ASMFC SEEKS TO FINE-TUNE COBIA MANAGEMENT

 

Anyone who has spent years on and around the northeastern coast knows that climate change and a warming ocean are having a significant impact on fish stocks.

Such changing conditions, combined with years of overfishing, have certainly contributed to the collapse of winter flounder and Atlantic cod, and may have pushed other once-common species such as pollock and silver hake (“whiting”) farther north and farther offshore.

But the other side of the coin is that we’re seeing some new species move into local waters.  Here in New York, it’s no longer unusual to see a pod of blacktip or spinner sharks ravage a school of menhaden just a few hundred yards off the beach, something that was just about unheard of even a decade ago.  Some warmer-water species that always made sporadic appearances, such as sheepshead, black drum, and croaker, are becoming more abundant.

And one of the most interesting of those newly-arrived species is the cobia which, like drum and sheepshead, were once very occasional catches, but are now becoming abundant enough to target.

Last season, my friend Mike Mucha caught the first cobia ever brought about one of my boats.  It was a small one, close enough to New York’s 37-inch limit that we released it rather than bringing it home (cobia are reportedly excellent food fish).  It wolfed down a whole mackerel hung on an #18/0 circle hook and 15 feet of #14 wire while we were shark fishing around the 20-fathom line.  Many other local anglers, particularly those fishing closer to shore, have caught multiple cobia, with a very few in the 80 and 90 pound class.  Some fish are even being taken in the surf.  Although cobia are not yet a frequent catch here on Long Island, there are enough around for anglers to intentionally target, if they’re willing to put in the time and effort.

However, the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission’s Interstate Fishery Management Plan for Atlantic Migratory Group Cobia does not really address the species’ northward movement.  That is probably going to change.

The ASMFC has recently released Draft Addendum II to Amendment 1 to the Interstate Fishery Management Plan for Atlantic Migratory Group Cobia, which would update the management plan to account for the species northward expansion.  

As the Draft Addendum notes,

“the distribution of cobia landings has changed in recent years and is markedly different from the distribution of state landings observed during the initial allocation data timeframe of 2006-2015.  Over the last several years, recreational landings have increased in some Mid-Atlantic states while remaining relatively stable in the southern states, indicating a possible range expansion as opposed to a stock shift.  Additionally, two states have recently declared into the Atlantic cobia fishery (Rhode Island and New York) due to the increasing presence of cobia in state waters.  Updating the allocation data timeframe would account for these recent changes in landings and the extent of the fishery.  If reallocation is not considered, it is likely that some Mid-Atlantic and de minimis states at the northern end of the range will continue to exceed their soft targets resulting in restrictive cobia measures that may not reflect the status of the stock.”

Allocating the cobia resource

The Draft Addendum includes a number of allocation-related and data-related measures.

Section 3.1, Recreational Allocation Framework, asks whether the current state-by-state allocation should be changed. 

Option A, the status quo allocation, is heavily loaded toward the not-too-recent past, with 50% of each state’s allocation based on landings from 2011 to 2015, and 50% based on landings from 2006-2015.  More recent landings are not considered, and the de minimis states, which are currently defined as all states north of Virginia, are allocated just 1% of overall landings, which amounts to 769 fish.

While that might have made sense seven or eight years ago, it no longer reflects the reality of the fishery since, in the six years between 2018 and 2023, those states exceeded their combined allocation on four different occasions; in 2021, they landed a combined 5,334 fish, 694% of their allocation for that year.  The Draft Amendment represents the ASMFC’s efforts to address some of the problems arising out of the status quo.

Option B would also retain the current state allocation system, but would update the allocations with more recent data, and would increase the de minimis states’ allocation to 5% of overall landings.  

Option B is further broken down into two sub-options, Sub-option B1, which would base each state’s allocation on that state’s landings in five years during the period between 2018 and 2023 (2020 landings would be excluded from the calculation because of COVID-related uncertainties in the data), and thus would employ the most recent data available, while Sub-option B2 would only base 50% of a state’s allocation on landings during those years, while looking farther backward and base the other 50% on landings between 2014 and 2023.

Either sub-option would shift the allocation substantially northward compared to the status quo Option A, increasing Virginia’s share of the landings by roughly two-thirds, while cutting North Carolina’s share to about one-third of what it had been before.  South Carolina and Georgia would also see significant reductions.  Of the two sub-options, B1 would shift allocation somewhat more northward than B2.  Such northward allocation shifts should hardly be surprising, since the most recent data shows a steady northward shift in landings, as well.

To that extent, Sub-option B1 probably best reflects current data and trends in cobia landings.

However, Sub-option B1 only makes sense if one believes that cobia should be allocated on a state-by-state basis.  Option C provides for regional allocations.  It is also more complicated than the earlier options, because it offers up two possible regions, and two different ways to calculate allocation.

Sub-option C1 would create two regions, one consisting of all states between Rhode Island and North Carolina, and the other including just South Carolina and Georgia.  As was the case with Sub-option B1, allocation would be based on landings during the years 2018 through 2023, excluding 2020.  Sub-option C2 would create the same two regions, but take Sub-option B2’s backward looking approach of using both 2018-2023 landings and 2014-2023 landings to determine allocations.  

Both options would group the two Mid-Atlantic states with the largest allocations with the northern states with developing fisheries, and leave South Carolina and Georgia, with their small traditional fisheries, on their own.

Sub-option C3 would constitute the two proposed regions somewhat differently, with one region including all of the states with increasing landings or developing fisheries—that is, the states between Rhode Island and Virginia—in one region, and North Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia, the states with a decreasing share of the landings, in another.  Like Sub-option C1, C3 would use 2018-2023 (excluding 2020) as the base years for the regional allocations.  Sub-option C4 would establish the same two regions as Sub-option C3, but would take the same backward-looking approach as Sub-option C2.

While the various “C” sub-options might all make sense, depending on what data one might wish to emphasize, it would seem that, of all the regional sub-options, Sub-option C3 might be the right way to go, as it seems to best capture current trends in the fishery, grouping all of the states that seem to be increasing their share of landings—a trend that might well continue into the future—in a single region, while also using the most recent data to calculate the allocations.

Still, local allocations, whether based on states or regions, are not the only way to go.  Option D offers the possibility of coastwide management.  Under Option D, there would be no state or regional allocations, merely a single coastwide harvest target.  Nor would there be local size limits (other than in some de minimis states) or vessel bag limits (cobia are managed with a vessel, rather than individual, bag).  However, states would be allowed to set their own seasons, so long as such seasons adequately constrained landings, in recognition of the fact that the peak cobia season occurs at different times at different places along the coast.

Biologists believe that all cobia between Georgia and Rhode Island belong to the same stock of fish, and it is always a good idea to manage a fish stock as a unified whole, rather than applying different rules along different sections of coast.  The accuracy of recreational catch, landings, and effort data also tends to be most accurate when many samples are gathered over a broad geographic area.  Those factors all militate in favor of Option D.  However, the issue of fairness may be raised by some, who fear that the southern—that is, Georgia, South Carolina, and perhaps North Carolina—share of the fishery may continue to decline as the stock expands northward, and that eventually, even though the stock is healthy and cobia remain abundant in local waters, one or more of those states may be slowly squeezed out of their traditional share of the fishery by states to their north.

It’s not an unreasonable argument, but for those who believe, as I do, that management measures should reflect current abundance, and allow fishermen to land fish where the fish are today, rather than where they used to be, Option D would seem the best choice.

Section 3.2, Updates to State/Regional Recreational Allocations, would become irrelevant if Section 3.1’s Option D was selected, but raises an important question that could arise if any of the other Section 3.1 options are chosen:  What should the procedure for changing allocations be?

Normally, I wouldn’t think about the question too much, because the typical allocation debate sees managers expending much sound and fury to accomplish very little—most of the time, those that have allocation keep all, or almost all, of what they originally had, while those who are allocated little of a particular fishery resource are told to suck it up and stop complaining.the typical allocation debate sees managersexpending much sound and fury to accomplish very little—most of the time, thosethat have allocation keep all, or almost all, of what they originally had,while those who are allocated little of a particular fishery resource are toldto suck it up and stop complaining.  But cobia present a special case.

Cobia are expanding their range northward, into the de minimis states.  Once a state becomes responsible for more than 1% of overall landings, it loses its de minimis status and, if state allocations are still being used to manage the stock, must leave the de minimis pool and get its own state-specific allocation.  So there is a substantial chance that some state allocations will have to be changed, whether the other states want to cede some of their fish or not.

In addition, the data underlying many states’ landing estimates are iffy, because cobia constitute a seldom-encountered species and there is a lot of uncertainty in such states’ landings estimates.  Also, the National Marine Fisheries Service is currently conducting a study to determine whether the Marine Recreational Information Program might be overstating recreational effort, catch, and landingsthe NationalMarine Fisheries Service is currently conducting a study to determine whetherthe Marine Recreational Information Program might be overstating recreational effort, catch, and landings.  If the cobia catch and landings estimates change as result of either of those issues being resolved, it could have an impact on the landings estimates used to set state allocations, which then may have to be revisited.

Option A would ignore the advantages of acting quickly should any of those eventualities occur, and only allow reallocation through the standard ASMFC addendum process, which usually takes close to one year to complete.

Option B would fast-track the reallocation process, but only if 1) a state loses its de minimis status, and must be given its own allocation, or 2) the harvest estimates for the years used to set the allocation are revised.  Under such circumstances the Management Board would be allowed to change the allocations without the red tape associated with developing an addendum.

Given its limitations on management board action, Option B, which would quickly conform the management plan to the current reality, would seem the better choice.

How to best use uncertain data

The next two items in the Draft Addendum turn away from allocation and toward how effort, catch, and landings data ought to be used.  That’s an important question because, as noted above, the relative dearth of cobia catches in some states results in MRIP interviewers contacting too few anglers who caught cobia, and thus very uncertain numbers.

Section 3.3, Data and Uncertainty in Recreational Landings Evaluations, tries to address that issue.

While Option A would maintain the status quo, and compare a three-year rolling average of landings estimates against the landings target (note that if a state’s management measures changed during any three-year period, only the years with the most recent management measures would be considered), Option B would try to smooth out the peaks and valleys in the estimates by using a five-year rolling average instead, again with the proviso that, if management measures changed during the five-year period, only those years with the most recent measures would be included in the average.

It's possible to argue for either option.  Option A’s three-year rolling average would probably be less precise, and might result in unnecessary restrictions on fishermen or unjustified liberalizations in the face of a stable or even a declining stock.  However, it would probably allow managers to respond more quickly to an increase in landings that threatened the health of the stock.  Option B’s five-year average would probably better inform management about the long-term trends in the stock, and avoid unnecessary or unwise changes to management measures, but would also be slower to respond to a spike in landings.

Based on the time it would take for the management board to respond, Option A may be the better option, but it is a very close call.

The next logical question, how to respond if the rolling average shows a harvest target being exceeded, is addressed in Section 3.4, Overall Response to Recreational Landings Evaluation with Rolling Averages.

Option A embodies the current response, which requires a state (or region, should the management board opt for regional management) to shorten its season or reduce its vessel limit in the event that the three- or five-year rolling average of landings exceeds the state’s (or region’s) landings target or, if the state (or region) experienced an underage for two consecutive years, ask for permission to lengthen its season or increase its vessel limit, regardless of what was going on elsewhere on the coast.

Option B would insert some flexibility into the process, and excuse a state from changing its management measures in the event of an overage if 1) another state’s (or region’s) average landings were below target by at least the amount of such overage, or 2) the average coastwide landings for the relevant period were below the coastwide quota.

Again, arguments could be made for each option.

Option A requires states to maintain discipline, and avoids the situation where one state adopts what it suspects are inadequately restrictive measures in the hope that it will be bailed out by either another state’s, or a coastwide, overage.  On the other hand, Option B creates a situation which, for practical purposes, becomes a hybrid between state-by-state or regional management and managing the stock on a coastwide basis.  Either option, if properly enforced, probably protects the stock, and thus from a conservation standpoint, there is probably no real difference between the two.

Setting management measures

Section 3.5, Timeline for Setting Commercial and Recreational Measures, addresses the duration of management measures.  Option A reflects the status quo, in which the management board is empowered to adopt measures setting overall harvest quotas, vessel limits, bag/possession limits, size limits, and grounds for closing the commercial fishery at the end of a three-year period or after each stock assessment.  Option B would extend the life of management measures for up to five years, provided that there is no intervening stock assessment.  Since stock assessments will probably only occur every five or six years, extending the life of management measures would probably not have a detrimental effect on the stock.

What’s next?

The complete Draft Addendum can be found at https://asmfc.org/files/PublicInput/AtlCobiaDraftAddII_PublicComment_May2024.pdf.  It contains a far more detailed discussion about why a new addendum is needed, and the rationale behind the various options. 

The ASMFC is currently accepting public comment on the Draft Addendum.  The comment period will end at 11:59 p.m. on July 8.  Comments may be emailed to comments@asmfc.org (if you take this route, please write “Cobia Draft Addendum II” in the email’s subject line) or mailed to Emilie Frank, Fishery Management Plan Coordinator, Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission, 1050 N. Highland St., Suite 200 A-N, Arlington, VA 22201.

It's not often that we can witness the development of an exciting new fishery in local waters.  While anglers between Virginia and Georgia have long fished for cobia, and will certainly be interested in the Draft Addendum, it is also something that anglers in the de minimis states should not ignore, for how the fishery is managed, and how the fish are allocated, may well decide whether states to the north will benefit from cobia’s expansion, or whether they will only be allowed to take the leavings of those who have already been allocated a share.

Personally, I hope to target cobia this summer, right outside my home inlet, and expect that many other anglers in the de minimis states hope to do the same.  Commenting on the Draft Addendum is just a step toward that goal.