MARINE FISHERIES 2026: THE CLOUDS CONTINUE TO GATHER--PART II

 

Last Thursday, I posted the first part of an overview of the 2026 marine fisheries management landscape, and the issues likely to arise over the next year.  That post focused on the highest federal government levels, the administration and Congress, which drive federal fisheries policy, but rely on the regional fishery management councils to turn that policy into practice.

However, with a few exceptions, federal fishery managers lack the authority to manage fish in state waters, so the actions of state managers also can have a significant impact on the health and sustainability of fish stocks.  Along the East Coast, states have joined together to manage fish stocks cooperatively through the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission, which manages some species that are not governed by federal fisheries management plans while acting cooperatively with the National Marine Fisheries Service to manage others.

Today’s post will address issues that they will probably confront in 2026.

At the regional fishery management councils

One of the biggest issues that all of the regional fishery management councils will face in 2026 is a lack of timely scientific advice, resulting from the cuts in federal funding for NMFS regional fishery science centers and the resultant layoffs and voluntary departures of many fisheries scientists.  As noted in a press release issued by the New England Fisheries Management Council,

“The Council held an update on recent reductions to federal science and management resources including a total loss of 545 National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) positions, including 50 staff positions within the Northeast Region alone.  These reductions have not only delayed management actions, but directly affected stock assessments, surveys, and data streams.

“In 2025, several planned stock assessments were replaced with ‘data updates,’ which are ‘summaries of new data that have become available since that last management track assessment.  Specifically, they update (1) U.S. catch (landings and discards) by commercial and recreational sector, as appropriate, and (2) aggregated [Northeast Fisheries Science Center] survey indices.’  Data updates are expected for many stocks in 2026 as well…  [emphasis in original]”

Such cuts can only render fisheries management more uncertain and less responsive to changes affecting fish stocks, creating greater risks to long-term sustainability and making it more likely that overfishing may occur, that overfished stocks may not recover, and that already stressed stocks will decline further and possibly become overfished, thus causing long-term harm not only to the stocks themselves, but to the recreational and commercial fisheries that they support.

Given the ongoing debate over federal spending, the January 30 deadline to put an appropriations bill in place, and both parties’ apparent intent to avoid a government shutdown, it appears unlikely that significantly more money will be available for fisheries science in the upcoming year, so the current situation is likely to fester for a while.

With that in mind, these are the issues likely to arise at some of the regional fishery management councils over the course of the year.

Atlantic herring/river herring

After a federal district court vacated Amendment 8 to the Atlantic Herring Fishery Management Plan in 2022, deciding that its findings of localized depletion and the need to create nearshore areas that excluded midwater trawlers were not supported by substantial evidence, the New England Fishery Management Council decided to address the issue again in the pending Amendment 10 to the herring management plan.

Amendment 10 was originally intended to

“minimize user conflicts, achieve [optimum yield], and support rebuilding of the herring resource,”

as well as create catch caps and time and area closures intended to protect river herring and shad.

Although Amendment 10 is still considered a “multi-year priority,” it was subordinated to an omnibus amendment intended to address management flexibility measures in 2025.  Now, in view of it being specifically mentioned by stakeholders as a measure contrary to the President’s April 17, 2025 Executive Order, there is a significant possibility that Amendment 10 could be abandoned in 2026, and that the proposed additional protections for shad and river herring will not be put in place.

Private anglers to be subordinated in the Mid-Atlantic

Since 2019, the Mid-Atlantic Fisheries Management Council, working in conjunction with the ASMFC, has been engaged in what it calls its “Recreational Reform Initiative,” which has essentially been an effort to “increase management flexibility,” which might be interpreted by some (and I’m among them) as an effort to sidestep some of the management provisions of the Magnuson-Stevens Fisheries Conservation and Management Act in order to allow recreational fishermen to kill more bluefish, summer flounder, scup, and black sea bass than a strict application of the law would otherwise allow.

Needless to say, the recreational fishing industry has been very supportive of the Initiative, as it views larger annual catch targets as necessary for increased sales and higher profits.  But whether or not the Initiative was in the long-term interest of anglers and the fish they pursue, one thing that could be said was that, up to now, it treated all anglers equitably.

In 2026, that may no longer be the case.

The Council and the ASMFC are now engaged in developing a “Recreational Sector Separation Amendment” that would apply to the bluefish, summer flounder, scup, and black sea bass fisheries.  As the Council describes it,

“the amendment may consider options for managing for-hire recreational fisheries separately from other recreational fishing modes (referred to as sector separation), as well as options related to for-hire permit and reporting requirements.”

Right now, the Council’s fishery management plans recognize only the commercial and recreational sectors, with anglers fishing from for-hire vessels subject to the recreational rules.  However, along with definitions for “commercial fishing” and “recreational fishing,” Magnuson-Stevens also includes a definition for “charter fishing,” which reads

“The term ‘charter fishing’ means fishing from a vessel carrying a passenger for hire…who is engaged in recreational fishing.”

So, if what the Council and ASMFC were planning to do was to separate the charter fishing sector from the rest of the recreational sector, allocate it its own annual catch limit based on its recent share of recreational landings, and give it regulations different from those governing the recreational sector, which would keep the sector’s landings at or below its ACL, it probably would not present a problem.

But that’s not what’s going on.

The for-hire fleet doesn’t want to be locked into its current landings levels; instead, it is seeking to stay within the recreational annual landings target, but to enjoy more favorable regulations that will allow its share of the landings to expand at the expense of the private-boat and shore based fishermen.  That intent was made clear in various comments made at the November 3, 2025 meeting of the Bluefish and the Summer Flounder, Scup, and Black Sea Bass advisory panels.  The report of that meeting noted that Connecticut charter boat captain Michael Pirri

“recalled when he first entered the for-hire fishery, it was widely understood that for-hire vessels harvested more than 10% of the total scup, black sea bass, and summer flounder.  Currently, those estimates have dropped to around 3-4%, depending on the fishery.  He noted that a key goal of the amendment should be to ‘privilege’ the for-hire fleet enough to result in a share of harvest closer to that 10%.  [emphasis added].”

Another way of expressing that is that he wanted to disadvantage the majority of recreational fishermen enough that they surrendered six or seven percent of overall landings to the much smaller group of anglers who fish from the for-hire boats.

So how small is the for-hire fleet’s contribution to the relevant fisheries?  The Council has historically compared the for-hire and private sectors by comparing landings, noting that

“scup and black sea bass have a higher percentage of harvest from the for-hire modes (11% of pounds harvested) compared to summer flounder (5% of pounds harvested).”

But one would expect anglers benefitting from the knowledge and skill of a professional captain and crew to land a disproportionately high share of the catch compared to recreational fishermen, who must depend on their generally more limited skills.  A more accurate gauge of public participation, and indirectly of each sector’s contribution to the social and economic benefits gleaned from each fishery, can be found in the number of trips taken.

There, data from the 2024 season (complete 2025 data is not yet available) shows that in the mid-Atlantic region, the for-hire fleet accounted for 15,485 (0.62%) out of an estimated 2,492,355 trips primarily targeting bluefish, 135,796 (1.60%) of the estimated 8,465,850 trips targeting summer flounder, 52,976 (3.94%) of the estimated 1,346,101 trips targeting scup, and 93,376 (11.83%) of the estimated 789,468 trips targeting black sea bass.

Given that data, there seems to be little reason to disadvantage the vast majority of recreational fishermen, and relegate them to the status of second-class anglers, in order to provide special advantages to what can only be described as a privileged few.

Yet that may be what we see in 2026.

 A draft of the sector separation amendment is almost certain to be completed in the first half of 2026, and go to public hearings soon after that.  Given that recreational fishermen are virtually unrepresented on the Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council, with just about all of the supposedly “recreational” seats being held by members of the for-hire fleet or others closely tied to the recreational fishing industry, despite that fleet’s relatively tiny contribution to the overall fishery, the disadvantaging of the private-boat and shore-based angler is very likely to occur.

South Atlantic red snapper

The problem besetting the South Atlantic red snapper fishery is very easy to describe but not at all easy to remedy:  Too many red snapper are being caught by recreational fishermen during the closed season, and are subsequently discarded dead.  As a result, recreational and commercial red snapper regulations are extremely restrictive.

On paper, that’s easy to fix.  All NMFS has to do is close an area of the ocean off Georgia and northern Florida for three months or so, to drive down the number of snapper caught as bycatch in other recreational fisheries, which would actually allow the number of red snapper taken home by recreational fishermen to nearly triple.

In the real world, a fix is nearly impossible, as the recreational fishing industry and militant recreational fishing organizations refuse to take responsibility for their own excesses.  Thus, we see the recreational sector continually trying to impeach the federal fisheries management system and transfer red snapper management to the states, where managers are much more vulnerable to political pressure, and have far more authority to ignore overfishing.

Efforts to replace the Marine Recreational Information Program, used to collect recreational data, with unproven state programs are well underway, as are efforts to transfer management authority from NMFS to state fisheries managers.  At the federal level, NMFS seems willing to give in to at least some of the recreational demands; last June, it reneged on an agreement to settle a lawsuit challenging its tolerance for recreational overfishing, backing off a proposed regulation to put the needed area closure in place.

In 2026, with a sympathetic federal administration, a regional management council that is also sympathetic to the recreational sector, and state managers willing to accept responsibility for managing red snapper, along with local congressmen that have already designated a willingness to support recreational demands, we can expect efforts to undermine federal red snapper management not only continue, but accelerate.

A transfer of some or all of the management authority to the states could very well take place.

And the South Atlantic red snapper stock could easily decline again.

Gulf of Mexico Amberjack

Greater amberjack in the Gulf of Mexico have suffered from severe overfishing.  In 2024, recreational fishermen caught more than twice their allocated quota, which meant that, pursuant to the accountability measures contained in the management plan, the 2025 recreational amberjack season should not have opened at all.

However, NMFS failed to prevent the season from opening, and allowed it to run for an entire month before shutting it down on September 27.  Most Gulf states followed NMFS lead, and also shut their seasons down in late September.  The one exception was Louisiana, which allowed fishermen to continue to land amberjack supposedly caught in state waters through October 31, the originally-scheduled close of the federal season.

As part of the announcement that Louisiana would not close its season in concert with the federal closure, the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries said,

“Governor Jeff Landry and Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries (LDWF) Secretary Tyler Bosworth sent a letter to NOAA Fisheries earlier this month, requesting that management of Greater Amberjack be transferred to the state level.”

Not surprisingly, on its Facebook page, the Louisiana chapter of the Coastal Conservation Association, an “angler’s rights” organization that is very closely affiliated with the fishing tackle and boating industries, stated that it

“applauds the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries and Governor Jeff Landry for their actions and stance on Greater Amberjack.”

Given that the Coastal Conservation Association is one of the organizations most aggressively supporting state management of South Atlantic red snapper, and given that it had taken a similar position with red snapper in the Gulf of Mexico, it is highly likely that, in the event that the 2026 Gulf amberjack season is either curtailed or completely cancelled, we will see another effort to undercut federal fisheries managers and the federal management system, by a group of people who know that state management provides the easiest route to evading science-based management measures, and avoiding the consequences of their own overfishing.

And in the current political environment, they could well succeed.

The Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission

Although striped bass will never be a low-profile species at the ASMFC, it will probably not be the most controversial topic at the management table in 2026, as members of the Atlantic Striped Bass Management Board look toward the benchmark stock assessment scheduled for release in the first half of 2027.

Atlantic menhaden

Instead, Atlantic menhaden will probably take the spotlight.  Last October, faced with data that suggested that total allowable catch would have to be cut by well over 50% in order to keep landings at or below the fishing mortality target, the Atlantic Menhaden Management Board only set the total allowable catch for a single year, 2026, rather than for the full three-year period, as was originally planned.  While the 2026 TAC is 20% lower than the total allowable catch in 2025, it did not reduce landings, as menhaden landings have been about 80% of the TAC in recent years.

So, in 2026, the menhaden management board will have to decide whether to further reduce the total allowable catch and, if their answer is yes, whether to reduce it all the way down to the point that would probably keep fishing mortality below the target level. 

There will undoubtedly be substantial public comment, driven by the conservation and angling communities, to make the full cut; if this year’s debate is any guide, the same interests will call for a complete prohibition on the so-called “reduction fishery,” the fleet of large purse seine vessels that dominate the commercial menhaden fishery, catching fish that will be “reduced” into fish meal, oil, and other industrial products.

That fleet is based in Virginia, where it provides employment for hundreds of individuals in an area where good-paying jobs can be hard to find.  It is certain that the reduction industry will strenuously resist a significant cut in the menhaden TAC, and it would obviously do all it can to oppose a complete closure of the reduction fishery.  Whether the other members of the Management Board will insist that landings reductions are taken, or whether the majority will accede to Virginia’s demands, cannot yet be predicted.

But the overall menhaden quota is not the only issue that will be on the table in 2026.  The Atlantic Menhaden Management Board has also agreed to initiate a new addendum to the management plan, which might reduce the cap on reduction fishery landings within the Chesapeake Bay by as much as 50%.

The current Bay cap of 51,000 metric tons was adopted in order to avoid the possibility of localized menhaden depletion in the Chesapeake Bay.  That has been a hot issue over the past couple of years, with some arguing that a shortage of menhaden in the Bay, allegedly due to reduction fleet landings, has led to a host of ills, ranging from a decline in striped bass abundance to nesting failure impacting the Bay’s osprey population.

The problem is that, while a lot of people talk about localized depletion, no one has ever been able to demonstrate that it exists.  So, while it is likely that the debate over a reduced Bay cap will be long on emotion, it is not clear whether a reduced cap will be supported by any hard data.  And it is unclear whether, should hard data be lacking, emotion will be enough to put a Bay cap in place when the Management Board meets to decide the issue in October 2026.

The federal threat

Regardless of the species that it is attempting to manage, the ASMFC has no inherent authority to require its member jurisdictions to comply with its fisheries management plans.  Instead, it must rely on a provision of the Atlantic Coastal Fisheries Cooperative Management Act that reads,

“Within 30 days after receiving a notification from the Commission [that a state has failed to comply with an ASMFC management plan] and after review of the Commission’s determination of noncompliance, the Secretary [of Commerce] shall make a finding on (1) whether the State in question has failed to carry out its responsibilities [to comply with a management plan], and (2) if so, whether the measures that the State has failed to implement and enforce are necessary for the conservation of the fishery in question…

“Upon making a finding…that a State has failed to carry out its responsibilities [to comply with a management plan] and that the measures it failed to implement and enforce are necessary for conservation, the Secretary shall declare a moratorium on fishing in the fishery in question within the waters of the noncomplying State.  [formatting omitted]”

And that may turn out to be a problem when it comes to enforcing its fisheries management decisions this year, as the current administration is more concerned with deregulating fisheries than in conserving fish stocks.

Consider the two menhaden issues discussed above.

Say that the Atlantic Menhaden Management Board, at its October meeting, decides to phase in a reduction in menhaden landings over the next few years, dropping landings from somewhere around 186,840 metric tons in 2026 to 108,450 metric tons in 2029.  And say that Virginia, which is allocated about three-quarters of all commercial menhaden landings, decides that such cuts would do too much harm to its menhaden fishermen, refuses to put the new, lower landings levels in place, and goes out of compliance, arguing to the Secretary of Commerce that the 186,840 metric ton annual catch limit does not lead to overfishing, and thus further reduction are not “necessary for the conservation of the fishery.”

And say that, in considering Virginia’s noncompliance, the Secretary looks to the Executive Order that President Trump signed on April 17, 2025, notes its intent to “unburden our commercial fishermen from costly and inefficient regulations” and to “promote…sale and export of United States fishery and aquaculture products,” recognizes that most of the menhaden  caught by Virginia fishermen are sold to a Canadian buyer, and decides that such considerations override the Management Board’s preference to reduce fishing mortality to the target level, because even a 186,840 metric ton harvest will not lead to overfishing, so the reduction is not necessary for the conservation of the Atlantic menhaden fishery.

Under such hypothetical conditions, the Secretary of Commerce could easily excuse Virginia’s noncompliance.

Or, instead of a Virginia refusing to comply with a reduced annual catch limit, consider what would happen if it refused to comply with a reduction in the cap for reduction fishery harvest within the Chesapeake Bay, particularly if no one can provide statistically valid data supporting the claim that the reduction fishery is causing localized depletion in the Chesapeake Bay.

Under such conditions, it would almost be expected that the Secretary would find that a reduced Bay cap is not necessary to conserve the menhaden resource.

And menhaden are only one example.  Given the last April’s Executive Order, and given the current administration’s propensity to monetize natural resources for the highest possible short-term gain, it is very possible that the Secretary will tend to support states that go out of compliance with ASMFC fishery management plans.

That possibility is likely to have a chilling effect on ASMFC management actions, and make the ASMFC less willing to adopt even modestly precautionary management measures in 2026, regardless of the species in question.

An increasingly aggressive recreational fishing industry

One of the things that we have seen over the past decade is a recreational fishing industry that is becoming more and more aggressive in its opposition to conservation-oriented fishery management measures, and in its promotion of new approaches to fisheries management that will lead to increased recreational landings and, at least in theory, to higher industry profits.

The industry and industry-affiliated organizations such as the Coastal Conservation Association and the Theordore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership first targeted the red snapper fisheries in the South Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico, seeking to weaken  the federal fisheries management system in favor of state managers who are more susceptible to political pressure and more likely to tolerate overfishing if that’s what local stakeholders want.

However, in recent years the industry and its fellow travelers have become more and more aggressive.  If Social Security has been deemed the “third rail” of the political process—that is, the program that no one can contest if they want their political career to survive—then striped bass could reasonably be called the third rail of fisheries politics on the upper East Coast; no organization who wanted to have a viable presence among salt water anglers could take a stand against striped bass conservation.

But that changed in 2025, when industry and industry-affiliated organizations such as the American Sportfishing Association, the Center for Sportfishing Policy, Marine Retailers Association of the Americas, National Marine Manufacturers Association and others opposed a 12% reduction in striped bass fishing mortality needed to better ensure that the stock would be fully rebuilt by 2029.

We can expect the sportfishing industry to take advantage of the current administration’s hostility toward conservation measures, and its support for corporate profits, and become ever more aggressive in weakening federal fisheries management while trying harder to warp state and regional fisheries management toward greater exploitation and greater short-term economic benefits for the fishing industry, regardless of the long-term impacts on fish stocks.

The bottom line

The current political environment is extremely hostile to fisheries conservation efforts and to precautionary management approaches that are most likely to benefit fisheries in the long term.

Conservation advocates are being forced to take a defensive stance, with emphasis on limiting their losses rather than making any meaningful gains.  This situation existed throughout 2025, and even under the best circumstances is likely to extend into the first few weeks of 2029.  Depending on who ends up in the White House and in Congress, it could last far longer.

The one ray of hope on the horizon is the 2026 mid-term elections.  If control of at least one house of Congress can pass to persons who aren’t actively trying to tear apart the federal fishery management system, and who might actually care about the long-term health of fish stocks, we might not see any progress on important conservation issues, but we are at least likely to enjoy a deadlock where, at the legislative level at least, no more harm is being done.

It's sad that such is the best we can hope for, but that is the current reality for everyone who cares about the long-term health of the nation’s fish stocks.