“These amendments [to Magnuson-Stevens] need to not only
support the existing population of recreational anglers and fishing related
businesses but also allow for new entrants to come into the fishery and
businesses to grow and expand. The law
needs to recognize that in its current form, our tradition of fishing cannot be
passed on to our children without [Magnuson-Stevens] taking away opportunity
from the rest of the fishing community.
[Magnuson-Stevens], as it applies to recreational fishing, is a flawed
law, one that stifles growth of our industry and challenges the very future of
our tradition.”
Such comments made it clear that the tackle industry’s
problem with Magnuson-Stevens was the law’s emphasis on science-based
conservation and management, which restricted recreational harvest to levels
that are sustainable in the long term, and thus “tak[es] away opportunity from
the rest of the fishing community” if the number of anglers increases. What the speaker was obviously arguing for
was a management approach that would allow anglers to both increase in number and overfish as they did so, and so theoretically
increase tackle industry sales and profits—until that point where the bill for
the overages comes due, and fish populations fall low enough that few bother to
pursue them.
Thus, striped bass fishermen shouldn’t have been surprised
last year, when Michael
Waine, the East Coast spokesman for the American Sportfishing Association, got
on a podcast during which he seemed to suggest that additional striped bass
management measures should not be adopted, in order to maintain anglers’
ability to keep killing fish (and to keep the tackle industry selling stuff to
those anglers). In the podcast, Waine
characterized the striped bass fishery as
“Another scenario where management has gotten more strict
with time,”
then went on to say,
“We’re in a rebuilding period for the striped bass
population. The trajectory is good right
now, the rebuilding trajectory.
(Remember that you’ve got to take all this with a grain of salt. I think it’s better to talk about
trajectories rather than talk in absolutes given the uncertainties.)
“So we have an increasing trend in the striped bass, but we
know on the horizon there’s been poor recruitment in the Chesapeake Bay, which
is a major spawning area for striped bass and that’s been a good indicator of
future, or what the fishery will look like in the future, right. You cannot catch an adult striped bass
without starting with a lot of babies.
We know these, what we call ‘poor year classes,’ that have been spawned
over the past five years are coming down the road, meaning when the fish get large
enough to be a part of our fishery, that we’re catching, there are going to be
fewer of them, and so the question becomes, like what do we do in the meantime,
to plan for that?
“And so that coupled with very ambitious conservation goals, very
ambitious, like we’re trying to rebuild the striped bass population to a level
that it has rarely ever been to in the history of striped bass, that we’ve been
measuring. And so the question becomes
like how far are we willing to go from a management and policy side to
meet these very ambitious conservation goals, and you can see the byproduct of
that, we have a very narrow slot limit.
And so where we, where we’re currently focused is where do we go from
here? We want to avoid the scenario like
southern flounder [a badly overfished stock that saw North Carolina anglers
overfish their quota so badly in 2023 that, after paybacks were considered,
there was too little quota left to support a 2024 season] and a scenario like
red snapper [where, in the South Atlantic, anglers are killing so many of the
still-overfished snapper as bycatch in other fisheries, and so badly
overfishing the stock, that the National Marine Fisheries Service has been sued
multiple times for failing to properly address the problem, and the recent
recreational seasons have been limited to somewhere between one and three
days]. We want to make sure…that
management is aware of the headwinds but also allows for access for anglers to
go out and catch a fish, and so how do we balance these values? How do we balance building back a population
to a conservation level that we call all agree on, which we never likely will,
with fishing access, with the ability to actually go out and catch these fish,
and what worries me, worries me specifically is like we’ll go too far, meaning
we’ll actually tell people to stop fishing for striped bass, which is
where I think everyone loses…”
Waine’s comments make it clear that the American Sportfishing Association is more concerned with maintaining an active and profitable fishery than in restoring the striped bass stock to a level that’s sustainable in the long term.
His
comments also incorporate the fallacy, that we’ve seen pushed by both the
recreational and commercial fishing industries in many different fisheries
discussions, that it’s possible, and even desirable, to “balance building back
to a conservation level…with fishing access,” a fallacy that, if incorporated
into policy, only paves the road to failure and potential stock collapse,
regardless of the species involved.
For in the end, you can’t negotiate with nature.
If the fishing mortality rate of striped bass, or any other species, must be maintained at or below a certain level to avoid exceeding maximum sustainable yield and pushing the stock into long-term decline, you can’t “balance” management measures needed to achieve that rate with maintaining a certain level of harvest; if the fishing mortality rate exceeds the threshold, the stock will inevitably, eventually decline.
Any attempt at “balancing” conservation with continued harvest might result in an overfishing rate that is lower than it might be if harvest was the only concern, and slow the rate of depletion, but overfishing at any level will still have its inexorable effect on the stock. The fish will disappear.
The only difference might be that the tackle industry
profits a bit more before the inevitable end.
If
there was any doubt that Waine—and so, presumably, the ASA—was seeking to
stymie efforts to tighten striped bass management measures, his comments at the
December 2024 meeting of the ASMFC’s Atlantic Striped Bass Management Board,
shocked many striped bass anglers listening in, removed any doubt.
Serious striped bass anglers have long been one of the
loudest voices calling for striped bass conservation. In recent years, each time striped bass
management changes have been on the table, the ASMFC has received thousands of
comments supporting some of the most restrictive management measures that were proposed, a marked contrast to the mere handful of comments that support
more liberal regulation. Aware of that
fact, Waine commented, in his opposition to measures that would have provided
protection for the important 2018 striped bass year class this season,
“I think giving the [then-proposed] addendum the opportunity
to consider this more thoroughly [rather than adopting regulations that would
go into effect in 2025 to protect the 2018 year class, which will
otherwise be very vulnerable to recreational fishermen], really develop options
that the public can consume and provide input on is the best way best path
forward [sic]. You know, I think about you guys know I am a part of a
lot of these fisheries management discussions, and this is probably the most
unique fishery that ASMFC manages, especially recreationally.
“I look at the public comments, and I know that there’s
millions of striped bass anglers out there.
Millions. And I’m only seeing
twenty-five hundred comments from a lot of the same people that we know have
been commenting. And so, as an
organization, we’re going to work with our members to try to get more people
integrated into this process. We know that
the recreational fishery is very diverse, and I don’t feel the public comments
really are a good reflection of that diversity.
And so, where is the opportunity to get those individuals into the
process?
“Where is the opportunity to give folks the chance to
get involved and engaged?...Don’t talk to the same folks that you’ve been
talking to all the time. Find the people
who care about this resource, and value it in a way that their voices should be
heard too. And that’s what we’ll do as
an organization ourselves.
[emphasis added]”
Waine’s comments fairly drip with hypocrisy, and more than a
little irony.
He effectively tells the Management Board to discount the
comments of the thousands of conservation-minded anglers who clearly “care
about this resource, and value it” (to borrow Waine’s own words) enough to
learn about the issues and attend hearings and/or submit public comments,
because they are “the same people that we know have been commenting.” Yet Waine himself admits that he is “a part
of a lot of these fisheries management discussions”—he is, in truth, one of
“the same people that we know have been commenting”—but he clearly expects the
Management Board to hear and value his comments, while disregarding the comments of others.
It's only the “same people” who disagree with Waine
and the American Sportfishing Association who should be ignored…
And, of course, to counter those thousands of “same people”
who have taken the time to learn about the issues and how to comment on them—information
that is freely and publicly available to everyone on the ASMFC website—Waine
announced what seems to be an American Sportfishing Association effort to
create an astroturf movement (defined
as “the use of fake grassroots efforts that primarily focus on influencing
public opinion and typically are funded by corporations and political entities
to form opinions”) to advocate against needed striped bass conservation measures.
But this is where the tackle industry is trying to take
fisheries management, and they’re not just targeting striped bass.
But that short recreational season isn’t the whole
story. As
I also wrote, in an essay published last January, NMFS has proposed a
regulation that would substantially increase recreational red snapper
landings—from a little under 30,000 fish to 85,000—while also nearly tripling
the commercial quota and substantially reducing the recreational red snapper
bycatch and discard mortality. But the
angling industry has opposed it, because it would require a closed season for
all reef fish in a stretch of ocean off Georgia and northern Florida and,
clearly, you can’t sell anglers stuff if the season is closed.
And, just last Friday, it became clear that the industry won
this round. In a press release
announcing “NOAA Fisheries Announces Changes to the Management of Red Snapper
in the South Atlantic Region and the 2025 Fishing Seasons,” NMFS stated, among
other things, that
“During development of Amendment 59, NOAA Fisheries held
multiple in-person hearings and received extensive comments during the public
comment period; most of which opposed all or part of a discard reduction season
proposed in the draft amendment to increase commercial and recreational red
snapper catch limits and the recreational fishing season length. In response to this input, and because a new
red snapper stock assessment is underway, which will take into account the
results of the South Atlantic Red Snapper Research Program and other new
information about the red snapper stock, NOAA Fisheries removed the discard
reduction area closure and several other proposed actions from further
consideration. [original formatting
omitted]”
The recreational annual catch limit for 2025 will be 22,797 South
Atlantic red snapper, substantially less than the 29,000-plus red snapper catch
limit in 2024, to be caught during a 2-day season in July. It is not clear whether that reduction in
annual catch limit, coupled with a two-day fishing season, will be enough to
prevent recreationally-driven overfishing in 2025, as NMFS promised to do in the
agreement settling a lawsuit brought by members of the commercial fishing
industry last year.
Still, given the choice between continued overfishing and
interrupted sales, it’s pretty clear which option the industry prefers--even if the overfishing is so severe that
members of the commercial fishing industry have sued NMFS multiple times in an
effort to end it, and NMFS
has agreed to settle one of those lawsuits by finalizing new regulations—which
will include the closed season—later this month.
Thus, industry representatives have come out in favor of the
new South Carolina law, and similar state
management measures, which state politicians clearly hope will eventually apply
to snapper in federal waters, even though such state measures are not
supported by any hard scientific information and will almost certainly lead to
continued overfishing, even though an option that would end overfishing and
benefit the red snapper stock is on the table and readily available.
And that’s because, despite allowing continued overfishing,
the state management measures would accomplish something that no current or
currently contemplated federal regulation will: They would let the tackle industry sell more stuff.
Which, finally, brings us to Atlantic bluefin tuna.
Anyone who fishes offshore knows that the 2024 bluefin tuna season was very good.
In fact, it was a little too good.
At the last Highly
Migratory Species Advisory Panel meeting, held about a month ago, NMFS managers
informed attendees that Angling Category permit holders substantially exceeded
their 2024 quota, with landings 152 percent of the base quota amount. The overage extended throughout the various
size classes, with school bluefin (27 to 47 inches) landings 14 percent over
quota, large school/small medium (47-73 inches) landings over by 83 percent,
and large medium/giant “trophy” (73+ inches) over by 102 percent.
The largest commercial categories went over quota as well, resulting in the United States exceeding its overall quota, which is set by the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas, by nine percent.
Since NMFS regulations require that any quota overage, by
any category, must be repaid pound-for-pound in the following year, and since
ICCAT rules require the same sort of payback of national quotas, except
that, if a nation exceeds its quota for two consecutive years, the
payback isn’t merely pound-for-pound, but may be 125 percent of
the original overage, it was pretty clear that the Angling Category was going
to take a big quota cut this year.
NMFS wasn’t only going to impose the required payback, but
it will clearly do everything it can to avoid the additional penalty that could
be imposed for consecutive overages.
Originally, NMFS had decided to allow permitted Angling
Category vessels to land one bluefin, between 27 and 73 inches long, on each
fishing day. While such limit was
expected to reduce recreational landings, if bluefin availability in 2025
approached what it was the year before, it was expected that landings would
approach the Angling Category quota, and force NMFS to close the fishing
season, at some point in late summer.
The for-hire fishing industry wasn’t pleased about the
one-fish bag limit, complaining that they wouldn’t be able to convince
customers to go out for just a single fish.
The probable need for an early season closure also caused
discontent. NMFS eventually tried toremedy the problem by amending the 2025 Angling Category regulations, limitinglandings to school bluefin, and placing the large school and small medium fishoff limits (the Trophy category had already closed), while continuing torestrict private vessels to a single fish per day, but allowing for-hirevessels to retain two.
It seemed like a not-unreasonable compromise. For-hire boats would get a second fish, and by restricting landings to the smaller school bluefin, the season would probably extend later into the year, as the small fish, individually, contribute far less to the quota than the larger ones do. (In 2024, school bluefin comprised about 75 percent of the total number of bluefin landed by anglers, but only about 34 percent by weight.)
Nonetheless, many anglers were unhappy that the large school
and small medium bluefin were put out of their reach. Very few understood the reason why such
regulations were adopted.
And the tackle industry stepped in to fan the flames.
“Is it worth the time—and the fuel bill—to run offshore to
the tuna grounds if the most your crew can bring home is one small bluefin
tuna?”
The rest of the piece does little more than echo the
American Sportfishing Association’s party line.
It quotes the organization’s president, Glenn Hughes, as
saying
“We’re disappointed in NOAA’s revised 2025 retention limits
for the bluefin tuna Angling category because of its associated negative
economic impacts. These
restrictions threaten revenue, jobs, and fishing opportunities for the
sportfishing industry. [emphasis added]”
And as you ought to realize by now, the sportfishing
industry considers any regulation that threatens revenue to be really, really
bad, and will fight doggedly against it, regardless of the underlying reasons
that the rule was put in place.
Maybe that’s why the article doesn’t really explain why the
bluefin regulations were adopted. If the
author made any effort to contact and interview scientists at NMFS’ Highly
Migratory Species Division, he didn’t mention it, and he certainly didn’t quote
anyone from NMFS in the article.
Instead, the only mention of the underlying reason for the new rule was
“Reports from the 2024 season paint a picture of a thriving
fishery, with abundant bluefin catches across the Northeast…Ironically, that
abundance appears to be the driving factor behind the new restrictions. According to NOAA’s 2024 Large Pelagics
Survey (LPS) estimates, recreational anglers exceeded their quota due to what
appears to be an unprecedented level of success on the water.”
But the author immediately put even that brief statement
into question by adding
“But, the accuracy of those survey results is under
scrutiny,”
stating that the American Sportfishing Association was
calling for a review of the Large Pelagics Survey data and raising the
possibility of “flawed data” and “overly restrictive regulations,” and quoting
a portion of a letter from a Massachusetts for-hire organization which said,
“We recommend that the recreational angler catch data for
2024 be further reviewed to assess any outliers and avoid a regulatory response
that could unnecessarily restrict U.S. fishing opportunity…Given the
uncertainty surrounding the angling category catch, we strongly urge NOAA to
decertify and initiate a review of the 2024 recreational BFT harvest
estimates…”
Another somewhat unrealistic comment from the American
Sportfishing Association’s Hughes finished the whole thing off:
“As the bluefin tuna stock rebuilds, securing additional
access is reasonable and necessary to reflect improved stock health and maximize
the fishery’s value to America’s sportfishing economy. [emphasis added]”
Because, of course, maximizing the bluefin’s value to the
tackle industry is the only thing that matters, although Huges didn’t quite
explain why Canada, Japan, or any of the other nations that also receive quotas
of Western Atlantic Bluefin Tuna ought to give up some of their quota to the
U.S., just so that ASA members might profit a little more.
But that certainly seems to be the way those members think,
because there was another
piece published last week that echoed the same sort of thoughts. Appearing in Fishing Tackle Retailer, the
article was titled "Updated Bluefin Tuna Retention Limits To Negatively
Impact Northeast Retailers.” It was
written by Tom Fucini, the northeast sales representative for Folsom Corp., a
large New Jersey fishing tackle wholesaler/manufacturer. The article mentions the new regulations,
notes how, over the past five years, northeastern anglers have experienced a “Tuna
Boom” that saw new anglers, attracted by more abundant bluefin tuna, enter the
fishery, and how tackle shops have experienced “a nice boost in sales” as a
result.
It then warns that
“These new regulations threaten to slow that momentum…This
new rule is a dramatic step backward,”
and, in a conclusion that suggests that industry members
might still be able to get such regulations overturned, states,
“NOAA’s data suggests an abundance of small Bluefin and
classifies the species as “Least Concern” in terms of conservation
status. They claim recreational anglers exceeded
quota by more than 50% in 2024 and retained more small fish than in 2023.
“A key issue cited was underreporting by recreational
anglers. Many have been hesitant to
report catch data, fearing that doing so would lead to more restrictions—ironically,
exactly what we are now facing.
Unfortunately, NOAA has not done enough to educate the recreational
community on how reporting directly impacts quotas and regulations.
“If you’d like to voice your concerns about how these
changes will affect retailers, charter boats, and manufacturers in the fishing
industry, you can contact NOAA directly.
[emphasis in original]”
It was a remarkable closing statement for a few
reasons. It starts out by mentioning the
current abundance of bluefin tuna, a claim that is probably true, but is also
entirely irrelevant. The issue is not
that 2025 recreational bluefin landings threatened the health of the stock, but
only that they exceeded the quota, and contributed to the United States exceeding
its overall 2024 quota, which it was obliged to comply with as a contracting
member of ICCAT.
The reference to recreational underreporting was a second
red herring. While recreational
underreporting was acknowledged at last May’s HMS Advisory Panel meeting, no
one ever suggested that such underreporting had anything to do with the
calculation that anglers had exceeded their 2024 quota; in fact, exactly
the opposite was true. I
am a member of the Advisory Panel.
I attended the entire May meeting. And what I heard was that the majority of the
recreational bluefin tuna catch estimate—an amount equal to a little over 78 percent
of the estimated landings—came from information provided by anglers in NMFS’
Large Pelagics Survey, a telephone survey that contacts Atlantic Highly
Migratory Species permit holders.
The underreporting issue relates to the reports of bluefin tuna landings that anglers are legally obligated to make within 24 hours of returning from any trip on which a bluefin tuna is either landed or discarded dead (listed as "ALRS" in the above chart).
Since anglers have a legal obligation to
report bluefin landings, it’s not clear why the article’s author was
castigating NMFS for not “doing enough to educate the recreational community”—an
angler shouldn’t have to be “educated” as to why they need to comply with the
law—and in any case, raising the underreporting issue was only misdirection, as
such mandatory reports only accounted for about 11 percent of the 2024 landings
estimate.
But perhaps the most egregious failure of the article was
its failure to inform readers of the consequences, should the current bluefin
tuna regulations be abolished in favor of rules allowing a higher catch.
For while the 2025 recreational bluefin regulations are a
bit onerous, so long as they’re not exceeded, Atlantic Coast anglers should see more liberal regulations put in place for the 2026 season—it’s even
possible, if not likely, that regulations might be relaxed a little later
this year, if recreational bluefin landings are lower than managers currently
expect.
But if the industry spokesmen get their way, bluefin
regulations are prematurely relaxed this year, and the angling sector, as well
as the United States, exceeds its quota again, then instead of seeing more
relaxed rules in 2026, anglers will again be facing paybacks. And those paybacks might not be merely
pound-for-pound; if the U.S. exceeds its quota for a second consecutive year,
anglers might have to give back 1 ¼ pounds of 2026 quota for every pound that
they go over in 2025, and it’s hard to see how that would be good for anyone.
Yet the article never warns of the downside of relaxing the
2025 recreational management measures. Instead,
it merely ends with the statement,
“Let’s work together to ensure that our voices are heard and
that future policy decisions reflect both conservation goals and economic
realities for small businesses like ours,”
a statement that perpetuates the false narrative that
conservation and economic concerns have parity, and should be given equal
consideration by fisheries managers.
That’s just not true.
For
as I noted back in April 2014—just three months after this blog began—if you
want to have a fishing industry, it helps to have fish.
Yet, for all of their corporate sophistication and their
political contacts, the fishing tackle industry hasn’t yet accepted that basic
truth. Regardless of the species in
question—they might be as different as striped bass, red snapper, or bluefin
tuna—the industry mantra is always the same, some version of
“Discount the science, discount the data, discount the needs
of the resource. We need to have liberal
regulations that keep people fishing, and keep them buying our stuff.”
If that means letting overfished stocks remain unrebuilt,
languishing at depleted levels, in order to keep landings high for another few
years, that’s OK.
If it means perpetuating overfishing, and even wasting most
of the annual catch through discard mortality, to avoid a closed season where
gear can’t be sold, that’s OK, too.
And if it means pressuring fisheries managers to ignore
their obligations under international agreements, well, maybe such obligations should
be ignored.
At least that’s the way, judging by its actions, the industry
seems to feel.
But a nation’s fish stocks belong to its people—all
of its people—and not merely to those who profit from their exploitation. Anglers should not be forced to fish on
diminished populations just to keep the industry solvent. Divers should be able to visit reefs that
have their entire ecosystems intact. And
a person who has never even seen the ocean should find comfort in the knowledge
that the country is holding its natural heritage in trust for everyone,
including those yet to be born.
The fishing industry, in its incessant battle with fisheries
managers and its efforts to bend the management system to suit its purposes, is
concerned with none but itself. Yet even
there, it should think twice before continuing its fight.
For the fish can survive very well without a fishing
industry. But a fishing industry without
fish will quickly die.
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