Some words bring very clear pictures to mind.
In a fisheries context, the word ‘bycatch’ evokes images of
industrial-scale commercial fisheries, where miles-long pelagic longlines take
an unintended toll of sharks, billfish, and even marine mammals, while factory
trawlers sweep the ocean floor with vast nets that scoop up anything that
happens to lie, crawl, or swim in front of their gaping maws.
But one image that doesn’t immediately come to most people’s
minds is that of a recreational fisherman, using nothing more than a single
hook and line, threatening the health of a fish population by accidentally
catching and killing too many members of an overfished stock.
Yet that scenario can occur, and it’s happening right now
off the southeastern coast of the United States, where anglers targeting
grouper and other reef fish are causing real, if unintended harm to the red
snapper stock.
The South Atlantic stock of red snapper has been overfished
for quite a long time. Stock assessments completed in 2009, 2010, 2017, and
2021 have all found the stock to be overfished
and experiencing overfishing. The South Atlantic Fishery Management Council
(Council) has put a rebuilding plan in place, and it appears that the stock is
currently on
track to rebuild by the 2044 rebuilding deadline. To achieve such
rebuilding, the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) established a 2024
annual catch limit (ACL) of 85,268
pounds for the commercial fishery, along with a commercial limit of
just 75 pounds (gutted weight) of red snapper per trip, and a recreational ACL
of 21,167
fish, paired with a recreational bag limit of one fish, of any size, per
day.
To keep commercial landings within the commercial ACL, the
National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) monitors such landings, and if they
exceed, or appear likely to exceed, the commercial ACL, the
commercial fishing season is closed for the rest of the year.
To keep recreational landings within the recreational ACL,
NMFS establishes a
recreational fishing season that it believes will be short enough to
prevent an overage. In 2024, the recreational red snapper season in the South
Atlantic region lasted for only
one day.
However, seasons and ACLs only dictate when fishermen
may keep red snapper; they have little impact on when
red snapper can be incidentally caught and
unintentionally killed. It is those incidentally killed red
snapper, most of which are killed by the recreational fishery, that are making
it particularly difficult for the Council and NMFS to rebuild the South
Atlantic red snapper stock. As the
Council has noted:
Since initial implementation of the rebuilding plan, red
snapper fishing has been limited by few days of recreational harvest allowed
annually and a low annual catch limit (ACL) for the commercial sector with a
season beginning each year in July until the ACL is met. These measures,
combined with growing effort in the South Atlantic snapper grouper fishery,
particularly from the recreational sector, have led to a drastic increase in
the number of red snapper that must be released after being caught. The increase
in releases has, in turn, led to an increase in the number of fish that die
after being caught and released, despite efforts from management and fishermen
to improve survival after release through best practices and use of descending
devices. The number of dead red snapper far outnumbers fish removed from the
population by harvest.
Large numbers of releases limit managers’ ability to prevent
overfishing and reduce the number of fish that can be landed by the fishery.
Overfishing occurs when the number of total removals exceeds the overfishing
limit. If more of these removals occur from fish dying after release, fewer
fish may be landed.
It is thus in the best interests of both the red snapper and
red snapper fishermen to reduce the number of fish that die after release, so
that red snapper mortality may be reduced at the same time that red snapper
landings might be increased. However, that is a far easier thing to describe
than to achieve.
The Council tried to rein in recreational red snapper
bycatch in 2022, when it initiated Regulatory Amendment 35. The Decision
Document for such amendment spelled out the problem the Council was
facing when it printed comments made by the Council’s Scientific and
Statistical Committee (SSC), which observed that
To significantly reduce discard mortality, reducing
encounters and effort is paramount. Long-term management strategies need to
focus on these reductions in order to enable greater harvest to occur…
In the short-term (for this regulatory amendment), the SSC
recommends pursuing temporal/spatial reductions (possibly wave-based) in bottom
fishing. Seasonal differences among regions within the South Atlantic should be
considered when developing these regulations, if possible. The bulk of
recreational discards of red snapper are occurring off the East Coast of
Florida; thus, spatial closures may be most effective in this area… [formatting
omitted]
What the SSC was, in essence, suggesting was that the
Council implement closed seasons and/or closed areas for all bottom
fish, in order to reduce anglers’ out-of-season encounters with, and so their
bycatch and release mortality of, South Atlantic red snapper. Anglers quickly
rejected the idea. The
Council reported that ‘much of the [Snapper
Grouper Advisory Panel] was opposed to giving up access to other species to
potentially increase ability to retain red snapper.’
The Snapper Grouper Advisory Panel (AP) itself provided
a statement that read:
For Regulatory Amendment 35, the AP was asked to provide
suggestions to further reduce red snapper interactions while fishing for other
species. The AP was asked to consider punitive actions that may include bottom
fishing closures and altered or shut down seasons for other species in order to
avoid red snapper interactions.
The AP presented opinions and suggestions in the best of
faith. However, the overriding opinion and feeling of the AP is that red
snapper are recovered. This is based on the collective on-the-water experience
of the AP members. The AP overwhelmingly feels they were asked for suggestions
to solve a problem that no longer exists.
The red snapper is highly abundant. The biomass of the
species is largely assumed by the AP as recovered and sufficient in abundance
and range to begin a pathway to more liberal regulation of the species.
After the AP proved unwilling to even consider the
scientific advice, and instead stubbornly maintained a position that no
additional management actions were needed to reduce recreational bycatch and
release mortality, and after recreational fishing organizations also expressed
strong opposition to such measures, it was probably not surprising
that, in the end, the
Council did not forward Regulatory Amendment 35 to NMFS for approval.
But that did not end the debate over recreational red
snapper bycatch.
On May 15, 2024, Tilman Gray, a commercial fish buyer in
Hatteras, North Carolina, and Slash Creek Waterworks, Inc., a commercial
fishing operation also located in Hatteras, brought a lawsuit against the
Secretary of Commerce and the National Marine Fisheries Service, challenging
‘the failures of Defendants Gina M. Raimondo, in her official capacity as
Secretary of Commerce, and the National Marine Fisheries Service (‘NMFS’), to
promulgate regulations to stop overfishing on the South Atlantic stock of red snapper,
as required by the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act, 16
U.S.C. 1801-1891d…’
The complaint in that suit noted that, on July 23, 2001,
NMFS notified the Council that the South Atlantic stock of red snapper was both
overfished and experiencing overfishing; that the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery
Conservation and Management Act (Magnuson-Stevens) requires regional fishery
management councils to develop plans to end overfishing within two years of
such notification; and that if a regional fishery management council fails to
take such action within two years, Magnuson-Stevens requires NMFS to promulgate
regulations intended to achieve such goals within the following nine months.
The complaint then alleges that both the Council and NMFS
failed to fulfil such statutory obligations, and that both Tilman Gray and
Slash Creek Waterworks have been harmed as a result.
NMFS must have recognized the validity of the plaintiffs’
claims, for on August 22, 2024, the parties to the lawsuit entered into a
settlement agreement, in which the defendants agreed, among other things, to
‘complete and submit to the Office of the Federal Register for publication by
June 6, 2025, a final rule implementing a Secretarial Amendment to stop
overfishing on the South Atlantic red snapper stock under 16 U.S.C. [section]
1854(c) & (e).’
The defendants would be relieved of their obligation to file
such Secretarial Amendment if, prior to the June 6, 2025 deadline, the Council
has filed ‘a plan amendment or proposed regulations’ to end overfishing of
South Atlantic red snapper, and defendants have submitted a final rule
reflecting such Council’s action.
Thus, federal fishery managers are now being forced to
address the issue of recreational bycatch, and the resultant discard mortality,
in the South Atlantic red snapper fishery, whether or not the recreational
interests who arguably dominate the Council wish to do so.
On September 20, 2024, NMFS
notified the Council that it would be preparing the agreed-upon
Secretarial Amendment, but has not yet said what such amendment would look
like. However, in the
notice published on its website, the agency stated:
The most recent scientific information indicates the South
Atlantic red snapper stock is recovering consistent with rebuilding goals owing
to higher than average recruitment of young fish in recent years, yet too many
red snapper are being caught and discarded dead to sustain this recovery if
recruitment decreases back to more historical levels. The magnitude of these
dead discards is causing overfishing of the red snapper stock and preventing
the more abundant, younger fish from surviving to the older ages necessary to
sustain the population in the long term. Management measures that reduce dead
discards may serve to both end overfishing of the stock and increase the number
of red snapper that can be retained by fishermen.
NMFS’ focus on reducing dead discards both as a means to end
overfishing and as a way to convert dead recreational discards into red snapper
landings is very reminiscent of some of the language found in Regulatory
Amendment 35, which was ultimately rejected by the Council. It would thus seem
likely that the remedies considered in Regulatory Amendment 35, including the
use of closed seasons and closed areas to reduce angling effort and anglers’
encounters with out-of-season red snapper, will be included in the final
Secretarial Amendment.
But perhaps more importantly, the Secretarial Amendment may
represent NMFS first effort to constrain bycatch-prone recreational fishing
activities; in doing so, it would create an important precedent.
-----
This essay first appeared in “From the Waterfront,” the blog
of the Marine Fish Conservation Network, which can be found at http://conservefish.org/blog/
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