Recreational fisheries management is a complicated mix of
science, law, and politics—with some economics supposedly tossed in as well—that
sees managers try to maintain healthy and sustainable fish stocks, while
complying with all applicable laws, not putting anyone out of business, and keeping
stakeholders happy.
That’s pretty much an impossible task, and everyone should
be more-or-less content if the laws are observed, the fish stocks are healthy,
and the adverse impacts on fishing-related businesses are less than they’d be
if the fish stocks collapsed.
Generally, fishery managers try to give anglers what they
want, within the confines imposed by science and law. Yet what anglers want isn’t completely clear. There are a lot of voices out there purporting
to speak for recreational fishermen, although it’s not clear who appointed them
on anglers’ behalf. And individual
anglers are, by and large, not particularly good at speaking for themselves.
We saw a good example of that last fall, when the Atlantic States
Marine Fisheries Commission’s Atlantic Striped Bass Management Board was
debating the Draft
Addendum III to Amendment 7 to the Interstate Fishery Management Plan for Atlantic
Striped Bass. The Management
Board had solicited public comments on the various measures contained in the
Draft Addendum, including a proposal to reduce commercial and recreational
landings by 12% in order to make it more likely that the stock would rebuild by
2029, the deadline mandated by the fishery management plan.
“We represent the entire recreational fishing and boating
community.”
That was a pretty bold, and clearly false, claim, as the
only broad-based membership organization of the six was the Coastal
Conservation Association (despite its name, the Boat Owners Association of the
United States is not a membership organization, in the sense that angler- and
hunter-based groups such as Trout Unlimited, Ducks Unlimited, or the Coastal
Conservation Association are, but is instead a sort of maritime AAA, that
provides towing services, reduced-rate insurance coverage, discounts at West
Marine stores, etc.), and the CCA doesn’t come close to representing the “entire,”
or even a substantial minority, of the saltwater angling community. The CCA represents an even smaller proportion
of striped bass anglers.
It claims a little
over 125,000 members, most of whom are located in Texas, Louisiana, and
Florida, with much of the remainder scattered across other states bordering the
South Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico. While it has a few small chapters on the
striper coast, in New Hampshire, Maryland, and Virginia (an active North
Carolina chapter is also technically in a striped bass state, although it
concentrates on bass spawning in North Carolina rivers rather than on coastwide
striped bass issues; three former chapters, in Massachusetts, Connecticut, and
New York, dissolved years ago, and the status of the Maine
chapter is unclear, although the last seemingly “official” post on its Facebook
page was made nearly five years ago), they don’t come close to representing
most, much less all, of all striped
bass anglers, who collectively took over 14 million fishing trips primarily
targeting the species last year.
Yet the CCA wasn’t shy to march in lockstep with the rest of
the industry organizations who purported to represent the “entire” angling
community, and oppose the 12% landings reduction, largely on economic grounds,
even though its
own New Hampshire chapter supported the management measure, and encouraged the
Management Board to put the reduction in place.
Thus, fisheries managers are wise to be skeptical of any
organization that purports to represent anglers as a whole, and not merely its
own limited membership.
But while that sort of skepticism might prevent managers
from mistakenly accepting an organization’s position as that of the broader
angling community, it doesn’t help them know how most anglers want them to
approach a management problem.
As a practical matter, when addressing a recreational
fisheries issue, managers are limited to three basic tools—size limits, bag
limits, and seasons, which all have to be set before a season begins. And the thing about size limits, bag limits,
and seasons is that they force tradeoffs.
You can, for example, have a small size limit, but that’s going to lead
to a small bag limit and/or a short season.
A larger bag limit may lead to a smaller bag and/or shorter season,
while a long season is necessarily going to result in a larger size limit and/or
smaller bag.
Thus, we often hear things like, “Commercial fishermen can
keep 14-inch fluke. Why can’t
recreational fishermen keep 14-inch fluke, too?” And the answer is that they can, if they’re
willing to settle for a 1-fish bag limit and a season that lasts through the
first two weeks of June (that’s probably an exaggeration, but you get
the point—a small size limit, acceptably high bag limit and long season isn’t going
to happen in most popular fisheries).
Thus, the trick for fisheries managers is to find the sweet
spot—that combination of size limit, bag limit, and season that will adequately
protect the resource, while coming closest to satisfying anglers.
It’s not an easy thing to do.
Many times, the ASMFC, or a regional fishery management
council, or even a state, will hold hearings and solicit public comments, in an
attempt to solicit opinions. It’s a
viable approach although, depending on when the hearings are held, anglers’
ability to attend may be limited (hearings held during the workday, or so early
in the evening that people don’t have enough time between when they get out of
work and when the hearing is held, are particularly problematic), and there are
always the problems of people being afraid to speak in public, or of interest
groups packing the hearing and, at times, trying to shout down and intimidate
those with different views.
Recently, we have seen states try to survey anglers on
various issues, but that, too, is an imperfect solution, because a survey doesn’t
accurately reflect the views of a population—in this case, the population of
anglers—if the people surveyed don’t represent an accurate cross-section of
that population. In the case of state
surveys, which typically aren’t sent out to a pre-selected subset of anglers,
but are instead posted online so that the public may voluntarily respond, it is
nearly impossible to keep biases out of the sample.
Younger anglers, for example, may be more willing to
complete—or even more able to access—an online survey than older, less
computer-savvy individuals. Native
English-speakers may be more likely to respond than those who only learned the
language later in life. Education,
economic condition, and similar factors may also tend to skew survey results
toward findings that don’t accurately reflect public sentiment.
Then there is the issue of someone intentionally trying to bias
the results. Angler surveys generally
draw a small enough response that a group of like-minded individuals, whether a
business, an industry group, a large fishing club, or a publication with a
particular editorial viewpoint can urge customers, readers, or members to respond
to a survey in disproportionate numbers, and so distort the outcome.
For example, the
ASMFC received 4,525 comments on the question of whether to reduce striped bass
landings by 12% in Addendum III to the management plan. The American Sportfishing Association, which
is the trade association for the fishing tackle industry, generated a form
letter that resulted in 929 comments opposing the 12% cut. That amounted to 20.5% of all comments
received by the Management Board, and 34.1% of all comments opposing the
reduction. Yet the ASA solicited
those comments through its “Keep America Fishing” advocacy program, which
reaches out to anglers all across the United States, many—perhaps most—of whom
do not live on the striper coast and do not fish for wild striped bass.
Yet their opinions counted just as much as those of the most
ardent striped bass angler, even though they didn’t necessarily provide any
insight into what such striped bass anglers wanted the Management Board to do.
In another instance,
the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation conducted an
on-line survey of anglers last January, asking what changes they’d like to see
in the state’s black sea bass regulations.
One of New York’s
largest party boat fleets put the news up on its Facebook page, urging its
followers—which likely included a large percentage of anglers who fished from
for-hire boats—to participate. It’s
likely that other businesses encouraged their customers to participate in the survey
as well.
Only
2,060 stakeholders responded to the black sea bass survey. Of those, 1,915 were anglers, while the rest
represented for-hire businesses or bait and tackle shops. It’s impossible to know how many of the 1,915
anglers only responded because they were urged to do so by a for-hire operation
or other business, but it’s probably safe to assume that at least some of the
respondents fell into that category.
And that sort of encouragement could have easily biased the
survey.
In
2025, New York anglers took just slightly more than 335,000 fishing trips in
which black sea bass were the primary target.
Of those 335,000 trips, only about 34,500—10.3%--were taken by anglers
fishing from for-hire vessels. The 138
members of the for-hire industry who responded to the survey comprised 6.7% of
all respondents. So, if more than 75 of
the 1,915 anglers who responded did most of their black sea bass fishing from
for-hire vessels, the percentage of respondents representing the for-hire sector
would have exceeded that sector’s 10.3% share of the black sea bass fishery as
a whole.
While, as a practical matter, a couple of percentage points one
way or another wouldn’t really matter, it’s easy to see how, if a few
businesses made a concerted effort to get customers to respond, they could
badly bias the results of a survey, and provide a false impression of what the overall
angling community preferred.
Fortunately, in the case of New York’s black sea bass
survey, that sort of bias didn’t seem to occur.
Responses were remarkably consistent across all identifiable groups of
stakeholders, with a little more than half of the respondents prioritizing a
reduction in the minimum size, with an increase in the bag limit during the
first part of the season (ending on August 31) and an earlier start to the
season effectively tied for second place.
As a result, New York will reduce its size limit from 16 ½ to 16 inches
in 2026, and start its season on May 16 rather than on June 23.
In that instance, it looks as if the survey helped managers
to get the changes right; anglers generally seem content with the agency’s
decision. And there is no question that
the people at the DEC’s Marine Resources Division put in a lot of effort to
reach the right outcome.
But there was still an element of good fortune involved, for
in the end, while determining how many fish the recreational sector might land
is a matter of science, setting regulations that will adequately constrain recreational
landings, while leaving anglers reasonably content, is just as much a matter of
art, performed by managers who know their constituents well enough to sort
through the noise that surrounds the rulemaking process.
All things considered, it’s remarkable how often they manage
to get it right.
