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.