THE STATE OF FISH STOCKS: DENYING REALITY

 

The 2018 benchmark stock assessment made it perfectly clear that the striped bass stock was overfished, and not much has changed since then.  Addendum VI to Amendment 6 to the AtlanticStriped Bass Interstate Fishery Management Plan, adopted in 2019, did get overfishing under control, but spawning stock biomass remains below the biomass threshold, while poor recruitment in three of the four major spawning areas—theVirginia and Maryland portions of the Chesapeake Bay, as well as the DelawareRiver—bodes ill for the future of the stock.

The stock assessment’s conclusions were based on 13 different fishery-dependent and fishery-independent surveys, which spanned the coast from New England to the Virginia coast and sampled fish ranging from juveniles to big spawning females.  The conclusions were peer-reviewed by a panelof three internationally-recognized experts in fisheries biology, who had noconnection to, and thus no intentional or unintentional biases toward, thestriped bass, who found that the assessment was based on good science and wasappropriate for managing the striped bass resource.

So it should be safe to assume that the striped bass stock is in a bad place, and could benefit from some management attention.

But the other day, when I was explaining that to a friend on a public website, citing some of the data related to the spawning failures in Chesapeake Bay and their impact on the bass population, someone else whom we both knew fairly well jumped into the conversation with a single comment,

“All junk.”

When I took exception to that response, and asked him to provide some support for his assertion, I received a heated response, which read in relevant part,

“The bass do not migrate the way they did 10 years ago.  They do not come inside inlets to find food as after the bunker seining was outlawed in New Jersey and then New York.  They feed offshore as far as the canyons and sampling is worthless and near shore catches are down so everyone screams disaster for the stock.  I see tremendous numbers of large breeding females being caught and keeping the hard hit for hire industry alive even though they all get released…There is no hard data.  You can’t regulate a migratory species precisely.  You are missing all the fish that never come inshore.  It’s junk science based on a moving biomass that you have no idea where it’s headed or where it came from.  A bunch of want to be good so called conservationists with a lost cause because your science is based on junk suppositions.  Make you feel good?  Your time has been wasted on this subject…”

Later on, he went on to note that the data underlying striped bass management was

“Junk science’

but

“Can’t be disproved.”

The possibility that the data underlying striped bass management can’t be disproved because it is, after all, true apparently never entered his mind.

Usually, I’d provide link to the exchange so folks could read it all in its original context, buy I’ve known the person making the comments for close to 35 years.  He’s not a bad guy, and I don’t feel like embarrassing him in an Internet post that, for practical purposes, will remain in the public domain forever.  However, his comments did provide too good an example of a phenomenon we often see in fisheries management—people so set on a their desired outcome that they flat out deny reality and refuse to consider any evidence contrary to their views—for me not to steal a few quotes.

The person who made the above-quoted comments is a long-time charter boat captain, and I believe that he holds a commercial fishing license and some striped bass tags as well—although I might be wrong about the latter—so it’s pretty easy to understand why he wants to believe what he does.  The folks who most adamantly deny even overwhelming scientific evidence usually have some economic motive for doing so, although purely recreational fishermen, who glean no profits from the fishery, can doggedly hang onto some strange notions, too.

But typically, there is some money involved.

Take, for example, a recent op-ed piece that appeared on the web page of The Star Democrat, a Maryland newspaper.  The piece, titled “Time for a better way to walk the talk on the Chesapeake Bay,” was similar to the comments quoted above, in that it lamented the fact that the striped bass’ current demise was being blamed on fishing mortality, and proposed other causes for the fish’s troubles.  It called for

“making the right decisions in the right way to address recent reports that the count of young striped bass in the Chesapeake Bay are at a critical low this year.”

The op-ed went on to say,

“some are jumping to the conclusion that overfishing by watermen and waterwomen is the reason for this reported low count.  Upon closer examination it is clear that there may be other reasons that merit further review and consideration.  These probable causes could be:

“Climate change resulting in warmer water in the Bay which may result in striped bass spawning earlier than they have done between March and mid-April.

“The cumulative negative impact on Bay water quality resulting from decades-long discharges of untreated wastewater from the chronically malfunctioning Back River and Patapsco wastewater treatment plants in Baltimore.

“The cumulative negative impact on Bay water quality resulting from decades-long discharges of water from behind the Conowingo Dam.  Over the past three years alone, the Conowingo has released tremendous amounts of sediment and water during the pre- and post-spawning season, directly affecting hatching and survival of striped bass in the northern Bay.

“Steadily increasing numbers of predators in the Bay that eat striped bass, especially during their grow-out.  Those predators include blue catfish, snakehead fish, cormorants (aka sea birds), cow-nosed rays and an increasing number of dolphins in the northern Bay.  [emphasis added]”

 

Unlike the commenter that was first quoted, the piece in The Star Democrat doesn’t flatly reject the science as “junk,” but gets to the same place by stating that

“Instead of over-regulating striped bass and other species, [Maryland] needs to…ensure the department’s conservation work…is rooted in science and evaluated through real-world testing,”

and arguing that

“it simply does not make any sense that the spring survey done by [the Department of Natural Resources] showed large amounts of spawning fish over the past several years,”

suggesting that there is a link between the number of large females present on the spawning grounds and the number of juvenile striped bass produced, which is simply not the case.

The author just can’t admit that Maryland striped bass are experiencing recruitment failure, and that fishing mortality, whether recreational or commercial, must be cut back to maintain striped bass abundance, and perhaps even to prevent a stock collapse.  He tries to find another cause for the striped bass’ distress, while ignoring the fact that, regardless of the cause, reducing commercial and recreational landings is the only tool that fishery managers have to ease the stress on the striped bass population.

Although the author of The Star Democrat piece was a commercial fisherman, recreational fishermen are subject to similar delusions.  The fishing columnist for the Cape Gazette, a Delaware paper, responded to the news of another poor spawn in the Chesapeake by writing,

“I still think they need to consider the fact that there have been more female striped bass in the Hudson River complex over the past few years than ever before.  Those fish did not just drop out of the sky.  They had to come from somewhere, and it’s just possible that they came from the Chesapeake Bay.  As global warming increased water temperatures, these big fish have moved north and now spawn in the Hudson River complex, and not in the Chesapeake Bay.”

I’ve heard others say the same thing, but there is no support for the theory.  Information provided by New York’s Department of Environmental Conservation shows that the Hudson’s juvenile index has, over time, exhibited a slight downward trend, with most, and most of the largest, of the above-average spawns occurring between 1987 and 2003.  However, the second-largest year class on record was produced in 2007, and it is not unreasonable to believe that such year class is responsible for many of the 40-pound-class fish being taken in and around the New York Bight this year.

In addition, spawning striped bass are not fungible; fish that spawn in the Chesapeake Bay and in the Hudson River are not the same.  A few years ago, the Massachusetts Divisionof Marine Fisheries spearheaded a study that found clear genetic differencesbetween the Chesapeake and Hudson spawning stocks, each of which has presumably evolved slight genetic variations to best adapt to conditions on their spawning grounds.

Thus, the data doesn't support the idea of a supposed northward migration of bass accounting for the decline of the Chesapeake spawning stock.

At the same time, it’s only human to believe what one wants to believe.  Confirmation bias, defined as

“the tendency to search out, interpret, favor, and recall information in a way that confirms or supports one’s prior beliefs and values,”

is very real and may even provide some social advantages.

Even if confirmation bias provides no advantage at all, under many circumstances, it does little harm to let people believe what they choose to believe, so long as they don’t force those beliefs, or the consequences of such beliefs, on others.

But when fishermen deny the science underlying fishery management decisions, and try to force their beliefs on the management process, they can adversely impact that process, and cause real harm to fish stocks.

It is the job of fisheries managers, and of fisheries advocates, to recognize such denial for what it is, and prevent such misapprehension from impacting management decisions that, in the end, will affect us all.