A DIFFERENT PERSPECTIVE ON FISHERIES ISSUES

 

Sometimes, the best way to understand an issue standing immediately before you is to lift up your head and look somewhere else.  It’s far too easy to get wrapped up in local problems, focusing so closely on the details that you miss bigger themes that repeatedly recur, not only close to home, but across the nation.

I was reminded of that just the other day by something that I read about, of all things, bowfishing in Oklahoma.

Oklahoma bowfishermen may currently shoot and kill an unlimited number of what have historically been deemed “rough fish” or “trash fish,” derogatory terms for what might better be called “native non-game species.”  The designation includes various types of gar, drum, and buffalo, which have been a part of the local ecosystem for millennia, but are neither popular with anglers nor widely sought for food, and thus are considered by many to be more or less worthless.

A report originally published in the Oklahoma Ecology Project on November 29 discusses bowfishermen intentionally targeting aggregations of spawning gar, often in a tournament context where killing large numbers of fish is the goal.  It describes an incident

“in the summer of 2021 when a group posted to Facebook a video as they tallied over 1,000 dead gars killed in one night at the Red River.  Ultimately, the bowfishers were fined not for the excessive take but for improper disposal of the carcasses.”

The carcasses were disposed of, after all, because the gar were considered fit only to be living targets, and not to be used as food.

The Oklahoma Department of Wildlife Conservation has decided that killing unlimited numbers of fish, which contribute to the proper functioning of Oklahoma’s native ecosystems, should be halted, and has proposed imposing a 10-fish daily bag limit for bowfishermen.  It turns out that the supposed “trash fish” are both more valuable and more vulnerable than many people believe.

Research published by the United States Forest Service indicates that freshwater mussels are seriously imperiled, with 71.7% of those found in North America listed as either endangered, threatened, or of special concern.  It notes that

“The high numbers of imperiled freshwater mussels in the United States and Canada…portend a trajectory toward an extinction crisis that, if unchecked, will severely impoverish one of the richest components of aquatic biodiversity.”

It turns out that the freshwater drum, a regular target of Oklahoma bowfishermen, serves as a host to 24 different species of freshwater mussel during one point in their lives, and thus makes a significant contribution to successful mussel reproduction (the larvae of most freshwater mussels, which are called “glochidia,” must spend a brief portion of their lives as parasites in various freshwater fish species; without a suitable host, the larvae will die).

Thus, the drum play a key role in the survival of mussel species, some of which are already badly depleted. 

In the case of the fish known, collectively, as “buffalo,” which represent the largest members of the sucker family, the issue is not the vulnerability of freshwater mussels, but of the fish themselves.  A study of three species, the bigmouth, smallmouth, and black buffaloes, conducted at the University of Minnesota found that such fish regularly live for more than 100 years.  The Oklahoma Department of Wildlife Conservation observed that

“bigmouth buffalo exhibit what is called ‘episodic’ or irregular recruitment, and that it is related to environmental conditions.  The fish have occasional years of spawning success separated by periods of poor reproduction for a decade or more…As a large-bodied and long-lived species with few natural predators, this slow-paced life history strategy is considered a suitable one.”

However, add aggressive unnatural predators, in the form of bowfishermen that are unconstrained by bag limits and, in at least in the case of some, any sense of responsibility toward the resource, and a life history dependent upon producing a cohort of juvenile fish every ten years or more can suddenly look like a very iffy proposition.  It has been noted that the buffalo’s long lifespan, extremely episodic recruitment, and late maturity, among other aspects of its life history, are

“all characteristics that make this species extremely vulnerable to overfishing…bigmouth buffalo are declining in Canada, and have been in steep decline in contiguous areas of the U.S., temporarily associated with the rise of modern bowfishing in the 21^st century.”

It’s only reasonable that Oklahoma is now hoping to provide some protection to such historically unprotected fish.

But the bowfishing industry is pushing back.

Although Oklahoma bowfishermen admittedly practice something called “shoot-and-release” for historically unmanaged native fish species, and despite the fact that Oklahoma fisheries managers have determined that over half of the fish “released” after being shot in “non-vital” areas, and about 96 percent of the fish that weren’t immediately killed after being shot in the guts, spine, or head, nonetheless died within five days, Kyle Mather, a spokesmen for Oklahoma’s bowfishing community could somehow still argue, with a straight face, that his constituents were not engaged in wanton killing.

In fact, he argued that bowhunters actually

“provide a service by removing what he says he believes is a small portion of more-than-plentiful native fish populations that have few natural predators.”

Just why such fish need to be removed from the ecosystem, and just why such removal constitutes a service rather than harm, Mather failed to say.

Of course, those were not the bowfishermen's’s only avenues of attack.  Mather reportedly also argued that

“customized lighted boats and other equipment are expensive, and people won’t want to go to that expense to shoot just a few fish per outing.  The rules would put guides out of business.”

Another spokesmen for the bowfishermen, Pete Gregoire, president of the Bowfishing Association of America, objects to the 10-fish bag limit because

“They still don’t have any real data, any good science to back this up…These populations are not in jeopardy, and the limit they came up with is purely arbitrary.  They need to put good studies in place and figure things out.  Then, if there is a defined need for restrictions, we will listen.”

And that’s where perspective comes in.

Anyone who attended the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission’s New York hearing on Draft Addendum II to Amendment 7 to the Interstate Fishery Management Plan for Atlantic Striped Bass last Monday night heard representatives of the party and charter boat industry make arguments that sounded very similar to the arguments made by the bowfishing industry representatives who oppose protections for Oklahoma’s native fish. 

At the striped bass hearing, speaker after speaker came to the microphone to declare that the science used by the ASMFC to prepare Addendum II was somehow “bad,” even though it was derived from a peer-reviewed stock assessment based on what is arguably one of the richest data sets used to manage any Atlantic Coast species. 

They all talked about a healthy fish stock undergoing some sort of “change” in migration patterns, spawning grounds, etc., even though neither they nor anyone else could provide any documentation of what such “change” might be.  There was a sort of consensus that warming water—but not necessarily climate change, although how they separated the two was unclear—was causing the bass to abandon their Chesapeake Bay spawning grounds for rivers farther north, including the Hudson, Housatonic, and Connecticut.

The fact that the juvenile abundance surveys for the Hudson River show no increase in recruitment, that Housatonic River dams block access to just about all suitable spawning habitat, and that the Connecticut River, in all likelihood, produces only small numbers of fish did not deter them from arguing that such new “northern” spawning grounds can and have replaced the 70 to 90 percent of all Atlantic Coast bass traditionally spawned in the Chesapeake Bay.

Nonetheless, they insisted that it was the ASMFC’s science that was, somehow, “bad.”

And like the claim that no one would go out on an a boat to shoot “only” ten fish per person, and that such a bag limit would put Oklahoma bowfishing guides out of business, the for-hire operators speaking at Monday night’s hearing argued that they needed a slot limit broader than the 28- to 31-inch slot in effect today, because if their clients only caught fish that they had to release, and could not take one home, they would not charter boats and the for-hire operators would also go out of business.

And such claims might even be true, but that doesn't explain why the health of a handful of businesses (in the case of striped bass,the for-hire fleet is only responsible for about 1.5% of all directed trips) ought to take precedence over the long-term health of a public resource.

Finally, the claim that the bowfishermen were “provid[ing] a service” by removing some proportion of the “more-than-plentiful” buffalo, drum, and gar sounded almost like the claims made by some of the for-hires that striped bass were “over-abundant,” becoming cannibalistic, etc. and, if anything, needed to be thinned out a bit, and not protected,

When we look at one fishery in a vacuum, whether that fishery is striped bass,  gar, buffalo, and drum, or something completely different, it’s easy to hear the arguments of those who oppose good, science-based fishery management, and wonder whether they might, in fact, have a valid point or two.

But when you look at the bigger picture, and see representatives of the fishing tackle industry complain that the science behind managing red snapper in the Gulf of Mexico is no good, hear the same people whine that there are too many sharks stealing the fish off their lines (and perhaps hope that someone would perform the service of removing a few from the ocean in order to improve anglers’ lives), and see needed summer flounder regulations opposed because

“Restaurants, hotels, gift shops and a wide range of other businesses would be harmed if recreational anglers see no point in making the trip if they feel that their prospects for keeping a few fish to take home were not good,”

a common theme begins to emerge.

Regardless of species, which can be as different as striped bass in New York or bigmouth buffalo in Oklahoma, those who stand to profit, at least in the short term, by killing more fish use the same arguments to oppose the regulations needed to conserve and/or rebuild fish stocks.  The arguments rarely, if ever, are rooted in fact or hard data.  Instead, they repeat the same unsupported allegations again and again:  The science is bad.  We’ll go out of business.  There are too many fish, and they need to be thinned.

Seen in that context, it becomes clear that such arguments are merely a ploy, used to defeat regulations intended to support healthy and sustainable fisheries and enhance short-term gain.

It becomes clear that such arguments should be ignored.

 

 

 

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