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.