SOUTH ATLANTIC RED SNAPPER: A DEAL IS A DEAL

 

About two months ago, I wrote a blog post about the impact recreational bycatch and discard mortality is having on the South Atlantic red snapper population, and how the National Marine Fisheries Service has entered into an agreement to settle litigation aimed at ending overfishing, caused by such bycatch.

The story is a little unusual, for while recreational fishermen often complain about commercial bycatch—whether it’s red drum supposedly killed by menhaden purse seines or striped bass floating on the sea’s surface after a trawler passes through—it’s not every day that commercial fishermen sue NMFS because anglers are harming their livelihoods.

But in the case of South Atlantic red snapper, that’s just what went on.

And NMFS, recognizing that the commercial fishermen’s claims were valid, decided not to fight the lawsuit, but to instead settle the matter by agreeing 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 settlement provides that NMFS’ obligation to prepare the Secretarial Amendment would also be satisfied if the South Atlantic Fishery Management Council prepared an amendment to the relevant fishery management plan, which would end the overfishing, and NMFS submits such amendment, in the form of a final rule, before the June 6 deadline.

Since just about all of the recreational bycatch leading to the overfishing of red snapper takes place when the recreational red snapper season is closed, merely tightening recreational red snapper regulations, which already include a 1-fish bag limit and, in 2024, a 1-day-long open season, will not do anything to solve the problem.  Instead, NMFS is going to have to find a way to prevent anglers from accidentally catching and unintentionally killing red snapper when the red snapper season is closed.

As NMFS described the problem,

“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 has published a notice announcing its intention to prepare the agreed-to Secretarial Amendment.

An amendment that would both end overfishing and allow anglers to put more red snapper in their coolers would seem like a win for all concerned, but that’s not necessarily so.  That’s because, with tightened red snapper regulations out as a practical option, the only way to reduce recreational red snapper bycatch and discard mortality is to tighten regulations for other species that live in the same places that red snapper do, and more particularly, by further restricting the times when and perhaps the places where anglers can target such other species, and so sharply reducing the opportunities for anglers to catch out-of-season red snapper.

While such restrictions wouldn’t necessarily reduce the overall recreational harvest of such other species, as a shorter season can be offset by a larger bag limit and/or lower minimum size, it would reduce the recreational bycatch and dead discards of out-of-season red snapper, and convert some of the current dead discards into landings.

The South Atlantic Council’s Scientific and Statistical Committee 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…the SSC recommends pursuing temporal/spatial reductions (possibly wave-based) in bottom fishing…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]” 

The Council almost followed its SSC’s advice.  It prepared an amendment that would have adopted measures needed to significantly reduce the recreational bycatch of red snapper, but in the face of strong opposition from recreational fishing organizations and the recreational fishery, never submitted it to NMFS for approval.

And so NMFS was sued, and decided that it was prudent to enter into a binding legal settlement with the plaintiffs, agreeing to develop management measures to end the recreational overfishing of South Atlantic red snapper, and publish those measures, in the form of a final regulation, on or before June 6 of next year.

It’s inevitable that the final regulation will include a closed season for all bottom fish, in order to avoid recreational red snapper bycatch, in a substantial swath of the waters managed by the South Atlantic Fishery Management Council.

And so some folks who have seemingly forgotten how a binding legal settlement works are trying to convince NMFS to dishonor the agreement that it made, in good faith, with the plaintiffs in the recent red snapper lawsuit.

In a recent edition of its “Policy Watch” newsletter, the American Sportfishing Association, which represents the fishing tackle industry, announced with apparent approval that

“On Thursday, U.S. Congressman John H. Rutherford (R-FL), along with 22 fellow House colleagues, sent a letter to National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Administrator Richard Spinrad to oppose bottom closures and shorter red snapper seasons for recreational anglers in the South Atlantic.

“The members urged NOAA to suspend consideration of area closures and other significant management decisions until the South Atlantic Great Red Snapper Count and other ongoing data collection programs are completed and integrated into the stock assessment process.”

While the American Sportfishing Association would probably be very happy to see NMFS comply with that request, as avoiding time and area closures would likely allow ASA members to sell more fishing tackle to, and so make more money from, bottom fishermen in the South Atlantic, collecting the relevant data and incorporating it into a new stock assessment just isn’t going to happen by June 6, 2025, and NMFS has a legally-enforceable obligation to issue regulations ending recreational overfishing of South Atlantic red snapper by that date.

Rep. Rutherford’s letter to NOAA said

“We write to share our concerns with the advancement of a Secretarial Amendment to alter management of red snapper in the South Atlantic.  We urge you not to consider area closures or other significant management decisions until the ongoing surveys are completed and their data is integrated into the stock assessment process.

“While we agree that our fisheries must be managed in a sustainable way, we currently lack sufficient data to support area closures, which would have immense economic implications on our states.  Current methods used to determine the health of the stock, and ultimately inform management decisions, do not provide an accurate picture of the red snapper stock.  In fact, NOAA recently stated that the recreational data effort estimates could be off by as much as 40 percent.

“Over the last 12 years, anglers and fishery managers have worked diligently to rebuild the red snapper stock, and by all accounts these efforts have been successful.  The most recent scientific information indicates that the South Atlantic red snapper stock has had strong recruitment of young fish in recent years and is and is recovering consistent with rebuilding goals.  Anyone who has been out on the water recently will tell you that red snapper is plentiful.

“We regularly hear from our constituents that red snapper is so abundant it is all they can catch.  As the stock grows, more encounters occur out of season, which leads to increased discards.  These discards ultimately count against fishermen, leaving them with short or non-existent seasons even after complying with all the rules.  This is a frustrating cycle that prevents fishermen from accessing this important resource.

“Red snapper seasons, even short ones, help support our coastal economies.  The six-day 2018 recreational season added $13 million to the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) for the region.  As red snapper seasons shrink, however, so does their economic benefit.  Area or season closures of bottom fishing would be an economic disaster for our states which rely heavily on our coastal economy and the businesses that support our robust fishing industry.

“Any secretarial amendment decisions for the red snapper fishery must be made using the best and most up-to-date science.  Congress has provided $8.7 million to improve management and available fishery data, $3.3 million of which was used to fund the South Atlantic Great Red Snapper Count.  This study, which began in 2021, will provide independent data on the red snapper population and will be completed in the second half of next year, right after NOAA intends to implement a final rule.  Taking secretarial action without incorporating the soon-to-be available data from the Great Red Snapper Count and the ongoing state surveys would be precipitous and irresponsible.

“For these reasons, we urge you to suspend consideration of area closures and other significant management decisions for the South Atlantic until the Great Red Snapper Count and the other ongoing surveys are completed and integrated into the stock assessment process.”

Rep. Rutherford's letter admits that the problem the Secretarial Amendment is intended to address exists:  “As the stock grows, more encounters occur out of season, which leads to increased discards.”

It admits that the current rules are inadequate to address the discard problem, saying “These discards ultimately count against fishermen, leaving them with short or non-existent seasons even after complying with all the rules.  [emphasis added]”

Yet it makes no effort to link recreational bycatch and dead discards with the health of the stock, nor does it acknowledfge how such discards might negate the impact of the “strong recruitment of young fish in recent years,” a concern clearly expressed by NMFS.

And, most significantly, it ignores the fact that NMFS no longer has the unbounded discretion to suspend action on the Secretarial Amendment until all the yet-uncollected data is in place, peer reviewed, and included in a stock assessment, a process likely to take years.  It completely disregards the fact that NMFS has already entered into a binding commitment to finalize regulations calculated to end overfishing by a date certain, and cannot merely change its mind now and delay any action to some indefinite point in the future.

In writing his letter, Rep. Rutherford suggests that NMFS wait for data that won’t arrive until after the Secretarial Amendment must be finalized and published in the Federal Register.

But that June 6 deadline cannot be casually ignored.  NMFS has a binding obligation to finalize the rule by that date, and if it fails to do so, legal consequences may, and almost certainly will, ensue.

Politicians may be used to committing to one thing before doing another.  They may make promises that they have no intention of honoring.  But most of us, particularly those of us who negotiate legal agreements, are expected to stand by our word.  Our professional reputations stand or fall on our willingness and our ability to deliver on what we have promised.

We understand that a deal is a deal, and it’s well past time for the politicians who interfere with the fishery management process to understand that basic truth as well.

 

SHIFTING STOCKS: WHEN DOES A FISH BECOME "NATIVE"

 

I don’t recall when it was, other than it was back in the late 1960s or early ‘70s, when the bottom of Long Island Sound near my southwest Connecticut home seemed to be paved with “lafayettes,” the fish more properly known as spot, Leiostomas xanthurus.  

Few of the local fishermen had ever seen a spot before, and most of those who did had caught them somewhere else, since spot were and still are a popular inshore panfish from perhaps Delaware down into the southeastern states.  The books said that they ranged well up into New England, but the fact that my father, who had fished our Connecticut waters since the late 1920s, had never seen one before that year was testimony to how rarely that happened.  Yet that season—as I recall, it happened in late summer or early fall—it was impossible to toss a clam- or sandworm-baited hook into the water without having a spot attack it before it even hit the bottom.

Yet after that one brief occurrence, they were gone.  

Although I fished the same western Sound waters until I moved to Long Island in late ’83, and have gone back to fish there in just about every year since, I have never caught another spot along the Connecticut coast.  They invaded once, then retreated, and have never appeared in numbers again.

But in recent years, we’re seen a somewhat similar phenomenon, as fish that are not known to spawn—nor, in some cases, even to regularly visit—more northerly waters are beginning to appear on a regular, and perhaps even a predictable, basis as a warming ocean draws them up from their typical range.

Now, the question for fisheries managers is how to respond.

Managers in Alabama are currently facing that problem with snook.

While Alabama is certainly not considered a northern state for most purposes, it fits that description with respect to the snook, as that species’ range in the United States has historically been limited to the southern half of the Florida peninsula—from roughly Cape Canaveral on the Atlantic side to Tarpon Springs on the Gulf of Mexico—and the southernmost coast of Texas, where waters typically remain warmer than 50 degrees.

But as the waters of the Gulf of Mexico warmed, snook began to move farther north, first along the Florida panhandle, and then into Alabama’s waters.  The news website Al.com recently reported that

“Snook puts regulators and anglers in an interesting position.  It’s not a species native to Alabama, so it isn’t regulated.  However, for more than a decade now, people have been catching snook in the waters around [Alabama’s] Perdido Bay…

“Early on, officials though the snook were visiting, but not overwintering in Alabma waters.  Now, ‘they seem to overwinter,’ said [Kevin] Anson [of the Marine Resources Division of the Alabama Department of Conservation and Natural Resources]…

“’Here’s the deal.  There’s two ways to look at it,’ said [Scott] Bannon [director of the Marine Resources Division].  ‘They’re not from here.  There’s no regulation, you could catch them all, we could go ahead and be done with it.  But most people that are catching them don’t want that, they want some form of protection.  As much as people think we’re a ‘no’ agency, our job is to provide access to the fisheries.  So, this is a new fishery, people are enjoying it, they should get to enjoy it.  So to come out with no data and say ‘no,’ I don’t think that really falls in line with the way we view how we do conservation.’

“’They’re not a native species, so in theory we could wipe them out and it’s okay, it has no impact on the environment,’ said Bannon.  But there’s also the possibility that protecting the new snook fishery could help it develop into a boon for coastal fishing.”

Alabama’s fishery managers ultimately proposed a one-fish bag limit and 24-inch minimum size, management measures that would be significantly less restrictive than the 1-fish bag limit and 28- to 33-inch slot size limit that currently prevails in the adjacent waters of Florida’s panhandle.

Al.com noted that

“The audience [attending a meeting on possible new regulations] seemed to favor taking action to nurture the snook fishery, possibly even the institution of a catch-and-release protocol or a tagging program.”

That Al.com article raises a number of issues that reach well beyond Alabama’s management of its emerging snook fishery.

For example, when should a fish be deemed to be “native” to a particular section of coastline?

A tarpon was caught on Martha’s Vineyard [Massachusetts] this fall, and a few years ago, I was trolling for tuna with a friend south of New York’s Long Island when my companion hooked and landed a small almaco jack, a fish that has been recorded as far north as New England, but is rarely caught north of the Carolinas.  It’s safe to say that neither fish was “native” to the waters that it was caught in.

But for the past decade, snook are being regularly caught in Alabama waters, just as anglers now regularly target tarpon in Virginia’s bays, and I can now target spinner sharks in Long Island’s coastal sea.  At what point do those fish stop being “occasional visitors” and become “native?”

The fact that they might not have been historically present, however “historically” might be defined, hardly seems a valid reason to deem them “non-native.”  After all, before the Wisconsin glacier retreated 11,000 years ago, fish like striped bass, black sea bass, and summer flounder would not have been “native” to New York’s coast which, because so much water was tied up in the ice, began near the edge of the continental shelf in those days, about where the 50 fathom contour exists today.

And it is highly unlikely that what are now Florida’s waters were warm enough to host snook at that time.

Instead, as waters warmed, fish began to shift their ranges northward as warming waters made northern waters more attractive at the same time that southern waters became too hot for them to tolerate.  They would also have initially been visitors, which only became “native” after ocean temperatures more-or-less stabilized, allowing ocean ecosystems to reach their own sort of equilibrium. 

Thus, as fish shift or extend their ranges northward today, in response to a further warming sea, can they reasonably deemed “non-native?”  Or are they merely tomorrow’s natives beginning to carve out a place in ecosystems that are adjusting to stress and change as temperatures rise?

And to that end, what should fisheries managers be doing to welcome the new arrivals, and perhaps create new fisheries as traditional fisheries—such as those for cod, winter flounder, and perhaps even striped bass—succumb to a changing climate and become increasingly less productive?

What criteria should fishery managers use to determine whether a regular visitor is now a “native” worthy of protection?

The Al.com article seems to suggest that when snook began to overwinter in Alabama, that might have made them enough to merit protection.  While that might make sense in the warmer Gulf states, in the northeast, many important recreational species, including striped bass and bluefish, spend their winters in warmer, more southerly waters rather than overwintering locally.  Similarly, localized spawning should hardly be a requirement for “native” status, as such requirement would render the long-revered striped bass “non-native” in most of New England.

Yet, right now, many of the newcomers find no protection at all; here in New York, we have no protections for species such as spot, Atlantic croaker, and sheepshead, all of which are becoming more regular visitors.  At what point should they merit regulatory action?

In the case of black drum, there is even a New York law, dating back many years, which would penalize anyone who catches and then releases a black drum alive, although dumping one--or many--back into the ocean dead seems to be completely legal.

The law was originally implemented after shellfishing interests importuned the state's legislature, arguing that shellfish beds must be protected from the drum's alleged depredations.  It's not clear that such rationale—which dates back to the days when states paid bounties to hunters who killed predators like coyotes, wolves, and seals—has any place in today’s changing world.

The fact that most anglers seem amenable to Alabama managing its new snook population, along with the fact that Alabama’s fisheries managers seem to understand the snook’s potential, and are willing to extend the fish regulatory protection, is a hopeful sign in these times, when shifting fish stocks and changing environmental conditions promise to wreak significant change on coastal ecosystems.

We can only hope that Alabama’s enlightened approach to snook is emulated all along the U.S. coast, with respect to all of the species that will be shifting into new waters, and providing new opportunities to those wise enough to embrace them.

 

MOSTLY GOOD NEWS AT 2024 ICCAT MEETING

 

Every November, the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas holds its annual meeting of the parties, where representatives of all the ICCAT member nations get together to discuss the management and harvest of Atlantic tunas and “tuna-like species,” a term that has been interpreted to include swordfish, billfish, and various sharks.

Not too many years ago, the ICCAT meetings were fairly depressing.  The delegates would spend most of their time debating how to get the last drop of blood from a stone, fighting over their relative shares of what was then a badly depleted Atlantic bluefin tuna stock, which shares would end up being exceeded with impunity by many of the contracting nations.  Things got so bad that for a while, in the late 1990s and early 2000s, some conservation advocates suggested that the acronym “ICCAT” really stood for “International Conspiracy to Catch All Tunas.”

But ICCAT has gotten better since then.

While various nations still try to hold up important conservation initiatives in an effort to protect their own domestic fleets (including a regrettable, multi-year effort on the part of the United States to block badly needed efforts to protect the shortfin mako shark), ICCAT can also point to some successes, including its effort, begun in 2000, to rebuild the North Atlantic swordfish population, its 2021 moratorium on shortfin mako shark harvest (which first required that the White House change hands) and, yes, even the ongoing and so-far successful recovery of the Atlantic bluefin tuna.

This year’s ICCAT meeting appears to have built on that progress.  NOAA Fisheries calls 2024 a “banner year for the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas,” and points to “several breakthrough outcomes, including new management measures for Atlantic tropical tunas and North Atlantic swordfish.”

The agency went on to note that

“Following years of hard-fought negotiations, the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas adopted a comprehensive conservation and management measure for Atlantic tropical tunas, including bigeye, skipjack, and yellowfin tuna…The Commission adopted new control measures and allocation decisions that reflect the diverse interests within ICCAT’s tropical tunas fisheries for the first time after years of unsuccessful negotiations…

“ICCAT also adopted the first management procedure for North Atlantic swordfish.  A management procedure establishes an agreed framework for future management decision-making—such as setting catch limits—designed to achieve specific objectives.  These objectives could include attaining conservation goals and maintaining stability in fisheries.  ICCAT continues to make significant progress in adopting management procedures for several stocks under its management, thanks to years of dedicated effort by scientists and managers.  This advancement will allow for more effective management of stocks in the face of identified uncertainties…”

NOAA Fisheries wasn’t alone in its assessment.  The European Union’s Directorate-General for Maritime Affairs and Fisheries used the terms “landmark” and “breakthrough agreement” to describe the tropical tunas measure.  While the EU announcement emphasized the measure’s benefits to the fishing industry, it also observed that

“The EU also continued to lead towards science-based management measures with the adoption of a recommendation for a Management Strategy Evaluation for tropical tunas.  This will allow ICCAT to develop a long-term science-based approach to managing bigeye, skipjack, and yellowfin tuna populations, ensuring that these species are healthy and abundant.”

The outcomes of the 2024 ICCAT meeting also won praise from members of both the conservation and commercial fishing communities.

The HarvestStrategies.org website, which is managed by The Ocean Foundation’s International Fisheries Conservation Project, stated that

“Management procedures (MPs) were the big winner at the meeting, with progress made on eight different stocks.  This remarkable achievement affirmed ICCAT’s commitment to transitioning its management to MPs as a more science-based and transparent approach to achieving long-term sustainability for its $5.4 billion fisheries.”

Esther Wozniak, who works on international fisheries issues for the Pew Charitable Trusts, praised the adoption of the management procedure for swordfish, which will replace annual negotiations of swordfish quotas with a system that will make science, rather than politics, the primary driver of management decisions.  Ms. Wozniak said that,

“Thanks to leadership over many years from Canada, the United States, and the European Union, ICCAT has demonstrated that long-term, sustainable visions for healthy fisheries can extend across all commercial fish populations.”

The fishing industry’s praise was more measured, with industry spokesmen hailing actions which immediately benefitted fishermen, but also ruing the fact that such actions were needed, while expressing concern that further measures will be required.  Thus, The Fishing Daily reported fishermen’s approval of ICCAT's decision to shorten the period when fish attracting devices, or “FADs”—floating objects that attract and hold schools of tuna, making them vulnerable to purse seines—could not be used from 72 to 45 days, noting that ICCAT scientists

“could not demonstrate the moratorium’s effectiveness in protecting the bigeye tuna stock and concluded that no moratorium [on FAD use] was necessary to maintain the species stock health, as the Total Allowable Catch (TAC) and its distribution has proven sufficient.”

However, the same scientists recommended that a FAD moratorium of no less than 30 days remain in place to protect yellowfin tuna.

The initial restrictions on FAD use apparently caused economic harm to African tuna canneries, forcing many to shut down and leading to the loss of thousands of jobs.  It also caused about half of the European purse seine fleet to abandon the fishery, with two European operations, which allegedly could not successfully compete with Asian vessels, going out of business. The Fishing Daily quoted Anne-France Mattlet, Director of the European Tuna Group, who noted that

“It is unfortunate that it took such severe socio-economic impact to prompt a reduction in a moratorium whose effectiveness remains unproven.  While this decision comes too late for two European shipowners, who have already been forced to cease operations, we hope it will provide some relief to the remaining European tropical tuna purse seine fleet.  We also see the European Union’s stand for science-based but also socio-economically proportionate measures as a good sign…”

The Fishing Daily also quoted Xavier Leduc, President of Europeche Tuna Group, who warned that ICCAT must do more to improve compliance with management measures, saying

“To ensure EU fleets are not subject to unfair competition and sustainable fishing practices, it is essential that third countries operating in ICCAT’s waters implement basic control, monitoring, and compliance measures.  This includes a comprehensive list of operational vessels, increased observer coverage, and the establishment of a high sea’s [sic] inspection and boarding scheme…”

Such criticism was aimed at some Asian countries that block compliance proposals at ICCAT while allegedly failing to

“adhere to…fundamental measures to combat illegal, unreported, and unregulated (IUU) fishing.”

Two Asian nations, Japan and China, also drew criticism for their opposition to a measure that would prohibit fishermen from removing shark fins from the carcasses of sharks before they are landed, and thus make it more difficult to engage in shark finning, an activity which sees the valuable fins cut away from the shark and retained, while the rest of the shark is dumped back into the ocean.

The proposal to prohibit the removal of fins at sea was made by the United States, Brazil, and Belize, and gained the support of 42 of ICCAT’s 52 members.  However, because it required unanimous consent to be adopted, China’s and Japan’s resistance were enough to defeat it.  Belize attempted to circumvent the requirement for unanimity by calling for a vote, something that normally doesn’t happen at ICCAT but, perhaps because Belize’s action caught the other nations by surprise, the proposal nonetheless failed.

Sonja Fordham, president of Shark Advocates International, stated that she was “deeply, deeply disappointed” in the defeat of the measure “despite support from an unprecedented coalition of countries,” and admitted that

“We are exasperated that a strong, enforceable shark finning ban has once again been blocked by essentially two countries, despite overwhelming support and clear scientific advice.”

Still, despite such setbacks, the 2024 ICCAT meeting must be viewed as an overall success.

The next question is whether such progress will continue, particularly in view of the change of administration in the United States.  Historically, the U.S. has been a conservation leader at ICCAT.  However, while it never completely abandoned that role, the United States definitely took a step back during the years between 2017 and 2020.

History may very well repeat itself over the next four years.

THE ASMFC MOVES FORWARD--SLOWLY--TO REBUILD STRIPED BASS

 

By any objective measure, the coastal migratory population of Atlantic striped bass has fallen on hard times.

In Maryland, the juvenile abundance index (JAI), which has gauged the success of each year’s spawn since 1957, was 2.0 in 2024, far below its long-term average of 11.0. It was the sixth consecutive year of spawning failure in the Maryland portion of the Chesapeake Bay, while the average JAI for the six years between 2019 and 2024 was the lowest average for any six-year period in the 67-year history of the Maryland juvenile abundance survey.

Things were no better on the Virginia side of the Chesapeake Bay, where the preliminary 2024 JAI was 3.43, and marked the fourth consecutive year when the JAI fell below the 25th percentile (a JAI of 8.22) of the Virginia survey’s time series; previously, the Virginia survey yielded JAIs of 6.3 in 2021, 7.95 in 2022, and 4.26 in 2023.

A stock assessment update, released in October 2024, suggested that, under current management measures, the still-overfished striped bass stock was unlikely to fully rebuild by the 2029 deadline established by the management plan, but there was so much uncertainty in the underlying data that, depending upon the assumptions that biologists made, the landings reductions needed to achieve a 50 percent probability of timely rebuilding might be anywhere between 4 and 46 percent.

Thus, when the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission’s (ASMFC) Atlantic Striped Bass Management Board (Management Board) met on October 23, 2024, most of its members seemed to realize that they had to do something to restore the striped bass stock, but just what they had to do was a bit of a mystery.

Uncertainty Reigns

The biggest problem they faced was that Addendum II to Amendment 7 to the Interstate Fishery Management Plan for Atlantic Striped Bass (Addendum II) had just been adopted in January 2024, and its provisions—a one-fish bag limit for recreational fishermen, paired with a 28- to 31-inch slot limit for the ocean fishery and a 19- to 24-inch slot in the Chesapeake Bay, along with a seven percent reduction in the commercial quota—had been in place for less than a year, making it impossible for the scientists on the Atlantic Striped Bass Technical Committee (Technical Committee) to know how Addendum II’s provisions impacted the striped bass fishery.

If the Technical Committee assumed that Addendum II had little effect, and that 2024 landings would approximate those of 2023, no less than a 46 percent reduction would be needed to rebuild the stock by 2029. However, that level of landings appeared unlikely, as recreational striped bass landings for March through June of 2024 were substantially lower than landings in the corresponding months of 2023; if landings for the rest of the year matched those four months’ pace, 2025 landings would only have to be reduced by four percent to make rebuilding probable.

But that latter scenario was also unlikely.

By 2024, the big 2015 striped bass year class had mostly grown out of the coastal slot size limit, while the next, slightly above average year class, the 2018s, was just below the slot size. In 2025, the 2018s would enter the slot, and be vulnerable to recreational harvest. If past patterns held true, that would increase recreational landings for 2025, but those landings would probably decrease in 2026, as the 2018 year class grew out of the slot.

But how much landings would increase in 2025, or decrease in 2026, is difficult to calculate, as there is too little information available to predict angler behavior or the availability of fish to the fishermen who pursue them. The Technical Committee believed that, in the most likely scenario of a landings increase in 2025, followed by a return to 2024 landings levels thereafter, a 14.5 percent reduction would be needed to rebuild the stock by 2029.

Clinging to the Status Quo

The data seemed to call for some sort of management response, but not everybody attending the meeting agreed. Three Maryland charter boat captains called on the Management Board to maintain the current recreational regulations, with the speakers claiming that their business was down between 30 and 80 percent, and that customers were cancelling Maryland charters and going elsewhere to fish.

On the Management Board itself, two primary opponents of new conservation measures emerged. One was Adam Nowalsky, the Legislative Proxy from New Jersey, who attempted to discredit the data that suggested additional restrictions were needed.

He asked:

Could you explain to me why the juvenile abundance indices graph shape does not match the Year 1 shapes as we see them for Maryland and New York? My expectation would be that the Age 1 would have a similar shape just lagging by a year, but what I see for Maryland is a higher period of juvenile abundance followed by a lower period followed by what appears to be a steadily declining period of juvenile abundance, whereas the Age 1 appears to be something somewhat steady with a few spikes in it. New York [Year 1 recruitment], on the other hand, looks like something with just a high degree of variability bouncing up and down around some midpoint, while more recently it seems to be a downward trending bell curve. So could you provide some insight why the Age 1 charts don’t match the juvenile abundance indices?

His intent was clearly to cast doubt on the relationship between juvenile abundance and the recruitment of Year 1 fish into the population, and so minimize the impact of recent low JAIs on the health of the stock.

However, Technical Committee members quickly reaffirmed that there was a clear correlation between JAI and Year 1 recruitment. Dr. Gary Nelson of the Massachusetts Division of Marine Fisheries dismissed much of the difference in the graphs’ shapes as the result of mere “noise” in the data, attributable to the much smaller number of Year 1 fish encountered when compared to the number of juveniles, although he also noted that the juvenile bass could occasionally experience a mortality event that reduced survival during their first year. Dr. Katie Drew, an ASMFC stock assessment scientist, offered an even simpler explanation, saying that one very large Year 1 recruitment event early in the time series could have distorted the shape of the recruitment graph, and so concealed the actual degree of year-to-year variation.

Unable to discredit the data with his first line of attack, Mr. Nowalsky then tried to impeach just the Year 1 recruitment information, asking the Technical Committee whether they could ignore the strongest year classes, which helped sustain the spawning stock biomass through periods of low recruitment, in order to make overall recruitment in the past appear weaker, and less of a contrast to the low recruitment that the stock is experiencing today.

Mr. Nowalsky made no secret of his motives and admitted:

What I was just looking for is some other way to possibly interpret this information that would indicate that there is perhaps more stability in the fishery with regard to recruitment…I see a recruitment chart there that sees some periods of very high recruitment but in fact, if you didn’t have some of these super-high years, that recruitment mean would be lower and maybe you would have a different interpretation of recruitment. When I look at the juvenile index, abundance index graphs and the Year 1s, juveniles, Year 0s, are not spawning. Year 1s are not spawning, but you have to have Year 1s to have spawning fish. So when I see particularly the Maryland Age 1s somewhat having a more static line, it just gives me pause to think about what we are really seeing here…If I took out some of these outliers of recruitment, is recruitment necessarily on the precipice of disaster?

Dr. Nelson then explained the statistical approach that the Technical Committee used to analyze the recruitment data, and how such application of what he referred to as “Change Point Analysis” indicated that striped bass recruitment experienced something that might be termed “regime change” around 2008, when recruitment dropped below earlier norms.

Thus, Mr. Nowalsky’s efforts to skew the data, and de-emphasize the recent sharp drop in recruitment, failed to gain traction.

The other aggressive opponent of new conservation measures, Delaware fishery manager John Clark, then rose to set forth his opposition to additional management measures, using language that some might find surprising, coming from an experienced fisheries professional:

We’ve been cutting now, this is the 10th anniversary of when we started cutting back, that was that 25% cut, followed by an 18% cut, followed by what, another 15? I mean, it’s just been a bunch of cuts, and one thing that you see when you look at the [spawning stock biomass], that it seems to be following a natural population cycle going up and down. I’m just curious, I mean we have this arbitrary goal of keeping it at a certain level, yet the boom in the population began when the population was what? Maybe a quarter of what it is now? No, I mean, we can’t guarantee anything by just keeping the spawning population at a very high level, because we’re still not sure of all the factors that lead to big year classes, correct? I mean, it just seems like management has to weigh both sides of this. Of course, we want to be cautious, but there is a point when we might be foregoing fish that could be caught in the pursuit of trying to keep the stock at a level that you think is necessary. But in the meantime, as you’ve heard, people are going out of business and we’re seeing a lot of people I know that are hurting, and I know we hear it from our commercial guys all the time, they’ve taken since 2014, this quota has been cut almost in half, and you know that comes out of their pockets, and the question that I have is do we have any sense of whether the stock will recover if indeed it did, [spawning stock biomass] went down even further than it is now? I mean, it seems like it’s still very possible that, based on these cycles, that it could be coming back, right?

Mr. Clark seemed to have no concerns about allowing an already overfished stock, which is experiencing spawning failure in multiple nursery areas and has experienced consecutive years of low recruitment, to fall to even lower levels of abundance, in the expectation, or at least the hope, that some undefined “cycle” will eventually allow it to return to health on its own.

To Rebuild the Bass Stock

But that was not the majority opinion. That opinion might have best been expressed by Dennis Abbott, New Hampshire’s Legislative Proxy, a long-time member of the Management Board who called the last six years of poor recruitment “the gorilla in the room,” opined that “We’re in one of the most difficult positions we’ve been in with striped bass,” and proclaimed that “My job first is to protect the resource, and if we protect the resource, we’ll protect the fishermen.”

Mr. Nowalsky, perhaps not liking the direction that the debate was taking, soon asked, “As we sit here today, does the rebuilding plan mandate a reduction for 2025, as we sit here today and, if the answer is yes, what would that reduction be?”

He was promptly informed that no, the rebuilding plan didn’t mandate a reduction, and that any decision about making a reduction was within the discretion of the Management Board, but he was also reminded that the rebuilding plan did mandate that the stock be rebuilt by 2029, so that failure to take action in 2025 might very well mean that more restrictive management measures would have to be taken in later years.

Roy Miller, the Governor’s Appointee from Delaware, then put the rebuilding issue in a historical perspective:

In the 1980s, there were concerns like we heard from our fishing audience today, over contaminants in the nursery areas. There were concerns over too much rainfall or not enough rainfall, colder than normal temperatures or warmer than normal temperatures; all these things which were beyond our control in the 1980s. So what could we control? We finally settled on fishing mortality, so that we could maximize the number of eggs laid in our ecosystems so that when conditions were favorable, a dominant year class would eventually be produced. And that’s exactly what happened…When you look at those years from ’85 to ’89, that’s when we provided maximum protection…By providing protection for those eggs laid in the system, making sure there were enough spawners to lay those eggs, conditions were eventually favorable and the ’89 year class was the result. I see us entering a similar sort of situation now, when we have poor reproduction for six years…I do think there are enough parallels with what happened in the 1980s, that we need to keep that in mind and keep our focus on maximizing the number of eggs laid in our estuary systems, so we can again support some larger than average year classes.

The rub was that, even if the Management Board wanted to take action that might spur rebuilding, it wasn’t sure what action would be needed, as the Technical Committee had not yet informed them of what sort of changes to size limits, seasons, or any other management measures, would be needed. That wasn’t the Management Board’s fault; before it could propose a suite of possible management measures, it needed to know which specific scenario—the one requiring a 4 percent reduction, or a 46 percent reduction, or something in-between—the Management Board felt was most likely. Once the magnitude of the reduction was decided, the Technical Committee could calculate the measures needed to attain it.

Thus, Nichola Meserve of the Massachusetts Division of Marine Fisheries rose to move the process forward. Declaring that, “The only error I see is doing nothing…some type of action is necessary,” she placed a motion on the table: “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.”

The motion was seconded by Martin Gary, the Director of the New York Department of Environmental Conservation’s Marine Division.

Mr. Clark immediately spoke in opposition, arguing that:

The reference points are exceptionally high, and even though we don’t have…on the current projections, it seems, we have a 43 percent chance of hitting the target, the target is 125% of the 1995 rebuilt [spawning stock biomass]. But it has a very good chance of hitting the threshold. I know that isn’t what we said in the plan, but it’s still a bigger stock than we have now. In the meantime, we’re talking about some…we’re just further regulating, making things more difficult. I think…a basic concept in finance is net present value, and I would transfer that to a fishery, and that a fish today is worth more than a fish four years from now. We already heard the hardships, that what we have currently done is putting on our recreational fishermen [sic] industry—the for-hires, that is—and our commercial fishermen, and I think this is just, you know, another almost gratuitous cut at this point, because it is something else that is going to make life more difficult for them…You know, we cut the quotas on weakfish back, we did everything we could, they haven’t come back…

It was another remarkable speech from a professional fisheries manager, who was calling for the Management Board to ignore the explicit terms of the striped bass management plan, because even without fully rebuilding the stock, the stock would, in a few years still be “a bigger stock than we have now;” who was willing to risk the future health of the striped bass stock in return for catching more fish today because “a fish today is worth more than a fish four years from now;” and who questioned the worth of trying to rebuild striped bass, because managers haven’t had much success rebuilding weakfish.

But it was also the last concerted effort to derail the rebuilding effort. While the meeting had a long way to go, everything else constituted unsuccessful attempts to just cause delay.

Attempts at Delay

The first attempt to stall needed management measures came from Maryland fisheries manager Michael Luisi, who called the provision in Addendum II, which allowed the Management Board to adopt rebuilding measures on their own, without first drafting a new addendum and taking it out for public hearings, “an experiment” that could not, as a practical matter, be carried out in what was left of 2024. He said that he was “concerned about the longevity and the durability of the actions that we take,” and wanted to see consistent rules, that would not be changed after a short time, put in place. Thus, proposed a substitute motion that would replace the original motion made by Ms. Meserve, which read:

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 2024 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 regional and commercial fishery for implementation on January 1, 2026.

Not surprisingly, the motion was seconded by Mr. Clark.

Mr. Luisi argued that “we owe it to the public to be heavily involved in the addendum process,” implying that the public would prefer to see the longer addendum process used to adopt management measures, rather than fast-tracking such measures through Management Board action even though, when the public had a chance to comment on the question during the development of Addendum II, 2,150 out of the 2,240 comments received—96 percent—favored the fast-track process to get needed catch restrictions in place.

There was substantial opposition to Mr. Luisi’s substitute motion, which would have left the 2018 year class vulnerable to harvest as they entered the coastal recreational slot limit in 2025.

Chris Batsavage, a North Carolina fisheries manager, noted that the Management Board was running out of time to rebuild the striped bass stock, and that it needed to move faster with respect to protecting the 2018 year class from harvest in 2018. 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.”

David Sikorski, Maryland’s Legislative Proxy, opined that “It’s more responsible to act more quickly,” noting that past management efforts often failed because the Management Board did not impose the full reductions recommended by the Technical Committee. He said that it was time to “stop playing games” with the management process and do what was needed to rebuild the stock.

Mr. Abbott said that the Management Board shouldn’t “sacrifice” the 2018s, and said that adoption of the substitute motion would amount to “a dereliction of our duty to protect the 2018 year class,” while David Borden, the Governor’s Appointee from Rhode Island, observed that “We’re in a unique position…If we allow the 2018 year class to be fished down, we’ve lost an opportunity and painted ourselves into a corner.”

Yet other Management Board members supported the motion for various reasons. Max Appelman, representing NOAA Fisheries, feeling that fast-tracking management measures provided no opportunity for “robust public comment,” supported the substitute motion. Pat Geer, a Virginia fisheries manager, also supported the substitute, largely for administrative reasons; the process of getting bass tags out to Virginia’s commercial fishermen begins in August, and so was already underway when the October meeting was held. It could not be interrupted to accommodate any management measures that were put into place for the 2025 season.

Thus, after Mr. Luisi’s substitute motion failed on a vote of 6 in favor, 9 opposed, with a single abstention, Mr. Geer made his own motion to substitute and delay the implementation of needed harvest cuts. His motion read, “Move to substitute to schedule a special Striped Bass Management Board meeting in December 2024 to consider Board Action in response to the Stock Assessment Update. The Board MAY consider action to revise the 2025 recreational seasons 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, Mr. Clark seconded the motion, which sought to delay the implementation of commercial management measures.

There were comments supporting and opposing the motion, although the most notable came from Ms. Meserve, who had grown exasperated with the repeated attempts at delay, and declared that “I remain disappointed and frustrated that the states with writing on the wall,” meaning the Chesapeake Bay states where JAIs had plummeted, were trying to stall needed management measures. Mr. Batsavage admitted that he was “sharing Nichola’s frustration” and, with respect to Mr. Geer’s administrative problems, that “we shouldn’t let process get in the way of conservation of striped bass.”

Still, Mr. Geer’s motion nearly passed, failing on the narrow vote of 7 in favor, 7 opposed, and 2 abstentions.

At that point, Mr. Clark moved to amend Ms. Meserve’s original motion, seeking to substitute the phrase “commercial quotas” with “commercial measures,” in order to allow the consideration of other commercial management measures, most particularly a requirement that bass must be tagged at the point of capture rather than the point of sale to a wholesale buyer, in addition to or in lieu of a quota reduction.

Mr. Sikorski seconded the motion only so that it might be discussed, but the resulting discussion was short. Ms. Meserve voiced her opposition to the amendment, saying that it would add additional, unnecessary issues to the proposed December meeting, when the Technical Committee would already be challenged to calculate the needed size and season alternatives. She also noted that a 10-year review of commercial bass tagging measures had already been scheduled, and that there was no need to address the issue in December.

Mr. Gary felt that Mr. Clark’s motion could be seen as a way to avoid a commercial quota reduction, at a time when recreational catch would be subject to additional cuts, and said, “I think we’re at a point with this stock when no one is getting a pass. We’re all in this together. All the sectors have to work together with what we have left, in the absence of reproductive success.”

With those words said, the vote was taken and the motion failed, on a close vote of 8 in favor and 8 opposed.

Resolved to Move Forward

And with no further discussion, Ms. Meserve’s original motion passed easily, with 14 votes in favor, and only New Jersey opposed. With Mr. Clark and Mr. Miller unable to agree, Delaware cast a “null vote,” which had no impact on the outcome.

With that done, the Management Board still had to decide what management measures they would consider at the December meeting, and what work the Technical Committee would have to do. They eventually agreed that they wanted the Technical Committee to update the 2024 landings projection with recreational data from July and August, which had just become available, and use that in calculating recreational management options. They also agreed that the Technical Committee should provide options for no-harvest season closures, and also provide information on closed seasons when even catch-and-release fishing was prohibited. And they agreed that the Technical Committee should look into the benefits of setting a new slot limit that did not allow fish over 28 inches to be landed, in order to protect the 2018 year class.

It’s not entirely clear that the Technical Committee will be able to get all of that done before the December Management Board meeting, and it’s certainly not clear what management measures will be in place for 2025. However, it does seem pretty certain that the Management Board will do something to protect the 2018 year class and make it more likely that the stock will rebuild by 2029.

Whatever that something is, we can only hope that it will be enough.

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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/

 

DAM REMOVAL: THE PROMISE VS THE POLITICS

 

A little over a month ago, a cofferdam on California’s Klamath River was taken down.  Its removal marked the last step in a long process that gave Pacific salmon and steelhead (sea-run rainbow) trout access to hundreds of miles of historic habitat, spawning grounds, and nursery areas, access that had been denied to them for more than a century.

It didn’t take long before a biologist for the Stae of Oregon spotted what was the first chinook salmon to enter the river and ascend beyond the former site of the cofferdam, where the far larger Iron Gate Dam had also once stood, as it swam toward the place where it would hopefully mate, spawn the next generation of salmon and, its life’s purpose completed, die.  In death, it will pay its debt forward, enriching the waters where its offspring would live for a brief time before they head towards the sea.

It was the first salmon to ascend the Klamath since 1912, when the river was first dammed.

Restoring salmon and steelhead runs in the Klamath necessitated the largest dam removal project in the history of the United States.  It cost $500 million, funded largely by PacifiCorp, a California utility, and various local water boards, and involved the removal of four separate dams.  Native American communities provided the impetus for the action, which was supported by PacifiCorp, the states of California and Oregon, and various angling and conservation organizations.

According to an article in the National Fisherman, members of the Yurok and Karok tribes began calling for the dams’ removal over two decades ago, after low, stagnant water and high water temperatures, resulting from the dams interrupting the Klamath’s natural flow, led to a gill rot disease that spread through the river’s spawning salmon, killing 70,000 adult fish, in 2002.

Scientists believe that it will be years before salmon and steelhead fully repopulate the Klamath watershed.  Removing the dams is a first step, but a watershed is more than just a river; it encompasses the entire basin, from the uplands that catch winter snows and funnel snowmelt and rain into the waterway to the vegetated banks that hold back the silt and keep it from suffocating the pebbled spawning beds or impairing the aquatic invertebrates on which the juvenile salmon will feed.

The Klamath River basin suffered significant damage during the century and more when the dams were in place; it will now be necessary to restore the native plants needed to fully restore the watershed.  That will take an immense amount of work to complete, but that work has already begun.

Still, the return of the first salmon was a major milestone.  Roberta Frost, secretary of the Klamath Tribes, observed that

“The return of our relatives the c’iyaal’s is overwhelming for our tribe.  This is what our members worked for and believed in for so many decades.  I want to honor that work and thank them for their persistence in the face of what felt like an unmovable obstacle.  The salmon are just like our tribal people, and they know where home is and returned as soon as they were able.”

There is reason to hope that the Klamath River’s salmon will eventually thrive.  The story of the Elwha River, on Washington’s Olympic Peninsula, is similar to that of the Klamath, although of a somewhat smaller scale.  After decades of advocacy spearheaded by the Lower Elwha Klallam Tribe and its supporters, Congress passed a bill that authorized the removal of two hydroelectric dams on the river.  The work, completed in 2014, opened up 70 miles of high-quality habitat that had been denied to the salmon for over a century.

The National Marine Fisheries Service, which has been actively studying the impacts of the Elwha dams’ removal, reported that

“With the barriers removed, aquatic organisms regained access to the entire river.  Anadromous fish such as salmon returned to areas that have been void of such species for a century.

“The free passage has also prompted a rapid increase in salmon life history diversity.  One example is the ‘re-awakening’ of summer steelhead, which is likely originating from up-river resident O. mykiss [rainbow trout] populations.  Species such as Pacific lamprey are also increasing following dam removal…”

So dam removal has been demonstrably beneficial for rivers and their runs of anadromous fish.

While big rivers and Pacific salmon have been getting most of the publicity, the impacts have also been beneficial on smaller East Coast streams.  One of the best examples may be the removal of the Edwards Dam on Maine’s Kennebec River in 1999, which marked the first time that the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission refused to renew the license of a hydroelectric dam that its owners wished to continue operating.

The removal of the Edwards Dam opened up an additional 17 miles of the Kennebec River to striped bass, alewives, and American eels, and led to the removal of the Fort Halifax Dam at the mouth of the Sebasticook River, which is the largest tributary of the Kennebec, opening that waterway to anadromous species for the first time in over a century.

In New York, in Maryland, in Massachusetts, and elsewhere along the Atlantic seaboard, the removal of smaller dams has allowed alewives, blueback herring, eels, and other anadromous species access to freshwater habitats and spawning grounds that they have long been denied, sometimes for more than two centuries.

Now, conservationists, anglers, and other advocates for diadromous fish are calling for what would be the biggest dam removal project yet, the removal of the lower four dams on the Snake River.  The National Wildlife Federation argues that

“Removing the four lower Snake River dams would reconnect endangered salmon and steelhead to 5,000 miles of pristine, high-elevation habitat—increasing the Columbia River Basin’s resiliency in the face of a warming climate, and providing salmon and steelhead with a real chance to recover to healthy and abundant populations.”

Trout Unlimited asserts that

“The fact is that salmon and steelhead returns [to their spawning grounds] in the Snake River Basin over the past 5 years have been among the lowest ever recorded.  In 2022, some salmon and steelhead returning to the Snake River have shown some signs of improvement—but only when lumping wild and hatchery fish counts together, and only when compared to terrible recent seasons…

“It is abundantly clear that the lower four Snake River dams are the primary cause of declines to wild salmon in the Snake River basin.  The Snake River basin is the largest, most climate resilient area of salmon habitat left in the lower 48 and contains over 40 percent of all coldwater habitat for Pacific salmon in the entire contiguous United States.  Salmon are resilient creatures, surviving ice ages and a geologically active landscape.  If we give them access to the most significant habitat left in the lower 48, then salmon can once again thrive.”

The Biden Administration seems to have agreed.  In September 2023, it issued a Presidential “Memorandum on Restoring Healthy and Abundant Salmon, Steelhead, and Other Native Fish Populations in the Columbia River Basin,” which acknowledged that

“Actions since 1855, including the Federal Government’s construction and operation of dams in the Basin, have severely depleted fish populations,”

and declared a policy

“…to carry out the requirement of the Pacific Northwest Electric Power Planning and Conservation Act, (Public Law 96-501) to operate, manage, and regulate the [Columbia River System] to adequately protect, mitigate, and enhance fish and wildlife affected by the Federal dams in the Basin in a manner that provides equitable treatment for fish and wildlife with the other purposes for which the Federal dams are managed and operated.”

The Biden Administration seemed to adhere to that policy, as on December 14, 2023, it announced an agreement that,

“when combined with other funding that the Administration is anticipated to deliver to the region, will bring more than $1 billion in new Federal investments to wild fish restoration over the next decade and enable an unprecedented 10-year break from decades-long litigation against the Federal government’s operation of its dams in the Pacific Northwest.”

The agreement was filed in the Federal District Court for the District of Oregon, and will be implemented through a memorandum of understanding between the Federal government, the states of Washington and Oregon, four Native American tribes, and various environmental organizations.  It appeared to set the stage for the possible removal of the Snake River dams.

However, this November’s election has changed the political landscape, ushering in a new administration that is far more friendly to dams and water projects, and far less friendly to salmon and free-flowing rivers, than the administration currently in power.  The election also appears to have handed both houses of Congress to a party that is generally more hostile to dam removal.

That may have doomed the dam removal effort on the Snake River, because such removal requires the approval of Congress.  Even before the recent election, the hydropower industry and its legislative allies spoke out against removing the dams, with Rep. Dan Newhouse (R-WA) claiming that

“This final package, which would make our region’s dams effectively defunct, confirms what we’ve all known for years.  The Biden Administration is catering to the wishes of extreme environmental activists that do not understand both the importance of the dams to our region, and the consequences of their proposed actions.”

Newhouse and other legislators introduced a package of nine bills that would prohibit removal of the Snake River dams.  At the same time, a representative of the affected tribes spoke out in favor of the dams’ removal and in support of the agreement.  Shannon F. Wheeler, Chairman of the Nez Perce Tribe, observed that

“The Federal dams on the lower Snake and mainstream Columbia rivers have had—and continue to have—devastating impacts on the salmon and our people, burdening our Treaty partnership.  So today, as Six Sovereigns joining together with the United States to advance salmon restoration throughout the Basin—including preparation for the breach of the four lower Snake River dams—we are also witnessing the restoration of Tribal Treaties to their rightful place under the rule of law.”

Thus, the table is set for continued conflict.

The bills introduced in the House, which would prevent the removal of the Snake River dams, were never passed and signed into law.  The Federal government seems to have entered into a legally binding agreement to protect the salmon, and if it steps away from that agreement, perhaps by refusing to remove the dams, it may well be subject to further litigation and perhaps an adverse court ruling.

At the same time, with Republicans now controlling the Senate, there is a very good chance that legislation to prevent the removal of the Snake River dams would pass both houses of Congress should it be reintroduced, and there is little doubt that it would be signed into law.  After all, in the previous Trump administration, the Environmental Protection Agency took the remarkable position that

“One option for addressing the conflict created by the inability to achieve applicable water quality criteria at all times and in all places is for the States to make changes to their applicable designated uses.  The federal regulation…provides requirements for establishing, modifying and removing designated uses.  A state may designate a use or remove a use that is not an existing use, if the state conducts a ‘use attainability analysis’ that demonstrates that attaining the use is not feasible…”

What Trump’s EPA was effectively suggesting was that if dams rendered rivers such as the Snake unable to support salmon spawns, the answer was not to remove the dams, but simply to remove “salmon spawning” from the list of designated uses of the river. 

While that might lead to the salmon’s disappearance from the river, it would make it far easier to leave the dams in place.

We could expect the same sort of logic from the incoming administration, given a president who once spoke of rivers’ waters being

“diverted into the Pacific Ocean,  [emphasis added]”

as if rivers didn’t naturally flow to the sea, and who last appointed a Secretary of the Interior who favored diverting waters away from their natural course, even though their flows were critical to the survival of Pacific salmon runs and endangered fish species, for the benefit of the agricultural industry.

The president who might decide whether to remove the Snake River dams recently—while not president—expressed so little understanding of how rivers flow that he said,

“You have millions of gallons of water pouring down from the north with the snow caps and Canada, and all pouring down and they have essentially a very large faucet.  You turn the faucet and it takes one day to turn it, and it’s massive, it’s as big as the wall of that building right there behind you.  You turn that, and all of that water aimlessly goes into the Pacific, and if they turned it back, all of that water would come down here and right into Los Angeles.”

It’s not completely clear what Trump was talking about, as there is no river system that can be simply diverted either to Los Angeles or into the Pacific Ocean—the badly overtaxed Colorado River probably comes closest to his description, although its usually dry delta opens not on the Pacific, but on the Gulf of California—but it is pretty clear that someone with his unique understanding of rivers is probably not going to do much to protect anadromous fish from the impacts of dams.

And that’s unfortunate, because the effort to remove dams for the benefit of anadromous fish has gained real momentum in recent years.  Many fish stocks, on both coasts, have benefitted from dam removals, and it will be sad to see removal efforts are abandoned.

However, given the current political environment, it is likely that the last, best chance to save declining runs of Pacific salmon, as well as other diadromous species, may well expire in just two more months.