Thursday, December 21, 2023

GULF OF MEXICO RED SNAPPER MANAGEMET: THEY'RE STIRRING THE POT ONCE AGAIN

 

Every coast seems to have one or two fish that stir up most of the trouble at fishery management meetings.

Striped bass undoubtedly claim that title at the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission.  At the New England Fishery Management Council, it’s the cod; at the Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council, black sea bass and summer flounder probably cause the most heated debates.  

In the southeast, red snapper seem to be the species causing most of the contention, at both the South Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico fishery management councils.

But it’s at the Gulf Council where red snapper really star, where just the mention of red snapper management can cause tempers to blaze and more-or-less reasonable people to begin taking unreasonable stances.  It’s Gulf of Mexico red snapper that inspired an angler-led assault of the federal fishery management system that has shown no sign of abating, and may be getting ready to flare up again.

Evidence of such a possible flare up came in the form of two separate articles, written by two different authors, which appeared in to unrelated publications, but came out within a week of each other and were written by people with very clear ties to an organization that has long been dedicated to undercutting federal red snapper management.

The first such article was an opinion piece published in the Mississippi Clarion Ledger on December 12.  That piece, titled “NOAA has let down Mississippi’s anglers too many times,” was written by Jason Osborn, who is not only a member of the Mississippi Advisory Commission on Marine Resources, but is apparently also a “Patron” member of the Coastal Conservation Association, meaning that he has donated a significant sum of cash to one of the organizations making the greatest effort to undermine federal fishery managers—particularly with respect to red snapper.

Given such connection, his attack on NMFS—NOAA Fisheries—comes as no surprise.

The second article was published the next day, December 13, on the website AL.com, which deals with Alabama news and events.  Titled “When it comes to red snapper, Alabama can do it better,” that opinion piece was written by Dr. Bob Shipp, a very experienced and respected marine biologist who is intimately familiar with red snapper issues, but who also served for 12 years as a Director of the Coastal Conservation Association’s Alabama chapter.

Trusting people might believe that it is mere coincidence that two different outlets, in two different states, would publish op-ed pieces authored by two different people who voice similar concerns and happen to have connections to the same organization.  Folks familiar with the players in the Gulf red snapper debate, and how they go about their business, are more likely to believe that the editorials mark the start of a new assault on the federal fishery management system.

The editorials have the same common theme.

Osborne’s piece in the Clarion Ledger complains that

“Anyone who has fished for red snapper in the Gulf of Mexico over the decades has been treated to a roller coaster of shifting seasons, perplexing data and a stubborn insistence on the status quo,”

and attacks the data used by federal fishery managers.  He focuses on NMFS’announcement, made earlier this year, that recreational fishing trips, and sorecreational landings, might be overstated by as much as 30 to 40 percent, and attacks NMFS' efforts to calibrate federal fisheries data and that gathered by the five Gulf states, each using a different methodology, into what managers refer to as a “common currency,” data sets that make sense when compared to one another.

After criticizing the federal management system, Osborn comes to the conclusion that

“It is time for Mississippi to get off this crazy ride and opt out of the federal data collection process entirely.  The state can operate its own system that local anglers and managers alike can understand and have faith in.”

His reason—which we can assume is also the Coastal Conservation Association’s reason—for seeking such an outcome is simple, for as Osborn noted,

“Mississippi began the Tales n’ Scales program, which is a mandatory reporting system that is almost a census of exactly how many fish are caught.  For a couple of years, our seasons were significantly longer under the state management model, and all was well.  [emphasis added]”

Shipp got to the same place with respect to Alabama, but he is a respected scientist, so had to get there the long way around, first informing readers that

“my years of research on red snapper has found that this species does not migrate.  In my work at the University of South Alabama, we organized hundreds of research cruises to tag red snapper at reef sites all over the Alabama coast and found that the species demonstrates tremendous site fidelity.  In some instances, we recorded tag recaptures for 20 years at the same reef site!  The research demonstrates that red snapper could be managed more effectively as a resident species according to the population and habitat characteristics off our coast.”

That statement, of course, sets the stage for state-level management, and allows Shipp to then follow the same path pioneered by Osborn, arguing that

“recreational catch is one of the crucial data streams at the heart of every management decision, and yet federal efforts to accurately quantify it have failed miserably for decades.”

He also uses the recently discovered problems with NMFS’ Fishing Effort Survey to impugn the federal management process, and condemns NMFS’ efforts to convert all of the federal and state data into a common currency that allows such information to be compared and utilized in a statistically sound manner.  

After laying out issues that are, in his opinion, hindering the red snapper management process, Shipp reaches a similar conclusion to Osborn, that

“The simple solution is for Alabama to leave the federal recreational data program altogether…Texas has never been part of the system and Louisiana opted out five years ago.  It’s time for Alabama to do the same!”

While some might find it remarkable that two different people came to the same conclusions about red snapper management at the same time, the two articles are far less remarkable for what they say—for, in the end, they do nothing more than parrot the Coastal Conservation Association’s long-held position—than for what remains unsaid.

For example, Osborn tried to make NMFS seem incompetent by saying that

“On NOAA’s watch we had year-long seasons on depleted stocks, and three-day seasons on booming stocks.”

What he didn’t mention is that people don’t fish as often, and don’t catch as many fish, when stocks are depleted as they do when stocks are in better shape (although the Gulf red snapper stock has notbeen “booming” since the early1950s, it has been recovering, and coming closer to being rebuilt, in recent years).  So in 2000, when stocks were low, Mississippi anglers made only about 28,000 trips targeting red snapper, despite the year-long season, while in 2022, even during the shorter season, the number of trips increased more than five-fold, to nearly 155,000.

Osborn also “forgot” to mention that back in the days of the year-long season, states tended to match their regulations with those set by NMFS.  The three-day federal season was a necessary response to states going out of compliance with the federal rules, and adopting much more liberal management measures; since Gulf red snapper are managed as a single stock, federal regulations had to be much more restrictive to offset the large numbers of snapper being caught within state waters when federal waters were closed.

One of the most interesting omissions from the Shipp piece was related to his comment that red snapper don’t migrate and demonstrate “tremendous site fidelity.”  He used that fact to support state management, but it also does something else—it negates CCA’s argument that “The Great Red Snapper Count,” a comprehensive assessment of the Gulf’s red snapper population that discovered that two-thirds of the fish were widely scattered over low-profile bottom, and that the population was three times as large as previously believed, justified a relaxation of red snapper regulations.  

If the fish on the various Gulf reefs—which are the fish generally targeted by anglers—represent local populations that do not mix with fish from elsewhere, then the majority of the red snapper, which aren’t found on the reefs, are largely irrelevant to anglers and so to the recreational rulemaking process, which must focus on the populations of fish that are targeted by anglers, which are the fish which abide on the higher-profile reefs and other obvious structure.

Regulations must effectively address the one-third of the stock that is targeted by anglers, and not the two-thirds that recreational fishermen largely leave alone.

But perhaps the biggest omission from both opinion pieces deals with the recreational data issue.  It’s not surprising that both opinion pieces appeared in Alabama and Mississippi news outlets, because it is the data developed by those states’ recreational data programs—Alabama’s “Snapper Check” and Mississippi’s “Tales n’ Scales”—that, according to NMFS, underestimated recreational red snapper landings.  The recreational data programs maintained by Florida and Louisiana provided estimates very similar to those produced by NMFS.

That presents both Osborn’s and Shipp’s criticisms of NMFS’ data in a very different light, for contrary to what Osborn implied when he wrote,

“the Gulf Coast states won the ability to collect data on what their recreational anglers were really catching because no one believed what NOAA was reporting,”

that is, that the state data systems produced landings estimates different from those produced by NMFS, so that the state data was right (“what their recreational anglers were really catching”) and that the NFMS data was wrong, Louisiana’s and Florida’s landings estimates actually confirmed the NMFS’ data, meaning that either the estimates produced by NMFS, Louisiana, and Florida were all wrong, and that Alabama’s and Mississippi’s estimates were correct, or that the latter two states’ estimates were wrong, and the former three data sets were the ones that reflected reality.

Osborn’s and Shipp’s assumption that the Mississippi and Alabama estimates represented the most accurate data is not justified by the preponderance of the objective evidence; such statements were more akin to wishful thinking.

Osborn, and particularly Shipp, as the more experienced scientist, also omitted the impact that overestimation of recreational landings would have on estimates of red snapper abundance.  Recreational landings are one of the datasets used in the red snapper stock assessment, and such estimate contributes to the estimates of red snapper abundance.

Because it takes a larger biomass to support a higher level of recreational landings, an overestimation of recreational landings will of necessity lead to an overestimation of red snapper biomass.  Thus, if recreational landings are actually lower than NMFS believed—something that both Osborn and Shipp suggested is true—then the red snapper biomass, and particularly that portion of the biomass that relates to high-profile bottom and is targeted by anglers, would also be lower than previously believed.

Such lower biomass would justify more restrictive regulations.

Both Osborn and Shipp omitted that point.

So, in the end, what we need to ask is why an anglers’ rights group such as the Coastal Conservation Association might want to use coordinated editorials to stir up public opinion against federal red snapper management at this particular time.

Perhaps it was merely done in anticipation of the Gulf of Mexico Fishery Management Council setting state quotas for the 2024 recreational red snapper season, in an effort to stymie the calibration process and win larger quotas for Alabama and Mississippi.

Perhaps it was done as part of a larger program to convince both of those states to secede from NMFS Marine Recreational Information Program, and in doing so, again achieve the goal of larger red snapper quotas.

Or perhaps the editorials represent the first shot in a more ambitious effort to win support for legislation, not yet introduced, that would shift red snapper data collection, or even the entirety of red snapper management, from NMFS to the several Gulf states.

Right now, looking in from the outside, the endgame is hard to discern.

But whatever it is, we can be sure of of two things.  The two editorials were part of a coordinated effort to undercut federal red snapper management.

And pretty soon—maybe right after New Year’s—the debate over recreational red snapper management in the Gulf will heat up again.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


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