POLITICAL FISH

 

Not too many years ago, there was a group called the Recreational Fishing Alliance that tried to influence saltwater fisheries management policy.  The group was never particularly influential or effective, at least outside of New Jersey.  It was, for all practical purposes, a vanity project conceived of and in large part financed by the wealthy owner of a well-known boatbuilding company, and was better known for getting in the way of worthwhile conservation efforts than in getting anything meaningful done.

It very deservedly ceased doing business a little over two years ago, but while it was on the wrong side of just about every fisheries management debate, there was one thing that it got completely right, and that was a bumper sticker that it sold which simply said,

“Fish are political animals.”

That’s not something that we generally like to admit.

We like to believe that the fisheries management process is a science-based endeavor, in which dedicated fisheries managers consistently apply the best scientific information available to management issues and so obtain optimum results.  But while that’s how the system is supposed to work, and while there really are a lot of very capable scientists and very dedicated professional fisheries managers out there trying their best to properly manage fish stocks, the unfortunate truth is that politics drives much of the process, a fact that frustrates the scientists and professional managers as much as it does the commercial and recreational fishermen who depend on healthy and sustainable fish stocks for the livelihoods and/or recreation.

Start by considering just who the fisheries managers are.

Here in New York, which is more-or-less similar to the management structure of most Atlantic Coast states, our marine fish are subject to three levels of management:  1) by the National Marine Fisheries Service, usually acting on the advice of the Mid-Atlantic Fisheries Management Council, 2) by the states, acting cooperatively through the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission, and 3) by the State of New York, with the advice of its Marine Resources Advisory Council.

In each of those cases, the Director of the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation’s Marine Resources Division, or their representative, has a seat at the table, where they are joined by others, who are selected in accord with the laws governing the particular management body.

In the case of the Mid-Atlantic Council, the Marine Resources Director is currently joined by three other persons (each state is guaranteed only one seat for a state manager and one other, “obligatory” seat, and must compete with other states for the “at-large” seats that become available) nominated by the governor and appointed by the United States Secretary of Commerce. 

While individuals seeking nomination can and do submit their names to the DEC, who will forward them to the executive chamber for consideration, who the governor nominates, and the order in which the nominees are listed, is a highly political process; there is no guarantee that the person most favored by the DEC will be listed as then governor’s top choice, and there have been multiple occasions when New York delayed submitting its list of nominees to the Secretary of Commerce after a politically-connected person, representing themselves or speaking for one special interest group or another, engaged in back-room politics to contest the originally-proposed list of nominees and have it altered to suit their purposes. 

Once the list of nominees is submitted to the Secretary of Commerce, the appointment process again relies on political clout, as national recreational fishing, commercial fishing, and conservation groups each try to convince the Secretary, or others farther down the chain of command, to appoint the nominee that will best represent their interests.  During the mid-2000s, the debate over who would hold a New York seat on the Mid-Atlantic Council even reached the White House and its Council on Environmental Quality; it was decided, at least in part, after a long-time fishing buddy of the president’s father—who lived in Texas, and had nothing to do with New York at all—urged the appointment of his favored candidate.

At the ASMFC, the process is simpler, but no less political.  There, each state is represented by three designated individuals, an Administrative Appointee, who is typically the state’s top marine fisheries manager, a Governor’s Appointee, and a Legislative Appointee, who often assigns their vote to a proxy.  Once again, becoming a Governor’s Appointee or a Legislative Proxy is a purely political process, with multiple interest groups vying to see that their representative is named.

Finally, there are the state management panels, which in New York takes the form of the Marine Resources Advisory Council, which is chaired by the head of the School of Marine of Marine and Atmospheric Science at Stony Brook University or their designee, and consists of seven members of the recreational fishery and seven members of the commercial fishery.  Of the seven representatives from each sector, three are appointed by the DEC, and typically represent fishermen already active in the management process, with two more appointed by the state Senate and two appointed by the state Assembly.  The political connections needed for the latter appointments are obvious, although perhaps not as egregious as the connections needed to get a seat on one southern state’s fisheries commission, which are usually awarded to the interested parties who donated the most to the governor’s last reelection campaign.

In most of the instances described above, it’s pretty clear that the ordinary citizen, unaffiliated with a politically-connected group, has about as much chance to be appointed to a management seat as a snowball has of enjoying—and surviving—a month-long stay in Hell.

So, when it comes to many management decisions, the deck is already stacked in someone’s favor—just who depends on the forum—before the debate even begins.

And, of course, the fishery being debated matters as well, because some fish just have more charisma than others, garner more public support, and so get more management attention.

Consider the winter flounder.

Averaging maybe a foot long, dull brown on one side and white on the other, with a small mouth and a twisted face that has both eyes on the same side of its head, the flounder was no one’s idea of “charismatic megafauna.”  Yet it was once the backbone of recreational fishing in states between Massachusetts and New Jersey, and supported important commercial fisheries as well.

Recreational flounder landings peaked around 1984, and then quickly began to decline along with the flounder biomass, particularly in the southern New England/mid-Atlantic region.  At about the same time, populations of Atlantic bluefin tuna and of North Atlantic swordfish were in steep decline.  While the decline of the flounder was probably at least as severe as that of the two pelagic species, when conservation organizations had a choice between depicting majestic bluefin tuna and swordfish, sleek and silver as they sped through blue water, in their fundraising materials, or depicting the humble brown flounder humping across a submerged mud flat, hunting for worms and such, charisma dictated the choice.  Public relations campaigns educated the public about the declining fortunes of the charismatic species, and put political pressure on fisheries managers to take meaningful action to end their decline.  The winter flounder enjoyed no such attention.

All of that attention certainly benefitted the big, charismatic fish.  Today, the bluefin tuna population appears to be reasonably healthy (although some disagree), while broadbill swordfish in the North Atlantic are completely recovered.  On the other hand, the spawning stock biomass of southern New England/mid-Atlantic winter flounder fell from about 50 million pounds in the early 1980s to somewhere around 7 million pounds today, and shows no signs of improvement.

Because for fish as for people, once they enter the political sphere, charisma matters.

We recently saw the same sort of thing play out here in New York.

In 2024, a bill to shut down the commercial horseshoe crab fishery was introduced in both houses of the state legislature.  The sponsors were both politicians from the west side of Manhattan, and probably didn’t spend a lot of time on the water, but instead sponsored the bill at the request of some national conservation groups that weren’t interested in the horseshoe crabs themselves, but on a bird called the red knot, which depended on horseshoe crab eggs for food, and were being seriously threatened by the decline in horseshoe crab abundance.

The problem was that the biggest red knot feeding ground, where horseshoe crab eggs were most important to the red knots, was the Delaware Bay.  While some red knots did stop along New York’s beaches during the horseshoe crab spawn, it was not the sort of feeding ground that Delaware Bay was; in fact, the next major red knot stopover were the extensive tidal flats off Massachusetts.

That didn’t mean that New York’s horseshoe crabs were doing OK.  The horseshoe crab population is broken down into local stocks, and the New York stock (which is defined to include both New York and Connecticut) is considered to be in “poor” condition relative to its historical abundance.  But New York’s fisheries managers were already trying to get on top of the problem by implementing appropriate management measures.  While the ASMFC allocated 366,272 horseshoe crabs to the state each year, the Department of Environmental Conservation limited annual harvest to just 150,000—less than half of the state allocation—and implemented closures around the full and new moons in May and June, when the animals crowded onto shallow beaches to spawn.

The measures worked so well that, by early October 2025, only 67,000 horseshoe crabs—about 45% of New York’s already-reduced 150,000 crab quota—had been landed, and the likelihood of many more being landed was slight.

But that wasn’t good enough for the political folks who, along with their various organizations, were pushing for the bill.  For them, the issue wasn’t good horseshoe crab management, but scoring a “win” by shutting down the fishery.  So they kept up the pressure, at one point even enlisting the help of the late primatologist Jane Goodall who, with all respect to her work and her memory, might not ever have seen a live horseshoe crab in her life, but was nevertheless willing to contribute her name and her cachet as a famed scientist to the cause.

Because that’s the way it goes when a fish (or other marine resource) goes political; expertise and facts carry far less weight than public relations and personal clout.

Even so, New York’s governor heeded the advice she received from the DEC and vetoed the 2024 bill.  But political pressure can be inexorable.  A new bill to close the horseshoe crab fishery was introduced early in 2025, and the various political forces redoubled their efforts to make that bill law.  Eventually, with some compromise language that would phase in the closure over four years, it was signed into law, against the advice of the DEC and the Marine Resources Advisory Council, in the waning days of the year.

In that case, political pressure by well-meaning people and organizations resulted in the passage of legislation that was probably unnecessary but, on balance, might well end up doing more good than harm.

But politics can go the other way, too.

In 2023, the ASMFC adopted Addendum XXVII to Amendment 3 to the Interstate Fishery Management Plan for Atlantic Lobster, which was initially viewed as a precautionary measure that would permit a rapid response should recruitment of Gulf of Maine and Georges Bank lobster enter a substantial decline.  At the time it was passed, no one realized that such a decline was already on the horizon, and that just months after Addendum XXVII was adopted, its new management measures, which included an increase in the minimum size, would be triggered due to a 39% crash in lobster recruitment.

Affected lobster fishermen were, for the most part, adamantly opposed to the regulatory change, and implementation was repeatedly delayed.  Eventually, the opportunities for delay began to wane, and final implementation of the new management measures was scheduled for July 1, 2025.  But the lobster fishermen weren’t having any of that.  Having failed to further delay implementation at the ASMFC, they turned to political remedies.

The debate probably hit its nadir after New Hampshire’s Republican governor, Kelly Ayotte, wrote a letter to the ASMFC which read, in part,

“I have heard loud and clear from our lobstermen, commercial fishermen, and concerned legislators and citizens from our Seacoast that this minimum size increase will have a negative impact on an industry already strained by existing regulations.  To ensure the survival of an iconic and historical industry in our state and our region, and to ensure our nation remains competitive in global trade, I ask you today to rescind these new guidelines.  In the meantime, New Hampshire will comply with the previous minimum size for lobster in an effort to preserve this proud industry.”

Just in case anyone failed to understand that her letter represented a gentle way of telling the ASMFC to kiss off, she also put up a post on X.com (formerly “Twitter”) which read

“New Hampshire will not comply with burdensome regulations that harm our lobstermen.

“We will protect this iconic and historic industry nin our state.”

The text was accompanied by an image featuring a star, a lobster, and the words

“COME AND TAKE IT.”

Normally, the ASMFC’s response to such defiance would be to find the state out of compliance with its fishery management plan and, in accordance with the terms of the Atlantic Coastal Fisheries Cooperative Management Act, forward its finding to the Secretary of Commerce who, after finding that New Hampshire was, in fact, out of compliance with a management provision necessary for the conservation of the lobster fishery, would impose a moratorium on that fishery until the state chose to comply.

However, faced with defiance by a governor who belonged to the same political party as the President of the United States, and given that, during his first term, that President had already issued an Executive Order seeking to deregulate the nation’s commercial fisheries, which suggested that his Commerce Secretary would not find New Hampshire out of compliance (and also facing resistance from fishermen in other states), the American Lobster Management Board backed down and eventually adopted a new addendum that revoked then challenged management measures.

Politics had defeated science once again.

Which brings us to Atlantic menhaden, which may be the most political fish of all.

No one with any credibility will deny that menhaden are a very important forage fish all along the East Coast.  But for many years, and particularly after the publication of a book titled The Most Important Fish in the Sea, which was written by a non-scientist and cultural historian who exaggerated  the species’ role in coastal ecosystems, menhaden management has been badly politicized.  Much of that politicization revolved around the fact that most menhaden are landed by what is known as the “reduction fishery,” a fishery involving very large, very visible boats which deploy very large purse seines capable of capturing an entire school of fish in one set.  The fact that such vessels are owned and operated by a single company, Ocean Harvesters, and sell to a single buyer, Omega Protein Corporation, which is owned by a very large Canadian fisheries products company, Cooke Inc., only inflames the debate.

The notion of a single corporation conducting an industrial-scale fishery for menhaden just seems to rub folks the wrong way, perhaps because it offends their notion of commercial fishermen as strong, independent operators who risk their lives taking small boats out into a big ocean in order to bring home seafood that will feed the public.  The actual number of menhaden being caught, and scientists’ stock assessments declaring that the menhaden stock is neither overfished nor experiencing overfishing, seem to take up little room in their arguments, which mostly revolve around claims that the reduction fleet’s activities lead to “localized depletion” of menhaden, even though localized depletion has never yet been established—or even adequately defined.

In that sort of environment, it’s probably not surprising to see that the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership has announced that it’s hiring a public relations agency to assist it with its menhaden management campaign, to

“highlight the far-reaching impacts of menhaden management decisions, engage anglers, conservationists, and policymakers through strategic media outreach and storytelling.”

Storytelling, not science, because they’re engaging at the political level, where telling the right story is all that matters. 

It’s not an effort to educate the public, which would be based on stock assessments and hard data, but rather an effort to propagandize the public, by telling stories that tug at the emotions rather than providing facts that tug at the intellect.

It’s probably an effort at greenwashing, too, prosecuted by an organization that tried to undercut federal red snapper management in the Gulf of Mexico and more recently opposed proposed measures to conserve Atlantic striped bass and make it more likely that the spawning stock biomass would be fully rebuilt by the 2029 deadline established in the fishery management plan.

It’s unfortunate, but in the political side of fisheries management, perceptions always trump facts, and the organizations with the money and political clout to propagandize the public and impact the management process nearly always come out ahead.

Which means that until conservation-minded anglers figure out how to come together and invest their time and financial assets in the political process, they will always be left behind.