"THERE ARE MORE FISH THAN EVER BEFORE..."

 

When you get involved in the fisheries management process, and attend the meetings and read what’s in the press, it doesn’t take long to realize that, regardless of the species, there are a few common themes:

“The scientists just don’t know where to find the fish, there are plenty of them around.”

“There are lots of fish, they just went somewhere else.”

“The fishermen aren’t the reason that the fish are disappearing, it’s the seals (or the sharks, or the bluefish, or the cormorants, or…)”

And then there is the most common theme of all, used mostly when a stock is in decline and restrictions are needed, but also when folks want to see landings increase: 

“There are more fish than ever before!”

The nice thing about most of those assertions—from the point of view of the person making the claim—is that they pretty well stand on their own, without the need for any supporting facts.  After all, unless you fit a few hundred bluefish with satellite tags—an economically impractical project—you can’t prove, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that most of the bluefish on the East Coast didn’t suddenly decide to set off across the Atlantic to visit North Africa, as a New York party boat captain suggested at a hearing a few years ago, and that the population wasn’t really overfished, as the stock assessment advised.  It might seem very unlikely, but…

In the same way, fishermen can claim that the loss of winter flounder wasn’t due to overharvest, but from cormorants eating the juvenile fish, while Maryland waterman can argue that the decline in blue crab abundance was due to striped bass, and not to themselves.

But when it comes down to the “more fish than ever before” claims, things get a little trickier, because there are historical records.  But that never stops such claims from being made.

I was reminded of that a few days ago, when I was reading a press release issued by Rep. John H. Rutherford (R-FL), in which Rep. Rutherford stated that

“Every local angler I talk to says that there are more red snapper in the South Atlantic than they’ve ever seen before.”

We can take that statement at face value, and accept that it accurately reflects what anglers are telling Rep. Rutherford.  But beyond that, what does it really mean?  

In the context of the press release, Rep. Rutherford was using it as an argument to liberalize recreational red snapper regulations, and extend what he called the “measly” two-day season.  Yet, even if every angler “says that there are more red snapper…than they’ve ever seen before,” does that mean that the stock is truly healty?

Not according to the last stock assessment, which was released in 2023.  That assessment states that

“the stock remains overfished SSB/SSB_30%=0.44, and…overfishing is occurring F/F_30%=2.20, though at a lower rate than in terminal years of previous red snapper assessments…This assessment estimated that, since 2010, total abundance and spawning stock have been increasing at a relatively rapid rate, showing substantial progress toward rebuilding.  Despite overfishing, this increase in abundance has been stimulated by higher than average recruitment.  [emphasis added]”

Thus, we seem to be faced with two contradictory statements.  On one hand, the stock assessment finds that South Atlantic red snapper remain overfished.  On the other, anglers are “seeing more red snapper…than they’ve ever seen before.”

How can both statements be true?

To answer that question, it’s necessary to look at an earlier stock assessment, completed in 1960, which stated that

“The assessment indicates that the stock has been overfished since 1960,”

and includes a graph depicting a spawning stock that fell to very low levels in the early 1970s, bottomed out in 1980, and remained at or near historic low levels through at least 2006.

The same assessment notes that

“overfishing has been occurring since 1960 at about 14 times the sustainable level, with the 2006 estimate of F/F_40% at 12.021…  [note that the fishing mortality target has changed since the 2008 assessment, and now contemplates F_30%, a higher level of fishing mortality]

”Estimated abundance-at-age shows truncation of the oldest ages from the 1950s into the 1960s; the age structure continues to be in a truncated condition.  Fish of age 10 and above are practically non-existent in the population.

“…Total biomass and spawning biomass show nearly identical trends—sharp decline during the 1950s and 1960s, continued decline during the 1970s, and stable but low levels since 1980.”

Thus, for an angler to have seen—to have fished on and experienced—a South Atlantic red snapper stock that was not overfished, that angler would probably have to be at least 75 years old, old enough to have been catching red snapper in the late 1950s.  And even then, that angler would not be old enough to have fished on a truly healthy red snapper stock, but merely one which was already declining toward overfished levels.

It is very possible that no one fishing today has ever fished on a completely healthy red snapper stock, with both adequate biomass and a wide range of age and size classes.  Instead, most of today’s red snapper anglers probably began fishing after 1980, when spawning stock biomass was at or near its nadir—somewhere around, or below, three percent of an unfished stock. 

To such anglers, the current spawning stock biomass, which has been increasing in recent years, really does represent “more red snapper than they’ve ever seen before,” because their fishing experience only included years when the spawning stock biomass was dismally low.  Now, spawning stock biomass is the highest it’s been since 1980, and there are some older and larger fish being caught.

To a starving man, a burger can seem like a banquet, and that’s what the South Atlantic red snapper fishermen are experiencing today.  They are seeing more red snapper than they’ve ever seen before, and because they never experienced true abundance, they believe that current abundance reflects a healthy stock.

They are wrong.

And that’s why saying that anglers are seeing “more red snapper…than they’ve ever seen before,” is an all but meaningless statement, for it says nothing about how many red snapper the same anglers might see if managers only brought overfishing under control, and fully rebuilt the stock.

Such meaningless comments aren’t limited to South Atlantic red snapper.

Down in North Carolina, where the southern flounder stock has declined to the point that the state’s salt water fisheries managers never opened the recreational season last year, we see an angler still insisting that

“I’ve been fishing for 50 years, so I should know a little about it.  The [flounder fishing this year] was the best I’ve seen.”

And up in New England, after a stock assessment found that cod stocks had crashed, perhaps to just four percent of their potential, fishermen still made comments like

“Cod are everywhere, we can’t avoid them.”

At least in the case of South Atlantic red snapper, some anglers, used to a stock near historically low levels, might be misled by the ongoing recovery of such long-overfished stock, and actually believe that the stock is fully rebuilt.  But in the case of southern flounder and cod—and of other species that I haven’t bothered to include here, including striped bass—the stock is clearly in truly bad shape, yet people still try to play the “most ever” card.

Everyone, including themselves, know that it’s not true, yet they say it all the same.