A NEW THREAT TO FEDERAL FISHERIES DATA

 

I’ve said it before.  MRIP—the Marine Recreational InformationSystem, which is used to estimate recreational fishermen’s effort, catch andlandings—is the program that everyone loves to hate.

The reasons for that are complex. 

A little less than a year ago, the National Marine Fisheries Service revealed that, as part of its ongoing quality control checks of the program, it discovered that MRIP is probably overstating the number of angler trips, and so the level of recreational catch and landings.  That admission has been the focus of a lot of the recent anti-MRIP flak, particularly on the part of the same southern-state-oriented anglers’ rights groups that have been trying to overturn federal red snapper management for the past decade.

But while such groups pounced on the NMFS admission as a convenient way to validate their anti-federal management arguments, the fact is that MRIP was attacked by various angling-industry organizations and their allies in the press from the moment that it was released, in part because it inherited some of the rancor previously and justifiably aimed at its predecessor, the badly flawed Marine Recreational Fishing Statistics Survey—MRFSS acknowledged flaws, after all, provided the impetus for MRIP’s creation. 

Much of the animus aimed at MRIP seems to have the same source as the antipathy that many drivers hold toward radar speed guns and red light cameras—they provide a clear limitation on what people are able to do, and people don’t like to be told “No.”  Drivers know that it’s illegal to speed and to run through red lights, but many want to do it anyway, and don’t want to be held responsible for the results.  Similarly, recreational fishermen know that it’s bad to overfish, but they still want to take some fish home regardless of what the data might say, so when MRIP leads to more restrictive angling regulations, it's reflexively attacked, whether such attacks are justified or not.

I’ve actually participated in meetings where another person at the table completely dismissed landings data by saying “It’s MRIP.  I just don’t believe it,” making no attempt to justify his position beyond those few words.

It doesn’t help that some fisheries managers, and fisheries management organizations, choose to use MRIP data in ways that its designers never intended, and thus base regulations on data too imprecise to be used for management purposes.

The precision of MRIP data generally improves with the number of anglers who are interviewed and their catch recorded.  Thus, MRIP data is good when, for example, managers want to know how many fish of an often-encountered species are caught along the entire coast, or in a large region thereof, over the course of a year.  But when managers try to break annual, coastwide data down into individual states, and then break it down farther into two-month “waves” and/or modes of angling, the precision quickly breaks down.

When New Jersey sets black sea bass regulations that sees the season open on May 17, with a 10-fish bag limit, close on June 20, open again on July 1 with a 1-fish bag limit, then close for a month on September 1 before opening on October 1, again with a 10-fish bag, before going to a 15-fish bag from November 1 through the rest of the year, it is only kidding itself, and everyone else, if it believes that the data is precise enough to support all those changes.  If such regulations, and other state regulations which, although not quite as extreme, still vary from wave to wave, ever manage to constrain recreational black sea bass landings to the landings target, luck rather than calculation would almost certainly be the cause.

Yet the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission, with the blessing of NMFS and the Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council, adopt such regulations every year, then seem astonished when they can’t get recreational landings under control.  Both managers and fishermen both tend to blame MRIP, when it is really the misuse of MRIP that deserves the blame.

However, the most vehement and most consistent opponents of MRIP have not been those in the Mid-Atlantic or New England black sea bass fisheries, but rather the industry-aligned anglers’ rights groups down in the Gulf of Mexico, and more recently in the South Atlantic, who resent the fact the MRIP is keeping them from killing more red snapper.

This year, sportfishing industry groups have convinced Rep. Garret Graves (R-LA), a legislator who has long benefitted from their favors and reciprocated by carrying their water in the House, to introduce a bill intended to gut MRIP.  Titled the “Fisheries Data Modernization and Accuracy Act of 2024,” such legislation directs that

“The Administrator [of NMFS] shall reform the MRIP in effect as of the date of the enactment of this section to meet the unique needs of individual regions and States, taking into consideration the needs of State-level programs related to recreational fishing catch and effort surveys in effect as of the date of the enactment of this section to ensure that such reform does not unnecessarily dilute the effectiveness of such programs.”

While that might sound at least somewhat benign, if one reads the bill, it quickly becomes clear that Graves’ goal is to minimize the use of MRIP data in fisheries management, and to replace it, wherever possible, with state-level data.

That becomes obvious early on, when the bill calls for the creation of a committee within the National Academy of Sciences that is supposed to “meet regularly to discuss issues related to fisheries data collection and management,” that is supposed to “operate independently and without the influence of” the head of NMFS, but which must include representatives of state fish and wildlife agencies among its members.

It’s called stacking the deck…

Similar provisions exist throughout the bill.  One provides that if the percent standard error of any wave of MRIP estimates exceeds 30, or if the state petitions the committee with respect to any recreational fishery managed with open and closed seasons, the head of NMFS must consult with the new committee to either reduce the PSE or, if that is not possible, to “adjust the management of such seasonal fishery.”  

Such provision virtually assures that just about every important recreational species would be included in the provision, as most such species are managed with seasons, while even popular species such as striped bass, summer flounder, and bluefish had at least one wave during 2023 when the PSE exceeded 30, even though the season-wide PSEs for those species were 7.9, 7.5, and 8.3, respectively, all plenty precise enough to support management actions.

After the required consultation, NMFS would have to issue a report that included recommendations

“to adjust the management of such seasonal fishery in a manner that allows continued access…  [emphasis added]”

In other words, adjusting management in a way that allows anglers to continue to kill fish, apparently without regard to whether the stock was overfished or approaching an overfished condition, whether overfishing was taking place, or whether such “continued access” would cause long-term harm to the health of the fishery.

With language like that, it’s not hard to believe that, in 2022, the American Sportfishing Association was one ofthe biggest contributors to Graves’ campaign.

The bill would also allow a state to initiate the consultation process with the proposed committee if the percent standard error of MRIP data for any given year

“is significantly greater or less than the preceding 3-year average PSE for such seasonal fishery, [emphasis added]”

which is fairly bizarre when you think about it, because it means that states would have a right to seek a change in the management process if MRIP was improved and the data became markedly more precise.  Other specified data issues, that cast doubt on the precision of MRIP estimates, could also trigger such a consultation.

But things start getting strange again when Graves’ bill contemplates state data collection programs.  It would allow states, with NMFS’ approval, to develop their own programs, which more or less tracks the current process.  But then it puts NMFS in an impossible position, by requiring the agency to

“establish universal standards regarding the collection of such data,”

which is perfectly reasonable, but further requiring that such standards both

“allow for flexibility in the design of such programs to account for differences in recreational fishing activity between States,”

while also

“facilitat[ing] the collection of comparable data between States within a region for purposes of stock assessment and management.”

It’s an impossible task, for if states have different designs intended to “account for the differences” in such states fisheries, and so employ divergent methodologies, there is no way that the data collected by any state will be comparable to the data collected by others.  

Even though such data may each be reasonably precise, according to the standards of the separate surveys, the data will also be different as a result of the methodologies used, and will not be comparable until run through a process that calibrates each states’ findings and translates them into a common standard that makes comparisons possible.  

That is exactly the issue that caused such consternation in the Gulf of Mexico red snapper fishery, when various states’ catch estimates had to be converted into a “common currency,” and led to some states taking cuts to their annual harvests while others were allowed to land a few extra fish.

But regardless of the quality of the state data collection programs, or of whether they really did provide comparable data, the bill requires that NMFS

“establish such data as the baseline for the calibration of historic estimates of recreational catch,”

and to

“use such data to establish catch limits and monitor landings without calibration to any Federal program, including MRIP,”

even though the NMFS data has a much longer time series, and has no compatibility issues at all, and despite the fact that the state programs would not be required to undergo the same sort of rigorous review, including a National Academy of Sciences review, that MRIP underwent.

If, despite such review, the MRIP’s problem with overstated recreational effort went undiscovered until last year, how many undiscovered flaws might exist within the state programs?  But Graves seems unconcerned with those.  In fact, it provides that

“If a State collects data pursuant to this subsection that is collected pursuant to the MRIP, the Administrator [of NMFS] shall use the data collected by the State in place of the data collected pursuant to the MRIP,”

again without any sort of study or peer review that upholds the superiority of the state data.

The Graves bill goes on, to provide funding to states to develop programs to supplant MRIP, and is in that way compatible with the House budget that would appropriate $30 million to a few southern states for just that purpose, while letting NMFS’ science and research programs—and the rest of the coast--starve.

Looking at Graves’ bill, the first thing that we should admit is that MRIP isn’t perfect.  The supposed overestimation of recreational effort is, if confirmed, a major error that may have compromised stock assessments and the calculation of annual catch limits for both the recreational and the commercial sectors.  But NMFS is constantly working to uncover and address MRIP’s flaws.

There is no guarantee that any state survey will be subject to the same sort of continuing review.

MRIP is the only survey that crosses state boundaries, providing a uniform system of estimating recreational landings.  State surveys, at best, will have to be tweaked to work with one another, leading to the same sort of controversy that emerged in the Gulf red snapper fishery.

Yes, MRIP is flawed.  But at this point we should ask, “Why reinvent the wheel?”

Instead of spending money on state surveys that will presumably replace MRIP, why not spend the same money on MRIP itself?

Does anyone doubt that the $30 million in the House budget, if appropriated to improve MRIP instead of being passed out to a handful of southern state surveys intended to supplant it, could fix whatever problems may be lurking within?

But, of course, that’s not what Graves, and the organizations that back him, want. 

They want to kill more red snapper than the science and prudence allow.  They don’t want “good”—that is, more precise—landings estimates.  They want estimates that will let them take more fish home, regardless of such estimates’ accuracy.

And they see getting rid of MRIP as the best way to make that happen.