FISHERY MANAGERS CAN'T CATCH A BREAK

 

I’ve said it more than once in casual conversation, and might have written it down once or twice somewhere in this blog:  Fisheries managers, whether state or federal, don’t get paid enough for the job that they do.

Let’s be honest—you don’t become a marine biologist to get rich.  Biology had fascinated me throughout all of my school years, and from the time that I was six or seven or so until the time I turned 17, I had no doubt that I’d spend my career happily studying the various creatures that lived in our seas. But about the time that I started taking a serious look at colleges, and career research turned from just thinking about what I’d like to do to thinking about what sort of job might keep me reliably supplied with a sufficiency of groceries, boats, and related gear, a career in biology slipped from my first choice to an unrequited dream.

But when I talk about folks being underpaid, it goes far beyond mere salary.  As I grudgingly settled into my job at various big financial institutions, observed the stultifying world of corporate America first-hand, and became more and more involved with the fishery management process in an effort to do at least something worthwhile with my life, I realized that the folks who run the fisheries management agencies, and the various subdivisions thereof, needed the same sort of organizational, budgeting, personnel, and public relations skills as the corporate set, but were paid—if they were very fortunate—maybe 10 percent of what they might earn as administrators in a similar corporate setting. 

It's pretty clear that someone enters the field of fisheries management out of a love for the subject and a dedication to the mission of rebuilding and conserving fish stocks, because they certainly don’t do it for the money.

They don’t do it for the public acclaim, either, for it’s hard to think of another career in which a person is confronted with the same degree of acrimony, just for trying to do the right thing.

Consider, for a moment, what happened down in Louisiana over the past few years.

The state’s two foremost inshore recreational species had fallen on hard times.  Speckled trout—more properly, “spotted seatrout”—and red drum have both fallen on hard times.  Of the two, the trout were facing the worst situation, with the stock badly overfished and the spawning stock biomass at the lowest level of abundance ever recorded.  Red drum were just beginning their slide, and presented managers with a chance to limit the damage and start the rebuilding before things got much worse.

Louisiana’s fisheries managers set about to make things right.

  The first item on their agenda was rebuilding the speckled trout stock, and modifying the state’s extremely liberal recreational measures, which still allowed anglers to keep 25 foot-long trout every time they left the dock, a bag limit significantly higher, and a size limit significantly smaller, than prevailed in any other Gulf state at the time.

To that end, Louisiana managers sat down and devised a few different sets of regulations that, they expected, would get the job done, then sent their proposals out for public comment, holding eight public hearings and sending surveys to a representative sample of Louisiana’s recreational fishermen. 

Based on the feedback received, the managers proposed new regulations which would decrease the bag limit to 15 speckled trout, and raise the size limit to 13 ½ inches, measures that received the strongest support from the angling public.

So it seemed that the Louisiana managers did everything that reasonable and prudent managers ought to do, first using their scientific expertise to craft alternative sets of management measures that would rebuild the speckled trout stock within a reasonable time, sending the alternative measures out to public comment to see which ones the public preferred, and then seeking to adopt the proposed regulations.

The only problem was that not everyone agreed with the rules, and that one of groups opposing such rules was the politically connected Louisiana chapter of the Coastal Conservation Association, which made the incredible statement that

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

CCA Louisiana argued for rules that would allow Louisiana anglers, most particularly including the chapter’s members, to kill more speckled trout, regardless of the state of the stock.

In the end, Louisiana’s professional fishery managers were slapped in the face for trying to do the right thing, as a committee of the state legislature, largely or wholly ignorant of fisheries science but fully cognizant of where both their votes and their donations come from, vetoed the new regulations.  Fortunately, it wasn’t a total loss, as a new set of management measures, not quite as effective as those initially adopted but still capable of rebuilding the stock within six years, was ultimately adopted and escaped further political interference.

Proposed red drum regulations followed a similar, if somewhat shorter path.

Louisiana’s drum aren’t yet overfished, but are experiencing overfishing.  Louisiana’s fisheries regulators noted that

“biological data [indicates] the red drum stock is experiencing overfishing resulting in an escapement rate below the 30 percent minimum limit, leading to a declining biomass.  To increase the escapement rate and avoid the stock biomass declining to an overfished condition, management changes are necessary.”

Once again, Louisiana’s fisheries managers tried to protect the fish stock, as well as the public’s long-term interests in a healthy red drum fishery, and proposed regulations that could rebuild the stock within about 10 years.

The proposal received the support of most of the stakeholders who commented before both the Louisiana Fish and Wildlife Commission and the same legislative committee that had torpedoed the proposed speckled trout management measures.  But once again, the Coastal Conservation Association opposed the conservation measures, with a spokesman saying

“The majority of our members believe that the [proposed management measures] passed in July [go] a step too far.”

And once again, politicians overrode professional fishery managers and shot down the proposed red drum rules, resulting in a less effective set of management measures being proposed in their stead.

Such disregard for professional fishery managers' expertise, standing alone, was bad enough, but then the outdoor media began piling on.

On December 12, an article appeared on the Outdoor Hub website, in which a writer named Keith Lusher complained,

“As recreational anglers in Louisiana acclimate to the new speckled trout regulations that have been imposed on them, the Louisiana Wildlife and Fisheries Commission is continuing its push to tighten restrictions on redfish…

“Once again [the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries] is asking recreational anglers in Louisiana to comment on the new restrictions.  However, it’s blatantly clear that the comment session is more of an appeasement session giving the impression that the LDWF cares about what recreational fishermen think.  It’s because of this that frustration among recreational fishermen is growing after the state initiated a closed season on flounder just last year and the tighter restrictions on speckled trout last month.

“Roland Gardner has fished Southwest Louisiana for over 50 years.  Gardner says he’s seen ebbs and flows in redfish harvests through the years.  ‘To take a few down years and write new law to limit recreational fishermen is just a knee-jerk reaction.  I wouldn’t be surprised if some environmentalists got to them and put forth an agenda to reduce limits on all species.  It’s not going to stop with flounder, specks, and redfish,’ Gardner said.

“Jeff Dempster believes what’s happening on the East Coast of the country is coming to the Gulf of Mexico.  ‘They want us all off the water to have the Gulf all to themselves.  This is just the beginning.  Look at what’s going on along the East Coast with the windmills.  They’re killing whales and putting lobster fishermen out of business.  You can bet your last fed coin they have eyes on the Gulf,’ Dempster said.”

Thus, for trying to rebuild a badly overfished stock of southern flounder, a species that is in steep decline throughout the southeast, for trying to restore a speckled trout stock that has fallen to the lowest level ever recorded, and for trying to keep the red drum stock from following the same path—basically, for doing they job that they’re paid for—Louisiana’s fishery managers are being accused of collaborating with some imagined cabal of extreme environmentalists who are supposedly trying to push anglers off the water, so that such environmentalists can “have the Gulf all to themselves,” although what they plan to do with said Gulf, if they’re not planning to fish, isn’t completely clear.

Unfortunately, conspiracy theories of this sort aren’t unique to Louisiana.  Fishermen on the East Coast, and particularly in the mid-Atlantic region, long ago became inured to spokesmen for the now thankfully defunct Recreational Fishing Alliance ranting about how

“large, well-funded and politically active environmental organizations…are philosophically opposed to fishing and endeavor to remove as many fishermen as possible from the water.”

It’s probably not surprising that the same delusions have spread to conspiracy-minded recreational fishermen along the Gulf coast, although it is somewhat amusing that one such conspiracy theorist quoted in the Outdoor Hub piece rails against East Coast windmills for “killing whales and putting lobstermen out of business,” but doesn’t seem to expend the same sort of vitriol on Louisiana oil rigs and related infrastructure that not infrequently spring leaks and spill oil into the Gulf of Mexico, such as the recent spill of about 1.1 million gallons of crude into waters that host not only the endangered Kemp’s ridley turtle, but also the rare Rice’s whale, which some have called “the most endangered whale in the world.”

Such irrational attitudes, and such disdain for professional fishery managers, might be excused if they were only expressed by a single author in a single outlet.  Unfortunately, they seem much more widespread.

In a December 9 article in The Advocate, writer Joe Macaluso accuses Louisiana fishery managers of playing “kick the can” with the state legislature, because after seeing their proposed science-based regulations shot down by a legislative committee, the managers failed to completely capitulate to the politicians, and instead came back with a new set of rules that maintained their preferred 3-fish bag limit, but coupled it with a more broader, more permissive slot size of 18 to 27 inches, rather than the originally proposed 18 to 24.

More troubling, on December 22 the same writer published an article in Louisiana Sportsman titled “Time to right the ship—leadership—of our state’s wildlife and fisheries,” in which he wrote,

“Without naming names—and didn’t your Momma tell you ‘if you can’t say anything nice about someone, then don’t say anything’—Louisiana’s Department of Wildlife and Fisheries has been run as if it was a red-headed stepchild (with all apologies to anyone red-headed and anyone who’s a stepchild).

“The hope is these folks will go away, these folks who made life a growing misery when it came to fish (especially fish) and wildlife issues.

“The heart-felt hope is that newly elected governor Jeff Landry has found the just-right people to run this vital state agency, and appoint the just-right people to the Wildlife and Fisheries Commission.”

And thus we come to understand why the professional fishery manager can’t catch a break.

If he or she does their job, promoting healthy fish stocks and healthy fisheries that are sustainable in the long term—they are pummeled in the press by people focused only on their short-term kill, and not on the future.  They are the subjects of inane conspiracy theories, and accused of trying to throw fishermen off the water (which might be the most ignorant comment of all, for just about all of the fishery managers that I’ve ever met were also inveterate anglers).  They are stymied, and often criticized, by opportunistic politicians with no real understanding of fisheries biology, but with very well-developed instincts for the right sound bite at the right time—politicians who often have the final say on whether those fishery managers remain employed.

On the other hand, if a fishery manager just goes through the motions, bending to the will of politicians and an often-hostile angling press that is driven more by a desire for advertising revenues than a desire to tell the truth, such manager can avoid political peril and public castigation, but will still have to face the most strident critic of all—themselves, and the conscience-driven knowledge that, in their inaction, they have betrayed the public trust.

I’ve met a lot of professional fishery managers over the years, at the state, regional, and federal levels, and can say that, with very few exceptions, they have eschewed the latter path, and instead executed their duties professionally and well, standing up to the politics as well as they could, while withstanding the cries of the critics.

Maybe they can’t catch a break.  Maybe, whatever they do, someone will scream and cry that it’s wrong.  Nonetheless, they endure.  And we, our sport, and the fish we pursue are better off for what they do.