HOUSE SEEKS TO SHORTCHANGE FISH, FISHERMEN; THE SENATE DISAGREES

 

Elections always have consequences, and for those who care about the health of the nation’s marine fisheries, and the quality and adequacy of federal fishery management programs, the consequences of the 2022 elections for the House of Representatives have not been good.

The House recently passed an appropriations bill that would reduce the National Marine Fisheries Service’s 2025 budget by 22 percent, compared to 2024.  The cuts would not be evenly spread across the agency’s budget.  Instead, the science and management budget would be reduced by a little over 11 percent and the enforcement budget cut by about 17 percent, while funding for activities deemed more frivolous by the House majority would be reduced far more, with habitat conservation and restoration spending chopped by about 28.5 percent and spending on protected resources (that is, species protected under the Endangered Species Act or Marine Mammals Act) slashed by 55 percent.

The ideology behind the cuts to NMFS’ budget were clearly set out in the House Report on the Commerce, Justice, Science, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, which starts off, in part,

“To reduce the size of the Federal Government and ensure that agencies funded herein are focused on missions that serve the American people without wasting and abusing hard-earned tax dollars, this bill prioritizes funding for critical agencies, including the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, National Science Foundation, Bureau of Prisons and Drug Enforcement Administration, while freezing, reducing, or eliminating funding for non-essential activities…

“To support investments in Federal priorities such as national security, law enforcement in our communities, and administering just detention and correctional systems, the bill right-sizes agencies and programs by scaling back unsustainable spending levels to fiscal year 2022 levels, or lower, and cutting programs that have become agency slush funds and social justice initiatives…”

It continues that way for several more paragraphs, each making it clear that maintaining healthy and sustainable fisheries, restoring degraded fish habitat, and enforcing fisheries laws are not among the priorities of the majority party, and that both recreational and commercial fishermen are not seen as important constituencies by those who prepared either the draft budget or the report.

And, of course, the word “conservation” seldom appears in the report, except as a reference to an already-existing program or statute.

But that doesn’t mean that recreational fishermen are completely left out of the House report or the House allocation process.  In a few instances, where anglers are trying to kill more fish than the current science allows, or seek to undercut the federal fishery management process, the House majority is more than willing to support them.

Hopefully to no one’s surprise, all such efforts focus on the South Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico, where organized anglers have long tried to undermine or completely replace federal management of recreational fisheries; in a similar vein, much of the recreationally-oriented allocations affect the red snapper fishery.  If you fish in New England, the Mid-Atlantic, or anywhere in the Pacific Ocean or Caribbean Sea, the House majority essentially treats you as if you didn’t exist, but the whiners in the Gulf and South Atlantic, who are also politically astute and are willing to pay the asking price to “gain access” to key legislators, are getting their share of attention.

Thus, the same House majority that was more than willing to cut $14 million from law enforcement, and cut another $16 million from habitat restoration and conservation, presumably because such things are not priority issues and so are deemed “non-essential activities,” decided that it was appropriate to spend another $5 million to “validate” the results of the so-called “Great Red Snapper Count” in the Gulf of Mexico, because

“Greater inclusion of fisheries-independent estimates of reef fish like Red Snapper can be used to help both State-based management initiatives as well as objectively resolve discrepancies between Federal management agencies and concerned stakeholders.”

Another $3.5 million was appropriated to survey reef fish off the East Coast of Florida, because

“The Committee recognizes concerns by the State of Florida regarding the incomplete data assessment concerning reef fish located off the waters of Florida’s Atlantic coast, including the Florida Keys.”

But the really big allocation was the $30 million—equal to the cuts to the law enforcement and habitat budgets combined—appropriated

“for NMFS to assist each of the States within the South Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico Fishery Management Councils that wish to develop or improve State recreational harvest collection programs to supplement, or if the State chooses, supplant, the [federal] Marine Recreational Information Program…These efforts shall be a top priority for [NMFS]…  [emphasis added]”

The fact that the House majority is calling what would once have been considered a pork barrel program to benefit anglers in a handful of states “a top priority” while cutting funding from enforcement and habitat restoration budgets probably says all that one needs to know about how much it values marine conservation efforts.

Fortunately, the Senate places a greater value on the nation’s living marine resources, on fisheries science, and on the long-term health of fish stocks.  The Senate appropriators not only agreed to fund NMFS full $1.2 budget, but it added an additional $53 million to the agency’s initial request in order to include some additional conservation funding.

At this point, it is probably important to note that the Senate appropriation was a very bipartisan effort, that was supported by 26 out of the 29 senators who cast a vote on the appropriations bill.  That stands in stark contrast to the ideologically extreme appropriations bill forced through by the House majority.

Thus, it should be expected that the Senate Report on the Departments of Commerce and Justice, Science, and Related Agencies Appropriations Bill, 2025 also stood in stark contrast to its House counterpart. 

Instead of the House majority’s shrill, self-serving rhetoric about reducing the size of government, the alleged misuse of taxpayer dollars, agency slush funds, etc., the bipartisan Senate report recognizes the importance of federal agencies that are, among other things,

“properly managing our Nation’s fisheries, [emphasis added]

and engaging in

“activities critical to our Nation’s well-being, including…fisheries management.”

Such language makes it clear that the Senate appropriators, unlike those of the House majority, do not consider NMFS’ duties to be “non-essential activities.”

In a similar way, the Senate report recognizes the importance of marine conservation, as well as the importance of commercial and recreational fishing activities on every coast of the United States, and not merely in the southeastern states.  Thus, instead of taking the House majority’s approach, and appropriating around $40 million for the Gulf and South Atlantic, and letting fishermen elsewhere starve, the Senate bill includes provisions for fisheries, and protected species, on every coast, including $8.5 million for Atlantic salmon restoration efforts, $80 million for Pacific salmon conservation and management (including $7 million for habitat conservation), $2.5 million for New England groundfish research, $1 million for Atlantic bluefin tuna research, and $5 million for Gulf of Mexico fishery research.

And no, red snapper in the Gulf and South Atlantic weren’t ignored, although such regions weren’t slated to receive the inflated amounts allocated by the House majority.  Instead, the Senate allocated $1 million, rather than the House majority's $5 million, to validate the Great Red Snapper Count, and another $1 million above 2024 funding levels for additional South Atlantic reef fish research. 

With respect to the Marine Recreational Information Program, the Senate report noted that

“The Committee is concerned by reports that the Marine Recreational Information Program [Fishing Effort Survey] may be vastly overstating fishing effort.  While the FES methodology represents a clear improvement from previous methodologies, the Committee supports the cautious approach to using these estimates advocated by the Gulf of Mexico Fishery Management Council and South Atlantic Fishery Management Council Scientific and Statistical Committees.  The Committee encourages NMFS to conduct a thorough analysis of the effect if each estimate on stock status and allocation before they are used for stock management.”

However, what the Senate appropriators did not do was reach into the pork barrel and hand out $30 million to be used to develop state data collection programs for the southeast states—while relegating the remainder of the coastal states, which lie outside of that privileged region, to the continuing use of MRIP.

There are many other differences between the appropriation bills, and each of those differences will, if the bills are passed by their respective houses as currently written, have to be reconciled in a conference in which each house of Congress will be represented.

There will be winners and losers on many issues, and although we can’t be sure what the final appropriations bill will look like, we can expect that it will be neither as small-minded and tight-fisted as the House majority’s version, nor as provident, thoughtful, and generous as the current Senate bill.

Hopefully, it will be workable.

But the key issues will not be resolved when the 2025 appropriation bill becomes law.  Next year, the fight will begin again, and the 2026 appropriations bill may be better or worse, depending on who has the power in both houses of Congress.

This is not, I should note, a pure party-line issue, and I don’t want to suggest that virtue favors only one of the two major parties—fisheries conservation has traditionally been a bipartisan issue, and seems to remain so in the Senate today.

Instead, it is a question of philosophy and ideology:  Are Americans willing to invest in healthy, sustainable fish stocks, that can provide food and recreation well into the future?  Or do they believe that marine resources should be, at best, exploited for short-term gains or, at worst, ignored to meet whatever fate the future may hold, but in any event shouldn't be deemed worthy of the investment needed for proper conservation and management?

Each candidate on the ballot this November will have a different answer to those questions, and with the election barely three months away, it is time for concerned voters to determine just how each candidate views ocean issues, and so determine who should and should not hold elective office.

For as I noted when this essay began, elections have consequences for each of us, and for our fisheries, too.

 

HOW NOT TO MANAGE A FISHERY

 

I still remember a night, maybe 25 years ago, when I was Chairman of the Babylon Tuna Club, and was running a meeting addressing one of the more contentious issues in club history:  Whether the club should adopt minimum sizes for fish entered in its annual and weekend contests, which were higher than the minimums imposed by the state and federal governments.

Just about everyone liked the idea when it was first proposed, but after a couple of years of members having their fish barred from contests because they didn’t meet the new minimums, quite of few folks decided that the club minimums were a bad idea, because they apparently thought that $25 or $50 or $100 that they didn’t win might have made a big change in their lives.

The debate got pretty heated, and a lot of angry and a few just plain dumb things were said, but one of the comments that I’ll never forget went something like “The state has scientists setting the regulations, so we shouldn’t be trying to adopt more restrictive club rules.”

“The state has scientists setting the rules.”

Ahh, if only that were true.

The unfortunate fact is that fisheries regulation is a political process.  While I know, and have known, many state fisheries scientists, know how hard they work, and how much they want to do the right thing, I have also seen all their hard work go for nought when somebody who has the governor’s, or other high-ranking official’s, ear disagrees with the professionals’ assessment and convinces the folks in the Executive Mansion to take things in a different direction.

Almost without exception, that direction was the wrong one, but if the right (or, perhaps, the wrong) person shares a Scotch or two with the ultimate decisionmakers, belongs to the right political party, and/or makes appropriate contributions to the appropriate candidates’ campaigns, all the science in the world won’t change the outcome.

It’s a shame, because the people who should be driving the management process—the people who are formally trained in fisheries science, who have spent years in the field learning their craft, and who have developed the professional expertise to draft and analyze management measures—often have far less impact on management measures than they should.  At the state level they are, after all, answerable to the state’s governor; in just about every state, the head of the Conservation Department, or Environmental Department, or whatever the state chooses to name the management agency, has either known the governor for a long time or has been otherwise active in the governor’s party, and is far more likely to resolve controversial issues based on political, rather than conservation, concerns.

So it’s pretty typical to see the fisheries scientists make the best recommendations that they can, trying to maintain a healthy fish stock while also being aware of the impacts of their decision on the various stakeholders.  The professionals’ regulatory proposals then go through lawyers, which may change some things for strictly legal reasons, before they are kicked upstairs for approval at the agency’s highest levels.

Throughout that process, everyone with an interest in the outcome—anglers’ organizations, commercial fishermen and their organizations, the party boats, the charter boats, the tackle shops, and the rest—pull whatever strings they might pull, use whatever contacts they might have, and call in whatever favors are owed to either support or overrule the professional managers’ decisions, with the opponents hoping to either kill the regulation outright or to change it in ways that will better serve their interests, even if they end up hurting the resource and everyone else in the end.

And when those efforts fail—in this sort of contest, once everyone starts to fight everyone else, someone is bound to fail—the next step is to call for the legislature to come in and pass a bill that will overrule whatever the agency decides, and instead benefit those with the greatest legislative influence, even if the legislation that emerges will cause everyone real harm in the end.

The latest example of that sort of thing is happening now in the House of Representatives, where Rep. Jared Golden (D-ME) teamed up with Rep. Michael Lawlor (R-NY) to introduce an amendment to the Fiscal Year 2025 Commerce, Justice, Science, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, which would supposedly prevent regulators from increasing the minimum size for lobster caught in the Gulf of Maine.

Should that effort succeed, it could well cause long-term harm to both the Gulf of Maine lobster stock and the lobstermen of Maine.

The unavoidable truth is that lobsters are impacted by warming waters, and the Gulf of Maine is warming faster than most oceanic regions on Earth.

Twenty years ago, the Southern New England stock of American lobster began to show signs of distress, as landings dropped sharply.  Such drop was not unexpected given that both abundance and recruitment had been declining in the face of high fishing mortality.  However, fishery managers were slow to respond to the decline, as lobstermen tried to argue around the findings of the 2006 stock assessment.

At an April 2006 meeting of the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission’s American Lobster Advisory Panel, panel members were

“concerned that the stock assessment did not take into account the increases in natural mortality (M) in some areas…[Advisory Panel] members were also concerned that the assessment does not take into account predation of lobsters by striped bass, cod, and dogfish to name a few.”

It was a classic, and all too typical, example of fishermen trying to escape increased regulation by placing “blame” for decreased abundance on naturally occurring factors, while doing their best to ignore the fact that, regardless of the cause of a stock’s decline, current levels of harvest were, nonetheless, unsustainable.  And the fishermen did have substantial success in delaying the management process and assuring that the ASMFC would not adopt measures stringent enough to halt the decline in lobster abundance.

The ASMFC’s American Lobster Technical Committee issued a 2010 report titled Recruitment Failure in The Southern New England Lobster Stock, which stated that

“Since the release of the 2009 Assessment, additional monitoring information has been reviewed which documents that the reproductive potential and abundance of the [Southern New England] stock is continuing to fall lower than the data presented in the latest assessment.  The [American Lobster Technical Committee] contends that the stock is experiencing recruitment failure caused by a combination of environmental drivers and continued fishing mortality…

“The southern New England stock is critically depleted and well below the minimum threshold abundance.  Abundance indices are at or near time series lows, and this condition has persisted.”

The report further stated that,

“Given additional evidence of recruitment failure in [the southern New England stock] and the impediments to stock rebuilding, the Technical Committee now recommends a 5-year moratorium in the [southern New England] stock area…”

Even after an external peer review, conducted by three internationally recognized experts, essentially endorsed the Technical Committee’s advice, neither fishermen nor fisheries managers were willing to take it.  Instead, they subordinated the scientific recommendations to the short-term desires of the lobster fishermen.  The ASMFC’s American Lobster Management Board hemmed and hawed, continually proposing trivial solutions to a very real and serious problem, and never mustered the courage to stand up to hostile stakeholders, and do what was needed to halt the lobster’s decline.  Thus, the ASMFC’s summary of the 2020 American lobster stock assessment notes that

“The abundance threshold is calculated as the average of the three highest abundance years during the low abundance regime.  A stock abundance level below this threshold is considered significantly depleted and in danger of stock collapse.  This was the only reference point recommended for the [southern New England] stock due to its record low abundance and low likelihood of reaching this threshold in the near future.”

Managers’ concessions to the lobster industry, and their failure to take any meaningful action to stem the southern New England stock’s decline has thus put that stock on the path toward collapse.

While all that was going on, Gulf of Maine lobstermen were catching more lobster than ever before, benefitting from an ocean that, while far cooler than that off southern New England, was beginning to warm.

Now, however, there are signs that Gulf of Maine temperatures may be getting a little too high.  The ASMFC notes that

“since 2012, lobster settlement surveys throughout the [Gulf of Maine] have generally been below the time series averages in all areas.  These surveys, which measure trends in the abundance of juvenile lobsters, can be used to track populations and potentially forecast future landings.  Persistent low settlement could foreshadow declines in recruitment and landings.  In the most recent years of the time series, declines in recruitment indices have also been observed.”

That’s how things started in southern New England a couple of decades ago.  But this time the Management Board, apparently having learned the folly of inaction, decided to move quickly, and adopted Addendum XXVII to Amendment 3 to the Interstate Fishery Management Plan for American Lobster.

Addendum XXVII provides, in part, that the minimum size of Gulf of Maine lobster would increase, and the escape vent sizes in lobster traps used in the Gulf of Maine would also increase,

“based on an observed decline in recruit abundance indices of 35% from the reference level (equal to the three-year average from 2016-2018).”

That decline occurred much more quickly than anyone anticipated.  In October 2023, the Technical Committee determined that once 2022 data was included in the index time series, the recruit abundance index would fall by 39%, when compared to the reference level.  The minimum size would have to change much more quickly than anyone expected.

Because the trigger was tripped so soon, the Management Board decided to delay any change in the minimum size to January 1, 2025, but to lobstermen, who questioned the science that triggered the increased minimum size—a spokesman for the Maine Lobstermen’s Association called it “too precautionary”—and worried that smaller Canadian lobster, some caught right on the Maine/Canada border, would reduce their market share, that was still too soon.

Kristan Porter, president of the Maine Lobstermen’s Association, complained that

“I fish in an area called the gray zone in Downeast Maine.  We share the same area as Canada, so if I am going to have to throw lobsters back that they will still be able to keep, then it’s putting us on an uneven playing field with our neighbor.”

In response to such complaints, Rep. Golden introduced his bill (he will be up for election in November, after all), which would

“block federal funding from being used to implement, administer, or enforce ASMFC’s proposed gauge increase.”

It’s the perfect example of an ill-informed fisheries bill.  

First, it ignores the best available science on Gulf of Maine lobster recruitment, without having any countervailing science at all (as demonstrated in southern New England, fishermen’s assurances that the science is wrong can be very wrong).  If Rep. Golden was truly concerned about the science, he could have taken the path of his colleague, Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME), who successfully urged the Senate appropriators to set aside $2 million in funding

“for Gulf of Maine and Georges Bank American lobster research through Maine Sea Grant…with a focus on ‘stock resilience in the face of environmental changes…’”

and so be sure of his facts before taking legislative action that could harm the lobster—and so his constituents—in the long term.

But it’s also unclear how effective Rep. Golden’s bill would be even if it became law, since the ASMFC’s management actions are binding on the states, not the federal government, and Maine would be legally obligated to enforce the terms of Addendum XXVII or risk having its entire lobster fishery shut down as noncompliant, a result that would certainly be worse for the state’s lobstermen than an increase in the minimum size.

But that’s what happens when legislators get involved in what should be science-based fisheries issues. 

Not only don’t they understand the implications of the science but, too often, they misunderstand the implications of their own actions as well.

 

 

 

 

 

"TRASH FISH" FINALLY GETTING THEIR DUE

 

I fish offshore for tuna.

People who don’t do that too often—or don’t do it at all—might think that it’s always exciting when, after what might have been hours of staring at an empty blue ocean, marked only by the boat’s wake and the splashes and wakes of the lures, a line finally pops away from the outrigger and a rod bends down to the weight of a striking fish.

And yes, that sudden call to action is what we all wait for—except for those times when you realize that no line is rolling off the reel’s spool because a false albacore (more properly, “little tunny”) weighing all of eight or ten pounds just grabbed the trailing lure on a squid bar and, unable to make any headway against nearly 30 pounds of drag, is instead arcing across the entire pattern, going over some lines and under a few more, weaving everything together in a knot that will take at least fifteen minutes to clear.

And the worst thing is, after causing all of that trouble, when you finally drag the miscreant fish to the boat, its meat is so strong and bloody that you can’t even eat it, so you toss it over the side to again wreak havoc on the next tuna boat to troll by.

At least, that’s the way it used to be.  On the offshore scene, at least, false albacore were seen a nuisances that got in the way of the tuna bite, perhaps useful for shark bait but not for much else.

But as light-tackle fishing, and saltwater flyfishing, in particular, began to catch on, false albacore began to gain fans as a strong, fast, sometimes picky fish that pulled hard and were fun to fish for.  Particularly as striped bass and bluefish abundance declined, light tackle guides, who served a clientele more interested in sport than in putting fish in the cooler, relied on false albacore for an increasing part of their business.

Suddenly, the false albacore had economic value, and that economic value earned the fish respect.  People even began caring about its welfare.

The problem was, there was very little information for fishery managers to rely on.  The stock had never been assessed, and no one really knew whether it was accurate to talk about a single false albacore stock, or whether there might be multiple stocks on the U.S. East Coast.  Should light-tackle anglers off Nantucket or Montauk or North Carolina care that a new fishery was starting up down in Florida, that saw fishermen netting and selling false albacore as bait for swordfish and grouper?

More recently, we’ve seen the same sort of thing happen with jack crevalle, another strong, hard-fighting fish that was more-or-less labeled “trash” because of its bloody, strong-tasting meat.

I well recall fishing some backwater along the Lee County (Florida) coast, making cast after cast to the mangroves with only a meager return, when the creek exploded into boiling white water as a school of decent-sized jacks blew up a school of baitfish.  I pointed the breaking fish out to my guide, hoping to he’d get us close enough for a cast, but he said, “They’re just jacks,” and continued to maneuver the boat along the bankside vegetation, trying to give us a shot at speckled trout, snook, or red drum, fish that, on their best day, couldn’t outfight a jack, but were given more respect because people would eat them.

Such traditional disdain for jack crevalle makes little sense.  Well-heeled anglers will spend many thousands of dollars—close to $20,000 for some venues—to catch a giant trevally, but many won’t go 50 yards out of their way to hook up with big jack crevalle.  Granted, the trevally grow about three times as large as the jack crevalle (the International Game Fish Association’s all-tackle record for giant trevally is 160 pounds, 7 ounces, while the all-tackle jack crevalle is just 66-2) but otherwise they’re almost the same fish, both belonging to the genus Caranx and both sharing the same wide-bodied build.

And while it may take days of travel by airplane and boat to reach good giant trevally waters where, if you’re lucky, you might get shots at a few fish each day, anglers along the southeast coast of the United States can often find quality action on big jack crevalle within a few minutes of their docks.  Yet one fish is heralded, the other, too often, disdained.

But, as was the case with false albacore, attitudes seem to be changing.  Guides and their clients are finding jack crevalle to be a relatively abundant, hard-fighting gamefish, qualities that rank high with the many light-tackle anglers who prefer to catch and release challenging sportfish, and don’t care about icing fillets.

As is the case with false albacore, not much is known about jack crevalle.  Like false albacore, it is an unregulated species, there has never been a formal stock assessment, and much of its basic biology—things such as natural mortality rates and migration patterns—remains question marks.

But here, too, there is change, and a lot of the credit for that change goes to the American Saltwater Guides Association, an assemblage of guides, tackle shop owners, other marine businesses, and conservation-minded anglers who understand that healthy and abundant fish stocks are good for business.  Two years ago, they pioneered what they now call “The Albie Project,” a cooperative effort with the New England Aquarium to implant false albacore in the Nantucket Sound area with both acoustic and traditional spaghetti tags, in order to better understand the structure of the stock.

False albacore released near Nantucket have already been detected off North Carolina and Florida, suggesting that the entire East Coast population might constitute a single stock.  Other researchers, unaffiliated with the Association, have also begun to take a more serious look at the species; last October, I took out three Stony Brook University researchers, who managed to deploy four acoustic tags.  Three of those fish were later detected by acoustic arrays, and again confirmed that fish from the northeast, in this case New York, travel as far as Florida.

The single-stock hypothesis found further support in genetic research that is also part of the Albie Project.  Samples were taken from fish caught off Montauk, New York, and also from individuals caught off Massachusetts and North Carolina.  When the lead researcher, Steven Bogdanawicz of Cornell University, commented on the study, he noted,

“Important to remember here that we didn’t set out to determine whether fish from NY/MA/NC were different from each other; rather we’re asking ‘If we take a sample of albies from a pretty broad area at about the same time, how many genetic groups do we see?’  Both softwares [used to analyze the false albacores’ DNA] agree that the answer to that is ‘one.’”

The preliminary data, along with the increasing importance of false albacore to the recreational fishing industry, has led to efforts to provide the fish with some protection from overharvest.  While the Guides Association’s efforts to convince the South Atlantic Fishery Management Council to initiate a fishery management plan for false albacore failed, the Association did convince the Council to have its Mackerel and Cobia Advisory Panel produce fishery performance reports for the species every three years, tracking landings and catch estimates to hopefully determine whether mor formal management might be needed in the future.

In North Carolina, the Guides Association generated enough comment letters to convince the North Carolina Marine Fisheries Commission to adopt basic safeguards for false albacore.  Should landings at any time exceed the five-year average by 200 percent or more, the state will adopt restrictions that will include a 3,500-pound commercial trip limit and a 10-fish individual recreational bag limit, along with a 30-fish recreational boat limit.

Now, the Association is turning its attention to jack crevalle.

In 2023, a paper titled "Rapid approach for assessing an unregulated fishery using a series of data-limited tools” appeared in the American Fisheries Society’s journal, Marine and Coastal Fisheries.  Although it was not a formal assessment of the jack crevalle stock, it used jack crevalle to illustrate an approach to stock assessment.  In doing so, it discovered that

“the Crevalle Jack stock is unmanaged and stock size has continually declined, suggesting that the stock is not being sustainably harvested.  According to the base model [fishing mortality] was above [the fishing mortality rate that would allow harvest at maximum sustainable yield] for 14 of the 22 years since 2000, revealing that overfishing has been occurring regularly since 2000.  Biomass was above [the biomass level needed to produce maximum sustainable yield] from 1950 to 2002 but was below [that level] for every year from 2003 to 2011 and from 2017 to 2021, with [biomass[ being the lowest in 2019.  It appears that high levels of catch above [maximum sustainable yield] starting in 1989 led to overfishing beginning in 2000 and led to the stock becoming overfished in 2003.”

Given such findings, it is important that fishery managers obtain more information about jack crevalle.  In an effort to avert more serious problems, the Guides Association has initiated a tagging program that has guides on Florida’s East Coast implanting spaghetti tags in jack crevalle, in an effort to cast some light on fish distribution, movements, and stock structure.

Thus, former “trash fish” are beginning to get the attention that they deserve, as fishermen, and at least part of the fishing industry, begin to understand that the quality of a fish’s flesh is only one gauge of its value, and that catch-and-release fisheries such as those for false albacore and jack crevalle can generate economic benefits every bit as high, and perhaps even higher, than those emphasizing harvest. 

From there, it is just a short step to understanding that every fish has value, none are mere “trash,” and all should be managed to maintain their abundance at sustainable levels.

 

 

GOVERNEMENT ACCOUNTABILITY OFFICE WEIGHS IN ON BYCATCH

 

Bycatch, defined in the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act as

“fish which are harvested in a fishery, but which are not sold or kept for personal use, and includes economic discards and regulatory discards,”

has long been a problem in commercial and a handful of recreational fisheries. 

Although one of the National Standards for Fishery Conservation and Management created by Magnuson-Stevens states that

“Conservation and management measures shall, to the extent practicable, (A) minimize bycatch and (B) to the extent that bycatch cannot be avoided, minimize the mortality of such bycatch,”

meaningful efforts to reduce bycatch have been few and far between; efforts to do so are generally stymied by the lobbying efforts of industrial-scale fishing industries, which wield significant political influence.

Today, the epicenter of the debate is Alaska, where large trawlers targeting pollock or other groundfish have been accused of killing large numbers of salmon and halibut, at the same time that restrictions on those intentionally targeting such fishes have become more and more onerous.

For the most part, the bycatch debate has flown under the radar of the popular press; it is an issue largely championed by conservation groups and by smaller-scale fishermen who feel victimized by an industrial fleet that is permitted to incidentally kill species of fish now denied, in whole or in part, to fishermen who once directly targeted them and depend on them for their livelihoods.

However, that may be changing.Last month, the United States Government Accountability Office, which was created to be

“an independent, non-partisan agency that works for Congress [and] examines how taxpayer dollars are spent and provides Congress and federal agencies with objective, non-partisan, fact-based information to help the government save money and work more efficiently,”

issued a report titled FEDERAL FISHERIES MANAGEMENT Efforts to Reduce and Monitor Unintentional Catch and Harm Need Better Tracking, and so turned the government spotlight onto the bycatch issue.

The GAO found that

“[The National Marine Fisheries Service’s] efforts to track its performance in reducing and monitoring bycatch do not align with key elements of evidence-based policymaking related to performance management.  Specifically, the agency’s bycatch reduction implementation plan lacks measurable performance goals.  Having an updated plan with measurable goals and a tracking process could help inform agency decision-making.

“Additionally, NMFS has enhanced its database to compile bycatch estimates but does not have a comprehensive written plan for how it will report the estimates.  Developing such a plan could help the agency better monitor bycatch levels, trends, and information gaps, and demonstrate progress over time to internal and external stakeholders.”

To develop the report, the GAO focused on five specific fisheries, selected to include a diversity of fishing areas and fishing gear.  Those fisheries were the Bering Sea pollock trawl fishery, the Gulf of Mexico shrimp trawl fishery, the Hawaii deep-set tuna longline fishery, the New England scallop dredge fishery, and the West Coast groundfish fixed-gear fishery.  No fisheries within the Mid-Atlantic, South Atlantic, or Caribbean regions were examined.

In compiling the report, the GAO noted that bycatch, and bycatch reduction measures, were very specific to a fishery and to the species sought, as well as to the composition of the bycatch that the measures seek to reduce.  Overall, modifications to fishing gear, which allow fishermen to continue to operate while reducing encounters with bycatch species, are preferred over measures that close fishing areas either permanently or for defined periods of time, and so seriously impair fishing operations.  Similarly, the GAO found that measures developed independently of the fishing community, which have or are perceived to have a significant impact on the harvest of target species, will be less acceptable to fishermen, who may not comply with gear modification requirements.

Another issue is the availability of observers, who NMFS considers “essential” if the bycatch issue is to be properly addressed.  Such observers confirm the existence and level of bycatch caught in existing gear, and can monitor the effectiveness of bycatch reduction efforts.  However, observer levels vary from fishery to fishery, and coverage can be anywhere between 0% to 100% of trips made.  The level of funding can depend on a number of factors, including the availability of federal or industry funding, whether protected (i.e. Endangered Species Act-listed or protected under the Marine Mammals Act) species are involved, and the size and geographic scope of the fishery.

The low level of observers present in many fisheries (out of the five fisheries examined by the GAO, there was 100% coverage in the Bering Sea pollock trawl fishery, while coverage in the other four ranged between 2 and 41 percent) can lead to significant uncertainty in the bycatch data.

After speaking with NMFS administrators, scientists, members of regional fishery management councils, and stakeholders, the GAO included four recommendations in its report.  It advised that

“The Assistant Administrator for NMFS should gather information from across the regions to identify any additional resources needed to support fisheries observers, and communicate these needs to relevant stakeholders, including Congress.  (Recommendation 1)

“The Assistant Administrator for NMFS should develop an updated National Bycatch Reduction Strategy Implementation Plan with measurable performance goals tied to specific time frames.  (Recommendation 2)

“The Assistant Administrator for NMFS should develop a process for tracking progress toward the performance goals in the National Bycatch Reduction Strategy Implementation Plan and use the information to guide agency decision-making.  (Recommendation 3)

“The Assistant Administrator for NMFS should develop a comprehensive written plan for reporting on bycatch estimates from the enhanced Fisheries One Stop Shop database, including how the agency will communicate over time on bycatch levels, trends, and information gaps.  (Recommendation 4)”

In a letter dated June 3, 2024, a NMFS representative said that the agency agrees with the GAOs recommendations.

So do we have reason to believe that progress will soon be made on the bycatch issue?

Probably not.  Politics will get in the way.

First, we should note that the report was addressed to, and requested by,

“the Ranking Member Committee on Natural Resources, House of Representatives,”

Raul M. Grijalva.

The Ranking Member of a House committee is the highest-ranking member of the minority party sitting on such committee.  Given the high degree of partisanship in the House, along with the majority party’s general hostility to any legislation that promotes conservation and/or might place any restrictions on business, the likelihood of the report giving birth to changes in federal fisheries law is remote, at best, in 2024; future success would depend on a change in the party controlling the House, with no such change taking place in the Senate or, probably, in the White House. 

Given the current state of electoral politics, that’s not the most likely outcome of the November elections.

Politics will also continue to dominate the bycatch issue in the regional fishery management councils.  Nothing demonstrates that fact better than the delays in 2024 appointments to the Pacific and North Pacific fishery management councils, where conservation-minded nominees are being challenged by the bycatch-prone trawler fleet.  As noted in a recent article appearing in the National Fisherman,

“The State of Washington (WA) nominees by Governor Jay Inslee to both the North Pacific and Pacific Councils are  strong advocates of management policies that prioritize ecosystem protections over ‘optimum yields’ from fisheries extractions, as currently defined in fisheries laws.

“Many fishery stakeholders have long believed that the North Pacific Fishery Management Council (“NPFMC”) ‘family’ has become too top-heavy with large trawl interests who are vested directly or indirectly in the Bering Sea pollock and groundfish fisheries.

“WA holds two of eleven voting seats on the 15-member NPFMC, and both are up for grabs.

“How the Council votes directly impact the Seattle trawl companies’ bottom lines and Inslee’s ‘eco-candidate’ choices for the NPFMC, have prompted a full-court press by powerful Senate trawl lobbyists to sway opinions at US Commerce in Washington, DC…

“Governor Inslee’s choice of one seat on the Pacific Fishery Management Council (“PFMC”) has also raised the hackles of Seattle’s trawl sector…”

Having observed fisheries issues for many years, I suspect that the lobbyists may still prevail, and that the trawlers will get one—or more—of their own on the two regional fishery management councils, which will make effective bycatch reduction that much more difficult to achieve.

Still, it is good to see the issue get some attention.

Although, as we go into an election that will probably put an administration that was demonstrably hostile to fisheries conservation back in power, a little attention and no results may be all that we get for the next four—or more—years.

 

 

FEDERAL COURTS (UNLIKE NEW YORK'S) TAKE FISHERIES OFFENCES SERIOUSLY

 

Last Thursday, a federal judge of the United States District Court for the Eastern District of New York sentenced a Montauk commercial fisherman, convicted of multiple charges after landing illegal summer flounder ("fluke") and black sea bass on many different occasions, to 30 months in federal prison.

According to the New York Times,

“The man, Chris Winkler, 64, who helms a 45-foot trawler called the New Age, was convicted by a Long Island jury in October on federal charges of hauling too many fish from the sea.  The jury also found him guilty of falsifying records and selling his illegal catch to partners at Gosman’s Dock, a waterfront mall and restaurant complex in Montauk, and to dealers at the Fulton Fish Market in the Bronx…

“Mr. Winkler’s case concerns fishing trips between 2014 and 2017 during which he harvested at least 200,000 pounds of fluke and 20,000 pounds of black sea bass beyond the limit, prosecutors said.  Mr. Winkler then fudged records to conceal the excess catch, they said.

“…Prosecutors said the over-quota fish was worth nearly $900,000 on the wholesale market.”

It was not the first time that federal prosecutors on Long Island came down hard on commercial poachers.  The Times noted that

“The federal government has increasingly used criminal prosecution to enforce fishing regulations, and Mr. Winkler’s case was among several similar cases brought by the Justice Department’s Environment and Natural Resources division in the past decade.  Two such cases, against other Long Island fishermen charged with overfishing fluke, ended with prison sentences.”

Nor is federal fisheries enforcement limited to the commercial sector.  In November 2012, the Justice Department shook up Virginia's salt water angling community when it brought charges against five local charter boat captains who were routinely violating federal law by targeting striped bass in federal waters more than three miles from shore.

At the time, both private and charter boats chronically violated the prohibition on striped bass fishing in the EEZ off Virginia, and the charter boats seemed to feel entitled to do so.  The local fishing website Tidal Fish often featured threads discussing the issue, and when one participant on the site’s chat boards chose to warn others about the regulation back in 2010—about the time when the indicted charter boat operators were committing their violations—he received a hostile and vaguely threatening response:

“Messin with Livelyhoods is Not recommended.. I don’t turn my back to Law Breakers. If I see a Violation Off Water that requires a Call to the Law then I do so.  Out on the Big Pond however holding a Video Camera pointing it at Boats that have Crossed the line.. 1st Not sure how you can Prove where you are on Film, 2nd you have Numbers on your Boat that pretty much identifies you.. All Im saying is Be careful …..Your Messin with things You may Not Comprehend.. It’s a Hard Life making a Living as a Charter Boat Capt.. Don’t make it that Much harder when there are Enforcements out there already… You Ready to be the Star Witness..  Not me Brother..”

Clearly, things had gotten far out of hand.

However, the Justice Department quickly put them back in order, with a substantial assist from the courts, which came down hard on the habitually poaching captains. 

All five were found guilty, and the punishments fit the crimes.

One captain was fined $5,600, plus another $1,900 in restitution payments.  He

“was also sentenced to three years’ probation with special conditions prohibiting [him] from engaging in either the charter or commercial fishing industries, anywhere in the world, in any capacity, during the term of his probation.  [He] is prohibited not only from captaining a vessel, but also rendering any assistance, support, or other services, with or without compensation, for other charter or commercial fishermen.”

Another was sentenced to 30 days’ in jail and 12 months supervised probation, during which time he was not permitted to engage in the charter boat fishery in any capacity.  In addition, he was required to surrender his captain’s license to the Coast Guard, under the condition that he never be reinstated as a licensed captain.

The other three captains received fines, were placed on three years’ probation, and were required to install vessel monitoring systems on any vessel that they might operate during the probation period.

Violating the prohibition on bass fishing in the EEZ no longer seen as merely a risk one took when doing business.  From everything that I’ve heard since, there are far fewer EEZ violations taking place off Virginia these days.

That demonstrates why federal judges who are willing to pass down tough sentences are one of the keys to successful fisheries management.  According to the New York Times, the judge in the Winkler case appreciated the negative impact that poaching has on fish stocks.

“’I consider this a serious crime,’ said Judge Azrack, who called the trial ‘illuminating, educational and disturbing.’  Mr. Winkler, she said, ‘undermined then integrity of the whole fisheries management program.’”

Unfortunately, if the matter had been tried in a state, rather than a federal, court, the outcome would probably have been very different.  It is extremely likely that the poacher would have escaped with a trivial fine that could easily be written off as just another cost of doing business, for most of New York's state and local judges, unlike Judge Azrack, seem to consider fisheries violations as of no meaningful importanc.  It is a situation that continues to frustrate the Department of Environmental Conservation’s law enforcement officers.

Take, for example, a situation that I reported on a little over two years ago.

It seems that, on November 7, 2021, the crew of a DEC police boat

“observed a vessel in the Atlantic Ocean south of Montauk.  On board, 2 persons were hauling up a gill net, both commercially permitted fishermen.  On board, in a cooler, were 11 tagged striped bass, all using allocation tags issued to another fisherman, who was not on board.  They had, also, and additional 82 unused striped bass tags.  An additional 5 untagged striped bass were found, hidden, on board, which were all under the 26” minimum size for commercially harvested striped bass.

“The captain admitted that he was out of striped bass tags for the year, and knew that it was illegal to fish using someone else’s tags…The fishermen were each charged with a misdemeanor, for the illegal commercialization of fish, plus a separate violation for possessing undersized fish and illegal use of tags.  In total, each fisherman faced penalties of up to $800 for the 16 illegal fish and an additional penalty of $5,000, based on the current market value of the fish.  The current market value for the fish illegally aboard the vessel was $388.02.”

While such violation might not have been in the same league as illegally taking 200,000 pounds of summer flounder and 20,000 pounds of black sea bass, it was still a misdemeanor-level transgression, committed by fishermen who admitted that they knew very well that they would be engaged in illegal activity even before they set out for the day.  Yet in this case, the punishment definitely did not fit the crime.

Instead of facing fines that might have deterred future illegal activities—fines at least greater than the value of the illegal fish they had landed—it turned out that

“On 1/5, in East Hampton Town Court, the captain pled to a violation, with a $100 fine and $75 surcharge; all other charges were dismissed.”

Having to pay just $175—less than half the value of the illegally-take fish—with no other penalties imposed, is hardly a deterrent to either the captain who poached the fish or to anyone following the outcome of the matter.  Such fines really are just a cost of doing business to those involved.

Of course, over the years, East Hampton Town Court has proven to be a poacher’s paradise, allowing those taking illegal fish to escape with a slap on the wrist.  That’s the sort of thing that happens when poachers are part of the fabric of the local community that elects the town justices and is home to the attorney prosecuting the crimes.

Still, the state courts rarely provide better results.  Many judges view fisheries violations as minor issues compared to the larcenies, assaults, rapes, and murders that they deal with on a regular basis, and are all too fast to let poachers go home essentially unpunished; similarly, members of the district attorneys’ staffs always have more work than they do time, and so have a tendency to put fisheries violations at or near the bottom of their priority lists.

It's an unfortunate situation, and one that makes it extremely difficult to properly enforce, and build respect for, state fisheries laws.

Yet the federal courts, including those here on Long Island, have already blazed a trail toward effective fisheries enforcement.  It is now up to New York’s courts and New York’s prosecutors to follow the path that they’ve made.

STRIPED BASS: TO REBUILD THE RIGHT WAY, AND ON TIME

 

When the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission’s Atlantic Striped Bass Management Board meets in October, one thing will be foremost in everyone’s mind—the results of the latest stock assessment update, which will be released ahead of the meeting.

If the update finds that there is at least a 50% probability that the striped bass stock will rebuild by 2029, without any additional management measures being taken, everyone will breathe a little easier and move on to the next item of business.  But if the assessment finds that the stock is unlikely to rebuild by that deadline, the Management Board will face a politically difficult decision.  It will have to decide how to further restrict striped bass fishing mortality, in order to allow timely rebuilding to occur.

A lot of that will depend on how much damage the 2022 spike in recreational landings impaired the recovery, and how successful the emergency measure adopted in May 2023 was in reducing fishing mortality and putting the recovery back on track (since 2023 will be the assessment update’s terminal year, the impacts of Addendum II to Amendment 7 to the Interstate Fishery Management Plan for Atlantic Striped Bass, adopted last January, will not be reflected in its findings).

The last stock assessment, which considered the health of the stock at the end of 2021, predicted that the stock would very probably be rebuilt by the 2029 deadline, but excessive recreational landings in 2022 quickly changed that forecast.  Marine Recreational Information Program landings data suggests that, as a result of the emergency measure, 2023 recreational landings were about halfway between 2021 and 2022 levels (we’ll get a better understanding of that at the August Management Board meeting).

So, realistically, additional action will probably be needed to rebuild the stock on time.

The big question is what those additional management measures will look like.  In that regard, the Management Board will have to make two big decisions.  One is the form such measures will take.  The other is how such measures will be adopted.

Typically, when new management measures are proposed, the Management Board will ask the Plan Development Team to put together a draft addendum, containing multiple management options, which will be sent out for public comment.  Public hearings are held and, informed by the comments received, the Management Board will finalize the management document.  However, the Management Board will have another option to choose from in October.

Addendum II provides that

“If an upcoming stock assessment prior to the rebuilding deadline (currently 2029) indicates that the stock is not projected to rebuild by 2029 with a probability greater than or equal to 50%, the Board could respond via Board action where the Board could change management measures by voting to pass a motion at a Board meeting instead of developing an addendum or amendment (and different from the emergency action process).  [emphasis added]”

Thus, the Management Board could, if it chose to, adopt new management measures at the October meeting, or at a subsequent meeting (perhaps a special meeting called for solely that purpose).  By fast-tracking the new management measures, the Board could have them in place for the 2025 season, thus eliminating some of the debate that swirled around Amendment II, which was not adopted until after some states had already issued commercial tags.  Getting the new management measures in place for 2025 will also make it more likely that the bass will be rebuilt on time; engaging in the full addendum process would probably see new measures adopted in 2026, allowing landings to remain too high for an additional year, and reducing the chances of a timely recovery.

On the other hand, there will certainly be those on the Management Board who will seek delay, trying to eke out another year of higher landings for their commercial and for-hire fleets.  They will argue that action should not be taken before stakeholders have a full opportunity to provide comments on the proposed management measures, using a feigned concern for stakeholder input—feigned because, after multiple rounds of comment on Amendment 7, the emergency action, and Addendum II, there is little doubt where the various stakeholders stand—to maintain excessive levels of harvest for at least an additional year.

Having said that, there is one reason that stakeholder comment—both past and present—may turn out to be very important, and that is the Management Board’s apparent obsession with reducing recreational release mortality.

To put things in the simplest terms possible, the key to rebuilding striped bass—or any other fish stock—is to get to a place where the number of new fish entering the stock (“recruitment”) is greater than the total mortality experienced by such stock.  It’s not much different than your personal checking account:  If your deposits exceed your withdrawals, your balance grows; if withdrawals exceed deposits, it’s not too long before your checks start to bounce.

So lowering total mortality is a good thing.

Total mortality—often represented by the symbol “Z”—has two components, fishing  mortality (“F”), which is just what it sounds like, fish removed from the stock by fishing activities, and natural mortality ("M”), which are removals due to natural processes such as disease, predation, etc.  Unfortunately, there is usually little that managers can do to reduce natural mortality, so when total mortality is too high, the answer is always to somehow reduce F.

Fishing mortality also has two components, one being landings, and the other deemed “discard mortality” (commercial) or “release mortality” (recreational).  Some  make no distinction between commercial discards and recreational releases, listing them both under the catch-all of “discards,” but that is a very critical mistake, because it ignores the dual nature of recreational fishing.

Some recreational fishermen fish, to a greater or lesser degree, for food.  They plan to bring their catch home.  And some recreational fishermen fish—as the term “recreational fisherman” suggests,”--primarily for recreation, and release most or all of their catch.  The great majority of anglers fall somewhere in-between, keeping some fish, and releasing others, depending on their needs, their mood, and the fish involved.

Fishing for food obviously kills fish, but catch-and-release kills some fish, too; it is not a bloodless sport. 

In what might be deemed recreational “food” fisheries, harvest makes up the biggest component of fishing mortality.  In the summer flounder fishery, for example, the average recreational catch for the years 2020 through 2022 was 11.06 million pounds; that total included 8.51 million pounds of fish landed, and 2.55 million pounds of fish that died after being released.

But sport fisheries display a very different pattern.  Atlantic tarpon in the South Atlantic region may be the most extreme example, with 2023 data showing zero fish landed, and 133,264 fish released.  

Clearly, sport fishermen don’t have to kill fish to have a successful day, yet some of those 133,000 tarpon undoubtedly died from the effects of being caught.  Based on one Florida study, which estimated a release mortality rate of somewhere between 7.3 and 17.1 percent, as many as 22,788 tarpon might have been killed by anglers last year.  Yet such losses are accepted as the inevitable result of a catch-and-release fishery, even though release mortality accounts for 100 percent of all fishing mortality.

Striped bass fall somewhat in-between.  

Many striped bass anglers see the bass as a sport fish, and rarely if ever take one home.  The ASMFC estimates that about 90 percent of the bass caught are released, and also estimates that about 9 percent of the released bass die after being caught.  Other fishermen like to take striped bass home and, of course, 100 percent of those fish fail to survive.  

In 2023, recreational fishermen in New England and the mid-Atlantic landed slightly over 2.6 million striped bass, while releasing about 26 million; if we apply the presumed 9% release mortality rate, about 2.34 million of those released fish subsequently died, meaning that, in 2023, release mortality accounted for about 47 percent of all fishing mortality.  In other years, it accounted for a few percentage points more.

Yet it appears that, should the Management Board decide to adopt additional management measures, they’re going to concentrate on less than half of the fishing mortality picture—recreational releases—rather than on the whole of the issue.

The Massachusetts Division of Marine Fisheries recently issued a press release in which it noted,

“If action is needed, the Board has signaled that it will be focusing, at least in part, on recreational release mortality.”

If anyone has their finger on the pulse of the Management Board, it is Massachusetts DMP, which has been at the forefront of the striped bass debate for the past five years or so.  And if anyone had any doubt about the Board’s fixation on striped bass release mortality, the first item on the agenda for its August meeting calls for it to

“Consider Initial Recommendations from Recreational Release Mortality Work Group.”

It will be a couple of weeks before we know what those initial recommendations will be, but in truth, there aren’t too many options.  It can try to adopt gear restrictions, mandating things like prohibiting the use of treble hooks in lures, or perhaps allowing only a single hook (which might be a treble) on plugs, and perhaps banning the use of bait in the striped bass fishery.  All of those suggestions would find some support in the preliminary findings of the ongoing Massachusetts release mortality study.

The Management Board could also attempt to regulate angler behavior, perhaps by requiring that all bass over a certain size—say, 35 or 40 inches—be released without being removed from the water.  Florida has long had a similar rule in place for tarpon, and they believe that it is doing some good.

The problem is that the benefits of any of those rules are very difficult to quantify.  No model existing today can tell managers, with anything like an acceptable degree of certainty, how much they might reduce release mortality by outlawing the use of bait, or mandating single hooks.  

Such rules are also practically unenforceable.  Should they be imposed, an angler caught casting out a fresh chunk of bunker or a plug armed with three sets of trebles can easily say, “I’m fishing for bluefish,” and it would be impossible for law enforcement to prove that such wasn’t the case.

Thus, while all such initiatives would seem worthwhile, managers won’t be able to prove that they would lead to a reduction in fishing mortality.

Given Addendum II’s narrow slot limit and single-fish bag, if the stock assessment update tells managers that they must further reduce recreational fishing mortality in order to timely rebuild the stock, they have only one effective tool left in their toolbox, and that’s to adopt closed seasons.  And that’s where the Board’s fixation with release mortality rubs up against the harsh realities of human behavior and enforcing fisheries laws.

Closing the striped bass fishery to harvest for some defined length of time would certainly cut recreational fishing mortality.  The magnitude of the reduction could be predicted with reasonable precision, based on the length of the closure.  But that’s where the rub comes in:  While a no-harvest closure would reduce recreational landings, it arguably do nothing to reduce recreational releases, and so release mortality (I actually disagree with that conclusion, believing that some “meat fishermen” would choose not to spend time, money, and effort fishing for bass that they couldn’t legally take home, and that release mortality would decline as a result).

The only way that the Management Board might theoretically reduce release mortality is to prohibit anglers from even targeting striped bass during some specified period.  Again, such a closure would clearly reduce striped bass landings, because if anglers can’t target them, they can’t bring them home.  However, whether it would significantly reduce release mortality is not at all clear, because one thing that fisheries scientists have not yet been able to model is regulations’ impact on anglers’ behavior.

As with the case of anglers who would, if faced with a gear prohibition, continue to target striped bass with outlawed bait and plugs while claiming to target something else, plenty of anglers would probably continue to target bass during a no-targeting season, and just claim to be fishing for bluefish, weakfish, or maybe red drum.  And other anglers, who perhaps really were fishing for blues, weaks, or redfish, would accidentally hook and subsequently release plenty of striped bass, because when different species live in the same places and eat the same things, they’re all going to be a part of an angler’s catch.

So the benefits of a no-targeting closure, as opposed to a no-harvest season, are not at all clear.

Still, there will be members of the Management Board who will support a no-target season out of a twisted sense of “fairness,” arguing that, if catch-and-kill anglers’ hopes of taking fish home are frustrated for a while, catch-and-release anglers shouldn’t be allowed to enjoy fishing, either.  It makes little sense, and would unnecessarily reduce the social and economic benefits gleaned from the recreational striped bass fishery, but some Management Board members are ideologically driven, and to them, the “fairness” claims will ring true.

Hopefully, a majority of the Board will feel differently, but once the initial recommendations of the work group are made public, which should occur about two weeks from now, we will need to take a good look at them, and begin to let our representatives on the Management Board know how we feel.

While adopting an unenforceable no-target closure would be a big mistake, it’s not the worst thing that the Management Board might do in October.

It could choose to do nothing at all.

Anglers concerned with the future of the striped bass should go back to the section of Addendum II that I quoted above, the section that empowers the Management Board to change the plan by a simple Board vote, and note one seemingly innocent parenthetical, the one that says “the rebuilding deadline (currently 2029)  [emphasis added]”

Maybe I worry too much, but I can’t help but think that the “currently 2029” language was added because someone in considering the possibility that, if rebuilding by 2029 looks a little too hard, the Management Board might just want to extend the deadline out a few years, although such extension would be contrary to the explicit provisions the management plan.

Yet history tells us that the Management Board has delayed taking action before.

I can easily argue that its November 2011 decision not to cut harvest, in the face of a stock assessment update predicting that the stock would become overfished within six years if nothing was done, was the first in a series of bad decisions that put the stock in the depleted state that it finds itself in today.  I can also argue that, when it followed the advice of then-Fishery Management Plan Coordinator Michael Waine, and so failed to follow the clear dictates of the management plan, which required it to initiate a rebuilding plan at that point, it lost its last, best chance to prevent a serious stock decline.

I hate to think that the Management Board might not have learned those lessons from its past.  In recent years—really, since the Amendment 7 process began—it seems to have grown more responsible, and more responsive to the needs of the striped bass stock and the advice provided by the great majority of stakeholders.

It would be a shame if the Board began to regress.

The Management Board must rebuild the striped bass stock by 2029, within the 10-year timeframe provided in the management plan.

But at the same time, it must do the job right, and not rely on unenforceable, unquantifiable, unjustifiable actions such as no-target closures, that might make some people feel good, but won’t do much to help the striped bass.