2024--A DISAPPOINTING YEAR FOR FISHERIES MANAGEMENT

 

In the decade—now almost eleven years—since One Angler’s Voyage first appeared, the last post in December has typically taken a look at the big fisheries stories of the year, and made some general comments on the progress of fisheries management in the past twelve months.

This year, it is impossible not to note that many of the important fisheries issues are progressing backwards.  Whether we are talking about the regional fishery management councils, the states, the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission, or the courts, conservation advocates and the fish that they seek to conserve have lost more fights than they’ve won, while some of the very few victories might be short-lived.

THE GOOD NEWS

The big win—Klamath River salmon

Last fall, the final episode of a years-long effort to remove dams from California’s Klamath River played out, as a temporary cofferdam, the final barrier to upstream movement of anadromous fish, was taken down.  Very shortly thereafter, a biologist marked the passage of the first chinook salmon to ascend the river since 1912.

Getting to the point where salmon could again ascend a free-flowing Klamath River cost $500 million and over twenty years of effort.  Four large dams were removed, and all the work is not yet done.  It will take years before the Klamath’s runs of salmon and steelhead (searun rainbow) trout are restored.  In the meantime, the river’s banks, so long submerged by still waters behind the now-removed dams, will have to be revegetated with native plants, and so stabilized to prevent erosion.

But that KIamath dam removals, the largest such removal project in the nation so far, illustrates what can still be done to preserve natural runs of anadromous fish, and stands as an example that should be replicated on every coast.

NMFS settles red snapper lawsuit

The Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act states that regional fishery management councils should

“exercise sound judgment in the stewardship of fishery resources,”

but the unfortunate truth is that too many people seek council seats not to be stewards of the nation’s living marine resources, but instead to protect their own interests and the interests of various businesses with which they are somehow affiliated.

And usually they get away with it, provided that their efforts make some meager effort to comply with the applicable law.  Sometimes, though, councils take things a step too far, as was the case when the South Atlantic Fishery Management Council flatly refused to take meaningful action to end the recreational overharvest of red snapper.

It’s not that the South Atlantic Council didn’t understand that there was a problem.  They went so far as to complete a regulatory amendment, which would have imposed time and area closures designed to reduce anglers’ bycatch of red snapper, and the resultant dead discards.  But faced with strong opposition from the recreational sector, the Council never forwarded that amendment to the National Marine Fisheries Service for approval and implementation.

And for once, anglers didn’t get away with obstructing needed fisheries management measures.  Commercial fishermen sued NMFS, arguing that it didn’t take timely action to reduce the dead discards, and resultant overfishing, attributable to the recreational sector.  NMFS took a good look at the lawsuit, and apparently realized that its inaction was indefensible.  As a result, NMFS agreed to a settlement which committed the agency to publish final regulations addressing the overfishing issue by June 6, 2025.

Thus, absent a change of heart at the Council or interference from Congress, NMFS will be forced to step in and be the stewards of the resource that the Council was obligated to manage, before it got sidetracked into defending the recreational fishery instead of the fish that both commercial and recreational fishermen depend upon.

But at least the red snapper might finally get a break.

Loper-Bright a blessing in disguise?

For the past forty years, when there was an ambiguity in a statute setting forth the powers of a federal agency, and an agency’s exercise of its powers was challenged in court, the reviewing court had to defer to the agency’s interpretation of the relevant statute, so long as that interpretation was reasonable.  Such deference was referred to as the “Chevron doctrine,” after the United States Supreme Court case which established it, Chevron U.S.A. v. Natural Resources Defense Council.

The Chevron doctrine was frequently challenged by right-leaning commentators, who felt that it gave too much power to unelected federal bureaucrats, and infringed on power that ought to belong to Congress and to the courts.  In recent years, challenges to the doctrine became more and more frequent, but while it was weakened, it was never overturned.

That changed on June 28, 2024, after the Supreme Court handed down its decision in Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo.  While the plaintiffs brought the action to challenge the National Marine Fisheries Service’s requirement that vessels in the Atlantic herring fishery carry industry-paid observers, the case, which was argued by a right-wing law firm at odds with the “administrative state,” became the vehicle used to successfully attack Chevron.  The Supreme Court’s decision explicitly overturned the Chevron doctrine, and found that only the courts have the authority to interpret the nation’s laws.    (Although that might not do Loper-Bright too much good in the end, as the matter was remanded to the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, with instructions that it be reconsidered, this time with no reference to Chevron.  Observers say that the court seemed willing to use Magnuson-Stevens’ legislative history, along with other customary rules of statutory interpretation, to uphold NMFS requirement that the herring industry pay for the needed observers.  Loper Bright may well have won the Chevron battle, but could ultimately lose the fight that it cared most about.)

The initial reaction of many in the advocacy community, including those advocating for marine resources conservation, to the Court's decision was negative, as people worried that it would lead to many corporate challenges to clean water, clean air, employment, health, and other important regulations, and block agency efforts to implement beneficial change.

But there is another side of the coin that is only now getting some attention:  If a presidential administration chooses to serve corporate interests by gutting regulations that control air and water pollution, overfishing, the destruction of terrestrial and marine ecosystems, etc., that administration’s agencies will no longer be deferred to by the courts.  Instead, regulatory rollbacks, as well as new, destructive regulations of every kind, will be subject to court challenges and a thorough court review that might well make the difference between clean water and the degradation of our rivers, estuaries, bays, and sounds.

Looked at in that context, the Loper-Bright decision looks very much like a blessing in disguise.

A MIXED BAG

Striped bass

Striped bass started 2024 strong, as the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Service adopted Addendum II to Amendment 7 to the Interstate Fishery Management Plan for Striped Bass in January.  Thanks to that Addendum, the former emergency measure that established a 28- to 31-inch coastal recreational slot limit was made permanent, a 1-fish bag and 19- to 24-inch slot size was adopted for the Chesapeake Bay, and the commercial striped bass quota was reduced by seven percent.

A group of commercial fishermen and charter boat operators from Maryland challenged Addendum II in federal district court, claiming, among other things, that it constituted an illegal “taking” under the Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution.  The trial judge quickly laughed them out of the courtroom when they requested a preliminary injunction that would prevent Addendum II from going into effect, and though they appealed that decision, their chances don’t look very good at the United States Court of Appeals for the 4^th Circuit either, as one judge asked Delmarva’s counsel

“Isn’t this regulation intended to save and preserve the striped bass?  If you take that at face value, then without this, the striped bass could become extinct, and your client would lose 100% of its business,”

and later asked.

“They can catch more than one.  They just can’t keep more than one, correct?”

while another judge questioned the plaintiffs’ claim that Maryland was “coerced” into compliance with the ASMFC’s management actions, noting that

“I don’t think it’s fair to think of anything in this regime as coercion.  The member states all continue to be voluntarily associated with this compact,”

 while adding.

“There is a sort of fashion right now to sort of attack institutions and claim that institutions that have been working well are somehow fundamentally defective.  I think that we should be very careful about entertaining those kinds of claims.”

Based on such comments, the plaintiffs should soon taste defeat at the appellate level, too.

That happened less than three weeks ago, but the striped bass’ fortunes have gone downhill since then.

After the ASMFC’s Atlantic Striped Bass Management Board’s October meeting, where it voted nearly unanimously to hold another meeting this month, when new management measures for 2025 would be considered, it seemed that the striped bass stock, despite being overfished and experiencing historically low levels of recruitment, was likely to be fully rebuilt by 2029.

But when the Management Board met on December 16, those hopes and expectations were dashed, as the Board failed to take any action to increase the likelihood of timely rebuilding, or to protect the 2018 year class, which will be the focus of recreational harvest next year.  Instead, the Management Board decided to initiate a new addendum to the Management Plan which, at best, will adopt new management measures for the 2026 season, after the 2018 year class has already borne the brunt of a full season of recreational harvest, and at worst may try to undo some of the beneficial provisions of Amendment 7 to the Interstate Fishery Management Plan for Atlantic Striped Bass, which was approved less than three years ago.

At this point, the future health and sustainability of the striped bass stock is very much up in the air.

BAD TRENDS

Court allows bad management of Mid-Atlantic fisheries

After the National Marine Fisheries Service approved the Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council’s proposal to abandon the traditional management of bluefish, summer flounder, scup, and black sea bass, and replace it with a so called “Harvest Control Rule/Percent Change Approach” that would allow managers to ignore the annual catch limit for the recreational sector, and even allow them to set “recreational harvest targets” that would result in the overall annual catch limit, and even the acceptable biological catch, being exceeded, the Natural Resources Defense Council sued, claiming that such management approach violated key provisions of Magnuson-Stevens.

Unfortunately, a trial court judge at the federal district court in Washington, D.C. disagreed, handing down a decision that, although it seemed to stretch logic close to the breaking point at times (finding, for example, that even though Magnuson-Stevens requires regional fishery management councils to set annual catch limits for all managed species, nothing in the law says that annual catch limits were intended to be actual limits on catch) nevertheless upheld the Percent Change approach.  In doing so, the court focused on the concept of optimum yield, finding that in order to attain the optimum yield from abundant stocks, it might be necessary to exceed the annual catch limit.  Similarly, the court’s decision seemed to suggest that even if the fishing mortality rate exceeded the rate that would produce maximum sustainable yield, it didn’t constitute overfishing if biomass waws above the biomass target.

It was an unfortunate decision that will probably inspire other fishery management councils to seek ways to circumvent Congress’ intent when it passed the Sustainable Fisheries Act of 1996 and the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Reauthorization Act of 2006, but for now, it represents the current state of the law.

ASMFC and NMFS ignore black sea bass stock assessment

Unfortunately, the efforts of NMFS—or, at least, of NMFS’ Greater Atlantic Fisheries Regional Office—to undercut Magnuson-Stevens and what would appear to be the intent of Congress didn’t stop when it approved the new “Percent Change” approach to recreational fisheries management.  That became apparent last August, when first the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission, and later the National Marine Fisheries Service, chose to ignore the “best available scientific information,” as Magnuson-Stevens puts it, with respect to black sea bass, because it didn’t want to tell the recreational sector—or, at least, the for-hire fleet—that the stock was smaller than they had believed, which meant that landings were too high and needed to be reduced.

The story starts in August 2023, when the ASMFC and the Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council traditionally hold a joint meeting to set the next year’s specifications for various species, including black sea bass.  Black sea bass have proven to be a very difficult species to manage, with recreational overages so hard to control that fishery managers effectively stopped trying.  The initial impetus behind developing the Percent Change approach was a desire to stop the chronic tightening of black sea bass regulations (one could argue that NMFS should have been focused on stopping the chronic recreational overharvest that required such tightening, but managers apparently lacked the will to take that job on, even though the tools to do so were readily available).  So, in August 2023, instead of suggesting the deep recreational harvest reductions that traditional management would have called for, Council staff ran the numbers through the Percent Change matrix, which advised that only a 10 percent landings reduction would be required.

But a 10 percent reduction is still a reduction, so managers found a way to avoid it, saying that the Percent Change approach contemplates having the stock assessment updated every two years, and since 2023 marked the third year without an assessment (because the planned assessment was late), black sea bass regulations for 2024 should remain unchanged, because a new assessment would be out that year, and managers could then adopt new regulations, if needed, for 2025.

A research track stock assessment passed through the peer review process in late 2023, and in the early summer of 2024 a management track assessment used that assessment’s methodology to provide an estimate of the spawning stock biomass, the biomass target, etc. for 2025.  It was passed on to the Mid-Atlantic Council’s Scientific and Statistical Committee which, in accord with Magnuson-Stevens, set the Acceptable Biological Catch for 2025, which set the upper limit for landings allowed by the Council.

But to managers’ dismay, the stock assessment found that both the spawning stock biomass and the biomass target were more than 20 percent lower than they had believed, and the Mid-Atlantic Council’s Scientific and Statistical Committee determined that black sea bass landings ought to be reduced by 20 percent.  So, suddenly, the same managers who didn’t want to take any management action until a new stock assessment came out decided, once they saw what the stock assessment said, that they didn’t believe the peer reviewed stock assessment that they’d been waiting for, and instead ought to maintain 2025 landings at 2024—or was that 2023?—levels, rather than implement the recommended reductions.

Now, they felt that, before any changes were made, they ought to wait for the assessment update scheduled for 2025.

So the ASMFC’s Management Board voted to maintain the status quo, while the Mid-Atlantic Council, bound by the strictures of Magnuson-Stevens, adopted its Scientific and Statistical Committee’s recommendations.  But the Council’s actions didn’t matter, because the regional office decided that it had the power, in order to avoid a split in state and federal regulations that might harm federal permit holders, to also leave the black sea bass regulations unchanged.

That seemed to violate the provisions of Magnuson-Stevens, but the regional office literally decided that the law did not apply to them.  It decided that, while Magnuson-Stevens said that the Council couldn’t adopt catch limits higher than the level set by its Scientific and Statistical Committee, there was nothing in the law that said that NMFS couldn’t ignore that Committee’s advice.  And while the law said that the only thing that NMFS could do was approve, disapprove, or partially approve a management plan or plan amendment, and not substitute its judgment for that of the Council, NMFS decided that annual specifications were neither an plan nor an amendment, and thus NMFS could adopt whatever specifications it chose, regardless of the Council’s actions.

In the end, that means that NMFS not only ignored the best available scientific advice for the 2025 black sea bass season, but that it probably feels free to ignore such advice in the future, regardless of species, if it thinks that it has a good reason to do so.

Which bodes ill for Magnuson-Stevens.

PARTING THOUGHTS

Perhaps I should have mentioned the 2024 election in the list of bad outcomes, as it ushered in an administration that proved itself hostile to fisheries conservation its first time around, and a Congress that is also likely to be very hostile to conservation efforts, very friendly to the commercial and recreational fishing industries, and can probably be expected to weaken, and very possibly to severely weaken, the National Marine Fisheries Service and federal fisheries management.

But I’ll address that sort of thing next Thursday, when I take a look at what 2025 might bring.  

 

 

GOOD NEWS FOR CHESAPEAKE MENHADEN

 

Amid all the gloom-and-doom reporting, good news often slips by unnoticed.  That seems to be the case with menhaden in the Chesapeake Bay.

If you read most of the articles written about Chesapeake Bay menhaden, you’d get the impression that they were in some sort of serious trouble.  For example, the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership recently put out a press release that began

“A healthy Chesapeake Bay with abundant fishing opportunities is only possible when there are sufficient menhaden.  Menhaden are keystone species serving as a critical food source for iconic Bay sportfish like striped bass, red drum, and bluefish, as well as ospreys, marine mammals, and more.  But for far too long, the critical science needed to make informed decisions about the Chesapeake’s menhaden has been delayed due to interference from industrial fishing behemoth Omega Protein, which removes over 100 million pounds of menhaden from the Bay each year.  [emphasis in original]”

The tone of the release suggests that there were problems with the Bay’s menhaden population—if one can even say that there is such a thing as a “Chesapeake Bay population” of menhaden since, so far as I know, no one has yet quantified the movements of menhaden in and out of the Bay.  In fact, the most recent benchmark stock assessment informs us that

“Based on size-frequency information and tagging studies, the Atlantic menhaden resource is believed to consist of a single unit stock or population.  Genetic studies support the single stock hypothesis.  [emphasis added; references omitted]”

Given that statement, it is probably incorrect to refer to a “Chesapeake Bay population” of menhaden at all.

Based on current knowledge, it is also impossible to say whether the menhaden found in the Chesapeake at any given time are fish that enter early in the year, remain there until chased out by winter’s cold, and are not replenished in any significant numbers during the season, or whether there is a regular interchange of fish between the ocean and Bay, and regular replenishment of the “Bay population” throughout the season.  There has often been concerns with “localized depletion” of Bay menhaden, but Amendment 3 to the Interstate Fishery Management Plan for Atlantic Menhaden, citing a 2009 stock assessment, notes that

“given the high mobility of of menhaden, the potential for localized depletion could only occur on a ‘relatively small scale for a relatively short time.’”

While it’s true that a lot more scientific information is needed to clear up such questions, and the the Virginia legislature has unfortunately delayed funding for studies that might help scientists find needed answers, it is also true that the ominous tone of the TRCP release, and most other public comments on menhaden, unnecessarily—and undoubtedly intentionally—skews public opinion in an unjustifiably negative direction.

Such skewed public opinion was readily apparent in the comments made by some stakeholders ahead of the December 16 meeting of the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission’s Atlantic Striped Bass Management Board.  While the problems facing the striped bass stock are well known—it experienced overfishing for many years prior to 2020, and because of unfavorable environmental conditions, most notably a lack of cold winters and cool, wet springs, has experienced very poor spawning success over the past six years—too many commentors ignored those issues and placed the blame for low striped bass abundance on an imagined shortage of menhaden in the Chesapeake Bay. 

Thus, we saw comments such as

“[Problems] in the Chesapeake Bay causing lower spawn rates [include]…allowing omega [sic] boats to fish inside the bay.  The bass will still migrate south to there [sic] spawning grounds but when it comes to spawning time they don’t have enough bunker to feed on to nourish their eggs for viable spawning,”

“As your own scientists have pointed out, striped bass are the most sensitive fish to declines in menhaden.  I urge you to consider menhaden reduction harvest as a likely contributing factor in the decline of striped bass,”

and

“Stop all harvesting of Atlantic menhaden…Now bigger picture.  Entire bays being harvested for menhaden no fish will push in and if there’s no food for their offspring why would they breed.  [sic]  These fish are not dumb they have been around a long time because of their survival skills.  STOP the commercial harvest of MENHADEN.  It is being used for completely unnecessary products and the ecosystem all up and down the coast.”

Such comments were made regardless of the fact that there is no data supporting the claims that there are insufficient menhaden to support the striped bass population.  The health of the menhaden stock is measured by the use of ecological reference points that are tied directly to the needs of the striped bass.  The target fishing mortality rate for Atlantic menhaden is defined as

“the maximum fishing mortality rate (F) on Atlantic menhaden that sustains Atlantic striped bass at their biomass target when striped bass are fished at their F target,”

while the fecundity target, which is used in lieu of a biomass target, is

“the long-term equilibrium fecundity that results when the population is fished at the [ecological reference point] F target.”

And since the most recent stock assessment update, completed in 2022, found that

“The fishing mortality rate for the terminal year of 2021 was below the [ecological reference point] target and threshold and the fecundity was above the [ecological reference point] target and threshold,”

any claims that the current overfished state of the striped bass stock is due to a shortage of menhaden lacks all credibility.

Some might try to argue that the stock assessment only looks at coastwide abundance, and so does not reflect the abundance of menhaden in the Chesapeake Bay.  However, such arguments overlook one critical fact:  For the last two years, the Chesapeake Bay has been flooded with juvenile menhaden.

Those fish have been documented in Maryland’s juvenile abundance survey.  In 2023, the survey found that

“Menhaden abundance was the highest measured in over 30 years.”

In 2024, the Maryland Department of Natural Resources announced that

“Menhaden abundance was nearly equal to last year, which was the highest measured since 1990.”

While those surveys were only conducted in the Maryland portion of Chesapeake Bay, the benchmark stock assessment also informs us that

“There have been several studies examining Atlantic menhaden migration patterns.  Adults begin migrating inshore and north in early spring following the end of the major spawning season off the Carolinas during December-February.”

Based on that information, it is reasonable to believe that an equal number of menhaden enter the Virginia portion of the Chesapeake Bay during the spring inshore migration, and that if there is any additional inflow of menhaden from the ocean later in the year, such fish would also venture into Virginia waters.

Yet, for some reason, there is little or no effort made to get the good news about Chesapeake menhaden out to the public.  The Maryland Department of Natural Resources reported its findings of high menhaden abundance in a single sentence buried in a press release focusing on striped bass, and few other outlets picked up the story.

After scientists at Virginia’s College of William and Mary found that osprey nesting success in one local bay had declined in recent years, and blamed that decline on a shortage of menhaden in the Chesapeake Bay, the story was widely covered in the mainstream press, including a comprehensive feature published in The New York Times.  Yet when another team of biologists from the Virginia Institute of Marine Science criticized that study, questioning the data and statistical methods that led to is conclusion that commercial menhaden fishing within the Chesapeake Bay was the cause of the ospreys’ nesting woes, and ultimately questioning that conclusion itself, writing,

“while we share concerns about the demographic and foraging trends of osprey in Mobjack Bay, the analysis presented in [the original study] do not establish a clear relationship with menhaden abundance and availability,”

their findings were reported in some local news outlets, but never attained the national attention that the original study received. 

It’s almost as if everyone knows that bad news about menhaden sells better, particularly to big foundations that provide the grants used to pay the salaries of consultants who lead the attacks on the menhaden industry, and to the donors that help keep various advocacy organizations, big and small, alive, while good menhaden news might result in those funds being redirected elsewhere.  Yet, as Dr. Robert Latour noted after issuing his criticism of the original study,

“It may turn out that the linkage is real, and I’m certainly willing to admit that, but right now I just don’t feel like we can say that…There was so much pressure being put on industry and policymakers to make decisions, and the scientific basis for doing that was not very solid at all.  So the point of the commentary was to give an alternative perspective.”

And that alternative perspective is certainly needed, because fisheries management decisions ought to be based on facts, not on emotions generated by a distorted view of the truth.  When those facts are absent, it’s incumbent on fisheries managers to go out and find them; it’s easy to argue that Virginia’s failure to finance comprehensive menhaden research was a shortsighted and potentially costly mistake.

But when information is available, it is incumbent upon researchers and advocates, as well as the press, to put as much emphasis on the good news and they put on the bad.  To do anything less brings their credibility into question.

The news out of Maryland, which found the greatest menhaden abundance in over 30 years, was certainly good, yet it was scarcely reported by any of the outlets or organizations that are quick to trumpet bad news regarding the species.

We can only suspect why such pervasive silence prevailed.

DOES ANYONE WANT TO MANAGE BLACK SEA BASS?

 

The black sea bass is the enigma of mid-Atlantic fisheries.

Since 2007, when the spawning stock biomass (SSB) was barely above the threshold that denotes overfishing, the stock has staged a remarkable comeback, with SSB reaching a high of 24,680 metric tons (mt), approximately 220 percent of the biomass target, in 2022. The SSB has declined since then, to an estimated 20,987 mt in 2024; a management track stock assessment completed in June 2024 (2024 assessment) suggests that SSB will decline more sharply in the near future, to 17,442 mt in 2025 and 14,042 mt a year later.

Still, even an SSB of 14,000 mt is well above the 11,225 mt biomass target, and more than large enough to produce the stock’s maximum sustainable yield (MSY), which is estimated to be 3,649 mt, or a little over 8 million pounds.

But what is most interesting about the black sea bass stock’s recovery is that it happened almost by accident, and not as the result of thoughtful and conservative management.

A difficult fish to manage

The first black sea bass management plan was adopted by the Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council (Council) and the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission (ASMFC) in 1996, shortly before a 1998 stock assessment found that the stock was overfished and probably experiencing overfishing. At the time, scientists weren’t able to calculate biological reference points, which are used to determine the spawning stock biomass and fishing mortality targets, as well as the thresholds that define overfishing and an overfished stock, and only did so when the 2016 stock assessment (2016 assessment) was prepared.

The 2016 assessment found that, based on the new biological reference points, the spawning stock biomass was very high, about 230 percent of its target level, and fishing mortality was well below its target.

Because black sea bass appeared to be very abundant, particularly off New York, New Jersey, and southern New England, the party and charter boat fleet had long been calling on managers to relax regulations, which they believed to be overly strict. At a June 2014 meeting of the Council’s and ASMFC’s joint Summer Flounder, Scup, and Black Sea Bass Advisory Panel (Advisory Panel), attendees complained that “black sea bass is facing a critical management situation that needs to be addressed immediately. Despite Magnuson Act restrictions, the Council and Commission need to approach these issues with more common sense. Waiting until a potential 2016 benchmark assessment will be too late. The current quota is punitive and based on bad information. Faith in the management system is being lost, and now is the time to break the rules and experiment with different solutions.”

When the 2016 assessment confirmed that the spawning stock biomass was more than twice the target level, demands to increase recreational landings became even more insistent. The report from the November 2017 Advisory Panel meeting, held after the 2016 assessment was released, noted that “Several advisors expressed frustration with the current process and the lack of Council/Board action in regard to the comments and suggestions provided by the [Advisory Panel]. Many felt that holding [Advisory Panel] meetings was done to just ‘check a box’ indicating this requirement was completed but their input is not considered…”

Despite managers’ imposition of increasingly restrictive regulation in an effort to constrain recreational landings to the recreational harvest limit (RHL), anglers chronically exceeded the RHL. During the period 2014-2018, the recreational sector exceeded the RHL in four out of five years, at times by as much as 84 percent, while only underharvesting in 2017, and that by a mere three percent.

By the time the Advisory Panel met in November 2019, it appeared that anglers would significantly exceed the 2019 RHL as well, and that it would take management measures restrictive enough to reduce landings by 20 percent to prevent another overage in 2020.

The Advisory Panel was not willing to accept such restrictive management measures. The report of the November 2019 meeting stated that

Twelve advisors spoke in favor of maintaining status quo recreational black sea bass management measures in 2020. Many advisors said they would prefer liberalizations but realized this is not possible given that projected 2019 harvest is higher than the 2020 RHL. One advisor said the restrictive management measures which would be required to prevent harvest from exceeding the 2020 RHL would be devastating to the recreational fishery. Many advisors expressed frustration that the fishery needs to be restricted when the stock is so healthy.

And that seemed to be the point when fishery managers gave up trying to actively manage black sea bass. For beginning in 2019, fisheries managers seemed to spend most of their time trying to find new and creative reasons to allow anglers to exceed the RHL, and very little time at all enforcing the provisions of the black sea bass management plan, or particularly the provisions regarding the permissible recreational harvest.

Scientists had already determined that the strength of black sea bass year classes was due less to the size of the SSB than to water conditions at the edge of the continental shelf, where recently-spawned sea bass spend their first winter. Warm, saline water tended to produce strong recruitment, making black sea bass a beneficiary of changing climate and a warming sea.

Managers decide to stop actively managing

Faced with a large spawning stock biomass, good recruitment of young fish into the population, and growing discontent among some in the angling community, managers apparently became resigned to the recreational sector exceeding its annual RHLs, and seemed willing to let nature take its course in the hopes that favorable environmental conditions would provide enough recruitment to make up for anglers’ excesses. A report of the November 2019 meeting of the Summer Flounder, Scup, and Black Sea Bass Monitoring Committee (Monitoring Committee), a group of state and federal fishery managers tasked with advising the Council and ASMFC on management matters, said that

The group agreed that it is very hard to justify a reduction in the harvest when the RHL is increasing by 59% [due to a recalculation of the SSB] compared to 2019, spawning stock biomass was 2.4 times the target level in 2018, and availability to anglers remains very high. They agreed that it is challenging to constrain the recreational fishery under current high levels of availability and further restrictions on harvest would likely increase discards. They also noted that spawning stock biomass has remained very high despite multiple consecutive years of [acceptable biological catch] overages, going back to at least 2015. Staff noted that recent above-average recruitment events have helped in maintaining a high biomass level despite [acceptable biological catch] overages…

So, the Monitoring Committee recommended that the Council and ASMFC maintain status quo management measures, even though such measures would probably result in the acceptable biological catch (ABC) for 2020 being exceeded. The Council and ASMFC ultimately heeded that advice, initiating a pattern of behavior that, although it would take different forms, has continued to the present day.

In 2020, the Monitoring Committee stated that

It is possible that there was a recreational overage in 2019. In addition, the use of status quo measures in 2020 was expected to result in an overage of the 2020 recreational [annual catch limit]; however…there were notable gaps in recreational data collection in 2020 due to Covid-19, which will pose challenges to estimating catch. Catch in 2021 is also uncertain; however, continued use of status quo measures may result in an overage of the 2021 recreational [annual catch limit] given past trends in the fishery…The [National Marine Fisheries Service’s (NMFS) Greater Atlantic Regional Fisheries Office (GARFO)] representative on the [Monitoring Committee] said that [the regional office] supports consideration of an additional year of status quo recreational management measures in 2021 given the current data limitations, the ongoing [fishery management plan amendment that would alter the commercial and recreational allocations of black sea bass] and [proposed changes to the recreational management process]…

The Council and ASMFC, apparently unconcerned about past and potential future recreational harvest overages, adopted status quo regulations once again.

In 2021, perhaps to no one’s surprise given that recreational overages were predicted for 2019, 2020, and very possibly 2021 as well, the Monitoring Committee was informed that a 28 percent reduction in recreational landings would be needed to keep such landings within the 2022 RHL. In addition, the GARFO representative to the Monitoring Committee noted that, because excessive recreational landings in 2018, 2019, and 2020 triggered accountability measures, regulations required that the Council take action to reduce recreational landings.

However, according to a report of the Monitoring Committee’s November meeting, “The [Monitoring Committee] preferred no change in the measures given that biomass is more than double the target and there are no concerning trends in recruitment or other stock status indicators…Therefore, the [Monitoring Committee’s] primary recommendation was for status quo measures in 2022. [emphasis in original]”

But on this one occasion, the Council and ASMFC did not follow the Monitoring Committee’s advice, because Michael Pentony, GARFO’s regional director, told the Council in no uncertain terms that if, despite the clear regulatory requirement that accountability measures be imposed, the Council did not adopt a 28 percent recreational landings reduction, then GARFO would not approve the Council’s decision. Thus, both management bodies reluctantly put such reduction in place.

To legally exceed the RHL

That would be the last time that the Council and ASMFC would adopt the full harvest reduction needed to constrain recreational landings to the RHL, for the management bodies were in the process of adopting a new way of managing recreational fisheries, called alternatively the “harvest control rule” or the “percent change approach” (new approach), which would formally allow them to set recreational harvest targets that substantially exceeded the RHL and even the recreational sector’s annual catch limit (ACL).

Although the Council and ASMFC approved the new approach in June 2022, the National Marine Fisheries Service would not issue final regulations embracing it until March 2023. Nonetheless, when the Council and ASMFC met in December 2022 to set 2023 recreational management measures for black sea bass, they proceeded as if regulations adopting the new approach were already in place. That had a major impact on the measures adopted, for under the traditional management approach, recreational black sea bass landings for 2023 would have been reduced by 45 percent, but, pursuant to the new approach’s methodology, only a 10 percent reduction was needed.

Such small harvest reduction allowed recreational landings to remain well above the RHL, and might have been difficult to justify on purely biological grounds, but in 2023 and 2024, the black sea bass management discussions became self-contradictory and perhaps somewhat weird.

2024 recreational black sea bass landings were predicted to exceed the RHL once again, and the new approach called for reducing such landings by 10 percent. Council staff noted that under the prevailing circumstances, “the Percent Change Approach does not allow for status quo measures.” However, it was clear that the Monitoring Committee was still reluctant to cut recreational landings and was seeking a reason to once again maintain the status quo, regardless of what the new approach required. The report of the November 2023 Monitoring Committee meeting noted that

The [Monitoring Committee] discussed the requirements of the Percent Change Approach given that the 2024 black sea bass RHL differs from the 2023 RHL due only to three additional years of catch data without updated stock status information. They agreed that the Percent Change Approach requirements in this situation are not clear. The framework/addenda which implemented the Percent Change Approach did not contemplate a situation where the RHL would change without a stock assessment update. When the framework/addenda was finalized, it was assumed that the management track stock assessments would be available every other year. The Percent Change Approach intends to set identical recreational management measures across two years to provide some stability; however, measures were set for just 2023 with the intent of setting 2024-2025 measures in response to an anticipated 2023 management track assessment. However, the management track assessment was later delayed for 2024…

Given all these considerations, but with greatest emphasis on the lack of updated stock assessment information, the [Monitoring Committee] recommended that recreational black sea bass measures be left unchanged in 2024. [emphasis in original]

And, eagerly accepting the Monitoring Committee’s advice, the Council and ASMFC again avoided reducing recreational black sea bass landings, even though such reduction was called for by the new approach, and would have been called for by the traditional approach, too.

The stock assessment no longer governs

But even if one accepts that the lack of an updated stock assessment justified leaving recreational management measures unchanged for the 2024 season, black sea bass management went completely off the rails when 2025 management was initially discussed in August 2024. By then, the Council and ASMFC had the new management track stock assessment that they lacked the year before. But the ASMFC, and eventually NMFS, simply chose to ignore it, even though such assessment had been peer reviewed by an independent panel of experts, who found that it “represents the Best Scientific Information Available (BSIA) for this stock for management purposes,” and the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act (Magnuson-Stevens),which governs all fishing in federal waters, clearly states that “Conservation and management measures shall be based upon the best scientific information available.”

The reason, which by then shouldn’t have surprised anyone familiar with how the resource has been—or, perhaps more accurately, has not been—managed up to that point, was that the 2024 assessment called for a reduction in landings.

Or, more precisely, it informed the Council and ASMFC that the black sea bass stock was about 20 percent smaller than the 30,774 mt estimate provided in the earlier 2021 stock assessment (2021 assessment). The 2024 assessment also determined that the target SSB was just 11,225 mt, compared to the 2021 assessment’s finding of 14,092 mt, and reduced the estimate of MSY from 4,773 to 3,649 mt.

In response to the findings of the 2024 assessment, the Council’s Scientific and Statistical Committee reduced its estimate of ABC by 20 percent, which should have translated into a 20 percent reduction in both commercial and recreational landings.

But that was something that no one—not the Monitoring Committee, not the Council nor ASMFC, and not NMFS—apparently wanted to do.

The report of the August 2024 Monitoring Committee meeting revealed that

Six [Monitoring Committee] members expressed concern with the 20% decline in the 2025 ABC compared to 2024 as there was not a clear explanation for why the biomass was projected to decline so sharply. Four of these six [Monitoring Committee] members said they couldn’t endorse the use of the SSC’s recommended 2025 ABC, though they acknowledged that the Council is bound by the SSC’s ABC recommendation.

The four [Monitoring Committee] members who could not endorse the 2025 ABC said a decrease in the ABC is not justifiable given that biomass is so far above the target level…The [Monitoring Committee] agreed that a decline in the ABC would have negative socioeconomic impacts for both the commercial and recreational sectors… [emphasis in original]

If you combine the comments in the 2023 and 2024 Monitoring Committee reports, what that committee was essentially saying was that the new approach called for recreational landings to be reduced by 10 percent in 2024, but the Monitoring Committee didn’t want to do that, because it didn’t have a recent stock assessment that demonstrated that such reduction was needed, and left 2024 landings unchanged. Then, in 2024, the Monitoring Committee received the 2024 assessment, which represented the best scientific information available, and indicated that the SSB was 20 percent smaller than previously believed. The Monitoring Committee also received an SSC recommendation based on the 2024 assessment which called for both commercial and recreational landings to be reduced by 20 percent. However, many committee members still didn’t want to recommend that reduction, either because they disagreed with the peer-reviewed assessment, or because they felt that there were enough black sea bass in the ocean that the scientific advice could be ignored.

While the Monitoring Committee did, in the end, adopt an overfishing limit, ABC, ACL, and RHL consistent with the 2024 assessment, committee members from Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, and Maryland (dissenting states) objected, and provided a minority report calling for status quo specifications. They declared that “Based on the latest stock assessments, fishery performance data, and insights from the Monitoring Committee,” the 20 percent reduction recommended by the SSC “is not justified and could lead to negative economic and ecological impacts.”

In support of that position, the dissenting states argued that “The 2024 Management Track Stock Assessment confirms that the Black Sea Bass stock is not overfished, and overfishing is not occurring,” and that “Spawning Stock Biomass (SSB) in 2023 was an estimated at 54.17 million pounds, which is 2.19 times the target level, indicating a robust and thriving population. [emphasis in original]”

The dissenting states did not mention, however, that such 54.17 million pounds was 20 percent less than the estimated biomass when the current management measures, which they hoped to perpetuate, were adopted.

The dissenting states also argued that “The recommendations for a 20% reduction in ABC are primarily based on projections for 2025-2026, which do not align with current trends observed in the assessment data,” and that “Biomass has continued to increase and management has continued to mostly reduce harvest since 2017…There is no indication that current levels of recruitment will not maintain current biomass levels. [emphasis in original]”

While all that could be true, the representatives of the dissenting states still failed to acknowledge that the 2024 assessment found that black sea bass SSB was 20 percent smaller than managers had previously believed, and so failed to explain why it would not be reasonable to reduce 2025 landings by 20 percent, thus scaling annual landings to the smaller SSB and achieving a consistent rate of removals from the stock.

The dissenting states concluded their report by stating, “Given the current robust stock status, we recommend advocating against the proposed ABC reduction and maintaining the current management strategies to continue the positive trend observed until the current assessment model and projections are currently evaluated,” even though such current assessment model had already passed a rigorous peer review, by a panel of three independent, internationally-recognized experts, who deemed such model “a significant advance from” the models used to determine the management measures that the dissenting states sought to preserve.

In the end, it was clear that the dissenting states just didn’t want to cut black sea bass landings, regardless of what the peer-reviewed science might say. They justified their reluctance by arguing that “Under-harvesting a stock can disrupt the balance within an ecosystem, leading to unintended consequences such as increased mortality to prey populations or changes to predator-prey dynamics,” that “A 20% reduction in ABC could unnecessarily constrain both commercial and recreational sectors, leading to lost economic opportunities and reduced community benefits,” and that “Such a reduction could undermine public confidence in fishery management and compliance with regulations, especially when stakeholders perceive are not agreeing with the data.”

Such arguments gained sympathetic ears on August 14, 2023, at the joint meeting of the Council and ASMFC convened to set black sea bass specifications for 2025. Various attendees commented that it would be “difficult to carry the message [of a 20 percent reduction in landings] back to the industry,” asked “how do we go back to stakeholders” with news of such reduction, fretted that managers were “at great risk of alienating our many stakeholders,” and declared that “this one [landings reduction] doesn’t make any sense.”

In the end, James Gilmore, New York’s legislative proxy, moved that the ASMFC suspend the rules that require it and the Council to adopt identical management measures with respect to 2025 black sea bass specifications. Such motion was seconded by John Clark, the Delaware fisheries manager, and passed on a near-unanimous vote, with only North Carolina opposed and NMFS abstaining. A follow-up motion made and seconded by the same people, to maintain status quo regulations, also passed easily, with only Rhode Island, North Carolina, and NMFS opposed.

Michael Luisi, the Maryland fisheries manager, moved that the Council also adopt status quo specifications, a motion that was seconded by Scott Lenox, an at-large Council member who was also from Maryland. However, Michael Pentony was quick to remind the Council that such action would violate the express language of Magnuson-Stevens, which states that ACLs set by regional fishery management councils “may not exceed the fishing level recommendations of [that council’s] scientific and statistical committee,” and stated that GARFO would disapprove any Council action that didn’t comply with the law. Thus, the Council adopted the 20 percent reduction in the ABC and set the commercial quota and RHL accordingly, creating different catch limits for state and federal waters.

Michael Pentony, referring to existing regulations, said that GARFO would take administrative action to resolve any inequities caused by such differing rules, although he wasn’t yet certain what that action would be.

The law might not govern, either

To steal a phrase uttered by Alice during her sojourn in Wonderland, after that, things began getting curiouser and curiouser.

The regulation that Michael Pentony referred to reads

If the total catch, allowable landings, commercial quotas, and/or RHL measures adopted by the ASMFC Summer Flounder, Scup, and Black Sea Bass Management Board and the [Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council] differ for a given fishing year, administrative action will be taken as soon as possible to revisit the respective recommendations of the two groups. The intent of this action shall be to achieve alignment through consistent state and Federal measures such that no differential effects occur to Federal permit holders.

The regulation had never been used before, and it’s not completely clear that the regulation’s instruction to “revisit the respective recommendations” authorizes NMFS to issue proposed regulations without first consulting the Council, but that’s how the agency interpreted the language so, despite Michael Pentony’s adamant stance against status quo measures at the August 14 meeting, on October 16, 2024, NMFS issued a proposed regulation that embraced the same status quo measures that Pentony opposed (proposed regulation).

In justifying the proposed regulation, which ignores both the findings of the 2024 assessment and the advice of the Council’s SSC, NMFS echoed the language used by the dissenting states, claiming that, “Given the current status of the black sea bass stock, which is well above the [Fishery Management Plan’s] definition of a biomass capable of producing maximum sustainable yield, and the potentially significant social and economic harm to Federal permit holders that would result from divergent state and Federal quotas, we are proposing to implement 2025 black sea bass specifications consistent with those adopted by the [ASMFC].”

The proposed regulation also seems to violate some of Magnuson-Stevens’ provisions, although NMFS doesn’t believe that is true.

As Michael Pentony noted on August 14, Magnuson-Stevens prohibits the Council from setting an ACL that exceeds the SSC’s fishing level recommendation. Another provision of Magnuson-Stevens limits NMFS’ authority, saying that “The Secretary shall approve, disapprove, or partially approve a plan or amendment…by written notice to the Council.” Read together, such provisions strongly suggest that NMFS lacks the authority to substitute its own status quo ACL, which exceeds the SSC’s harvest level recommendation, for the recommendation that the Council made on August 14; at most, it appears that NMFS might have disapproved the Council recommended specifications and requested that the Council revisit the issue.

But NMFS interprets the law differently, observing that the law requires “Each Council” to set annual catch limits no higher than the SSC’s recommendation, but places no such restriction in NMFS itself. NMFS also believes that language limiting its authority to either approving, disapproving, or partially approving a Council action applies only to fishery management plans and amendments thereto, and not to setting annual specifications for the various fisheries. NMFS believes that its authority to overrule a Council decision on specifications, and replace that decision with its own, arises from a different section of Magnuson-Stevens which grants the agency “general responsibility to carry out any fishery management plan or amendment…in accordance with the provisions of this Act,” and provides that “The Secretary may promulgate such regulations…as may be necessary to discharge such responsibility or to carry out any other provision of this Act.”

It is very general language that mentions neither annual specifications nor Council actions. NMFS’ interpretation of the two relevant sections of Magnuson-Stevens, read together, apparently assumes that Congress was extremely concerned that when regional fishery management councils drafted management measures, including annual specifications, they do not stray from the SSC’s scientific advice, but that Congress had no problem whatsoever with NMFS ignoring such scientific advice and adopting whatever annual specifications that, in the exercise of its sole discretion, it felt it appropriate or convenient to put in place.

That would seem a strained interpretation of the law, and helps to illustrate why, in deciding the case of Loper Bright v. Raimondo last June, which also involved NMFS’ interpretation of a provision of Magnuson-Stevens that provided it with a general grant of authority, the Supreme Court of the United States abolished the so-called Chevron doctrine, and found that an agency’s interpretation of a statutory provisions is not entitled to any deference when a court reviews such agency’s actions.

But whether or not the aforementioned provisions of Magnuson-Stevens apply, it’s difficult to understand how NMFS’ failure to conform the proposed amendment to the information provided in the 2024 assessment complies with the legal requirement that such measures are based on the best scientific information available.

Does it really matter?

Fishery managers would have the public believe that status quo management measures are appropriate, because the black sea bass stock has been thriving regardless of chronic recreational overharvest and combined commercial and recreational landings that exceeded the ABC, often by a very substantial amount, in 10 of the last 11 years.

But is that really the case? Some available data suggests that it’s not.

It is difficult to compare recreational black sea bass landings over the years, because of frequently changing size limits. However, data for New York and New England during the years 2022-2024, when the age and size limits remained consistent, seems to shows a steady decline in landings. During the period March-August of each of those years (the March-August period is used for comparison because data for the last four months of 2024 are not yet available), landings fell from slightly over 1.7 million fish in 2022, to 1.3 million in 2023, to just over 0.9 million in 2024. While three years probably don’t provide enough data to indicate a trend, the declining landings do suggest that the 2024 assessment’s projections of an SSB decline may be rooted in reality, despite some managers’ doubts.

It is virtually certain that NMFS will adopt the proposed regulation in their final 2025 specifications for black sea bass. That being the case, the next question is how the Council and ASMFC will react after the next management track assessment is released sometime around June 2025.

Will they conform 2026 management measures to the 2025 assessment, and whatever recommendations the SSC might make? Or, if they don’t like what an assessment and SSC say, will they just ignore the advice again, as they ignored it in 2024?

Time will tell.

But given the Council’s and the ASMFC’s past responses to recommendations they didn’t particularly like, it would probably be foolish to bet against them maintaining the status quo, regardless of what the best available science might say.

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This essay first appeared in “From the Waterfront,” the blog of the Marine Fish Conservation Network, which can be found at http://conservefish.org/blog/

STRIPED BASS REBUILDING EFFORT STALLS AT THE ASMFC--WHAT MIGHT BE NEXT?

 

On December 16, the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission’s Atlantic Striped Bass Management Board met to consider possible new management measures for 2025.  Such measures would have made it more likely that striped bass spawning stock biomass will be rebuilt to its target level by 2029, as required by the striped bassmanagement plan.

A number of Management Board members had been concerned that the 2018 year class of striped bass would be entering the 28- to 31-inch slot size limit for the coastal recreational fishery next year, and that if additional management measures were not adopted, a significant proportion of the 2018s would be removed from the population during the 2025 season.  The fact that striped bass recruitment since 2019 has been far below average, with the Maryland juvenile abundance index for the years 2019 through 2024 indicating  the lowest average spawning success for any six-year period since 1957, convinced some fishery managers that protecting the 2018s was a particularly urgent concern.

But, in the end, that didn’t happen.  

Instead of opting to take certain, if admittedly imperfect, actions to further protect the striped bass stock in 2025, a substantial majority of the Management Board decided that it made more sense to kick the can down the road, and initiate an addendum to the management plan that might—or might not—lead to the adoption of additional management measures in 2026.

I can’t say that I was surprised by that outcome, as I thought some sort of delay—either deferring any possible action until the February 2025 Management Board meeting or doing what the Board ultimately did, initiating an addendum—was the most likely outcome, although for a time during the meeting, I had a real hope that a well-crafted substitute motion, that would have imposed modest reductions in landings, might prevail.

I could speculate as to why it didn’t, but my views would be only that—mere speculation based more on observations than demonstrable facts—and so would contribute little of value to the discussion.

I could opine that, if the Management Board was composed solely of professional fishery managers, and not dominated by amateurs who have no formal scientific training and/or do have a vested financial interest in killing striped bass, the vote would have been different, but we need to take the Management Board as we find it.  While we can work for change, we cannot dwell in the land of “if only.”

What matters now is what happens next, because the future is something that, with enough work, might still be changed.

Unfortunately, I fear that last Monday’s inaction may have convinced many formerly staunch conservation advocates that the ASMFC process is fatally flawed, because a majority of the Management Board lacks the will, the requisite sense of responsibility, and the political courage to make hard decisions when hard decisions are called for.  They are convinced that, when pressed, it will opt for delay rather than make a potentially controversial decision.  

Still, it’s too early to abandon hope. 

Recreational striped bass landings for March through August of this year were substantially lower than they were in 2022 and 2023, and it appears that landings for the months of September and October are following, if not slightly accelerating, the same trend.  Based on such landings, the Striped Bass Technical Committee has calculated that there is a 57 percent probability that the stock could rebuild by 2029 without any additional management measures being adopted.  

So it’s not impossible that, despite the Management Board’s inaction, rebuilding will still occur.

However, the Technical Committee also made two other projections, based on slightly different assumptions of fishing mortality, and if either one of those better mirrors future fishing mortality patterns, the stock with probably not rebuild on time.

And given that the Technical Committee advised that

“all three primary scenarios represent a credible range of what might happen,”

and none are deemed a more probable outcome than the others, the fact that the striped bass rebuilds without any further management action in only one out of three possible futures is not reassuring.

So if additional action is required, the bass’ next hope lies in the proposed addendum. 

The problem is that, If such addendum is to be adopted in October, as the Management Board contemplates, the ASMFC’s Plan Development Team will have to complete a draft addendum, which would go out for public comment, by the Board’s August meeting.  There was even some talk last Monday about having the draft ready by May.  That schedule would make it nearly impossible to know whether the most optimistic projection bears any resemblance to reality when it comes to removals of fish from the 2018 year class.

I suspect that such projection will predict 2024 landings with a reasonable degree of accuracy, but if those landings were atypically low, it may well underestimate landings in 2025 and beyond.  

Should that prove to be the case, the Technical Committee will have little chance to make a mid-course correction before the draft addendum is released for  public comment, as it will not receive Wave 2 landings data until mid-June, while wave 3 landings—those from May and June, which capture recreational harvest during the heart of the spring migration—won’t be available until around August 15, after the summer Management Board meeting is held.  Thus, there will be little or no 2025 data to inform the proposed addendum, which makes it difficult to understand what the Board gained by delaying any new management measures for another year.

If the 2024 landings match those in the most optimistic scenario, and support a 57 percent probability of the stock rebuilding if no further action is taken, there is a very good chance that more precautionary management measures will not be adopted for 2026.  And if that is the case, the Management Board night decide to abandon the new addendum.  Such things have happened before.

But even if the Board decides not to implement harvest restrictions, it could well decide to adopt measures that will make things worse for the bass, as well as for surf and private boat anglers.

To understand why, we need to take a look at the motion that was approved by the Board.  It reads

“Motion to initiate an addendum to support striped bass rebuilding by 2029 in consideration of 2024 recreational and commercial mortality while balancing socioeconomic impacts.  Options should include, if needed, a range of overall reductions, consideration of recreational versus commercial contributions to the reductions, recreational seasons and size changes taking into account regional variability of availability, and no harvest versus no target closures.  Final action shall be taken by the annual 2025 meeting to be in place for the 2026 rec and comm fisheries.  [emphasis added]”

The language that requires striped bass mortality—that is, landings data and the associated science—to be balanced with socioeconomic impacts opens the door to all sorts of mischief.

It could lead to the abandonment of risk-averse management strategies, because they impose greater short-term socioeconomic costs.  It could lead to an imbalance of commercial and recreational harvest reductions, based not only on the potential costs to commercial striped bass fishermen, but also because of “consideration of recreational versus commercial contributions” to overall removals.  It could lead to the Board creating special privileges for the for-hire fleet, allowing it a wider slot limit, a higher bag, or exemptions from certain seasons, or no-targeting requirements, that everyone else is required to obey.

Of course, if the Management Board wanted to do the socioeconomic analysis correctly, it would also consider the economic losses attributable to reduced striped bass abundance.  But in all of the years that I’ve been watching the Management Board do it work, such losses have never been considered, and I don’t expect the Management Board to begin considering them now.

The “socioeconomic impacts” language brings particular cause for concern given the comments made by Michael Wayne, a spokesman for the American Sportfishing Association, the primary trade association for the fishing tackle industry.  At Monday’s meeting, Wayne said

“…I think the public process is really important for such a significant decision of season closures.  And it seems like on the fly, the Board has chopped up this motion to look a lot like the conservation equivalency process that I think everyone had opposed moving forward with given the status of this resource.  And so, I think giving the addendum the opportunity to consider this more thoroughly, really develop options out that the public can consume and provide input on is the best way best path forward.  You know, I think about you guys know I am a part of a lot of these fisheries management discussions, and this is probably the most unique fisher that ASMFC manages, especially recreationally.  And I look at the public comments, and I know there’s millions of striped bass anglers out there.  Millions.  And I’m only seeing twenty five hundred comments from a lot of the same people that we know have been commenting.  And so, as an organization, we’re going to work with our members to try to get more people integrated into this process.  We know that the recreational fishery is very diverse, and I don’t feel the public comments really are a good reflection of that diversity.  And so, where is the opportunity to get those individuals into this process?  Where is the opportunity to give folks the chance to get involved and engaged?  I don’t think it’s on the fly with this substitute motion, and I challenge the Board to go the addendum route and reach out to the constituents that they haven’t heard from.  Don’t talk to the same folks  that you’ve been talking to all the time.  Find the people who care about this resource and value it in a way that their voices should be heard, too.  And that’s what we’ll do as an organization ourselves.  [emphasis added]”

It's a significant comment, not only for it’s unintended irony (if the ASMFC heeded his advice “Don’t talk to the same folks that you’ve been talking to all the time,” they would stop talking to Waine, who comments at just about every meeting), but because it appears to be something very close to the tackle industry dismissing the concerns of the conservation community and the anglers who have long sought to protect the long-term health of the striped bass stock—“the same people that we know have been commenting…the same folks that you’ve been talking to all the time”—while expressing the ASA’s intent to stack the deck when it comes to public comment, to “work with [its] members to get more people integrated into this process,” because it’s not hard to figure out that if the ASA is going to get more people involved in the management process, the people who it turns out will support the interests of the tackle industry, and not necessarily the interests of the striped bass or dedicated striped bass fishermen.

Thus, we can expect the fishing tackle industry to make every effort to shape the proposed amendment in a way that maximizes short-term profits, and not the long-term health of the striped bass stock.

And then there’s the benchmark assessment.

Our first look at the impact of Monday's delay, and of the addendum that the Board has initiated, on the success or failure of the rebuilding effort will come in 2027, after the next benchmark stock assessment is completed.  The assessment is scheduled for peer review in June 2027, which means that it will be released too late for the Management Board to adopt a responsive addendum that year.  Should the benchmark suggest that a new addendum is called for, such addendum won't be finalized before February 2028, giving whatever measures might be included little time to affect stock rebuilding before December 2029.

Right now, we don’t know what the 2027 benchmark assessment is going to look like, but we can already predict that it might and probably will be significantly different from the last benchmark, which was completed in 2018.

The benchmark assessment is the time when the Technical Committee and the Stock Assessment Subcommittee reexamine the assumptions underlying striped bass management.  Such review can include a reconsideration of whether the model used to evaluate the health of the stock is the right one to employ, or whether another model might be more appropriate.  There has already been some speculation that the model might change this time around.

Any new model could attempt to regionalize the assessment, and separate bass hatched in the Chesapeake Bay from those that originate in the Delaware and Hudson rivers.  Scientists tried to do that in the 2018 assessment, but their effort did not pass peer review.  It’s very possible that, by 2027, they will have refined their approach enough to have it accepted by the peer review panel.

In addition, the apparent problemwith the Marine Recreational Information Program, which seems to cause it tooverstate the number of trips taken by recreational fishermen, and so leads to inflated catch and landings estimates, will probably have been corrected before theassessment is prepared.  If that is the case, it is likely that recreational catch and landings estimates will be reduced as part of the correction process and, because such data is an important input in the striped bass stock assessment, that the species' spawning stock biomass estimate will be redfuced; if that happens, the biomass target and threshold for striped bass will almost certainly be lowered as well.

That probably won’t change the stock's status, because all of the reductions will be on about the same scale, so a stock that was overfished based on the current calculations will probably also be overfished after any MRIP revisions, although that might not be true if the stock is very close to the biomass threshold, whether above or below.

However, we can probably also expect to see an effort to reduce the biomass reference points that is unrelated to any changes to MRIP, driven by Management Board members who merely seek higher striped bass landings.  While we can hope that any such proposal would fail—an effort to lower the biomass reference points was quickly and decisively shot down a few years ago, during the development of Amendment 7 to the Interstate Fishery Management Plan for Atlantic Striped Bass--there are still some Management Board members who are very much in support of such change.

Finally, the 2019 year class—the first of what, so far, has been six consecutive striped bass year classes that were far, far below the long-term average—will enter the spawning stock biomass in 2026, the terminal year of the benchmark assessment.  How the assessment will handle the impacts of the small 2019 year class and subsequent poor recruitment has yet to be seen.

With all of those changes, it is impossible to guess whether the benchmark assessment will  find that the stock is no longer overfished, or whether it might find that overfishing is once again occurring.  It might find that the stock is in better shape than we currently believe, or it might find its status has deteriorated at some point since 2018.

But the next question is:  What will the Board do if the 2027 benchmark assessment brings bad news?

Given the Board’s non-response on December 16, it is far from unlikely that, if rebuilding is only somewhat unlikely to occur—say, no less than a 40 percent probability—it may choose to do nothing once again, and try to learn to live with a stock slightly below the threshold.  I hope that’s not what happens, but if socioeconomics is given parity with the needs of the stock, as called for in the recently adopted motion, it could well occur.

A bigger question is what the Board might do if the benchmark advises that the bass are headed for serious trouble, and that instead of worrying about rebuilding the stock, managers will have to make a serious effort to keep the stock from  collapsing.

Hopefully, we won’t get to that point, but if recruitment continues to tank, and if fishing mortality drifts upward again, the odds favoring a stock collapse could increase.  Should he possibility of a collapse ever become a probability, provided that no management action is taken, we have to wonder whether the Management Board would be willing to take decisive action to avert a crash, or whether it will again pick  the least disruptive option—say, something with a bare 50 percent probability of success, assuming that the most optimistic assumptions prove true--and so set the table for a calamity.

After last Monday, I can’t set that possibility aside.

But I also can’t sit by and watch it happen.

I know that for a lot of the folks who have been fighting for the health of the striped bass stock over the last three, five, ten or more years, last Monday’s decision felt like a punch in the gut, that made them just want to throw up their hands and walk away.  I know because I’ve spoken with some of them, and corresponded with others, and that’s what I’ve been told.

The fact is, that’s just what folks like Michael Waine and his cronies at the American Sportfishing Association want to hear.  They want concerned anglers, who understand the management system and the needs of the striped bass, to walk away and not call for responsible management.  They want the ASMFC to stop listening to those who advocate for the resource, so that the industry can flood the arena with shills who will advocate for business interests instead.

And if folks walk away, that’s just what will occur.

I know that recent events make the bass’ future look bleak.  But, as I noted before, that future is not written in stone.

It can be changed.

By us.

If we shake of this loss, and get back in the fight.