CUTS TO NMFS BUDGET CREATE NEW THREAT TO FISH STOCKS

 

A few weeks ago, I found myself in a familiar place doing a very familiar thing—wandering around Capitol Hill, visiting Senate and House offices during the appropriations season, trying to maintain, or hopefully increase, funding for fisheries management.

This year, it seemed a particularly urgent mission, given that the 2025 staffing reductions at the  National Marine Fisheries Service, and particularly to its regional science centers, crippled the agency’s ability to conduct the surveys and perform the stock assessments needed to maintain the health of the nation’s fish stocks. 

While the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act is arguably the most comprehensive and most successful fishery management law in the world, it has one big vulnerability:  The management system that it created is very science-dependent.  In fact, one of the findings listed near the very beginning of the statute acknowledges that

“The collection of reliable data is essential to the effective conservation, management, and scientific understanding of the fishery resources of the United States.”

Magnuson-Stevens requires that

“Conservation and management measures shall be based upon the best scientific information available.”

To that end, the law requires that

“Each [regional fishery management] Council shall establish, maintain, and appoint the members of a scientific and statistical committee to assist in the development, collection, evaluation, and peer review of such statistical, biological, economic, social, and other scientific information as is relevant to such Council’s development and amendment of any fishery management plan,”

and further provides that regional fishery management councils shall develop annual catch limits for the fisheries that they manage, but such catch limits

“may not exceed the fishing level recommendation of its scientific and statistical committee [or that resulting from a peer review process described elsewhere in the law].”

That all sounds nice in theory, but the truth of the matter is that scientific information can’t be snatched out of thin air.  It takes money to conduct the surveys and other research needed to develop the fisheries-related data, and it takes more money to hire and retain the qualified scientists needed to design the surveys, analyze the resulting data, perform stock assessments, and determine what must be done in order to restore stocks to health and maintain healthy stocks at sustainable levels.

That money has never been easy to obtain, but for many years, Congress has largely recognized that maintaining the long-term health of the United States’ fish stocks was in the best interests of the nation, and addressed fisheries management as a bipartisan issue.  While funding was often less than ideal, it was generally sufficient to enable NMFS to manage fish stocks.

But the current Administration, consistent with its general antipathy toward the sciences and toward agencies that advance scientific knowledge, crippled NMFS’ management capabilities last year, when it cut agency personnel, including biologists at NMFS’ regional science centers.

The problem was highlighted at the May 2025 meeting of the Council Coordinating Committee, the body that represents, and expresses the concerns, of all of the regional fishery management councils.  The report from that meeting states, in part,

“Ms. Kelly Denit, NOAA Fisheries Director of the Office of Sustainable Fisheries…discussed the need to better align NOAA and Council priorities, challenges of managing over 500 stocks, and the need to prioritize fisheries management given limited resources.  Ms. Denit’s presentation touched on the National Standards Guidelines and suggested the need to evaluate narrowing the scope of management in light of current resourcing and administration priorities.

“A risk-value matrix was presented to the [Council Coordinating Committee] as a way to help evaluate which stocks require the most intensive management.  Underpinning this exercise is the reality that NOAA Fisheries cannot continue managing all current stocks and stock complexes that are currently in [fishery management plans] with existing and anticipated resources.  Ms. Denit spoke about the need to strategically choose where to take increased management risks.  The proposed matrix would categorize stocks based on ‘value’ (commercial/recreational/social importance) and ‘risk’ (ratio of catch to [annual catch limit], stock status, ecosystem role, climate vulnerability).  She suggested stocks in the high-risk, high-value quadrants might be strong candidates to receive the most detailed management, while low-risk, low-value stocks might be moved to ecosystem components or removed from management plans entirely.  Ms. Denit emphasized this report requires Council input and collaboration and stressed the need to explore more flexibility in management given current constraints…”

I have to admit that my first reaction upon reading those words was to recall a passage penned by pioneer ecologist Aldo Leopold, who wrote

“The last word in ignorance is the man who says of an animal or plant, ‘What good is it?’  If the land mechanism as a whole is good, then every part is good, whether we understand it or not.  If the biota, in the course of aeons, has built something we like but do not understand, then who but a fool would discard seemingly useless parts?  To keep every cog and wheel is the first precaution of intelligent tinkering.”

For the very act of designating a fish stock as “high value” or “low value,” based solely on whether is supports a significant commercial or recreational fishery, or has some other societal value, seems completely contrary to Leopold’s principle, and to common sense. 

But now, nearly a year after that Council Coordinating Committee meeting was held, those designations are beginning to grow real teeth, and are threatening to bite chunks out of the federal fisheries management system, marine ecosystems, and probably state budgets as well.

Recently, the Pacific Fisheries Management Council voted to cease actively managing 47 groundfish stocks, in response to a roughly 40% reduction in NMFS scientific and regulatory staff in the Pacific region. Many of those were species of Pacific rockfish, members of Scorpaenidae, the scorpionfish family, popular food fish that tend to have longer lives than many other species, and are thus particularly vulnerable to overfishing.

Instead of actively managing such stocks, the Pacific Council downgraded some of them from “stocks that require conservation and management” to “ecosystem component species.”  Such ecosystem component species are not actively managed to prevent them from becoming overfished or experiencing overfishing; there are no annual catch limits or and no attempts to maintain optimum yield, although NMFS’ Guidelines for compliance with Magnuson-Stevens provide that

“Councils may choose to identify stocks within their [fishery management plans] as ecosystem component (EC) species…if a Council determines that the stocks do not require conservation and management…EC species may be identified at the species or stock level, and may be grouped into complexes…management measures can be adopted in order to, for example, collect data on the EC species, minimize bycatch or bycatch mortality of an EC species, protect the associated role of EC species in the ecosystem, and/or to address other ecosystem issues.”

The problem here, of course, is that the Pacific Council has already acknowledged that the 47 stocks in question were “stocks in need of conservation and management.”  It designated them as ecosystem component species not because the “Council determine[d] that the stocks do not require conservation and management,” but because funds allocated to conservation and management were cut to the point that some stocks that, in fact, were in need of conservation and management had to be sacrificed to the “ecosystem component” designation, and these particular 47 stocks were deemed “low-value” enough to draw the short straw.

Yet, despite drawing the short straw and losing most management protections, the stocks designated as “ecosystem component species” were the fortunate ones, as the great majority of the 47 stocks will be completely removed from the management plan, and have no protections at all.

And the list of species under the Pacific Council’s jurisdiction that are no longer “in need of conservation and management” may grow larger.  National Public Radio reported that Merrick Burden, the Pacific Council’s executive director, observed that

“We have coastal pelagics, which are the sardines and anchovies and mackerels—the small, silvery things that everybody eats.  We have the tunas and billfish, and we have salmon…I expect us, to some degree, to consider this type of action for each of those.”

The same National Public Radio article that quoted Merrick Burden also noted that NMFS’ decision to shed the burden of managing ecosystem component stock is going to shift at least some of that burden onto the shoulders of coastal states.

“As a result of the federal charges, the [Washington] state department [of Fish and Wildlife] may need to ask the Washington Legislature for more staff to help cover new duties…But the state’s conservation mission won’t change, and the process they use to set sustainable harvest levels with stakeholder input will continue.

“In Oregon, where there is s more active commercial and recreational fishery for some groundfish, state officials opted to take over management for at least six of the species federal regulators will drop starting in 2030.  Oregon wildlife officials want the stocks to remain in federal management.  But barring that, taking on oversight will give them more control—and enough time to develop a state management plan.”

The Pacific Fishery Management Council is only the first to address the problem of removing species from federal fishery management plan.  It is an issue that is likely to impact all of the regional fishery management councils.  Thus, on February 2, 2026, the Council Coordinating Committee sent a letter to NMFS chief Eugenio Pineiro Soler which, after a brief introductory paragraph, said,

“The [Council Coordinating Committee] has considered this issue carefully over the course of the course of several recent discussions, including presentations from NMFS Headquarters and subsequent deliberations among Council Executive Directors.  While the CCC supports constructive dialogue regarding capacity constraints and opportunities to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of fishery management and science, we have significant concerns regarding both the process used to develop the Risk/Value Matrix and the implications of the framework as currently framed.

“First, the Councils have not been adequately consulted or involved in the development of the Risk/Value Matrix or its underlying methodology.  Councils were asked to react to, and potentially apply, a framework that appears to have been substantially developed in advance, including embedded assumptions regarding objectives, priorities, and acceptable tradeoffs.  Engagement at this stage risks being perceived as endorsement of a predetermined methodology rather than meaningful collaboration.  This approach does not align with the Councils’ statutory role under the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act.

“Second, the CCC is concerned that the Risk/Value Matrix appears likely to function as a de facto prioritization tool for stock assessments, monitoring, and associated scientific resources, with potential implications for the allocation of funding between NMFS Regions and Science Centers…The CCC is concerned that adoption of the Risk/Value Matrix could diminish or displace meaningful Council and constituent input into decisions fundamental to fisheries science and management.

“Third, the implications of the framework remain unclear, but several Councils have identified substantive concerns when attempting to apply the Risk/Value criteria to their fisheries…raising fundamental questions about what management actions would follow and what management problems the framework is intended to address.  These outcomes suggest that the Risk/Value Matrix incorporates policy choices and management objectives that have not been discussed with, or agreed to, by the Councils.

“Fourth, the CCC notes that similar national-level stock or assessment prioritization concepts have been proposed previously and were not supported by the Councils…The current Risk/Value Matrix appears, in important respects, to revisit those concepts without addressing the concerns previously raised by the Councils.

“Finally, the CCC is concerned about the compressed timeline proposed for Council engagement, the lack of clarity concerning current and future resource levels, and uncertainty regarding how Council input would ultimately be used.  Councils are already pursuing scope-reduction, prioritization, and efficiency efforts through Magnuson-Stevens-compliant public processes.  Participating in a parallel national exercise under the current conditions creates a risk that Council input could be used to justify predetermined outcomes or become binding regardless of future budget realities…”

The letter makes it clear that the Risk/Value Matrix being forced on the regional fisheries management councils is, at best, problematic and, at worst, illegal, although the latter point is probably of little concern to the higher-ups in the Administration.

It also should provide incentive for concerned lawmakers—and my last trip to Capitol Hill made it clear that there are concerned lawmakers out there—to redouble efforts to adequately fund NMFS, and its regional science centers, so that initiatives like the Risk/Value Matrix, and its potentially arbitrary criteria, can be gracefully retired, and no longer pose a threat to an informed fishery management process.