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.