NEW COD MANAGEMENT PLAN DISAPPROVED--FOR THE RIGHT REASONS

On May 28, 2025, the National Marine Fisheries Service issued a press release announcing the “Disapproval of Amendment 25 to the Northeast Multispecies Fishery Management Plan.”

The release went on to say that

“The New England Fishery Management Council prepared Amendment 25 to revise biological definitions for the Atlantic cod stock units managed under the [fishery management plan] from two stock units to four stock units.  However, Amendment 25 alone does not establish reference points or management measures for the newly defined Atlantic cod stock units.  After consideration of public comments received, the Secretary of Commerce disapproved Amendment 25 on May 16, 2025, on the basis that Amendment 25 and its supporting analyses do not adequately demonstrate how the proposed action is consistent with National Standard 1 or other required provisions of the Magnuson-Stevens Act.

“Because the four stock Atlantic cod structure and the resulting management track stock assessments have been determined to be the best scientific information available, National Standard 2 of the Magnuson-Stevens Act compels the Council to incorporate these cod stocks into the [fishery management plan].  The Council may do so by revising and resubmitting Amendment 25 or by developing a new amendment to the [fishery management plan].  To resolve the reasons for disapproval, the Council must include in a revised amendment the elements necessary for the action to be consistent with the National Standards and required provisions of the Magnuson-Stevens Act.  These management measures include:  The revision to the cod stock definitions to reflect four cod stock unit structure; the [status determination criteria] for the four cod stocks; accountability measures; and the distribution of [acceptable biological catch] for the four stocks.”

The press release didn’t make it completely clear why Amendment 25 failed to adhere to the National Standards for Fishery Conservation and Management, but a May 16 letter from Michael Pentony, the Regional Administrator for the Greater Atlantic Region Fisheries Office, to Rick Bellavance, Chairman of the New England Fishery Management Council, provides greater detail.

“The review of Amendment 25 and public comments received…concluded that the procedural approach to using Framework 69 as a companion action to Amendment 25 did not fully address the requirements of the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act.  Reference points, status determination criteria, and management measures required by the Magnuson-Stevens Act for the revised cod stock unit definitions Framework Adjustment 69 instead of being incorporated into Amendment 25.  This separation was exacerbated by the interceding beginning of the 2025 fishing year, which complicated full implementation of the Amendment and Framework.”

Such letter puts the disapproval of Amendment 25 in context, which is important given both the amendment’s importance and the opposition that it had received.

Historically, the Atlantic cod off the United States coast were managed as only two stocks—Georges Bank and the Gulf of Maine—even though genetic evidence strongly suggested that the species’ stock structure was significantly more complex. 

Such a simplistic management approach may well have contributed to the cod’s failure to respond to management efforts.  The 2023 Atlantic Cod Research Track Stock Assessment finally determined that there were at least four stock units which should be assessed separately: eastern Gulf of Maine, western Gulf of Maine (which is probably composed of two stocks—winter- and spring-spawning fish—but as a practical matter they can’t currently be separated for assessment purposes), Georges Bank, and southern New England.

The New England Fishery Management Council crafted Amendment 25, along with the related Framework Adjustment 69, in an effort to conform Atlantic cod management to the newly recognized stock structure.

From the beginning, the Amendment 25/Framework 69 package, which sharply reduced cod quotas and raised questions about how fish would be allocated among the various “sectors” created when catch shares were introduced to the New England groundfish fishery, became a lightning rod for fishermen already unhappy with the regulatory process.  Fishermen protested ahead of the December 2024 New England Council meeting, when Amendment 25 was expected to be approved, making comments similar to those uttered by Jerry Leeman, CEO of the New England Fishermen’s Stewardship Association, who said that

“These restrictions are going to be the end of the trawlers and anyone else buying fish.  Everyone in the fisheries expects Amendment 25 to torpedo their businesses.”

The fact that a representative of the New England Council admitted that

“The council recognizes the very low 2025 cod catch limits will be extremely challenging for the fishery to work under”

did not make fishermen view Amendment 25 any more favorably.  The New England Fishermen’s Stewardship Association fretted that Amendment 25 could

“permanently destroy the centuries-old cod fishing business,”

and Leeman said that

“We hope the new administration will promote American fishermen, instead of treating us like an invasive species.  But, the ground fishery might not make it until then if Amendment 25 is handed down.”

Given such concerns, and given President Donald Trump’s April 17 Executive Order, which stated that

“Most American fish stocks are healthy and have viable markets.  Despite these opportunities, seafood is one of the most heavily regulated sectors in the United States.  Federal overregulation has restricted fishermen from productively harvesting American seafood including through restrictive catch limits, selling our fishing grounds to foreign offshore wind companies, inaccurate and outdated fisheries data, and delayed adoption of modern technology,”

also stated that

“It is the policy of the United States to promote the productive harvest of our seafood resources [and] unburden our commercial fishermen from costly and inefficient regulation,”

and directed the Secretary of Commerce to

“immediately consider suspending, revising, or rescinding regulations that overly burden America’s commercial fishing…[and] identify the most heavily overregulated fisheries requiring action and take the appropriate action to reduce the regulatory burden on them,”

there was reason for concern that the disapproval of Amendment 25 was one of the first responses to the new federal policy.

Fortunately, that does not appear to be the case.  Based on what was said in the press release and Mr. Pentony's letter, as well as the plain language of Magnuson-Stevens, it seems far more likely that the disapproval was merely a response to shortcomings in the amendment itself.

For, upon examination, it becomes clear that Amendment 25 is an ineffective document, that recognizes the four Atlantic cod stock units, but does nothing more.  Management measures for the newly-defined stocks are nowhere to be found.  Instead, stock determination criteria, management measures, and other necessary specifications were included in Framework 69.

Such an approach is not compatible with the plain language of Magnuson-Stevens, which states that

“Any fishery management plan which is prepared by any Council, or by the Secretary, with regard to any fishery shall contain the conservation and management measures, applicable to foreign fishing and vessels of the United States, which are necessary and appropriate for the conservation and management of the fishery to prevent overfishing and rebuild overfished stocks, and to protect, restore, and promote the long-term health and stability of the fishery; …assess and specify the present and probable future condition of, and the maximum sustainable yield and optimum yield from, the fishery, and include a summary of the information used in making such specification; …specify objective and measurable criteria for identifying when the fishery to which the plan applies is overfished (with an analysis of how the criteria were determined and the relationship of the criteria to the reproductive potential of stocks of fish in the fishery) and, in the case of a fishery which the Council or the Secretary has determined is approaching an overfished condition or is overfished, contain conservation and management measures to prevent overfishing or end overfishing and rebuild the fishery; …to the extent that rebuilding plans or other conservation and management measures which reduce the overall harvest in a fishery are necessary, allocate, taking into consideration the economic impact of the harvest reductions or recovery benefits of the fishery participants in each sector, any harvest reductions or recovery benefits fairly and equitably among the commercial, recreational, and charter fishing sectors of the fishery; and establish a mechanism for specifying annual catch limits in the plan (including a multiyear plan), implementing regulations, or annual specifications, at a level such that overfishing does not occur in the fishery, including measures to ensure accountability.  [formatting omitted]”

Because Amendment 25 restructured the management plan to creating four stock units for Atlantic cod, replacing the previous two, it could not rely on pre-existing provisions in the Northeast Multispecies Fishery Management Plan to fill in the missing details; it would have had to include all of the required provisions applicable to the four newly designated stock units.  But Amendment 25 failed to do so, leaving the overall fishery management plan recognizing four stock units, but only containing management measures applicable to the two stock units that were formerly recognized.  That both created an unresolvable mismatch and tied NMFS’ hands when it came to managing cod, for as noted in Mr. Pentony’s letter to Capt. Bellavance,

“We did not publish a proposed rule for Amendment 25 because it does not have any implementing regulations.”

Thus. the amendment was effectively toothless, defining four stock units, but providing no guidance on how they should be managed.  NMFS' disapproval of Amendment 25 was the only practical action.

Still, it’s comforting to know that NMFS’ failure to approve Addendum 25 and Framework 69 sooner was not caused by political considerations, as might possibly have been the case, but by a legitimate effort to conform the management documents to federal law and so get the management process right.  And it’s equally comforting to learn that NMFS considers the 2023 stock assessment, which led to the creation of the four stock units, to be the best scientific information available, and the appropriate basis for future management.

It appears that Atlantic cod management is still on the right track. 

Now, we just need the New England Council to respond to the regional administrator’s letter, make the needed revisions to Amendment 25, and send it back to NMFS for what, it is hoped, will prove to be a speedy approval.

 

ANOTHER STRIPED BASS LAWSUIT

 

A little over a year ago, two boatmen’s groups, the Maryland Charter Boat Association and the Delmarva Fisheries Association, sued the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission in the United States District Court for the District of Maryland, alleging that the ASMFC’s management of striped bass, and more particularly, Addendum II to Amendment 7 to the Interstate Fishery Management Plan for Atlantic Striped Bass, was illegal, and violated the constitutions of both the United States and the State of Maryland.

The complaint in that lawsuit contained a number of errors of both fact and law, and the plaintiffs didn’t fare well in the courts.  Their first setback came about a month after the suit was filed, when the court denied their petition for a preliminary injunction, finding that the plaintiffs were unlikely to ultimately prevail in the legal action. 

Things got worse after the plaintiffs appealed the trial court’s decision to the United States Court of Appeals for the 4^th Circuit, which didn’t only agree that the plaintiffs weren’t entitled to a preliminary injunction, but also found that they lacked “standing”—that is, had no right to bring the legal action at all—because they sued the ASMFC while claiming to be injured by regulations adopted by the State of Maryland, which reduced the recreational bag limit for anglers on charter boats and reduced the commercial striped bass quota, so winning a lawsuit against the ASMFC would not necessarily lead to a change in Maryland’s rules nor provide them the relief that they sought.  The 4^th Circuit instructed the trial court to dismiss the suit with prejudice, and so resolved the legal action in the ASMFC’s favor.

A petition to the United States Supreme Court, which sought an emergency injunction, was quickly rejected.

At that point, most people would probably have accepted their loss and gone home, but the folks who brought the initial action against the ASMFC are nothing if not persistent.  On May 13, they filed a bigger, if probably no better, lawsuit featuring a larger cast of plaintiffs and a much larger group of defendants.  

I haven’t yet been able to get my hands on a copy of the complaint in the new action, but judging from some of the things that have been reported, it seems as if the plaintiffs are making arguments similar to those that they made in their last losing effort--that the ASMFC’s management of the striped bass fishery, and the states’ compliance with the ASMFC’s striped bass management plan, somehow constitute a denial of plaintiffs’ civil rights, and a taking of their property without due compensation.

It's a stretch, but I suppose the plaintiffs believe that if they keep trying, accumulate enough allies and sue enough different people, they will eventually prevail.  And it should be admitted that, although their chances of success are probably very small, they are somewhat larger than zero.

The new action, which was brought in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia, is captioned Cape Cod Charter Boat Association v. Burgum.  Additional plaintiffs include the Connecticut Charter and Party Boat Association, the Delmarva Fisheries Association, Inc., the Maryland Charter Boat Association, Inc., and the Montauk Boatmen and Captains Association.

Douglas Burgum, in his role as Secretary of the Interior, is the first-named defendant.  He is joined by fellow administration members Paul Souza, head of the United States Fish and Wildlife Service, Howard Lutnick, the Secretary of Commerce, and Laura Grimm, in charge of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.  The Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission is, of course, named, as are all fifteen of its members states, the District of Columbia, and the Potomac River Fisheries Commission.  So when the trial starts, there will definitely be a lot of lawyers filling the courtroom.

Various courtroom information services report that the lawsuit claims relief under 42 U.S.C. 1983, which is a section of the federal Civil Rights Act that reads

“Every person who, under color of any statute, ordinance, regulation, custom, or usage, of any State or Territory or the District of Columbia, subjects, or causes to be subjected, any citizen of the United States or other person within the jurisdiction thereof to the deprivation of any rights, privileges, or immunities secured by the Constitution and laws, shall be liable to the party injured in an action at law, suit in equity, or other proper proceeding for redress, except that any action brought against a judicial officer for an act or omission taken in such officer’s judicial capacity, injunctive relief shall not be granted unless a declaratory decree was violated or declaratory relief was unavailable.  For the purposes of this section, any Act of Congress applicable exclusively to the District of Columbia shall be considered to be a stature of the District of Columbia.”

Based on that language, in order to prevail, the plaintiffs are going to have to convince the court that the routine management of the striped bass resource, and the management actions taken by the ASMFC to conserve that resource and rebuild the overfished striped bass stock, when adopted by each state as regulations, somehow equate to the states depriving the plaintiffs of rights guaranteed to them by the Constitution or federal law.

Lawsuits generally don’t hinge on a single argument, and I suspect that the complaint cites alternate grounds for relief.  Plaintiffs willalmost certainly try to convince the court that the ASMFC is a federal agency,and that Addendum II constituted an “arbitrary and capricious” action, andshould thus be invalidated under the federal Administrative Procedures Act, and may present other arguments as well.  

Some of the comments made by plaintiffs’ representatives already provide a pretty good idea of what their approach might be.

The Star Democrat, a local Maryland news outlet, has reported that Capt. Robert Newberry, the President of the Delmarva Fisheries Association, brought the legal action because

“the [Atlantic States Marine Fisheries] commission and state agencies are shortening the fishing season, reducing the size of removable fish, lowering commercial quotas and limiting recreational fishers on charter boats to one fish per day.”

But those are all typical management responses when trying to rebuild an overfishes stock, and hardly rise to a deprivation of civil rights.  Newberry also reportedly opined that

“For too long, our industry has allowed this obscure Interstate Compact (ASMFC) founded in 1942 to help furnish the food supply behind the war effort, to transform itself into a power-hungry partnership with massive support from federal government agencies which apparently think that fish are more important than people.”

Such comment is a blatant misrepresentation of how ASMFC’s fisheries management role developed, as the commission did not “transform itself” into anything at all.  Instead, the ASMFC’s management role was defined by to two acts of Congress, the first being the Atlantic Striped Bass Conservation Act, which was enacted in 1984 in an effort to rebuild the then-collapsed striped bass stock, and the second being the Atlantic Coastal Fisheries Cooperative Management Act, enacted in 1993, which gave the ASMFC the authority to manage other coastal fish stocks.  

In passing those laws, Congress intended to give the ASMFC broad management autocks, in order to provide consistent coastwide management throughout a species' range, and to end chaos that ensues when states compete for the largest share of a depleted or declining fishery, instead of cooperating to assure such fishery’s long-term health.

Far from being the sort of rogue agency described by Newberry, the ASMFC is instead doing its job exactly as Congress intended.

Plaintiffs also seem to be under the misapprehension that the ASMFC’s striped bass management efforts somehow run afoul of the Executive Order signed by President Trump on April 17, titled “Restoring America’s Seafood Competitiveness.”  But that is not the case.

Even setting aside the fact that the ASMFC is an interstatecompact—that is, a voluntary association of states that have come together toaccomplish a particular purpose—and thus outside the scope of presidential authority, the Executive Order’s instructions with regard to fishery regulations are quite specific.  It directs that

“The Secretary of Commerce, in consultation with the Secretary of Health and Human Services and in consultation with input from the United States fishing industry, shall immediately consider suspending, revising, or rescinding regulations that overly burden America’s commercial fishing, aquaculture, and fish processing industries at the fishery-specific level.  Within 30 days of the date of this order, the Secretary of Commerce shall identify the most heavily overregulated fisheries requiring action and take appropriate action to reduce the regulatory burden on them, in cooperation with the Regional Fishery Management Councils, interagency partnerships, and through public-private partnerships as appropriate…”

But the striped bass regulations in question have been promulgated on the state and not the federal level, taking them out of the Secretary of Commerce’s jurisdiction.  Even if the Secretary tried to argue that the commercial and charter fisheries for striped bass impacted interstate commerce, and thus fell within his jurisdiction, such argument would necessarily fail, as striped bass management authority was granted to the states, acting cooperatively through the ASMFC, by an act of Congress, and Article I, Section 8, Clause 3 of the United States Constitution declares that

“[Congress shall have the Power…] To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes.  [emphasis added]”

The Executive Order provides the Secretary of Commerce with no power to manage striped bass in state waters; there is good reason why it mentions neither the states nor the ASMFC.

Similarly, the Executive Order provides that

“The Secretary of Commerce shall request that each Regional Fishery Management Council, within 180 days of the date of this order, provide the Secretary of Commerce with updates to their recommendations…to reduce burdens on domestic fishing and to increase production…The Regional Fishery Management Councils shall commit to a work plan and a schedule for implementation to insure these actions are prioritized.”

Again, there is no mention of the ASMFC, as the federal government, even at the presidential/secretarial level, has no authority to direct its actions.

If the plaintiffs are somewhat misinformed as to the origins of the ASMFC’s management authority and the commission's relationship with the federal government, it seems equally misinformed as to the health of the striped bass stock.  The Kent County News, another local Maryland news outlet, stated that

“Newberry said striped bass stock across the entire Mid-Atlantic region ‘has never been more plentiful.’”

That statement is demonstrably untrue.  A 2024 update to the striped bass stock assessment reveals that spawning stock biomass peaked in 2003, at an estimated 118,927 metric tons, as compared to 86,536 metric tons in 2023; if abundance is measured in numbers of striped bass, than abundance was at its highest in 2004, at an estimated 438.5 million individuals, compared to just 177.9 million individuals at the close of 2023.

Furthermore, striped bass abundance is likely to decline in the future, as the juvenile abundance index for Maryland, the single most important striped bass spawning ground on the coast, informs us that the years 2019 through 2024 witnessed the lowest six years of juvenile production in the 68-year history of the Maryland survey.

Despite those facts, the plaintiffs still argue that the current striped bass management measures aren’t needed, with Capt. Jill Maganza-Ruiz, president of the Montauk Boatmen and Captains Association, making the spurious comment that

“This needless action also violates common sense.  The ASMFC action was taken despite its own admission that striped bass stock is ‘not being overfished’ and that neither the Atlantic Ocean nor its bays and other tributaries even represent a ‘Fish Habitat of Concern’ for striped bass.”

She's right, the striped bass stock is not being overfished—that is, the fishing mortality rate is not excessively high—but that's largely because of the management measures included in the very Addendum II that the plaintiffs have chosen to challenge.  However, the striped bass stock is overfished—female spawning stock biomass remains too low to sustain the stock in the long term—and that is the problem that Addendum II is helping to resolve.

Another plaintiff’s representative, Capt. Willy Hatch, president of the Cape Cod Charter Boat Association, got an important fact right, but completely misinterpreted how it impacts striped bass abundance, when he said

“One major flaw in the claimed science behind this regulation is NOAA’s Marine Recreational Information program [sic] being used to estimate recreational and for-hire catch data which has been found to be grossly overestimating recreational catch.”

While he’s right that NMFS discovered an error in the MRIP effort survey that might overstate recreational effort—and so catch and landings data—by as much as 40 percent, Hatch seems to suggest that any overestimate of harvest would lead to the false conclusion that the striped bass population is smaller than it actually is.

That is not the case.

Recreational catch and landings are one of the inputs used in the striped bass stock assessment.  Higher sustained landings indicate that the striped bass stock is more productive, with a higher biomass target and threshold, and a larger biomass, than would be the case had landings been lower (this was illustrated in the 2018 benchmark stock assessment, when an upward revision in MRIP estimates led to the biomass target being increased from 72,032 to 114,295 metric tons; the estimate of spawning stock biomass was also modified upwards).

Thus, if MRIP is “grossly overestimating” recreational striped bass catch, as Hatch maintains and as is probably the case, the stock assessment is also necessarily overestimating both striped bass abundance and the productivity of the striped bass stock.  Such situation, if anything, would provide additional justification for Addendum II’s more restrictive management measures.

And a lot of fishermen believe that those management measures were perfectly appropriate, despite the plaintiffs’ objections.  While the complaint argued that

“Despite massive opposition in the form of hundreds of letters and in person meetings pleading with the ASMFC, its members [sic] states and other active participants, its self-described federal ‘partners’ and chief funding sources (namely, NOAA and USFWS), not to proceed with this flawed plan, that advice was glibly dismissed,”

it completely ignored the fact that while there might have been “hundreds” of letters opposing Addendum II (if barely 200 negative comments could charitably be--barely--referred to as "hundreds"), there were thousands of comments that supported the addendum, from fishermen who believed that its additional management measures were badly needed. 

A summary of the comments made for and against Addendum II reveals that, with respect to the ocean size limit, 2,289 comments supported the 28- to 31-inch slot that was adopted in Addendum II, compared to 32 who preferred the 28- to 35-inch status quo, the 160 who supported some sort of special, wider slot limit for the for-hire fleet, or the 6 who supported a 30- to 33-inch slot.  So on that issue, the plaintiffs were in a very decided minority.

We saw about the same sort of thing in the Chesapeake Bay, where 2,404 comments supported a 1-fish bag limit for all anglers, including those on charter boats, and only 55—far short of the “hundreds” cited in the plaintiffs’ complaint—supported giving a second fish to anglers fishing from for-hire vessels.

And with respect to the commercial quotas, only 158 comments supported keeping commercial quotas at the 2023 level, while 2,249 believed that Addendum II should reduce commercial quotas as well as further restrict recreational fishermen.

So, with respect to all three of the issues that gave rise to their lawsuit, the plaintiffs found themselves in the distinct minority.  If stakeholder opinion is one of the critical factors used to determine Addendum II’s validity, the plaintiffs are clearly on the losing side of the issue.

But maybe the most consideration ought to be the long-term impact on the plaintiffs themselves.

Mark Berger, head of the East Coast Fishing Coalition, an organization bringing together for-hire vessels from ports along the East Coast, complained that

“These actions threaten not only the present viability of our businesses but also the long-term sustainability of the for-hire sector of the fishing industry.  The ramifications extend beyond our industry, impacting hotels, restaurants, tackle shops and other merchants relying on our operations to sustain their livelihoods.”

A spokesman for North Carolina Watermen United, another organization that may join as a plaintiff, stated that

“We stand in solidarity with our fellow watermen in our opposition to the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission…The socio-economic hardships put on not only our captains, crew, and families but on our entire coastal communities when agencies continue to handcuff these watermen is immeasurable.”

And in the short term, those statements might almost be true.  But the current striped bass management measures offer the hope that any hardships created will only be temporary, and that a rebuilt stock will eventually bring regulatory relief and greater prosperity for everyone involved with the fishery.

On the other hand, the striped bass stock has collapsed before, and given the last six years of poor recruitment, and its current overfished state, it’s entirely possible that, without effective management measures, the striped bass stock could collapse again.

In 1984, after the stock had collapsed but before Congress gave ASMFC the authority to manage striped bass, recreational fishermen in New England and the Mid-Atlantic made slightly fewer than 1,800,000 trips targeting striped bass.

In 2024, even fishing under Addendum II’s stricter management measures, anglers made over 15.5 million trips primarily targeting striped bass, as those management measures act to slowly rebuild the stock,.

In 2003, when spawning stock biomass was at its peak, the number of directed striped bass trips reached 22 million.

So it’s pretty clear that effective conservation and management isn’t only good for striped bass, but also good for the businesses that rely on the striped bass resource.  Abundance clearly drives effort, and effort drives profits.

That’s something that the plaintiffs ought to think about.

For while it is highly unlikely that their suit will be successful, after 45 years as an attorney, I’ve learned to never say never when it comes to predicting what a court will do.  There’s always a chance, however slight, that plaintiffs will win.

And if they do, we might well find ourselves back in 1984, with a collapsed striped bass stock and an ASMFC stripped of its management powers, with no authority to pull the states all together to rebuild the stock.

In such a scenario, even if the plaintiffs win the lawsuit, in the end, they’re going to lose.

 

 

STATE MANAGEMENT OF EEZ FISHERIES: CAUSE FOR CONCERN

 

As the National Marine Fisheries Service lays off staff, and as that agency’s budget is cut, the possibility of transferring management responsibilities for many species of fish from NMFS to the states is going to prove more and more attractive to those who seek to cut costs, as well as to those who seek to escape the constraints of the structured, science-based federal management system in favor of the more flexible, politically-driven management systems that exist in the most states.

The state management approach has long been championed by “anglers’ rights” organizations, particularly those in the southeastern and Gulf states, who believe that getting out from under science-based regulations will provide their members—and all other anglers—the opportunity to pile more dead fish on the dock.  It has also been favored by the recreational fishing and boatbuilding industries, which seem to assume that if anglers can bring home more fish, they’ll buy more fishing tackle, more boats, and more boating gear, but don’t seem too concerned about the long-term business impacts of anglers overfishing fish stocks on a regular basis.

Nearly ten years ago, we saw then-Representative Garret Graves (R-LA) introduce a bill called the “Gulf States Red Snapper Management Authority Act,” which would have transferred management of red snapper in the Gulf of Mexico from NMFS to a newly-created Gulf States Red Snapper Management Authority.  The legislation actually managed to pass in the House of Representatives, but the Senate had a little more sense, and let the bill wither and die without giving it much, if any, serious consideration.

The anglers’ rights folks loved Rep. Graves’ bill, saying things like

“The state approach is simply a better way to manage a fishery as a whole.  State agencies put more stock in what a fish population actually looks like and how it’s responding to management in real time, rather than basing everything on estimates of what’s caught…

“The federal government has had decades to get red snapper management right.  It’s time to let the states finally provide the remedy.”

But what sort of “remedy” would the states actually provide?

We might have gotten a foretaste of that earlier this month, down in South Carolina.

South Carolina is a member of the South Atlantic Fishery Management Council, which includes all of the states between North Carolina and Florida.  Like the Gulf of Mexico, the South Atlantic hosts a red snapper population, but unlike the Gulf’s red snapper, the South Atlantic fish are experiencing considerable stress.

Strangely, most of that stress doesn’t come from intentional harvest, but from bycatch in other, primarily recreational, fisheries.  As NMFS has explained,

“Most of the red snapper fishing mortality is attributed to dead discards in the recreational sector…Recreational fishermen discard red snapper [during the] recreational open fishing season and during the closed season when fishers are targeting snapper-grouper species that co-occur with red snapper…approximately 98 percent of all red snapper discard mortalities during 2021-2023 were from the recreational sector.  The current level of discards is resulting in less younger fish, which are more abundant, surviving to the older ages necessary to sustain the population in the long term, particularly if recruitment decreases back to more historical levels.  Additionally, the high level of mortality from discards is reducing and limiting the amount of landed catch.”

But that explanation only angers a lot of recreational fishermen, who only know—and only want to know—that they are seeing a lot of red snapper when they go fishing, and want to be able to kill them and take them home.  To their way of thinking, it’s wrong for NMFS to impose an almost ludicrously short recreational red snapper season—the most recent lasted only one day—and one-fish bag limit, given the number of red snapper that they’re seeing.  The fact that they’re killing far more red snapper through discard mortality than they are through directed harvest, and that such discard mortality prevents NMFS from setting a longer directed season, seems to be beyond such anglers' comprehension.

And the leaders of the anglers’ rights groups, who get paid for making their members happy, not better informed, make no effort to improve recreational fishermen's understanding.

NMFS, in an effort to settle one of the three lawsuits filed against the agency for its failure to end the overfishing of South Atlantic red snapper, proposed a regulation that would nearly triple recreational red snapper landings, from 124,815 to 346,000 pounds, in exchange for a 3-month season closure for all reef fish along the 180-mile stretch of Georgia and north Florida coast where red snapper bycatch is highest.  But anglers, feeling no obligation to reduce their red snapper discards, are actively opposing the proposal.  They’re only interested in taking more dead snapper home, and are not concerned with whatever dead fish they might leave behind in the ocean.

And that’s where state management comes in, as politicians seek to offer relief—or, at least, the illusion of relief—for the anglers’ purported problems.

Last Sunday, in a different context, I mentioned legislation, introduced in North Carolina and already passed by one of the state’s two legislative chambers, that would, among other things,

“Allow a year-round red snapper season with a limit of two fish per person per day and a 20-inch minimum size limit in State waters.”

where very few, if any, red snapper are caught.

But South Carolina has gone a step further.   

Earlier this month, South Carolina Governor Henry McMaster signed a bill that would set state regulations for red snapper and 54 other species of South Atlantic reef fish.  South Carolina generally conforms its marine fisheries regulations to those adopted by NMFS, but the newly signed bill would create some explicit exceptions to that general rule, including

“(2) red snapper (Lutjanus campechanus) whose lawful catch limit is two fish per person per day.  The lawful minimum size for red snapper is twenty inches total length and there is no closed season…

“(3) all other species under the Snapper-Grouper Fisheries Management Plan.  The lawful catch limit for a species under that plan is the limit published in the 2024-2025 South Carolina Hunting and Fishing Laws and Regulations Guide, or the federal limit, whichever is higher.  The lawful minimum size for a species under that plan is the size as published in the 2024-2025 South Carolina Hunting and Fishing Laws and Regulations Guide, or the federal limit for the species, whichever is lower.  There is no closed season.”

That’s 55 different species, for which South Carolina’s state management measures could differ from those established by NMFS.  And the differences can be pretty spectacular. In the case of red snapper, South Carolina would allow anglers to land two 20-inch (or larger) fish on every single day of the year, which would of necessity have a far different, and far greater, impact on the stock than does NMFS’ 1-fish bag limit and 1-day season, even if there is no federal size limit at all.

While just about everyone will concede that there is always some uncertainty in fisheries science, and that two experts looking at the same set of data might well come away with slightly different conclusions, no one is going to believe that the difference between a 1-fish bag and 1-day season and a 2-fish bag and 365 day season can be wholly attributed to different ways of viewing the numbers.

Something else must be going on.

In signing the bill, Governor McMaster said that

“This new law reflects South Carolina’s commitment to commonsense, homegrown solutions.  Our anglers deserve a system that’s fair, science-driven, and tailored to our state’s unique waters, not a one-size-fits-all approach.  With S. 219, we begin putting our state in the driver’s seat to manage our resources responsibly and protect access for current and future generations.”

What future generations might have access to, if South Carolina badly overfishes its reef fish stocks, isn’t completely clear.

It probably wouldn’t matter too much, if South Carolina’s ambitions didn’t stretch beyond its dtate waters.  After all, the ocean bottom off South Carolina slopes slowly away from the shore, and few red snapper, or other important reef fish, are found in the state’s relatively shallow coastal sea.

However, it is clear that the state, and its fishing and boating industries, have bigger plans.

The South Carolina Boating and Fishing Alliance bills itself as

“a nonprofit membership organization representing the state’s boat and fishing tackle manufacturers, which generate a $6.5 billion+ annual economic impact and support 27,100 jobs.  SCBFA unites industry members, dealers, retailers, boaters, and anglers to protect and grow this vital economic sector while advocating for public policy that conserves South Carolina’s waterways.”

Gettys Brannon, the Alliance’s President and CEO, very clearly noted that, with the new law in place,

“If the federal government were to give us control, give the state control, give South Carolina [Department of Natural Resources] control, we would already have the framework in place for state management and state limits and grouper snapper limits within state waters,  [emphasis added]”

which pretty well tells everyone where the Alliance wants to see things go, even if they didn't quite spell things out.

Such intentions were echoed by the bill’s sponsor, state Senator Stephen Goldfinch, who commented,]

“It’s a great start and it puts a framework of regulation and enforcement that we can use in the future to govern a lot of water, not just a little bit, so I’m looking forward to that.  [emphasis added]”

To no one’s surprise, the biggest anglers’ rights and industry organizations endorsed the bill's approach.

Scott Whitaker, the Executive Director of the (badly misnamed) Coastal Conservation Association’s South Carolina Chapter celebrated the law’s passage, saying that

“This law marks a significant shift in how we manage our marine resources, moving away from overbearing federal oversight and toward local, science-based decision-making,”

while Jeff Angers, President of the Center for Sportfishing Policy, an umbrella organization of industry and anglers’ rights groups that spends much of its time lobbying against demonstrably effective federal fisheries management programs, gushed that

“South Carolina is at the front of the pack with its can-do attitude, its stand-out director and its newly enacted snapper grouper seasons in state waters.”

Given the realities of red snapper biology and its vulnerability as bycatch in other recreational fisheries, it’s easy to question whether South Carolina is “at the front of the pack” doing anything more than undercutting the federal fishery management program, and making it more likely that reef fish management in the southeast will fall into a state of undermanaged chaos.

Given the liberal management measures incorporated into the newly signed bill, such impending chaos sees certain.

What still remains uncertain is whether federal legislators, and federal fisheries managers, will be foolish enough to give states like South Carolina, the fishing and boating industries, and the anglers’ rights advocates the opportunity to loose such chaos on the southeast’s reef fish stocks.

NORTH CAROLINA LEGISLATORS TRY TO HOLD BACK FLOUNDER RECOVERY

 

The parable of King Canute and the rising tide is a well-known episode in the lore of Christian England.  As the story goes,

“Canute set his throne by the sea shore and commanded the incoming tide to halt and not to wet his feet and robes.  Yet, ‘continuing to rise as usual [the tide] dashed over his feet and legs without respect for his royal person.  Then the king leapt backwards, saying, ‘Let all men know how empty and worthless is the power of kings, for there is none worthy of the name, but He whom heaven, earth, and the sea obey by eternal laws.’  He then hung his gold crown on a crucifix, and never wore it again ‘to the honor of God the almighty King.”

The tale is often misinterpreted as depicting royal arrogance, and a king who thought he could hold back the tide by the power of his command alone, when in fact it was one of humility, a tale which saw Canute demonstrate to his courtiers that no royal command has the power to dictate how natural forces behave.

Unfortunately, there seems to far too many North Carolina legislators who lack Canute’s wisdom and humility, and could take some important lessons from that erstwhile king.

Such legislators appear to believe that they can dictate rebuilding terms to the state’s badly overfished southern flounder, without regard to biology and the needs of the flounder stock.

Southern flounder have been overfished for many years.  The North Carolina Southern Flounder Fishery Management Plan Amendment 3, released in May 2022, advised that

“The 2019 coast-wide stock assessment, including data through 2017, determined the southern flounder stock is overfished and overfishing is occurring.  North Carolina law requires management action to end overfishing within two years.  Recovery of the stock from an overfished condition must occur within 10 years and provide at least a 50% probability of success from the date the plan is adopted.  Rebuilding of this stock within 10 years requires a minimum reduction of 52% in total annual removals by weight for both the commercial and recreational fisheries based on 2017 harvest (landings and dead discards).  Amendment 3 further refines and builds on action taken in Amendment 2, which adopted a more conservative 72% reduction for the fisheries to help ensure the statutory requirements for rebuilding the southern flounder stock, described above, are met.  Management strategies implemented through Amendment 3 will not restart the time requirements set in Addendum 2 as approved in August 2019, that are necessary to meet the statutory mandate.”

So far, so good.  North Carolina determined that southern flounder are badly overfished and, in accordance with state law, state fisheries managers adopted a conservative rebuilding plan likely to rebuild the stock within 10 years.

The problem is that southern flounder are very popular with anglers.  Amendment 3 noted that in 20 out of the previous 30 years, southern flounder were the most popular recreational fish species in North Carolina.  When a popular recreational species becomes overfished, and faces the sort of strict recreational management measures necessary to rebuild southern flounder by the 2028 deadline, sparks can begin to fly as the tourism and recreational fishing industries clash with fisheries managers.

That happened with North Carolina flounder.

Prior to the adoption of Amendment 3, anglers were allowed to retain four flounder (which might include any combination of the three flounder species—southern flounder, summer flounder, and Gulf flounder—found in the state’s waters), provided that each fish was no less than 15 inches long, during the course of a very short season that only included the first two weeks of September.  However, on about 93% of the trips that saw flounder landed, anglers only kept a single fish.  That made it very difficult to implement Amendment 3’s 72% reduction in recreational fishing mortality (other strict restrictions were also being placed on the commercial fishery, to achieve a similar reduction there), because bag limits would be practically ineffective.  Given that the open season only lasted two weeks, it would also be very difficult to use a shortened season to achieve the needed cut.

In the end, North Carolina adopted hard-poundage quotas for both the commercial and the recreational fisheries, and required pound-for-pound paybacks in the following year if a quota was exceeded. 

In 2022, the recreational quota was 170,655 pounds, but the recreational catch (a combination of landings and dead discards) was substantially higher at 226,995 pounds.  As a result, anglers had to pay back 56,340 pounds in 2023.  That payback requirement led to an adjusted quota of just 114,315 pounds.  But in that 2023, the recreational catch was even higher than it was in 2022, totaling 241,609 pounds; that meant that anglers would have to pay back 127,294 pounds in 2024.  When that amount was deducted from 2024’s 170,655 quota, it left an adjusted quota of just 43,361 pounds—an adjusted quota that, based on the experience of the past two years, was far too small to cover 2024’s dead discards, much less any landings.

North Carolina thus decided to close the 2024 recreational fishery completely.

Patricia Smith, a spokesman for the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality, said that, as a result of that closure,

“We have a lot of angry fishermen,”

who characterized the closure as “government overreach,” argued that it was based on unreliable data, and blamed the commercial fishing industry for any problems that the southern flounder might be experiencing.

Anglers’ arguments convinced the North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission, which has jurisdiction over southern flounder caught inside coastal rivers (as opposed to the Marine Fisheries Commission, which regulates flounder caught in marine and estuarine waters) that the adjusted 2024 recreational quota was large enough to allow a four-day season encompassing the first two weekends in September, with a 1-fish bag limit and 15-inch minimum size.  Members of the Wildlife Resources Commission thought it was unfair that commercial fishermen could fish in 2024 when anglers couldn’t, that the recreational summer flounder allocation was too small (the allocation has since been amended to provide more flounder to the recreational sector), and that, if anything, the commercial fishery should have been closed to allow for at least some recreational fishing.

Now, North Carolina legislators have decided to intervene, cast scientific advice to the wind, and establish an arbitrary recreational fishing season, apparently determining that, as legislators, they will be able to command the stock to recover under whatever terms the lawmakers chose.

Thus, on May 7, the North Carolina House passed House Bill 442, titled “An Act to Restore Recreational Fishing for Flounder and Red Snapper in North Carolina Through the Creation of a Four-Year Pilot Program.”  The bill states, in part, that

“Whereas, in 2024, the Division of Marine Fisheries of the Department of Environmental Quality issued proclamations limiting the recreational harvest of flounder to four days in joint fishing waters…; and

“Whereas, the recreational fishing industry contributes significantly to the economy of coastal North Carolina; and

“Whereas, North Carolina’s restrictions on recreational fishing of flounder…are more stringent than any other Southeastern state from Virginia to Texas; and

“Whereas, there is considerable overlap in the fish populations between southeastern counties of the State, such as Brunswick County, and South Carolina; and

“Whereas, higher creel and season limits in South Carolina in 2024 gives that state a significant competitive advantage in the competition for recreational fishing tourism; and

“Whereas, state policies regarding recreational catch and release reporting and data analysis overestimate overall mortality, thus skewing the science on the flounder fishery; and

“Whereas, coastal fishing charters or individual boats report catching large amounts of these species by accident and having to release them, indicating the populations are plentiful; and

“Whereas, these unnecessarily strict and possibly unscientific restrictions on the recreational fishing industry forces recreational fishing customers and captains to move much of their business to South Carolina and Virginia; Now, therefore,

“The General Assembly…”

commanded that southern flounder find a way to rebuild—or at least not to decline any further—with a six-week recreational fishing season that occurs sometime between May 15 and November 15 with a one-fish bag limit and no annual recreational quota, plus a 750,000 pound commercial quota (which is more than 50% higher than Amendment 3’s 548,034-pound total allowable catch, which must be further divided among both the commercial and recreational fisheries).  Such measures would remain in place through 2029.

The bill passed the House on a lopsided 77-35 vote, and state Senator Norman W. Sanderson, a Republican from Pamlico, North Carolina who is co-chair of the Senate Agricultural Committee, expressed his intention to bring the bill up for a hearing there.

Thus, despite the objections of people like state Representative Pricey Harrison, a Democrat from Guilford, North Carolina, who declared that

“This is not a way to manage fisheries…We have experts,”

there is at least a reasonable chance that the legislation could be passed by the Senate and be signed into law.

Should that occur, North Carolina legislators will find themselves in a similar situation as King Canute, commanding the southern flounder population to rebuild or, at least, not to collapse.

If they find themselves in that position, it is unlikely that they will find their commands to the flounder any more successful than Canute’s command to the tide.

BUDGET CUTS THREATEN PACIFIC SALMON

 

I’ve been doing a lot of writing about cuts to National Marine Fisheries Service staff in recent weeks, for no better reason than because those cuts probably pose the biggest threat to science-based fisheries management that we have faced since the passage of the Magnuson-Stevens FisheryConservation and Management Act.

So far, I’ve talked about how such cuts might impact Mid-Atlantic species such as bluefish, summer flounder, scup, and black sea bass, how they are impacting groundfish off New England and in the North Pacific, how they’ve impacted scallops in the northeast and might even affect non-federally-managed species such as striped bass.  Although I haven’t written about it yet, at last week’s Highly Migratory Species Advisory Panel meeting, I learned how they’re hindering efforts to improve shark science, and their general impacts on the regulatory process.

But a good argument might be made that, of all the fish out there, none will be as adversely affected as Pacific salmon.

Even before the staff cuts were announced, Pacific salmon were stuck behind the eight ball.  Although some runs, like the heralded runs in Alaska’s Bristol Bay region, are healthy and not immediately threatened, far more are in such bad shape that they’ve been listed under the Endangered Species Act, with most of those showing no real signs of recovery.  

Much of the commercial and recreational salmon fisheries are already supported largely by hatchery-propagated fish, since wild salmon have become to scarce to support either fishery's needs.

Thus the question must be asked:  How will Pacific salmon, and the people who depend on them, fare over the next few years?

The answer may be, “Not very well.”

When I make that statement, I’m not just talking about the wild runs of fish which, with some exceptions, are seriously distressed, but also of the millions of salmon manufactured in hatcheries each year, which support not only significant commercial, tribal, and recreational fisheries, but also marine mammals that can no longer depend on naturally-spawned fish for their food.

Last month, the New York Times ran an article discussing the fate of hatchery salmon in the age of DOGE budget cuts, and the news was not good.  The article reported that, just in Washington State,

“almost a dozen hatcheries in the Puget Sound region are in limbo because a single employee from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration was terminated in February, a casualty of cuts made by billionaire Elon Musk’s advisory group known as the Department of Government Efficiency.

“That employee was Krista Finlay and her job at NOAA was to ensure hatcheries complied with the Endangered Species Act before fish were released into Puget Sound…

“’If I don’t release millions and millions of salmon, there’s less this year and years going forward,’ Ms. Finlay said.  ‘If we don’t have salmon returning in 2027 and 2028, we don’t have offspring to release the following year, so it will take many, many years to repair this, if it’s even possible.’”

I’m no fan of hatcheries, and if the only problem was that commercial and recreational fishermen wouldn’t be able to catch, and in the commercial fishermen’s case, profit from fish artificially propagated at the taxpayer’s expense, I’d have no problem seeing the hatchery system shut down, no matter how or why the shutdown occurred.  However, things are rearely that simple, and Pacific salmon provide no exception to the general rule.

Salmon are part of a complex ecosystem that sees young salmon travel to the sea, feed on the sea’s bounty for a few years, and then return to spawn and die in their natal rivers.  In their death, the salmon deliver the nutrients from their bodies, accumulated in those years of feeding at sea, to the headwaters of local rivers, where they feed everything from eagles to foxes to the great bears, are carried ashore by predators and scavengers that unintentionally fertilize streamside vegetation and, to the extent that they remain in the water, provide food for many aquatic creatures, including the insects on which the next generation of juvenile salmon will require in order to survive until they, in their turn, exit the river to feed in the sea.

Given the current dearth of salmon in most Pacific rivers, shutting down the hatcheries, as desirable as that might be from some perspectives, could well harm the remaining wild fish.  Without the hordes of hatchery-produced fish in the rivers and nearshore ocean, the wild fish, while spared the competition for food and spawning space that hatchery salmon currently pose, would be they would also be far more exposed to orcas, sea lions, eagles, bears, and other predators.  It’s not hard to imagine the harm that a pod of sea lions, hunting near the mouth of a river, could do to an endangered salmon run. 

In fact, we don’t have to imagine it—we can see the damage done to the threatened run of steelhead (sea run rainbow trout) at Oregon’s Willamette Falls, where up to 25% of the returning fish are lost to sea lions each year.

And, of course, the damage would be mutual, as the loss of the hatchery salmon would be a serious blow to threatened and endangered populations of predatory marine mammals, which would lose an important source of food.

But salmon hatcheries would not be the only casualties of the current staffing and budget cuts.  According to the conservation magazine Mongabay,

“The [White House budget] plan…eliminates the Pacific Coastal Salmon Recovery Fund, which Daniel Schindler, an ecologist at the University of Washington, told Mongabay would be ‘catastrophic to efforts to restore degraded habitat’ and build back the region’s iconic salmon populations.”

Radio station KUOW provided additional details on its website, stating that

“In 2023, the Pacific Coastal Salmon Recovery Fund distributed $107 million to states and tribes, with Washington state receiving $26 million, more than any other recipient.  Coastwide, the fund restored 3,624 acres of salmon habitat in 2023 and removed obstacles enabling salmon to reach an additional 202 miles of spawning streams.”

Senator Patty Murray (D-WA) has summed up the situation by noting that, just within her state,

“The Puget Sound, the Columbia River, they all rely on NOAA.  In Washington state, salmon are not just a pillar of our economy—and of the seafood industry that is so prominent in our state—it is also a way of life for our communities, for our tribes, and its part of our state’s identity, so NOAA’s work could not be more important when it comes to that.”

And Senator Murray isn’t the only person who should be concerned about how cuts to NMFS programs and personnel are going to impact Pacific salmon.

On April 17, President Donald Trump issued an Executive Order titled “Restoring America’s Seafood Competitiveness.” A portion of that Executive Order read

“It is the policy of the United States to promote the productive harvest of our seafood resources…

“The Secretary of Commerce shall request that each Regional Fishery Management Council…provide the Secretary of Commerce with updates to their recommendations…to reduce burdens on domestic fishing and to increase production…

“The Secretary of Commerce shall pursue additional direct public engagement to ensure executive departments and agencies are focusing core fisheries management and science functions to directly support priority needs that strengthen our Nation’s seafood supply chain.”

Pacific salmon support one of the most important commercial fisheries in the United States.  Cuts to NMFS staff and programs that seek to protect and rebuild wild salmon runs, or help ensure that millions of hatchery-produced salmon will run to the ocean each year, to support healthy commercial and recreational fisheries when they return in years hence, do not support any of those stated goals.

If President Trump truly wants to see the United States increase its seafood production, cutting funds to NMFS projects that support Pacific salmon is exactly the wrong way to get the job done.