Sunday, December 31, 2023

2023: A FRUSTRATING YEAR FOR MARINE FISHERIES

Ever since this blog began, I have made it a habit to review the past year in fisheries management, before making some predictions about what the big issues in the next year will be.  Last year, my review of the past 12 months was relatively upbeat.

That was last year.

2023, on the other hand, probably didn’t see a single unqualified management success.  Instead, we had one or two “it could have been worse” situations, and a few others where “worse” is just what we got.

I’ll begin the review with the species that probably generated the most debate, at least on the East Coast—the striped bass—then move on from there.

Striped bass

The striped bass was definitely one of those “it could have been worse” situations.

A stock assessment accepted by the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission’s Atlantic Striped Bass Management Board in 2019 found the striped bass stock to be both overfished and experiencing overfishing.  While Addendum VI to Amendment 6 to the Atlantic Striped Bass Interstate Fishery Management Plan got overfishing under control in 2020, the stock remained overfished.  In October 2022, the Management Board received a stock assessment update which found that the striped bass stock had a 78.6% chance to be fully rebuilt by the 2029 deadline established by the fishery management plan.

Unfortunately, the stock assessment update failed to consider the impact that the big 2015 year class, which was entering the 28- to 35-inch slot size limit, would have on recreational landings.  The influx of legal-sized bass caused recreational landings to spike in 2022, with 2022 landings approximately 90% higher than they were in 2021; when commercial landings and a slight increase in recreational releases were added to the calculation, biologists found that the number of striped bass removed from the population had increased by about 33%.

The Management Board had not planned to revisit striped bass management measures until after a stock assessment update was released in 2024, and had no legal obligation to do so.  However, the combination of sharply increased recreational landings, poor recruitment in key spawning areas, and a 2015 year class that was largely encompassed within the slot limit caused managers to take preemptive action.  At the May 2023 Management Board meeting, motion

“to initiate an Addendum to implement commercial and recreational measures for the ocean and Chesapeake Bay fisheries in 2024 that in aggregate are projected to achieve F-target from the 2022 stock assessment update (F=0.17).  Potential measures for the ocean recreational fishery should include modifications to the Addendum VI standard slot limit of 28-35” with harvest season closures as well as a secondary non-preferred option.  Potential measures for Chesapeake Bay recreational fisheries, as well as ocean and Bay commercial fisheries should include maximum size limits.  The addendum will include an option for a provision enabling the Board to respond via Board action to the results of the upcoming stock assessment updates (e.g., currently scheduled for 2004, 2006) if the stock is not projected to rebuild by 2029 with a probability greater than or equal to 50%,”

passed unanimously, and the Management Board went on to adopt an emergency action that required all states (with the exception of Maryland’s “trophy” fishery) to adopt a 31-inch maximum size by July 2, 2023 with only New Jersey dissenting.

The May meeting marked the high point of 2023 striped bass management.  After that, things began to flow slowly downhill.

The Management Board was supposed to approve a draft of the new addendum, Draft Addendum II to Amendment 7 of the Interstate Management Plan for Atlantic Striped Bass, at its August meeting, when it would select the management options that would go out for public comment.  Such approval would let the ASMFC schedule hearings on the Draft Addendum in late summer and early fall, and allow the Management Board to consider such comments, and approve a final version of Addendum II, at its October meeting.  States would then have to adopt new regulations in time for the 2024 season.

That didn’t happen.  Because the Management Board didn’t have enough information on how some commercial options might impact states’ landings, it decided to defer final action until its October meeting, which had the effect of delaying final adoption of Addendum II until, at best, late January 2024.  Such late adoption will mean that regulations will not be in place for the start of some states’ commercial fishing seasons, and any changes to commercial regulations might have to be deferred until 2025.

The version of the Draft Addendum that was finally released for public comment was a pitifully weak management document that was more likely to fail than to succeed in achieving its goals.  The ASMFC’s Atlantic Striped Bass Technical Committee found that, depending on which options were ultimately included in the final version of Addendum II, such Addendum had between a 33% and 56% of reducing fishing mortality to the target level, and that, if fishing mortality was reduced to Ftarget, there would still only be a 48% chance that the stock would be rebuilt by the 2029 deadline; when all options in the Draft Addendum were considered, there was only a 33% to 51% chance that timely rebuilding would be achieved.

The Technical Committee warned against putting too much faith in such estimates, saying that the uncertainty around the projected percentages was very, very large, and that any percentages provided were far more useful for determining the relative value of competing proposals, rather than determining their actual effect.  At the same time, providing such low estimates of probable success, in the face of substantial uncertainty, should breed discomfort, as the level of precaution embodied in regulations should be directly proportional to the level of uncertainty in the data underlying such rules.

By that standard, Draft Addendum II is a badly flawed management effort.

At the same time, it at least represents some effort to preemptively avert a decline in the striped bass population, for which the Management Board should be commended, as they could have simply decided to sit on their hands and do nothing until the stock assessment came out, as a different Management Board, largely composed of different people, did in November 2011, arguably setting off the chain of events that led the striped bass down the path that it travels today.

Politics trumps science in Louisiana

A little earlier, while discussing the Fishing Effort Survey, I mentioned how many angling industry and anglers’ rights organizations prefer state management over the federal fishery management system, because state systems can usually be manipulated more easily, and political pressure more easily brought to bear.

No state illustrates that more clearly than Louisiana.

2023 saw Louisiana’s state fisheries managers try to implement more restrictive regulations for both speckled trout (more properly, spotted seatrout) and red drum, and saw their efforts stymied in both cases by recreational organizations, particularly the Coastal Conservation Association, that used their political clout to stymie science-based fisheries management.

In the case of speckled trout, the stock had been fished so heavily by recreational fishermen—the commercial fishery accounts for well under 1% of all landings—that few fish grew past the states tiny 12-inch size limit, and 95% of the population was made up of fish no more than two years old, and its spawning potential was the lowest ever recorded.  State fisheries managers, after long and diligent work, decided to reduce the bag limit from 25 to 15 fish, and increase the size limit from 12 to 13 ½ inches.

But the Louisiana chapter of the Coastal Conservation Association didn’t want anything to do with such conservation measures.  Making the absurd claim that

“In our experience, changes in recreational regulations have rarely, if ever, resulted in a direct fishery recovery,”

and declaring that

“Moving to a 13 or 13.5-inch minimum size seems drastic and unnecessary,”

CCA Louisiana opposed Louisiana’s fishery management efforts.  Its opposition helped to convince a legislative oversight committee to override the state’s professional fisheries managers, forcing them to come up with alternative management measures.  Fortunately, their second proposal, which called for a 15 fish bag and a 13- to 20-inch slot limit, and allowed anglers to keep two above-slot fish each day, still provided the speckled trout with a reasonable opportunity to rebuild, and made it past the legislative committee.

Red drum are now running the same gauntlet.

Red drum aren’t yet in a badly depleted condition.  While they’re experiencing overfishing, with too few fish escaping the slot limit and joining the spawning stock, they are not overfished.  Louisiana’s fishery managers are trying to end overfishing and return the stock to health.  Once again, overfishing is the sole province of the recreational sector, as Louisiana outlawed commercial fishing for red drum a long time ago.

Current regulations allow anglers to keep five red drum per day.  Such fish must be between 16 and 27 inches long, although one drum per day may exceed the 27-inch maximum size.  Louisiana’s regulators determined that by dropping the bag limit to three red drum per day, narrowing the slot limit to 18 to 24 inches, and prohibiting the retention of any over-slot fish, they could reduce landings by 55% and rebuild the stock within about 10 years.

But once again, Coastal Conservation Association Louisiana opposed any such conservation measures, with its executive director, David Cresson, stating at a public hearing that

“The majority of our members believe the [Notice of Intent to adopt the proposed regulations] goes a step too far.”

And once again, the politicians on the oversight committee vetoed the professional managers’ proposal.

So far, the red drum’s saga doesn’t end as well as the speckled trout’s.  Louisiana’s managers have proposed a new set of rules, which would drop the bag limit from five fish to three and adopt an 18- to 27-inch slot limit, while prohibiting the retention of over-slot fish and prohibiting captains and crew from keeping fish on trips carrying passengers for hire.

Such regulations will result in a much smaller reduction in recreational landings, and lead to a significantly longer rebuilding time.  As of now, it is not clear that they will pass oversight committee review.

Mid-Atlantic “Harvest Control Rule”

This topic, too, could fall into the “it could have been worse” column, although the outcome was already pretty bad.  T

he Mid-Atlantic “Harvest Control Rule” (quotation marks needed as, from a strictly technical perspective, it isn’t) was adopted at a joint meeting of the Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council and the ASMFC’s Summer Flounder, Scup, and Black Sea Bass and Bluefish management boards in June 2022.

It represents the culmination, or at least a substantial mid-course victory, of the fishing industry’s efforts to evade the strict, data-based requirements of the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act, and replace them with a set of management actions largely decoupled from the recreational harvest limits and annual catch limits previously used to constrain recreational landings, and even from the allowable biological catch and overfishing limits used to prevent overfishing.  Such decoupling will, in many instances, allow recreational fishermen to kill substantially more fish than they were able to before, an outcome that the recreational industry views with considerable favor.

The National Marine Fisheries Service adopted final regulations incorporating the Harvest Control Rule on March 9, 2023, despite stakeholder comments noting that the Rule appears to conflict with key provisions of Magnuson-Stevens.  In response, the Natural Resources Defense Council filed a suit in federal district court, requesting judicial review of such regulations.  That challenge is still pending, with memorandums of law filed and oral arguments yet to be heard.

In the meantime, at the December 2023 joint meeting of the Council and the ASMFC’s Summer Flounder, Scup, and Black Sea Bass Management Board, the Control Rule was used to set 2024 recreational specifications for the summer flounder and scup fisheries, which are respectively facing 28% and 10% landings reductions, and was not used to set recreational specifications for black sea bass which, according to the clear and unambiguous language of the Rule, should have also been facing a 10% landings reduction.  However, the 2024 black sea bass landings target will remain unchanged because, thanks to advice from the Summer Flounder, Scup, and Black Sea Bass Monitoring Committee, which elevated the Committee’s view of the Rule’s intent above its clear language, both the Council and the Management Board decided that status quo was OK.

Marine Recreational Information Program/Fishing Effort Survey

In August, NMFS announced that it had found an error in the Fishing Effort Survey component of MRIP, which may have caused angler effort, and recreational catch and landings, to have been overstated by as much as 30% to 40%.

The problem was completely unexpected, and was only discovered because NMFS was engaged in quality control research intended to assure the integrity of MRIP data.  It came from an unexpected source.  The Fishing Effort Survey followed best practices in survey design, in that it asked the respondent a simple question—How often did you go fishing in the past two months?—before asking the supposedly more difficult question of how often an angler fished over the past year.  However, the researchers found that about 16% of respondents stated that they made more trips in the past two months than they made in the past twelve, which is an obviously impossible result.

Apparently, surveyed anglers were so willing to help NMFS out that they were overstating the number of recent trips, compressing their activity to include trips made over a longer period of time into a two-month window.  Researchers discovered that if they broke from the usual protocol, and asked how many trips were taken in the past year before asking about the last two months, the initial question provided a bound which limited responses to the two-month question to a more believable number.

NMFS is now engaged in a year-long study to determine whether the overstatement is limited to certain states and particular fisheries, or whether it occurs more widely.  The agency expects to be able to adjust MRIP data to better reflect the actual number of trips taken by 2026.

Predictably, the chronic critics of the federal fishery management system were quick to use NMFS’ announcement as new grounds to attack MRIP and resultant management decisions.  A September editorial in The Fisherman magazine was titled “NOAA Bombshell!  Angler Effort Surveys Still Flawed,” and criticized then-recent management actions to reduce the annual catch limit for summer flounder and impose an emergency, 31-inch maximum size limit on striped bass.

Farther south, the Center for Sportfishing Policy and its affiliated organizations, which have long tried to shift management of popular recreational species to more easily manipulated state management bodies which are not bound by the strictures of Magnuson-Stevens, issued a press release calling on NMFS

“to stop making the same mistakes, stop wasting taxpayer money, and stop causing chaos in recreational fisheries management and coastal communities.  It’s time for all parties to work together to properly fund state efforts to manage recreational fisheries.”

Of course, the critics fail to mention that the same sort of problems that affected the Fishing Effort Survey might lurk somewhere in state surveys too, but no one really knows because, unlike NMFS, no one is really trying to find them.

The critics also fail to understand that the Fishing Effort Survey’s problems, although not insignificant, have less of an impact on recreational fisheries management than they might choose to believe.  As Dr. Evan Howell, Director of NMFS’ Office of Science and Technology, announced when describing the Fishing Effort Survey issue on an August 7 conference call, the issue creates an error in the magnitude of recreational landings estimates, but does not impact trends in those estimates.  So if estimates show that landings were 25% higher in one year than they were in the previous season, the percent increase is still essentially accurate, even if the absolute size of the landings in both years was overestimated.

But some people just can’t help trying to spin the story to suit their own needs.

Summer flounder experience overfishing

The last benchmark assessment for summer flounder wasn’t filled with good news.  While the stock wasn’t overfished or, at the time, experiencing overfishing, recent surveys suggested that the fish were growing more slowly, being smaller at any given age, and producing fewer eggs per individual.  The biomass target was reset downward as a result.  In addition, recruitment had been below average since 2010, resulting in a spawning stock biomass that was below the target level.

A 2021 stock assessment update continued in the same vein, finding that spawning stock biomass was at about 86% of the biomass target.  The one bit of good news was that recruitment in 2018 seemed to have been significantly above average, providing some hope that both the population and the harvest were on the rebound.

The good news didn’t last long.  A 2023 assessment update determined that the size of the 2018 year class had originally been underestimated, and that summer flounder biomass had been overestimated.  As a result, recent annual catch limits, commercial quotas, and recreational harvest limits had been set too high, so that fishing mortality exceeded the fishing mortality threshold in 2022, meaning that overfishing had occurred.

As a result, the 2024 annual catch limit was reduced by about 40%.

Summer flounder recruitment has been below average for more than a decade, and it is possible that the current low recruitment, which has largely remained stable, represents a new normal for the species.  If that is the case, returning to higher levels of summer flounder landings may not be possible, at least in the near term. 


And those are some of the more significant fisheries issues that we faced in 2023.  On Thursday, I'll make some predictions about what we'll see in 2024.

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