BETWEEN NOW AND DECEMBER: STRIPED BASS MANAGEMENT IN 2025

 

About 10 days ago, the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission’s Atlantic Striped Bass Management Board met, and decided to do something to make it more likely that the stock will rebuild by 2029.  What that something will be isn’t yet clear—because there is so much uncertainty surrounding the level of catch reductions that will be needed to make rebuilding likely, the Atlantic Striped Bass Technical Committee wasn’t able to come up with management suggestions until the Management Board decided which of five possible scenarios it deemed the most probable.

Once the Management Board selected their preferred scenario, the Management Board would be able to recommend a suite of management measures likely to achieve the associated reduction. 

In the end, the Management Board agreed with the Technical Committee, which advised that the most likely scenario—emphasis on the “most likely,” as there is still significant uncertainty that something different, to a greater or lesser degree, might ultimately emerge—is that the fishing mortality rate will be relatively low in 2024, will increase somewhat as the slightly above-average 2018 year class, which for the most part is still below the 28- to 31-inch coastal recreational slot limit this year, grows into the slot in 2025, and then will fall back to the lower, 2024 fishing mortality rate after most of the 2018s grow out of the slot in 2026.

The Management Board will now have to meet again in December to decide what the 2025 management measures will be.

Its preferred scenario theoretically calls for a 14.5 percent reduction in landings to make timely rebuilding probable but, like so many things associated with striped bass this year, the magnitude of the needed reduction is…uncertain.

The uncertainty stems from the fact that Addendum II to Amendment 7 to the Interstate Fishery Management Plan for Atlantic Striped Bass was just adopted last January, with its provisions becoming effective early last spring, so the Technical Committee really doesn’t have any clear guidance as to how Addendum II is impacting fishing mortality.

It does know that recreational catch and landings are down so far this year.

Between March and August 2023, recreational fishermen caught about 13.5 million striped bass, and took about 1.5 million of them home; this year, during the same six-month period, anglers caught only about 10.5 million striped bass and landed fewer than 900,000, reductions of 22 percent and 40 percent, respectively.  If that level of reductions does not increase during the last four months of the year, the fishing mortality rate for 2024 will be about 0.13, well below the fishing mortality target of 0.17, and almost low enough to have as 50% chance of rebuilding the stock with no changes at all.

On the other hand, there is good reason to believe that the fishing mortality rate will increase in 2025, as the 2018 year class grows into the slot.  Such mortality spiked in 2022, when the big 2015 year class was seven years old, and managers were faced with a scenario similar to the one that they face today; 2021 fishing mortality was low enough to rebuild the stock under then-current management measures, so the the 2022 spike caught many by surprise.  Now, informed by that experience, and knowing that the 2018 year class is much smaller than the 2015, just a bit above average, the Technical Committee doesn’t believe that the fishing mortality increase in 2025 will be quite as large.

But they can’t know that for certain.

A lot of things contribute to the size of each year’s harvest.  The availability of harvestable fish is certainly one of those things, but it is not the only factor.  While there is a large group of anglers who dedicate most of their fishing time to chasing striped bass, there are also quite a few who are generalists, and move in and out of the fishery as the fortunes of other species wax or wane.  The angler seeking to just catch of fish of any kind, or put some fish in their cooler, might target striped bass if a legal bass was easier to find than, perhaps, an equivalent amount of sea bass, bluefish or summer flounder, or if he could catch such bass closer to home, or at less expense, than fish of other species.  On the other hand, if such alternative species were readily available, anglers might be more inclined to target them than the less predictable stripers.

Weather can play a role, either keeping anglers locked up inside or enticing them to spend time on the water.  Economic issues can come into play, particularly in the case of the for-hire fishery, while the cost of fuel, if it gets too high, can keep private boat anglers ashore.  And bass may be more or less catchable, depending on the presence of bait, water temperatures, water clarity, and similar factors.

The Technical Committee has no way of accurately predicting such things; it can only look to past years for guidance, and hope that current patterns of angler behavior more-or-less mimic the past.

Against that background of uncertainty, the Technical Committee will have until the December Management Board meeting to come up with a proposed set of management measures.

What will they be?

Given that all striped bass anglers, whether fishing in the ocean or in the Chesapeake Bay, may only keep one bass per day, and that the slot size limits are fairly narrow, spanning just 28 to 31 inches in the ocean and 19 to 24 inches in the bay, reducing the bag limit is impossible, and narrowing the slots won’t be easy to do.  That would seem to make some sort of closed season the most attractive alternative.

However, seasons are complicated.  There is no one-size-fits all.  A closure at the start of the season, in April or May, or perhaps at the end in November and December, might achieve the needed reduction in New York, New Jersey, or Maryland, but probably wouldn’t accomplish much in New Hampshire or Maine.  Similarly, closing part of the summer fishery would impact New England, but might not do much in the Chesapeake Bay, where warm water and existing closures already limit the catch.  Season length also has a disparate impact on different states; the northern New England states have to pack all of their fishing into a handful of months, while seasons farther south can run for most of the year, so a 30-day closure would have a much greater impact in Maine than it would in Maryland.

Thus, seasons would probably have to be imposed on a regional basis, but what should such regions be?  Here in New York, for example, we live and fish at the intersection of New England and the mid-Atlantic region, and our fisheries don’t exactly align with either one.  Out on Long Island’s East End, our calendar looks much like Rhode Island’s with runs peaking a little later in the spring/early summer and a little earlier in the fall than they do in the New York Bight or in western Long Island Sound, where Connecticut and New Jersey appear better partners.  But if Connecticut is paired with New York and perhaps New Jersey, where does Rhode Island fit in?  Maybe it makes sense to group it with Connecticut, too, but then, how about where it abuts Massachusetts?

Judgement calls and compromise will obviously come into play.

Then there is what may be the most contentious issue of all:  Should any closed seasons merely prohibit harvest, or should catch-and-release also be banned?

In theory, a no-targeting closure could be shorter than one that merely prohibits landings, as release mortality would also be suppressed.  But would it work that way in the real world? 

Perhaps not.  There would certainly be enforcement problems.

Last spring, the Management Board appointed a Work Group to look into ways to reduce recreational release mortality.  When the Work Group report was presented at the October meeting, it was noted that the National Marine Fisheries Service has prohibited targeting striped bass in federal waters for about 30 years, yet in all that time, NMFS could not cite a single occasion when an angler was successfully prosecuted for doing so, unless there was a bass in the boat.  Similarly, although a number of states have limited no-targeting closures in place, none could cite a successful prosecution that did not involve a bass in possession.

It is all too easy for an angler to target striped bass while claiming to target bluefish, weakfish, red drum, or white perch, while it is nearly impossible to prove to a judge, beyond a reasonable doubt, that such angler was violating a no-target regulation.

Still, some Management Board members seem to want to put no-targeting seasons in place.  They include Adam Nowalsky, New Jersey’s Legislative Proxy, who has in the past complained that harvest reductions, unaccompanied by restrictions on catch-and-release, unfairly target the for-hire fleet and other catch-and-kill fisheries.  On several occasions during the October meeting, he made a point of asking whether such closures might be considered in December.

Emerson Hasbrouck, the Governor’s Appointee from New York, has close ties to the commercial and for-hire fisheries, and has always seemed somewhat averse to the interests of the surf and private sector anglers, particularly those who release their fish.  Like Nowalsky, he has been a past supporter of no-targeting closures, seemingly believing that allowing catch-and-release is unfair to his commercial and for-hire constituency and, at the October meeting, repeatedly asked questions intended to ensure that the topic comes up in December.

So even if closed seasons turn out to be the Management Board’s preferred way to achieve the needed reduction, the debate over how such seasons should be structured is likely to be very contentious.

Is it possible that the Board will choose to forego seasons and instead shift the coastal slot limit downward, to minimize removals from the 2018 year class?  While the answer to that question is yes, and it seems to make sense that, if the goal is protecting the 2018s, the best way to do that is to shield the entire cohort from the recreational fishery, that might be easier to say than to do.

The 28-inch size limit, whether used as a minimum size or the lower end of a slot limit, has been in place since 1995, so the Technical Committee has a good understanding of the role fish of that size play in recreational landings.  But except for New Jersey’s so-called “bonus” fishery, in which anglers are allowed to fish on that state’s commercial quota and target bass between 24 and 28 inches long, and except for a slot limit in Maine that allowed the recreational harvest of fish no larger than 26 inches, which was abolished in 2015, there is no data that might help the Technical Committee calculate how many sub-28 inch bass might be kept by anglers.

Would the ability to catch a smaller bass bring more anglers into the fishery?  Or would the small year classes produced, beginning in 2019, lead to such a dearth of smaller fish that fewer anglers would try to catch them?  While such smaller slot would do the best job of protecting the 2018s, it could also lead to an overall reduction that was far larger, or perhaps a little smaller, than the 14.5 percent that appears to be the current goal. 

Changing the slot size would also make it more difficult for the Technical Committee to determine how many bass would be caught because the current “selectivity curve,” which indicates the proportion of different-aged bass that would probably be caught in the fishery, is based on the current size limits.  Changing the slot limit would change the selectivity of both the recreational and commercial fisheries, and leave biologists in about the position that they suffer in today, with the new size limits ushered in by Addendum II blurring the selectivity assumptions made in previous years.

While such considerations will probably lead managers to disfavor a new slot, if it gets enough support, it might well get another look.

Which leads to the final point of this essay—public input.

There will not be a series of public hearings before the December Management Board meeting, as there are when addendums are drafted, so stakeholders won’t find it easy to comment on possible management measures, although it is possible that the ASMFC will be able to schedule a webinar or two, where public comment will be entertained.

There probably will be a meeting of the ASMFC’s Atlantic Striped Bass Advisory Panel, but the panel’s makeup doesn’t reflect the makeup of the striped bass fishing community; it provides commercial and for-hire interests with greater representation than they enjoy in the real world, and their comments comprise a far greater share of the AP comments than their typical share of the comments associated with public outreach.

Many states will also reach out to stakeholders, in either a formal or informal context.  But in that case, there is always the risk that the people the states reach out to will represent particular interest groups—commercial fishermen, for-hires, tackle dealers and such—and their comment will not accurately reflect overall stakeholder sentiment.

So it is important that anglers concerned about the striped bass’ future take the initiative, and provide their state fishery managers, and their ASMFC representatives, with input on the sort of management measures that they’d like to see, and the sort of measures that they oppose.  Comments need not be long, although logically presented arguments, based on facts and made respectfully, are always the best way to go.

A list of the ASMFC representatives, along with contact information for the members of each state’s delegation, can be found at https://asmfc.org/about-us/commissioners.

It doesn’t take long to make your thoughts known, and there can be real consequences if too many people, though concerned with the bass’ fate, keep their thoughts to themselves.

NMFS CONTINUES TO UNDERCUT KEY PROVISIONS OF THE MAGNUSON-STEVENS REAUTHORIZATION ACT OF 2006

 

The Fishery Conservation and Management Act of 1976—the initial iteration of the statute that we now know as the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act--was the United States’ first comprehensive law governing fishing in federal waters.  

Prior to its passage, other laws governed extracting the resources of the outer continental shelf, including marine life, or the harvest of tuna, but Congress had never before passed a bill intended to govern the conservation and management of marine life throughout the nation’s waters, on every coast, off every state and territory, from the point where federal jurisdiction began, three miles offshore (three leagues offshore of Texas and the Gulf Coast of Florida), to the edge of the Exclusive Economic Zone, 200 miles offshore (unless truncated to accommodate the EEZ of an adjacent maritime nation).

The primary motivation for the law’s passage was the decline in many stocks of fish, caused in part by domestic overfishing, but also driven by the fishing activities of large factory trawlers from other nations, which could come within 12 miles of U.S. shores.  Its sponsors hoped to nationalize marine fisheries, pushing the foreign boats 200 miles offshore (unless they were fishing for tuna which, to end the opposition of Pacific Coast blue water tuna seiners, the law did not include in its definition of “fish”) while providing incentives for U.S. fishermen to invest in new, modern vessels and gear.

The law also created the eight regional fishery management councils, and empowered them to be the primary authors of management measures intended to conserve and rebuild fish stocks.  However, the law had no safeguards to keep the fishermen sitting on those regional fishery management councils from adopting whatever management measures they chose, even if they led to overfishing.

As a result, the law’s biggest achievement was arguably shifting from a situation where foreign fishermen were overfishing U.S. fish stocks to one in which U.S. fishermen were overfishing U.S. fish stocks.  It didn’t do much for the fish, which continued to disappear.

Things got bad enough that, twenty years later, even the fishermen who originally took advantage of the 1976 law, bought new boats and gear, and had actively overharvested various stocks for the better part of two decades realized that things had to change before everyone, including the fish, were put out of business.

The result was the Sustainable Fisheries Act of 1996 which, for the first time, imposed legally enforceable standards on the fishery managers at the National Marine Fisheries Service.  Overfishing was not allowed.  Overfished stocks had to be rebuilt within a time certain, and within ten years if that was biologically feasible.  All management decisions had to be based on the best scientific information available.

After a federal appeals court decided, in the matter of Natural Resources Defense Council v. Daley, that federal management measures had to have at least a 50% probability of overfishing, the Sustainable Fish Act became a valuable tool to end overfishing and begin the rebuilding of overfished stocks.

Still, some regional fishery management councils—in particular, the New England Fishery Management Council—became adept at evading both the letter and the spirit of the law, crafting fisheries management measures that, on paper, appeared to meet the Sustainable Fisheries Act’s requirements, but failed to end overfishing in the real world.

Congress responded by passing the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Reauthorization Act of 2006, which was intended, in part, to close the loopholes that enabled regional fishery management councils to adopt ineffective management measures.

One of the relevant provisions required all regional fishery management councils to, in every fishery management plan they prepare,

“establish a mechanism for specifying annual catch limits in the plan (including a multiyear plan), implementing regulations, or seasonal specifications, at a level such that overfishing does not occur in the fishery, including measures to ensure accountability.”

Another stated that each such council must

“develop annual catch limits for each of its managed fisheries that may not exceed the fishing level recommendation of its scientific and statistical committee…”

Together, the provisions seemed to assure that fishermen would be held to scientifically justifiable catch levels each year, and that if they would face some sort of consequences—some sort of accountability—should such catch levels be exceeded.

And for a while, the management measures worked just that way.  More fish stocks were rebuild, and overfishing was largely controlled.  The problem was, some fishermen weren’t happy with the result, for while the law’s provisions promoted sustainable fisheries, they placed added restrictions on the number of fish that could be killed, and so placed some constraints on the recreational and commercial fishing industry’s profits.  Thus, for the last decade and more, the industry has been exerting political pressure on NMFS, seeking ways to exceed annual catch limits without being held accountable. 

Their efforts have spanned the gamut, from attempts to have responsibility for recreational red snapper management taken away from federal managers and handed over to the states, to passage of the so-called “Modern Fish Act,” which authorizes the use of “alternative management measures” rather than hard-poundage annual catch limits to manage recreational fisheries, to the creation and attempted creation of such alternative measures, including the adoption of the so-called “Percent Change Approach” by the Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council and, eventually, by the agency itself.

The Percent Change Approach has been their most successful effort to date.  It allows NMFS to set Recreational Harvest Targets that exceed the sector annual catch limit and that, when combined with the commercial quota, would permit the overall annual catch limit, and sometimes the Acceptable Biological Catch, to be exceeded without meaningful consequences.  Supposedly, some sort of Accountability Measures would be invoked if catch exceeded the annual catch limit, but such Accountability Measures are often so weak that they are meaningless.  For example, in a staff memorandum dated November 8, 2023, Julia Beaty, a staff biologist for the Mid-Atlantic Council, wrote

“As described in more detail below, an Accountability Measure has been triggered based on an overage of the average 2020-2022 recreational Annual Catch Limit.  For stocks with biomass above the target level, as is the case for black sea bass, the regulations require adjustments to the recreational measures; however, they do not specify how the measures should be modified.  In a letter to the Council dated October 30, 2022, the NOAA Fisheries Greater Atlantic Regional Fisheries Office (GARFO) stated that no additional action is required in 2023 to address the recent black sea bass overages, given the reductions contemplated for 2023 as well as the improvements made to the [Recreational Demand Model] which will be used for setting recreational measures for 2024.  [emphasis added]” 

Thus, we find ourselves in a situation where the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act requires that fishermen be held responsible for exceeding the annual catch limit, NMFS regulations require adjustments to recreational fisheries management measures when the trigger for imposing accountability measures is tripped, but NMFS may nonetheless do nothing to hold fishermen accountable for their overage, if it can argue that other measures being taken are adequate to constrain future landings.

That’s hardly a disincentive to anglers who seek to overfish, nor does it disincentivize the angling industry representatives who might sit on the Mid-Atlantic Council from seeking to kill more fish than the scientific analysis recommends.  It guts the effectiveness of the provision in the Magnuson-Stevens Reauthorization Act that would hold fishermen accountable for overages, and thus hopefully dissuade them from exceeding the annual catch limit.

NMFS has been emboldened to push back against the annual catch limit and accountability language by a court decision in the case of Natural Resources Defense Council v. Raimondo, which permits NMFS to adopt management measures likely to cause the annual catch limit, and perhaps even the Overfishing Limit, to be exceeded in any given year, so long as the spawning stock biomass remains above the minimum level capable of producing maximum sustainable yield.  That decision effectively emasculated the provision of the Magnuson-Stevens Reauthorization Act that required regional fishery management measures to set annual catch limits below the level recommended by each such council’s scientific and statistical committee.

Recently, NMFS has issued another set of regulations governing the 2005 black sea bass fishery, that seem to ignore that provision.

In August, the Mid-Atlantic Council and the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission’s Summer Flounder, Scup, and Black Sea Bass Management Board met jointly to address a new Management Track Stock Assessment for black sea bass, which found that the previous assessment had overestimated black sea bass biomass, as well as the biomass reference points, by more than 20 percent.  It also addressed a report of the Mid-Atlantic Council’s scientific and statistical committee that recommended a 20 percent reduction in the annual catch limit for black sea bass.

The Management Board refused to accept the conclusions of the stock assessment or the recommendations of the Council’s Scientific and Statistical Committee, but instead voted to leave 2025 black sea bass specifications—Overfishing Limit, Acceptable Biological Catch, Annual Catch Limit, Commercial Quota, and Recreational Harvest Limit—unchanged from those applicable to the 2024 fishery.  The Council, on the other hand, bound by the relevant language of the Magnuson-Stevens Reauthorization Act, followed the recommendations of its scientific and statistical committee, thereby setting up a situation where federally permitted vessels would be disadvantaged by having to abide by more restrictive regulations, including smaller commercial quotas, than state permitted vessels.

The regional administrator for GARFO stated that regulations allowed him to adopt measures that would hopefully avoid any such inequity in the black sea bass fishery, but admitted that the situation had never arisen before, and he wasn’t quite sure what the regulations allowed him to do.

The regulations that he referenced, 50 C.F.R. 648.143(e), reads

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

NMFS seemingly views that regulation as sufficient authorization for it to ignore the language in Magnuson-Stevens requiring the Mid-Atlantic Council to set annual catch limits at or below the recommendation made by its scientific and statistical committee, as the combined annual catch limits for the recreational and commercial sectors adopted by the Management Board, and apparently now by NMFS, would not only exceed the fishing level recommendation of the committee, which takes the form of the Acceptable Biological Catch, but the Overfishing Limit as well.

NMFS justifies its action by stating that

“Given the current status of the black sea bass stock, which is well above the [fishery management plan’s] definition of a biomass capable of producing maximum sustainable yield, and the potentially significant social and economic harm to Federal permit holders that would result from divergent state and Federal quotas, we are proposing to implement 2025 black sea bass specifications consistent with those adopted by the Commission.”

Such action may seem odd, and probably illegal, on its face, since a clearly-worded statutory provision should prevail in any conflict with an agency regulation.  

However, given the language in NRDC v. Raimondo, which seemed to elevate process and form over practical function when it allowed NMFS to adopt a Recreational Landings Target pursuant to the Percent Change Approach that is higher than either the Recreational Harvest Limit or the Annual Catch Limit, on the theory that NMFS fulfilled its obligation under the statute when it  merely set a value for the Annual Catch Limit, even if such Annual Catch Limit didn’t, in reality, do anything to limit the catch, it is possible that NMFS is now taking the position that the Council fulfilled the legal obligation established in Magnuson-Stevens when it set an Annual Catch Limit that complied with the scientific and statistical committee’s advice, and that nothing in the relevant provision obligates NMFS to endorse the Council’s action.

Instead, pursuant to the regulation, NMFS may argue that it was free to adopt specifications that conflict with the scientific and statistical committee’s advice.

If its action faced a legal challenge, NMFS might very well believe that a reviewing court would rely on the logic of the NRDC v. Raimondo decision to uphold the agency’s action.

But, once again, such decision would undermine the intent of Congress when it included such language in the Magnuson-Stevens Reauthorization Act.

And, while NMFS’ actions in the mid-Atlantic might be relatively inconsequential if limited to the seemingly very healthy black sea bass fishery, the notion of employing alternative management measures to manage the recreational fishery, as promoted in the Modern Fish Act and practiced in the mid-Atlantic, may be spreading to other regions along the coast.  At least one southern fishery management council is already investigating possible ways to adopt such alternative measures in its recreational fisheries.

And thus NMFS is slowly turning back the clock.

By finding ways to circumvent the intent of Congress when it passed the Magnuson-Stevens Reauthorization Act, NMFS is taking a step back to a period when annual catch limits and meaningful accountability for the recreational, as well as the commercial, sector did not exist, and overfishing was tolerated even in the case of depleted stocks.

So far, those steps back have been relatively small, but given the current legal environment, coupled with an agency philosophy that seems to be subordinating conservation and the long-term health of fish stocks to short-term exploitation, particularly with respect to recreational fisheries, NMFS’ strides backward could get longer at any time.

 

 

STRIPED BASS CONSERVATION: DEFEATING THE AXIS OF EVIL

 

According to Wikipedia,

“The phrase ‘axis of evil’ was first used by U.S. President George W. Bush and originally referred to Iran, Ba’athist Iraq, and North Korea.  It was used in Bush’s State of the Union address on January 29, 2002, less than five months after the September 11 attacks and almost a year before the 2003 invasion of Iraq, and often repeated throughout his presidency.  He used it to describe foreign governments that, during his administration, allegedly sponsored terrorism and sought weapons of mass destruction.”

Never one to let a good phrase go to waste, I stole the ex-president’s phrase back in February 2021, to describe Delaware, Maryland, and New Jersey, states which, in my view,

“constitute an ‘axis of evil’ on the [Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission’s Atlantic Striped Bass] Management Board, that will continue to threaten the long-term sustainability of the striped bass stock unless they are decisively defeated.”

Unfortunately, although those states have suffered a few setbacks in recent years, their decisive defeat has not yet occurred, while their performance at yesterday’s striped bass management board meeting made it plain that they still constitute a serious threat to the resource.

A newly released stock assessment update revealed that the striped bass stock remains overfished, although fishing mortality in 2023, the terminal year of the assessment, was only slightly above the fishing mortality target so the stock is not currently experiencing overfishing (even if it appears that the stock did experience a very modest degree of overfishing in 2022). 

Last week, Maryland and Virginia both released their 2024 striped bass juvenile abundance indices, and both were the worst in recent years, falling well below the 25^th percentile in the states’ respective young-of-the-year surveys.  In Maryland’s case, the 2024 index represented the sixth consecutive year of striped bass recruitment failure, and the lowest six-year average juvenile abundance index in the history of the state survey, which goes back to the late 1950s.

Next year, the 2018 year class, the last reasonably strong striped bass year class produced on the East Coast, will enter the recreational ocean slot size limit, and be vulnerable to recreational harvest, even though maximizing the abundance of the 2018s may be the key to rebuilding the spawning stock biomass by the 2029 rebuilding deadline.

So it’s clear that the striped bass stock is facing some serious challenges, and is in need of some help from fisheries managers.  But while many members of the Management Board are girding themselves to face those challenges, what was is also clear--at least to anyone who attended or listened in to yesterday’s Management Board meeting--is that the representatives of three "axis" states—Maryland, Delaware, and New Jersey—were doing all in their power to delay or derail efforts to rebuild and conserve the striped bass.

Yesterday’s Board meeting was a very drawn-out affair, with scientists and others presenting an broad array of information relating to the stock assessment update, the likelihood of rebuilding the stock by 2029, and the possibility of reducing the number of fish that die after being released.  It wasn’t until about 5:00 p.m., three and a half hours after the meeting began, that Nichola Meserve, a Massachusetts fishery manager, rose to observe that

“We are going to fall off our rebuilding timeline for 2029,”

state that

“The only error I see is not acting,”

and make a motion that read,

“Move to schedule a special Striped Bass Management Board meeting in December 2024 to consider Board Action in response to the 2024 Stock Assessment Update.  The Board will consider action to revise the 2025 recreational seasons or size limits and 2025 commercial quotas to achieve a 50% probability of rebuilding by 2029 under the “low 2024 removals with F increase in 2025 only” projection.”

Martin Gary, New York’s chief marine fisheries manager, seconded the motion, observing that holding a stand-alone Management Board meeting in December would provide time to obtain stakeholder input, and perhaps hold an Advisory Panel meeting; he said that he hoped that such meeting could be held in person.

Immediately, John Clark, a Delaware fisheries manager, announced his intent to oppose the motion, arguing that the spawning stock biomass reference points, which established both the biomass target and the threshold denoting an overfished stock, were “exceptionally high” (even though such reference points were thoroughly discussed during the 2021 debate over Amendment 7 to the Interstate Fishery Management Plan for Atlantic Striped Bass, and supported by 2,668 of the 2,678—(99.6%)—stakeholders who commented on the issue).  He then made the remarkable statement that if no further management action is taken, the stock is still likely to be above the spawning stock biomass threshold,

“which is better than now,”

observed that fishermen are already facing more restrictions than they did when the stock crashed in the early 1980s, and called any further landings reductions an

“almost gratuitous cut,”

 earning his state a prominent place on the axis.

Not to be outdone, Michael Luisi, the Maryland fishery manager, then sought to delay management action by making a substitute motion that would maximize exploitation of the 2018 year class when it entered the recreational ocean slot in 2025:

“Move to substitute and initiate an addendum to address reducing total removals (harvest and discard mortality/recreational and commercial) in the coastwide striped bass fishery using the technical committee’s most likely projection scenario (F2024=Low Removals, F Increases in 2025 Only and Returns to 2025 Low Levels) and a 50% probability of achieving the spawning stock biomass (SSB) target level by 2029.  The intent of this addendum is to provide the Board with coastwide and regional alternatives for the recreational and commercial fishery for implementation on January 1, 2026.”

By January 1, 2026, when Luisi's proposed addendum would become effective, the 2018s would be moving out of the ocean recreational slot, and most of the damage would already be done.

Not surprisingly, the motion was seconded by Delaware’s Clark.

In making his motion, Luisi argued that the provision in Amendment 7, which was fully debated by the Board and which allowed the Board to take immediate action in response to unfavorable information in the stock assessment update “was an experiment,”  (although one would think that, as in any experiment, you need to fully carry it out to its conclusion in order to know whether or not it would yield a favorable result), and said,

“We owe it to the public to be heavily involved in the addendum process.”

To the best of my knowledge, he never also expressed the opinion that the Management Board owes it to the public to fulfill its obligation to rebuild the striped bass stock by 2029.  Instead, he stated that

“I’m concerned about the longevity and the durability of the actions that we take,”

which is a legitimate concern, for it’s certainly nice to have management measures that don’t change from year to year.  But it’s far nicer to have management measures that actually achieve their goals and provide the public with a fully rebuilt stock that, if the Management Board does its job, will be healthy and sustainable in the long term.

The debate on the substitute motion lasted a while, as supporters and opponents of the proposal motion rose to speak.  One of the most interesting comments came from Chris Batsavage, the North Carolina fishery manager, who opposed Luisi’s effort to delay action.  

He noted that the Management Board was running out of time, and needed to move faster given the likely increase in 2025 fishing mortality that it was facing.  He noted that North Carolina no longer has an ocean striped bass fishery, in part because

“There aren’t a lot of fish out there,”

and in so doing, pointed out that not taking action to rebuild the population has real consequences.

But Pat Geer, Virginia’s fishery manager, supported the substitute, largely for bureaucratic reasons, as his state was already well into the process of obtaining 2025 striped bass tags for its commercial fishermen.  He suggested that, while it might be appropriate to change recreational management measures for 2025, commercial measures should not be altered until 2026.

Max Appelman, speaking for the National Marine Fisheries Service, favored the substitute because it allowed for more “robust public comment.”

But others disagreed.  David Sikorski, the Legislative Proxy from Maryland, argued that

“It’s more responsible to act more quickly,”

and to stop “playing games” with the management process by adopting regulations that fall short of what is needed to achieve their goals.  He also objected to those who tried to cause dissention within the angling community by neatly dividing catch-and-release from catch-and-keep anglers, noting that anglers often release fish on one trip, while keeping fish on another.  He also noted that, because of existing regulations, anyone who fishes releases fish, even if they are focused on harvest.

Dennis Abbott, New Hampshire’s Legislative Proxy, also opposed the substitute, saying that it represented

“a dereliction of our duty to protect the 2018 year class.”

In the end, although it had the support of New Jersey, Maryland, and Delaware, as well as the support of NOAA Fisheries, Virginia, and the Potomac River Fisheries Commission, the substitute motion failed on a 6 to 9 vote, with Maine, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, Pennsylvania, the District of Columbia, and North Carolina voting against, while the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service abstained.

At that point, Virginia’s Pat Geer, driven by the bureaucratic issues he faced, made another motion to substitute that read

“Move to schedule to substitute a special Striped Bass Management Board meeting in December 2024 to consider Board Action in response to the 2024 Stock Assessment Update.  The Board MAY consider action to revise the 2025 recreational season and/or size limits and 2026 commercial measures with an addendum for 2026 and beyond to achieve a 50% probability of rebuilding by 2029 under the low 2024 removals with F increase in 2025 only projection.”

Once again, Delaware’s Clark was more than happy to second the motion.

Mr. Geer explained that he made the motion because the states bordering the Chesapeake Bay couldn’t adopt amended commercial measures in time to provide tags to their fishermen before the fishing season began.

His plea drew some sympathetic comments, but Ms. Meserve noted, in a comment that probably expressed the views of the many people, both on the Board, in the audience, and on the water, who are concerned with the striped bass’ future, that

“I remain disappointed and frustrated that the states with writing on the wall”

are attempting to delay needed management measures.

Mr. Batsavage expressed his agreement with Ms. Meserves statement, and added,

“We shouldn’t let process get in the way of conservation of striped bass.”

Still, Mr. Geer’s motion almost attracted enough sympathy to pass, failing on a 7-7 vote, with the two federal agencies abstaining.  Along with the expected favorable votes of Delaware, Maryland, and New Jersey, it won the support of New Hampshire, the Potomac River Fisheries Commission, the District of Columbia, and Virginia, while Maine, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, Pennsylvania, and North Carolina voted against.

Yet Delaware’s Clark made one more attempt to disrupt the process, moving to amend the original motion so that the phrase “commercial quotas” was replaced by “commercial measures.”  Mr. Sikorski seconded the motion, making clear that he did so only for the purposes of discussion.

Clark argued that, instead of reducing the commercial quota, the Management Board should require that all commercially-caught bass be tagged at the point of capture (as they already are in many states) instead of at the point of sale.  He alleged that such point-of-capture tagging would prevent fish from being sold to illicit buyers without being reported, and would reduce actual commercial landings more than a quota cut would.

Some Board members expressed opposition, arguing that there was no time to consider measures other than quotas, but once again, the motion failed on a tie vote, with eight in favor and eight opposed.

At that point, Ms. Meserve’s original motion was finally on the table.  14 jurisdictions voted in favor; even Maryland conceded defeat and voted its approval.  New Jersey was the sole state to vote against, while the Delaware delegation was split and, unable to reach a decision, cast a “null” vote.

Despite Delaware’s, Maryland’s, and New Jersey’s efforts to disrupt the process, in just a couple of months the Management Board will address 2025 management measures for both the recreational and commercial fisheries.  Hoipefully, it will make meaningful changes to the managment plan.

But based on other comments made at yesterday's meeting, the opposition to effective management action will not go away.

Even before Ms. Meserve made her original motion, opposition to such measures began.

Delaware’s Clark tried to argue that, ten years after the first halting measures to conserve the stock began, the spawning stock biomass appeared to be following “a natural population cycle," going up and down.  He claimed that 

“we can’t guarantee anything by keeping [the spawning stock biomass] at a very high level,” 

and fretted that

“People are going out of business,”

while asking

“Do we have any sense of whether the stock would recover if spawning stock biomass went down even further than it is now?”

a question that caused a member of the Technical Committee to remind him that biomass is what people are fishing on, that a decrease in biomass means that fewer fish are available to fishermen, and that poor recruitment will not support the current level of fishing pressure.  But such response had no impact, with Clark suggesting, as he had in the past, that the biomass reference points should be lowered to allow higher harvests, and that

“We have been very precautionary [about the impact of management on striped bass].  We need to be precautionary about what we are doing to people.”

The importance of a healthy striped bass stock to the people who fish for them apparently did not cross his mind.

Adam Nowalsky, New Jersey’s Legislative Proxy, took a different tack, trying to cast doubt on the data and the need for further management action.  

He first tried to question the importance of the juvenile abundance index, asking why the trends in the JAI data did not exactly track the trends in recruitment of Year 1 bass into the population.  After being told that the differences could be due to either “noise” (that is, uncertainty) in the data or to mortality events during the juvenile fish’s first year, he then tried to raise doubts about the Year 1 recruitment, noting that years with notably high recruitment, to which he attached the disparaging label “outliers,” skewed the time series mean upwards.  He asked if it was possible to adjust or remove such high recruitment years, apparently without regard to whether such estimates accurately reflected the recruitment in the relevant years, in order to reduce the time series mean, an action which would degrade the accuracy of the time series as a whole and, in a period of low recruitment, make the stock look healthier than it actually is.

He claimed he was questioning such data because he was

“Looking for another way to possibly interpret this information to…stabilize the fishery,”

a somewhat cryptic way of saying that he was looking for a way to keep management measures unchanged and avoid putting needed conservation measures in place.  Such intent to avoid adopting such needed became obvious later in the meeting, when Nowalsky asked,

“As we sit here today, does the management plan mandate a reduction in 2025?”

He was undoubtedly hoping for an answer of “No,” although the real answer to that question was, of course, up to the discretion of the Board, based on how it applied the information presented by the Technical Committee to the language in the management plan.

Thus did the Management Board members from Delaware, Maryland, and New Jersey attempt to prevent the Board from adopting new management measures for the 2025 season.

So far, their efforts have failed.  But when the Management Board next meets, to put needed rule changes in place, we can be certain that the three states will again try to frustrate the rebuilding effort, in order to provide their stakeholders with a few more dead bass for a few more years, until the stock buckles under the strain.

For in the world of striped bass, they represent the axis of evil, and that is what they do.

We must never let them prevail.

WHAT NOW? ANOTHER POOR STRIPED BASS SPAWN IN THE CHESAPEAKE BAY

 

If you follow striped bass management at all, you probably already know that the Maryland Juvenile Abundance Index for 2024 was announced last Thursday, and that it came in at just 2.0, marking the sixth consecutive year of recruitment failure in the Maryland portion of the Chesapeake Bay.

You might also know that the Virginia JAI was also announced last Thursday, and came in at 3.43.  That marked the fourth consecutive year that the Virginia Juvenile Abundance Index was below the 25^th percentile in the time series used to determine low recruitment, with the 2024 JAI the lowest in recent years.

And if that’s not bad enough, the average of the Maryland JAI for the last six years was the lowest in the history of the Maryland Juvenile Striped Bass Survey, which first sampled juvenile striped bass abundance in 1957.  The previous low, for the period 1980-1985, was 3.36.  The average for the years 2019-2024 was 2.62, about 22 percent lower.

Maryland produces about two-thirds of the striped bass spawned in the Chesapeake Bay, and a recent study confirmed that the Chesapeake Bay produces over 80 percent of the striped bass caught along the East Coast of the United States.  So with Maryland experiencing six consecutive years of failed spawns, and Virginia not doing much better over the past four years, it’s pretty clear that the striped bass stock is in trouble.

What’s not clear is what managers can do about it.

Maryland has stated that

“warm conditions in winter continue to negatively impact the reproductive success of striped bass, whose larvae are very sensitive to water conditions and food availability in their first several weeks after hatching.”

Fishery managers have generally accepted the proposition that cold winters followed by cool, wet springs favor strong striped bass spawns, while warm winters followed by warm, dry springs can lead to spawning failure.  By that measure, 2024 should have produced at least a mediocre juvenile abundance index, for while the winter of 2023-2024 was relatively mild, the spring of 2024 was cool and wet, with water flows and water temperatures similar to those which produced strong year classes in the past.  Based on those conditions, many of us were expecting at least an average spawn, and hoped for something a little bit better than that.

By midsummer, there were some rumors and other indications that the spawn wasn’t as successful as we had initially expected, but would still result in a Maryland JAI in the 6 or 7 range—below the long-term average of 11, but still the strongest since the somewhat above-average year class of 2018.

When we finally heard, last Thursday, that the JAI was just 2.0, we were floored.

So clearly, something else must be going on.

There has recently been thought that favorable temperatures and water flows may not be enough to ensure a successful spawn. In a paper titled “Climate effects on the timing of Maryland’s striped bass spawning runs,” which was written by Angela Giuliano and appeared in the November 20, 2023 issue of the journal, Marine and Coastal Fisheries, the author suggests that

“If temperatures continue to warm quicker in the latter portion of the spawning season, this could result in a reduced time period during which temperature conditions are ideal for Striped Bass survival…these temperature could affect the timing of larval Striped Bass relative to their zooplankton prey, a concept known as match-mismatch.  Large year-classes of striped bass tend to occur after cold and wet winters and [research] showed a potential mechanism for this, with the rate that copepods reach the adult stage over the winter being dependent on water temperatures.

“…With the shifting spawning window and potential changes in zooplankton availability due to rising water temperatures, it has been suggested that having a broad age range of spawning fish will make it more likely that some eggs and larvae will experience these ideal conditions.  Although fisheries managers cannot directly control the water temperature that larval fish will encounter, they can consider how management actions may affect the age range of fish available in the spawning stock in addition to the size of the spawning stock.  If these management goals are considered in tandem, the Striped Bass stock may be better positioned to adapt to the conditions expected under a changing climate.  [citations omitted]”

Perhaps in addition to water temperatures and flows, there is another factor—zooplankton availability, and the timing of that availability with the timing of the striped bass spawn that dictates whether a spawn will be successful.

That’s not good news, because fisheries managers have no control over climate or weather, or the timing of a zooplankton bloom.

At the same time, Ms. Giuliano’s paper provides some guidance on what the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission’s Atlantic Striped Bass Management Board ought to do when it meets next Wednesday, particularly when read in conjunction with Dr. David Secor’s research, presented in “Spawning in the nick of time?  Effect of adult demographics on spawning behavior and recruitment in Chesapeake Bay striped bass,” which appeared in the ICES Journal of Marine Science in 2000. 

In that paper, Dr. Secor noted that

“large, old striped bass may spawn earlier than small and young individuals.  Increased age diversity in the spawning stock may increase the temporal and spatial frequency of spawning (spawning dispersion) and thereby increase the probability that some offspring will encounter favorable conditions…

“…Increased spawning dispersion may compensate for variable temperature conditions on the spawning grounds, which often results in patterns of egg production that are mistimed for optimal larval survival…The observation that larger striped bass tend to spawn early in the season suggests that spawning behaviours that vary with size or age might be an effective means to hedge bets against environmental stochasticity…

“…Striped bass epitomize periodic strategists, spreading risk of failed replacement through variability in spawning behavior over many spawning seasons…  [citations omitted]”

Dr. Secor also noted that

“Through a moratorium on Maryland State harvests in the Chesapeake Bay, the 1982  year-class was effectively protected and became a dominant [year-class].  Ironically, most egg production in 1982 was attributable to striped bass >10 years of age.  Old remnant females produced during the 1960s were a hedge against a long period of recruitment overfishing which occurred during the 1970s.  [citation omitted]”

Thus, even though the recent poor Maryland JAIs are driven by environmental factors—water temperature, water flows, perhaps a mismatch in timing between the striped bass spawn and the presence of the abundant zooplankton that the juvenile bass depend on for food—over which the Management Board has no control, the Management Board can still exert significant influence over the future of the striped bass, by 1) assuring that the spawning stock includes as many different age and size classes as possible, to take advantage of transient favorable spawning conditions that might occur over the course of a spawning season, and 2) by preserving the oldest and largest fish in the spawning stock, in order to preserve a pool of what Dr. Secor called “old remnant females” that can produce a strong year class on its own should favorable conditions arise.

The only way to achieve those two goals is to sharply reduce fishing mortality, which can best be done by sharply cutting back on recreational and commercial landings.

Under current conditions, there is little excuse for harvesting large female striped bass.  Recreational size limits in place in both the ocean and the Chesapeake Bay fisheries prohibit such harvest, but a number of states still do not place a maximum size on the bass that may be harvested by commercial fishermen; Massachusetts, for example, imposes a 35-inch minimum size on its commercial fishermen, with no cap on the size of the bass that might be landed. 

A maximum size limit for commercial fishermen was considered as a part of Addendum II to Amendment 7 to the Interstate Fishery Management Plan for Atlantic Striped Bass, but because such measure would be difficult to implement (by imposing a maximum size limit on the commercial fishery, managers would have forced commercial fishermen to harvest more, but smaller, bass to fill their quota, and adjusting quotas to account for the cap would have been a time-consuming process that would have frustrated the Management Board’s intention to put such Addendum in place quickly) such a size limit was not included in the Addendum.  However, if commercial quotas were cut back sharply at the same time the maximum size was imposed, that issue would largely become irrelevant.

Ending the harvest of larger, older bass would increase the chances of such individuals’ survival, and make it more likely that such fish would be available to to spur a recovery of the striped bass stock when spawning conditions improve, even if there were few younger females in the population.

However, protecting the older females is not enough, if the striped bass stock is to be given its best opportunity to rebuild.  Managers must also protect the younger bass, in order to provide the age and size diversity needed if at least some striped bass are to be able to take advantage of more favorable spawning conditions whenever they occur during the spring spawning season.  That can only be done by sharply cutting back both recreational and commercial landings, through extensive recreational season closures and a much-reduced commercial quota.  It might even be necessary to prohibit all commercial and recreational harvest.

The need to protect the younger fish, in order to create a diverse spawning stock, also means that managers should reconsider present policies that allow both recreational and commercial fishermen to target immature striped bass in the Chesapeake Bay.  

Given the extremely small year classes produced in the Bay in every year since 2019, the 2.79 million pound commercial quota in the Chesapeake Bay allows commercial fishermen to remove a substantial share of each such year class before the fish have had a chance to spawn even once.  Similarly, the 19- to 24-inch slot limit for recreational fishermen within the Bay forces anglers to target and, if so inclined, land immature striped bass.  Such removals are contrary to the objective of including as many year classes as possible in the spawning stock.  

The Management Board should consider applying the same 28- to 31-inch slot size limit now in force in the recreational ocean fishery to the Bay fishery as well, in order to lessen the removals of bass from the smallest year classes.

There would certainly be substantial resistance to such proposals.  Recreational and commercial fishermen in the Chesapeake Bay would undoubtedly object if they were no longer able to harvest immature striped bass, commercial fishermen will oppose any reductions in quota, and the for-hire fleet is unlikely to support any additional restrictions on recreational landings.

Yet the bass is in serious trouble.

Adopting extremely restrictive regulations today may be the only way to avert something far worse from occurring tomorrow.

 

 

MARINE FISHING INDUSTRY AGAIN TRIES TO WARP THE MANAGEMENT PROCESS

 

It’s another presidential election year, so like clockwork, the recreational fishing industry is again pushing its political agenda on the public and the incoming administration, in the form of a document titled The Future of Sportfishing:  Policy Recommendations from the Recreational Fishing Community.

This year, their efforts raise particular concerns, for despite their usual attempts to undercut marine conservation and management, they have somehow convinced a couple of legitimate conservation organizations, Backcountry Hunters and Anglers and Trout Unlimited, to support their attempts to distort the goals of marine fisheries management in order to maximize industry profits, even if doing so puts marine resources at risk.

As it has done in the past, the American Sportfishing Association uses the commercial fishing industry as a foil, couching its policies as a necessary response to a pro-commercial management system and arguing that

“…Historically, preference has been given to the commercial fishing industry.  The sportfishing industry is an afterthought and saddled with antiquated, commercial focused, management plans and inaccurate data.”

They don’t provide any factual support for those assertions, of course, and the commercial fishing industry might well take exception, and complain about shrinking commercial quotas and the reallocation of a portion of those commercial quotas to the recreational sector, as has recently occurred in the case of summer flounder, scup, black sea bass, bluefish, gag grouper, amberjack, and other species.

In partial defense of the ASA, the National Marine Fisheries Service has discovered a flaw in the Marine Recreational Information Program, which is used to estimate recreational effort, catch, and landings, but it is actively working to correct the problem. 

Otherwise, the American Sportfishing Association’s rhetoric is an appeal to emotion, not rational debate.  For example, it makes the claim that saltwater anglers are

“contributing over 40 billion dollars to the economy, despite being responsible for only 2 percent of all marine fish harvest (with commercial fishermen being responsible for the remaining 98 percent).”

While those figures may be true, their truth hides a deeper deception on the part of the ASA, for most of the commercial landings are composed of fish that are not targeted by anglers; in 2022, commercial landings included 2.7 billion pounds of walleye pollock, as species that does not support any recreational fishing activity, along with 1.44 billion pounds of menhaden, a fish that neither strikes artificial lures nor bites at a baited hook.

Thus, when comparing commercial and recreational landings, neither species, which dominate the overall commercial landings, are really relevant to the discussion.

But when we start looking at fish of interest to anglers, it quickly becomes clear that recreational fishermen account for a lot more than 2 percent of the landings, and often kill the lion’s share.  Thus, in the case of striped bass, recreational fishermen are responsible for 89 percent of the overall fishing mortality; with recreational landings nearly five times the commercial harvest. 

Based on available NMFS landings data for the commercial and recreational sectors, in 2022, recreational fishermen on the Atlantic coast were responsible for 97 percent of all dolphin landings, 83 percent of the bluefish, 66.5 percent of the king mackerel, 63 percent of black sea bass and 59 percent of all scup landings—even though, in the case of the latter species, the recreational allocation was only 35 percent of the annual catch limit.  The foregoing are all federally-managed species.  When we look at species managed on a state or regional basis, along with the aforementioned striped bass, anglers were responsible for 97 percent of red drum landings, 95 percent of black drum, 94 percent of tautog, and 90 percent of all spotted seatrout landings.

So, while commercial fisheries do dominate landings for some species of interest to anglers—primarily groundfish that can be trawled in large numbers or pelagic forage species such as mackerel that are trawled or purse seined tens of thousands of pounds at a time—recreational fishermen take the greater share of many other fish stocks, enough to make it clear that the American Sportfishing Association’s efforts to cast recreational fishermen as victims fails in the face of the facts.

But then, the rest of the ASA’s document, at least as it applies to marine fisheries, also fails to stand up to any sort of fact-based analysis. 

Take, for example, the assertion that

“The Marine Recreational Information Program (MRIP) is the federal data collection system for recreational fishing.  However, the program has routinely been shown to be highly inaccurate, including a recent study that found the program overestimates recreational catch by 30-40%.  This has led to inaccurate stock assessments, lower quotas, and shortened seasons…”

Again, we find one truth—NMFS did find that MRIP was overestimating recreational effort, and so catch and landings—used in an effort to make multiple false statements appear valid.

To begin, MRIP has not “routinely been shown to be highly inaccurate.”  Instead, MRIP’s sampling and catch estimation procedures were hailed by a panel of the National Academy of Sciences as

“a vast improvement over the previous sampling and estimation procedures and reflect state-of-the-art methods in survey sampling.  [emphasis added]”

Somehow, the ASA seems to have left that part out of their report.  One might almost think that the omission might have been intentional.

The one instance in which MRIP was found to be inaccurate occurred when a recent study—because MRIP, unlike the various state data programs that ASA actively supports, does conduct ongoing quality control studies to better ensure the quality of its data—revealed that, probably because of how the survey’s questions were ordered, anglers were overstating the number of trips that they took, which translated into an overestimate of catch and landings.

However, contrary to the American Sportfishing Association’s assertions, such overestimates did not lead to “inaccurate stock assessments, lower quotas, and shorter seasons,” at least if, by “inaccurate stock assessments,” one means an assessment that does not accurately reflect the status of a stock.

In fact, just the opposite occurs.

To address the stock assessment issue first, the primary purpose of such an assessment is to determine whether stock abundandce is at a sustainable level, and whether that abundance is increasing, decreasing, or staying relatively stable.  The size of a stock is far less important than its status, for if the stock is healthy and being fished at a sustainable rate, its precise size is of little real concern.  To that point, when discussing the error in MRIP, NMFS noted that, because of the error and any subsequent corrections,

“the magnitude of historical estimates may change, but critical catch and effort trend information is expected to remain similar.  It’s important to note that stock status determinations are relatively consistent when trend information hasn’t changed.  [emphasis added]”

Thus, the ASA is not correct when it claims that MRIP data, even if it overstates landings, leads to “inaccurate stock assessments,” as estimates of stock status and trends remain valid.

The ASA is also incorrect when it argues that the errors in MRIP lead to “lower quotas, and shorter seasons,” for in reality, such errors lead to higher recreational (and commercial) catch limits and longer seasons—perhaps higher catch limits and longer seasons than the stock can easily sustain.

That’s because recreational catch data is one of the inputs used when stock assessments are prepared, and when such data indicates that anglers are catching a lot of fish, the population model assumes a larger stock size, because the fish the anglers are catching have to come from somewhere.  We saw this in the 2018 benchmark striped bass assessment, when a higher estimate of recreational landings was an important factor in driving the estimate of spawning stock biomass from 61,000 metric tons in 2012 to more than 68,000 metric tons in 2017, at the same time that the same catch estimate contributed to increasing the values for the biomass target and threshold.

Such higher estimates of spawning stock biomass lead to higher, not lower, quotas for both recreational and commercial fisheries.

Yet the ASA ignores such facts as it continues to press for more liberal regulations and higher recreational landings, in the hope that such regulations will generate higher profits for the recreational fishing industry.  Thus, its report calls for

“implementation of alternative management approaches authorized by the Modern Fish Act.”

An example of such “alternative management approaches” is the so-called “Percent Change Approach” being utilized by the Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council, which allows NMFS to set recreational harvest targets that exceed the recreational harvest limit and even the sector annual catch limit, and which, if combined with the commercial quota, could lead to landings exceeding the overall annual catch limit, and even the acceptable biological catch and overfishing limit, effectively doing an end run around the conservative management approaches established by the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act.

But then, conservative management and long-term sustainability has never been the ASA’s lodestars.  The American Sportfishing Association is a trade association, and its purpose is to promote the interests of the recreational fishing business which, like any business, is all about maximizing profits.

Its willingness to turn its back on conservation concerns is made manifest in two of the other stated goals in the report,

“Withdraw North Atlantic right whale vessel speed rule and partner with industry on technology safety solutions,”

and

“Create a task force to develop mitigation protocols for shark depredation.”

Both deal with animals that are at low levels—in the case of right whales, critically low levels—of abundance, and neither make the animals’ welfare a priority, but rather elevate industry interests above conservation concerns.

The ASA’s position on the North Atlantic right whale is particularly callous.

The National Marine Fisheries service calls the North Atlantic right whale

“one of the world’s most endangered large whale species,”

and notes that

“human interactions still present the greatest danger to this species.  Entanglement in fishing gear and vessel strikes are the leading causes of North Atlantic right whale mortality…

“There are approximately 360 individuals remaining, including fewer than 70 reproductively active females…The number of new calves born in recent years has been below average.”

The whale is clearly a species in very serious trouble.

Yet the ASA would have the federal government withdraw proposed regulations that would require vessels as small as 35 feet in length—vessels the size of many recreational fishing boats—to slow to 10 knots in areas where and at times when right whales are likely to be present, in order to avoid whale-killing vessel strikes, because such regulations would hamper some fishing activities and might be a drag on recreational fishing industry profits.  The report argues that

“The recreational fishing community advocates for common sense solutions to conserving the North Atlantic right whale.  The 2022 Amendments to the North Atlantic Right Whale Vessel Strike Reduction Rule ineffectively applies a broad-brush management approach that will be costly to implement, practically impossible to enforce, and damaging to recreational boating, fishing, and coastal economies along the Atlantic coast.”

Now, I have no idea whether the proposed regulations would make any difference to the right whale population or not; I didn’t participate in the public comment period, because I lacked enough knowledge to form a meaningful opinion.  But it would seem that, given the state of the right whale population, it is not a “common sense solution” to allow fishing boats to rip through the species' nursery or feeding grounds at more than 30 knots, when vessel strikes—including strikes from recreational fishing boats—are known to have killed both adults and calves. 

“Common sense” would seem to demand that regulators err on the side of caution.                

If the ASA thinks that the proposed rules are too broad, and place too much of a burden on the recreational fishing community, then it is the Association’s burden to offer workable alternative solutions to the problem of recreational vessel strikes that can be put into effect now, not at some possible point in the future.  Merely saying that

“Several marine electronics companies have technologies that can detect NARW in real time and are hard at work at integrating how that information can be instantaneously communicated with boaters”

is not good enough. 

Eliminating regulations that may provide real protections today, in the hope that industry will someday develop a technology that might protect the whales, and that boaters, under no legal obligation to react to that information, will operate their vessels in a responsible manner when whales are in the vicinity, is wishful thinking, not a solution.

Hastening the extinction of a species such as the North Atlantic right whale, just so the recreational fishing industry might earn a few more dollars, is the height of irresponsible narcissism.

We see the same sort of narcissism, at a less critical level, in the ASA’s approach to shark depredation.  The issue, in a nutshell, is that anglers venture out on the ocean in search of fish that are the shark’s natural prey.  Such fish are hooked, struggle against the pull of the line, and their struggles are noticed by sharks that, doing what 400 million years of evolution have directed them to do, then make a meal of the distressed animal.  In response, anglers get upset that ab apex marine predator fed on the fish they wanted to play with, and perhaps eat themselves, and the issue of shark depredation is born.

Of course, shark depredation is nothing new.

If you read the books written by fishermen who ventured offshore in the years before the Second World War, anglers such as S. Kip Farrington, Van Campen Heilner, and Ernest Hemingway, you’ll learn that shark depredation was the norm back then, with marlin, bluefin tuna and other big fish regularly mutilated by sharks before they were landed.  Even in the late 1960s and early 1970s, when I was doing a fair amount of codfishing from Rhode Island-based party boats, it was pretty well accepted that, at some point during the day, one or more sharks would happen along and steal a few cod.  It was just the way things were.

But then shark populations became overfished, and anglers forgot what it was like to compete with sharks for the fish.  The anglers pretty well had things their way for a couple of decades, and when successful management actions began to rebuild some shark populations, those anglers resented having to compete with the big predators once again.  As Dr. J. Marcus Drymon, a marine fisheries ecologist at Mississippi State University explains,

“people gradually accept environmental decline.  Marine Biologist Daniel Pauly calls this habituation ‘shifting baseline syndrome.’  For fisheries, each new generation of fishermen accepts the current, often reduced, status of fish populations as the baseline and forgets that there was a time when these species were much more abundant.

“In this case, modern anglers are comparing increased numbers of sharks in the Gulf of Mexico to the past 30 years—a time when many shark populations were overfished.

“The recovery of populations that were once overfished can create an opposite situation, known as lifting baselines, with conservation and management efforts leading to population increases.

“Instances where populations have been overfished and then rebuilt can create a perception of overabundance.  When the species that’s recovering is a predator, that can lead to human-wildlife conflict.”

Thus, the “shark depredation” debate.  As some shark populations slowly rebuild, and as the number of anglers also increases, there is greater competition for the same prey species—grouper, snapper, cod, haddock, yellowfin tuna, and the like—and greater calls from the recreational fishing community, including the American Sportfishing Association, to “do something” about the shark “problem.”

The ASA complains that

“Shark depredation, when a shark bites or consumes the hooked catch as it is being retrieved, is increasing in prevalence and leading to poor quality fishing experience and concerns about fishery sustainability.”

Such statement ignores the fact that fish stocks had no problems dealing with sharks for hundreds of millions of years; it was only when fishermen—not only anglers, but commercial fishermen, too—came on the scene that sustainability became an issue.  And it never really addresses the fact that the sustainability of shark populations is important, too.

Still, it probably is possible to find a middle ground, for as Dr. Drymon writes,

 

“…The Gulf’s sportfishing industry has grown, and it is likely sharks learn to associate the presence of boats with an easy meal.

“Shark deterrents are available, and new versions are continually being developed.  Some fishermen are changing their practices to avoid sharks—for example, shifting locations frequently and never anchoring or fishing offshore to avoid coastal species such as bull sharks…

“In my view, measures like these, along with better data about which sharks are taxing anglers and where, are the most promising ways to help anglers coexist with sharks in the Gulf.”

And if that’s all the ASA wants to do, perhaps there isn’t a problem.  The report notes that

“Legislation introduced in the 118^th Congress, called the Supporting the Health of Aquatic Systems through Research, Knowledge, and Enhanced Dialogue (SHARKED) Act, would create a task force to research technologies and other methods that can reduce the prevalence of shark depredation,”

and so long as the efforts to reduce depredation focus on technology and changing angling practices, all should be well. 

However, the phrase “other methods that can reduce the prevalence of shark depredation” call all too easily be interpreted to include “other methods that can reduce the prevalence of shark depredation by reducing the prevalence of sharks.”  I sit on NMFS’ Highly Migratory Species Advisory Panel, and it is very clear from their comments at Panel meetings that a number of industry representatives believe that shark numbers are already too high—such members being confused by the “lifting baseline” mentioned by Dr. Drymon—and support and sometimes actively call for adopting measures that will halt the restoration of some shark stocks and reduce the abundance of others, even though biologists like Dr. Drymon tell us that

“As reports of depredation increase, so do calls for culling shark populations…

“Studies show, however, that predator removal is rarely an effective strategy.  It’s particularly ineffective for species such as sharks that move around a lot and will readily recolonize areas that have been culled.  Predator culls also pit people with different values, such as fishing boat operators and conservationists, against each other.”

Should the debate over shark depredation get to the point that culls are seriously considered, it’s not hard to figure out which side the American Sportfishing Association and its allies would support.  After all, it already supports

“reducing pinniped [seal and sea lion] populations in the river systems”

of the Pacific Northwest in order to prevent them from preying on salmon valued by anglers.  Going from there to reducing shark populations in order to lessen shark depredation on hooked sportfish is not a very long journey.

The ASA report addresses other issues, but in such cases the theme remains the same:  Giving lip service to conservation, while promoting policies that subordinate good science and thoughtful conservation practices to policies that will provide short-term economic benefits to the sportfishing industry, while putting the long-term health of marine resources in doubt.

The American Sportfishing Association, as a trade organization and as the voice of the recreational fishing industry, has every right to promote policies likely to help its members’ bottom lines, but recreational fishermen should never make the mistake of thinking that the ASA is looking out for them, just as policymakers should never make the mistake of thinking that the ASA speaks for recreational fishermen, instead of the fishing industry.

ASA speaks for itself.  It speaks for its members.  And those concerned about the long-term health of our nation’s living marine resources should not be pleased with much of what it has to say.