TRUTH, THE FIRST CASUALTY: SOUTH ATLANTIC RED SNAPPER

 

Some have said that

“Truth is the first casualty of war,”

and that statement is as true of political battles over natural resources and it is of military conflicts.

And over the last couple of decades, along the southeastern coast—both the Gulf and the South Atlantic—there is probably no fish that has been a greater focus of political battles than the red snapper.

I’m not sure why that is.

I’ve caught the things, and they’re fun to catch, but nothing exceptional.  Amberjack pull a lot harder, and sails are quite a bit more fun.  I’ve eaten them, too, and the meat is OK, but in my view no better than yellowtail, mangroves, muttons, or some of the other fish I’ve caught off South Atlantic shores.

But for whatever reason, red snapper seem to be particularly good at inspiring fights, at least fights involving recreational fishermen, the recreational fishing industry, and just about everyone else, who the recreational folks repeatedly try to blame for the problems that they, themselves created.

The latest conflict has arisen over the National Marine Fisheries Service issuance of exempted fishing permits, that will allow red snapper anglers in Atlantic Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, and North Carolina enjoy fishing seasons 20 or 30 times longer than they were granted last year, and perhaps exceed their annual catch limit by as much as 2,000% or more, without suffering any consequences at all (outside of a possible decline in the red snapper population).

That latest conflict is where the truth about recreational red snapper fishing in the South Atlantic comes in.  Not just one truth, or two, but a few of them.

The first important truth is that there are a lot of red snapper in the South Atlantic.  Some big year classes have pushed up abundance, measured in numbers, although biomass is probably still significantly below what it was during the mid-20^th Century, because most of the fish are still relatively small.

The second is that anglers are catching lot of those red snapper.  As one typical recreational commenter noted on a charter boat’s Facebook page,

“giving REC guys two days [season] for a fish that there’s zero chance your [sic] not catching them, shit you probably going to burn a ton of gas money just to go throw away Red snapper all day.”

A third truth, as the above quotation’s “throw away” comment suggests, is that a lot of the South Atlantic red snapper caught by anglers aren’t being kept by anglers, due both to the 1-fish federal bag limit and the very short federal fishing season, which is open for a day or two and closed for the rest of the year.  Instead, all of those over-limit and out-of-season red snapper are returned to the water.

In that regard, it’s also true that anglers release a lot of red snapper, in absolute terms; over the past five years, 2021 through 2025, recreational fishermen in the South Atlantic released an estimated 2.2 millon red snapper every year.

But a very unfortunate truth is that many of the red snapper that anglers release don’t survive.  Release mortality occurs in a host of ways.  The simplest is that some fish simply die from the stress of being hooked and released; one study conducted off North Carolina, which employed descending devices to get the fish back down to the bottom quickly, found that almost 94% of red snapper hooded in the jaw survive, while nearly 88% of all deeper-hooked fish die.

Another study, just released this month, was conducted off northern Florida, and found that if red snapper were released on the surface, without the use of a descending device, barotrauma—the damaging effects of pressure changes experienced when the fish was reeled up from the bottom—would result in 46.8% of them dying after release; that study found that if a descending device was used, the release mortality rate fell to just 12.9% after six hours, and 29.0% after 48 hours had passed.

But even assuming that all of the anglers releasing red snapper employed descending devices—which is a vastly over-optimistic assumption—29.0% of 2.2 million red snapper is still a lot of dead fish.

Which leads us to the most unpleasant truth of all:  That recreational release mortality kills far more red snapper than either recreational or commercial harvest.  It probably makes up about 80% of all recreational red snapper fishing mortality.

And that truth is the biggest casualty of the current red snapper wars, both because some of the details are being twisted, and because the massive level of recreational red snapper discards is being completely ignored by recreational fishing advocates.

That is nothing new.

Consider, for example, a press release put out by the Coastal Conservation Association, perhaps the nation’s largest, and very likely its most militant, anglers’ rights organization, last September.  Announcing that “South Atlantic States Unveil Road Map to Snapper Management;” the substantive portion of that release stated,

“South Atlantic red snapper is currently managed by NOAA Fisheries through the South Atlantic Fisheries Management Council.  The fishery has come under intense scrutiny in recent years as recreational fishing seasons have been limited to one or two days—and often closed entirely—despite the population being larger than at any time in recorded history.  Draconian federal restrictions arise from high levels of uncertainty in recreational catch data collected by the federal government.

“In just the last four months, the governors of Florida, Georgia, and South Carolina voiced their support for a shift to state-led management of red snapper in the South Atlantic in a joint letter to U.S. Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick.  That was quickly followed by formal letters from congressional delegations from each of the three states reinforcing the call for reform…

“’This is an incredibly important step in the future of recreational red snapper management in the South Atlantic,’ said Ted Venker, vice president of conservation for Coastal Conservation Association.  ‘We are grateful to the South Atlantic states for taking on this added responsibility and for their commitment to bring rational, reliable data and management to this fishery.  As we have seen in the Gulf under this approach, we are confident that management outcomes will begin to align with the health of the resource and enhance anglers’ access to it.’

“The process in the South Atlantic is expected to follow roughly the same path as state management in the Gulf, with each state implementing and testing data collection programs through Exempted Fishing Permits…”

Nowhere is the reader told of the huge waste of red snapper—estimated at approximately 475,000 dead fish—that results from recreational fishermen releasing red snapper during the closed season. 

Instead of admitting to that incontrovertible fact, the Coastal Conservation Association tries to pull out its favorite canard, that the 1- and 2-day red snapper seasons were due to “high levels of uncertainty in recreational catch data collected by the federal government,” although that’s not even close to true; the percent standard error—the measure of uncertainty—in the release data (used to calculate release mortality) for four out of the last five years was well within the parameters for acceptable data.  Admittedly, the uncertainty in the landings data was high, but the actual recreational landings are an order of magnitude smaller than the number of red snapper tossed overboard to die by recreational fishermen. 

That’s the truth that the Coastal Conservation Association, the American Sportfishing Association, and all of the other advocates of the exempted fishing permits and extending the South Atlantic red snapper season are trying to sweep under the rug.

They try to pretend that anglers are somehow the victims of an incompetent or uncaring federal government, and hope that the public (because the federal government already knows) never figures out is that those 475,000 red snapper dumped and wasted by recreational fishermen represent more than 42 times the number of red snapper landed by the entire commercial fishery in the South Atlantic (102,951 pound commercial quota divided by an average 9.19 pounds per commercially-landed red snapper equals 11,203 fish landed commercially).

About the only time that the angling industry and anglers’ rights crowd even admitted to all the dead discards was in a May 22 press release issued by the American Sportfishing Association, after a federal district judge in the District of Columbia enjoined the so-called “pilot programs” associated with the South Atlantic red snapper exempted fishing permits.  And even then, the release presented things backward, saying that

“the recreational fishery in recent years has been limited to one- or two-day recreational harvest seasons, which has led to excessive discard mortality estimates,”

instead of presenting the unvarnished truth, which is that

“because it produces so many dead red snapper discards when the season is closed, the recreational fishery in recent years has had to be limited to one- or two-day recreational harvest seasons.”

And we should note that, when stating a truthful case, one normally states the cause before the effect instead of, as the ASA did, stating the effect before the cause, to sort of hide what’s really going on.

But any way one chooses to word things, the truth is the same:  the estimated 475,000 red snapper discarded dead by recreational fishermen outnumber the 22,797 annual recreational catch limit that anglers are allowed to bring home by a ratio of more than 20 to one.

I can understand why the angling industry and anglers’ rights crowd might not want that truth circulating too widely.

After all, they came up with the exempted fishing permit plan in an effort to kill even more fish, and if the public became aware that something like 95% of the South Atlantic red snapper that anglers are killing now are just feeding the sharks and the crabs, they might try to keep them from killing too many more.

Which brings us to the final truth that the organized red snapper anglers don’t really want you to know: That at least some of the waste could have been avoided, and both commercial and recreational landings could have been more than tripled, with no negative impact on the red snapper stock at all.

And NMFS knew how to do it.

On January 14, 2025, the agency issued a proposed Amendment 59 to the Fishery Management Plan for the Snapper-Grouper Fishery of the South Atlantic.  The proposed amendment would have resulted in a commercial quota of 346,000 pounds, instead of the current 102,951, and a recreational catch limit of 85,000 fish, instead of just 22,797.  The tradeoff was that it would close all fishing for species in the snapper-grouper complex, in all waters north of Cape Canaveral, Florida and south of the Florida-Georgia line, from December 1 to February 28; that three-month closure, in just that one area off northern Florida, was expected to reduce red snapper discard mortality by at least 24%.

The proposed amendment was no panacea.  It’s impossible—or at least very difficult—to fish one’s way out of the sort of discard mortality trap that has snagged South Atlantic red snapper anglers, for so long as fishing is still going on while the red snapper season is closed, some level of discard mortality will occur.  Even during the 39-day (Florida) and 62-day (Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina) seasons proposed in the now-enjoined exempted fishing permits, the season would have remained closed, and discard mortality would still have occurred, for 10 or 11 months of the year.

But the proposed amendment was at least way to cut down the waste, and turn some of the discards into landings.

One would like to think that the angling community would have had a well-enough developed sense of responsibility that it might have at least tried to mitigate some of the waste of the red snapper resource that it had been perpetuating for years, and supported the proposed amendment.

But that sort of integrity was apparently lacking, for the various recreational organizations went all-out to defeat it, instead. 

The American Sportfishing Association called for everyone to “Protect Access to Bottomfishing in the South Atlantic,” which wasn’t surprising, since the ASA’s members can always sell more stuff if the season is open, and the American Sportfishing Association’s overriding job is to help its members sell as much stuff as they can.

Florida Sportsman magazine came out against the amendment.  Its advertisers were probably pleased.

And the Coastal Conservation Association came out strongly against, perhaps a little unnerved at being asked to actually conserve something, when creating artificial reefs for anglers to fish on and supporting hatcheries that pump out fish for anglers to catch are more in its wheelhouse these days.

Their efforts were successful.  Anglers’ waste of nearly half a million red snapper goes on, while the recreational fishing organizations still try to find new and creative ways to kill more of them.

That’s why it’s important to keep the truth front and center, and not let it be buried alive.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

BIOLOGISTS CONSIDER SHARK DEPREDATION

 

Shark depredation—the act of sharks stealing fish from anglers or commercial fishermen—is nothing new.

Ernest Hemingway wrote about sharks “apple coring” bluefin tuna—attacking a hooked fish so relentlessly that an angler was left with little more than a head, a tail, and a near-fleshless backbone in-between—in the mid-1930s, and when I began fishing for cod from Rhode Island party boats three decades later, it was pretty well understood that we’d lose a few on every trip to the sharks that would inevitably be attracted to the struggling fish we reeled up from the ocean’s floor.

Offshore sportfishing is a relatively new sport, not much more than a century old, but it’s a pretty good bet that the fishermen who first set a net or threw a spear into the ocean, hoping to drag some food from the sea, learned first-hand about shark depredation, long before anyone gave it a name or developed the alphabet needed to record its occurrence.

Still, shark depredation has been getting a lot more press during the last few years, and there is little doubt that depredation events are becoming more common, both in northern and southern waters.

The big question is “Why?”

A team of biologists set about trying to answer that question.  The result was the recent paper, “Characterizing a century of shark depredation in US Atlantic recreational fisheries,” which was published in the April 2026 edition of the ICES Journal of Marine Science.

The researchers came up with a correlation between shark abundance, prey fish abundance, and angling activity that suggests why rates of shark depredation have varied over the years, which seems to make intuitive sense and corresponds with what I’ve observed on the water over the past 60 or so years.

Early in the paper, its authors note that

“At its essence, shark depredation is the result of human-wildlife overlap; in this case, spatially and temporally dynamic overlap between recreational anglers and sharks competing for a shared resource.  Navigating the challenges associated with recent increases in shark depredation (real or perceived) requires a broader understanding of how this overlap has evolved over time.  Therefore, we present a conceptual model incorporating historical information to broadly characterize a century of overlap between US Atlantic recreational anglers, target fisheries species, and sharks…  [citations omitted]”

One of the more interesting aspects of the analysis is that shark depredation, along with the factors that cause it, ebbs and flows over time; it does not follow a consistent trajectory. 

In the beginning—meaning the beginning of the 100-year span analyzed in the paper, not the beginning of all interactions between fishermen and sharks—depredation occurred, but there wasn’t too much overlap between anglers, sharks, and their shared target species in the quarter-century between 1925 and 1950.  Angler populations were certainly far lower than they are today, and target fish populations, being under far less pressure, were almost certainly much higher.  But what might be the most surprising aspect of the latter half of that period is that the shark population was probably somewhat depressed, at least in the waters off Florida, where some of the highest levels of shark depredation reportedly occur today.

That was due, as the paper notes, to the need to find a substitute for cod liver oil, which was then one of the most-used vitamin supplements.  Once the start of the Second World War, and the threat of German U-boats, cut off cod liver oil shipments from Europe, shark livers, processed at a plant in Port Salerno, Florida, provided a viable substitute.

It’s probably important to note a description of the then-new commercial shark fishery that was quoted in the paper:

“Thus the shark, a pest and a menace to Florida fishermen and sport lovers, the scourge of Florida waters, is being transformed into one of the most valuable creatures of the sea,  [emphasis added]”

because when we hear fishermen complain about current levels of shark abundance, we often hear them say that sharks “need to be controlled,” or that shark populations are “out of control.”  The supposed overabundance of sharks is blamed on the National Marine Fisheries Service’s efforts to manage shark populations, with one charter boat captain whining that

“The sharks have been protected for decades, and I believe it’s time that we need to control these predators as their population is spiraling out of control.”

But the early-1940s comment about sharks being “a pest and a menace to Florida fishermen and sport lovers” confirms that there is nothing new about shark depredation; it was going on long before NMFS began regulating shark landings, and long before “depredation” became the buzzword that it is today.

In the next quarter-century—1951 through 1975—the paper suggests that the overlap between anglers, sharks, and the various prey species increased substantially.  The number of recreational fishermen increased as the typical worker had more leisure time, as well as a better selection of affordable fishing boats, while the availability of fish traditionally targeted by recreational fishermen began to decline due to increased landings, largely by the commercial fishery; at the same time, shark abundance was generally stable, as the commercial fishery declined while recreational shark fishing, spurred on by the book, and later the movie, Jaws, became more and more popular.

This was the era in which I was born, began angling, saw my first recreationally caught sharks, and had my first experiences with shark depredation.  It was also the time when I first experimented with recreational shark fishing, and the time that created my personal baseline for shark depredation.

At that point, sharks were generally cursed at by anglers when they stole a tuna, billfish, or cod, but shark depredation was not the cause celebre that it is today.  It was merely a nuisance that fishermen learned to live with when they ventured out onto the sea.

That being said, it could easily be argued that today’s discontent over shark depredation was born in the third quarter-century defined in the paper, the years 1976 through 2000.  They were years when the angling population continued to increase, while the populations of both sharks and the various target fish species were both in decline.  There was relatively little overlap between the three groups.  In fact, according to the paper’s authors, the years between 1976 and 2000 resulted in the least overlap of any period during the past hundred years.

As the paper observes, during this period,

“commercial shark fisheries were explored as an underutilized resource, and public interest in recreational shark fishing continued to grow.  Expanding trade relations with China during this period also offered massive new markets for US seafood exports, including shark fins.  Consequently, commercial shark landings escalated by an order of magnitude, from 135 tons in 1979 to 7172 tons in 1989, yet it wasn’t until 1993 that the first fishery management plan for US Atlantic sharks was enacted.  By then, most primary targets of commercial shark fisheries…were overfished…  [citations omitted]”

Some species of shark saw their abundance fall to historic lows.

This was the time when I became an active recreational shark fisherman, catching, killing, and eating my first sharks in the late 1970s, then buying my first (more-or-less) offshore-capable boat in 1982, catching my first sharks from that boat a year later, when I also ended up moving from my original home in Connecticut, where fishing was restricted to a shark-starved Long Island Sound, to the South Shore of New York’s Long Island, a move motivated by my desire for ready access to the ocean and the sharks and tuna that roamed within.

During those years, I became an active tournament fisherman, and saw anglers fishing from my boats place a number of prize-winning sharks on the scales.  But I also saw some species of shark fall into notable decline, dusky and sandbar (“brown”) sharks foremost among them.  The big tiger sharks that were once relatively common off New York during the summer became far less abundant, and even the shortfin mako, the most popular species in our local shark fishery, appeared to grow somewhat scarcer and trend smaller in size as the 20^th Century reached its end.

Anglers became accustomed to an ocean where sharks were fewer and farther between than was the case in previous decades.

Thus, they were mentally unprepared for what happened over the last 25 years.

The paper refers to the years 2001 through 2025 as a time of

“Greatest overlap and lifting baselines,”

when

“there are more anglers than ever before, shark populations are rebuilding following three decades of management, and many target fishery species are recovering from overfishing.”

Dr. J. Marcus Drymon, the lead author of the paper, previously characterized what can happen next as a sort of “lifting baseline” situation, in which

“Instances where populations have been overfished and then rebuilt can create a perception of overabundance.  When the species that’s recovering is a predator, that can lead to human-wildlife conflict.”

That’s arguably what we’re seeing with shark depredation today.

Still, the shark depredation issue can’t be ignored, because sharks do steal fish from anglers, and anglers do get upset when that happens.

The paper, relying on input from various sources, identified 22 species of shark that engage in depredation, and 51 target fish species that suffered from the events.  The depredation events involved 207 different combinations of shark and target fish species, with bull sharks and sandbar sharks named as the most frequent depredators.  Those figures probably underestimate the number of possible shark/target fish combinations that actually occur, as I recall that my early recollections of depredation on the Rhode Island cod boats involved blue, shortfin mako, and dusky sharks, although duskies were not listed as one of the reported cod depredators in the study.

Perhaps most significantly, the paper stated that

“There are no ‘silver bullet’ shark depredation solutions that will work across all of the fishery scenarios identified in our analysis.  Ideally, any approach should simultaneously maximize access to target fishery species while minimizing shark interactions.  Yet, in reality, potentially available mitigation options may only marginally reduce conflict, not eliminate it.  Depredation mitigation options currently include three primary mechanisms: (1) using technical/physical deterrents, (2) modifying fishing behaviors, or (3) reducing shark populations.”

It notes that

“researchers are testing the efficacy of technical/physical deterrents with promising results,”

while also observing that

“Shark population reduction, either through targeted removal or optimizing sustainable harvest of sharks, is often proposed by anglers as the preferred mitigation option,”

although such population reduction might prove impractical because

“Killing prohibited species…is illegal, while targeted removal of authorized species…without widely marketable products is wasteful and inconsistent with US fisheries law.”

As an angler who has fished on every coast of the United States, and is more than familiar with the Atlantic coast shark fishery and other Atlantic coast fisheries, I would argue that the second option, modifying fishing behaviors, probably holds the greatest promise.  While the paper merely states that

“modifications to fishing behaviors such as changing locations and using electric reels are likely to reduce depredation,”

I would argue that the best way to minimize shark depredation is to get a hooked fish up to the boat as quickly as possible, and either land it or release it in the shortest practicable time.

That is not a new or nor a controversial opinion.  Hemingway had already figured it out nearly 100 years ago.

“We try to fight them fast but never rough.  The secret is for the angler never to rest.  Any time he rests, the fish is resting.  That gives the fish a chance to get strong again…You don’t have to kill a horse to break him.  You have to convince him…”

Dr. Andrew J. Danylchuk, another of the paper’s authors, once wrote something similar, with respect to avoiding shark depredation of tarpon in the Florida Keys.

“The longer an angler fought a tarpon on the line, the greater the chances for depredation…

“There is a quick solution…Fight tarpon harder, and get ‘em landed and released in under 10 minutes.  Of course, a shark could still go after it once released, but at least the fish has a fighting chance of survival.”

It’s only common sense.  The less time a fish is struggling in the water, the less time there is for its struggles to attract a shark, and even if they do, the less time the shark will have to locate and depredate the fish.

But a lot of current angling trends work counter to those truths.

There has been a trend over the years to use spinning tackle to catch larger fish, including tuna, sailfish, and larger reef fish such as amberjack and big groupers.  While anglers might find such gear more enjoyable to use, from an ergonomic standpoint, it is far less efficient than the traditional, conventional rod and reel, either paired with a belt and stand-up harness or, when the fish are particularly large, a bucket harness, footrest, and fighting chair, either of which allow the angler to bring the full force of their shoulders, back, and legs into the fight.  A spinning rod, on the other hand, doesn’t take full advantage of all of an angler’s muscle, and so adds extra time—with tuna, sometimes an hour or more—to the battle, time which makes depredation all the more likely.

In recent years, we have also seen trends like slow-pitch jigging, which employ rods that lack any meaningful backbone, and are largely useless for pumping a big fish up from the bottom; instead, the angler just slowly cranks the reel until the fish finally gives up the ghost, again extending fighting times.  Another relatively recent trend, deep-dropping, sees anglers lower baits to the bottom in 800, 900, or even in more than 1,000 feet of water, giving cruising sharks more than enough time to intercept hooked fish somewhere between the bottom and the boat.

Yet anglers blame the sharks for depredation, rather than blaming themselves for setting up what amounts to an all-you-can-eat shark buffet.

Thus, while the new paper provides valuable insights into why and how shark depredation occurs, preventing depredation remains a challenge.  Science can only go so far in addressing that challenge; anglers must be willing to do their part as well.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

WELL, THAT WAS CERTAINLY QUICK: NEW LAWSUIT CHALLENGES SOUTH ATLANTIC RED SNAPPER EFPS

 

Just ten days ago, I wrote about the National Marine Fisheries Service’s less-than-wise decision to issue exempted fishing permits that will allow the four South Atlantic states to set their own red snapper regulations, even for anglers fishing in federal waters, and how those permits will allow anglers to severely overfish the red snapper stock.

The exempted fishing permits were issued on May 1^st. 

On May 5^th, a lawsuit challenging their issuance was filed in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia.  So far, the lawsuit hasn’t gotten much mention in the press, but I obtained a copy of the complaint, and so know the basic details. 

The action was brought by the Southeastern Fisheries Association, Inc., a commercial fishing trade association, as lead plaintiff.  Two commercial fishing companies in North Carolina, along with two North Carolina commercial fisherman and another from Florida, are also listed as plaintiffs.  Defendants are, as one would expect, Howard Lutnick as Secretary of Commerce and the National Marine Fisheries Service.

The list of parties will inevitably grow.  The recreational fishing industry, in the form of the American Sportfishing Association, the largest angling industry trade group, and the Coastal Conservation Association, an “anglers’ rights” organization that walks in lockstep with the ASA and conforms to the trade group’s decisions, has already announced its intention to intervene in the action in support of the exempted fishing permits.  It is reasonable to believe that one or more marine conservation groups may eventually intervene on behalf of the plaintiffs.

The premise of the complaint is simple and straightforward, expressed in its first five paragraphs:

“The case challenges an illegal fishery management action taken by the Defendants Howard Lutnick, in his official capacity as Secretary of Commerce, and the National Marine Fisheries Service (“NMFS”).  Specifically, on or about May 1, 2026, Defendants issued so-called ‘exempted fishing permits’ to the states of Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, and North Carolina, which would allow a massive amount of recreational fishing for South Atlantic red snapper in 2026 and beyond.

“The factual record establishes that under the challenged permits, red snapper landings in 2026 will substantially exceed the stock’s annual catch limit.  The record also establishes that under the challenged permits, fishing mortality in 2026 will be so high as to cause overfishing on South Atlantic red snapper.  Furthermore, the record establishes that actual recreational landings of red snapper in 2026 will not even come close to following the stock’s governing allocation ratio.

“Preventing overfishing, managing stocks under annual catch limits, and ensuring fair and equitable allocations are core requirements of the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act… (‘Magnuson-Stevens Act’ or ‘the Act’).

“The Magnuson-Stevens Act nowhere allows Defendants to waive the statutory requirements for annual catch limit management, preventing overfishing, and for fair and equitable allocations—whether through the use of ‘exempted fishing permits’ or otherwise.

“Excessive catch of South Atlantic red snapper in 2026 will harm the stock.  Stock abundance and biomass will be depleted, and its rebuilding progress will be set back.  [formatting omitted]”

Those allegations seem to present legitimate grievances, particularly in view of an Ocean Conservancy analysis which noted that

“The EFP proposals failed to include estimates of the number of fish they anticipate catching or how many people will be allowed to catch them, even though such estimates are required as art of the EFP application/approval process.  Ocean Conservancy has used available data to estimate the number of fish that could be caught.  The annual catch limit, or ACL, for the recreational sector is 22,797 fish.  A recent two-day red snapper fishing season in Florida alone resulted in 24,885 landed fish, which exceeds that limit.  A simple expansion using this Florida landings rate and ignoring the contribution from other states who will have even longer fishing seasons, suggests that as many as 485,000 fish could be landed in a 39-day season.  This is over 20 times the annual catch limit—a clear violation of the Magnuson-Stevens Act.”

Still, there are two sides to every lawsuit, and particularly when challenging administrative actions, wins rarely come easily.

The exempted fishing permits and resultant lawsuit test the boundaries of exempted fishing permits.  Magnuson-Stevens states that

“…the Secretary [of Commerce], in consultation with the [regional fishery management] Councils, shall promulgate regulations that create an expedited, uniform, and regionally-based process to promote issuance, where practicable, of experimental fishing permits.  [What are called “experimental” fishing permits in Magnuson-Stevens are deemed “exempted” fishing permits by NMFS.]”

The result was 50 C.F.R. 600.475, titled "Scientific research activity, exempted fishing, and exempted educational activity."  Subsection (b)(1) of that regulation provides,

“A NMFS Regional Administrator or Director may authorize, for limited testing, public display, data collection, exploratory fishing, compensation fishing, conservation engineering, health and safety surveys, environmental cleanup, and/or hazard removal purposes, the target or incidental harvest of species managed under [a fishery management plan] or fishery regulations that would otherwise be prohibited…Data collection designed to capture and land quantities of fish for product development, market research, and/or public display must be permitted under exempted fishing procedures.  An EFP exempts a vessel only from those regulations specified in the EFP.  All other applicable regulations remain in effect…  [emphasis added]”

Usually, EFPs are issued to a small number of parties, perhaps even to a single vessel, that will be conducting focused research, and usually result in relatively small levels of exempted landings.  However, in this case, NMFS needed to somehow shoehorn the South Atlantic red snapper EFPs issued to the four states, which would affect many thousands of anglers and potentially hundreds of thousands of fish, into that authorization language.  They are attempting to do that by characterizing the exempted fishing as a new data collection effort, titling the Florida permit (and using similar language in all four EFPs)

“Exempted Fishing Permit to Test a State-based Data Collection and Management System for the Recreational Harvest of Red Snapper off Florida for 2026,”

and stating in the permit that

“[The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission] is pilot testing the use of its State Reef Fish Survey (SRFS) and a voluntary smartphone application (phone app) during an extended recreational fishing season for red snapper in state and federal waters of the South Atlantic.  FWC intends the activities conducted under the EFP to improve data on recreational fishing effort, catch, and discards of red snapper, and to inform the development of a long-term state-led management strategy for the recreational fishery.”

However, that hardly seems to be the sort of limited testing that the regulation contemplates.

Everyone who fishes recreationally under the permit—which as a practical matter means every angler who fishes for South Atlantic red snapper—is subject to the “EXEMPTIONS AND FISHING RESTRICTIONS” section of the permit, which provides, in part,

“Unless specifically exempted or required by this EFP, all other federal regulations continue to apply.  During the 2026 recreational fishing season only, this EFP exempts participants conforming to these terms and conditions from the following regulations.

1)     50 CFR 622.181(c)(2) that restricts combining harvest limits of red snapper in federal waters with any harvest limitations in state waters, limits the harvest and possession of red snapper to the specified season, and applies these limitations to a federally permitted for-hire vessel in both state and federal waters.

2)     50 CFR 622.183(b)(5) that specifies when the recreational season will occur each year.

3)     50 CFR 622.193(y)(2) that specifies the annual catch limit and accountability measures applicable to the recreational harvest of red snapper.”

Florida argued that such exemptions were needed because

“short fishing seasons that drive an artificially compressed level of fishing effort, and therefore a lack of reliable catch and discard information, have compounded management of the Atlantic red snapper fishery into an untenable situation.  To gather baseline data that is reflective of catch, effort, and discard rates associated with an expanded fishing season, FWC is proposing to monitor the recreational red snapper fishery through an extended 2026 fishing season…Due to the issues listed above regarding the need for baseline data due to the lack of adequate data currently being used to manage Atlantic red snapper, FWC will not submit projected landings for year 1, as any estimate would be highly uncertain and not scientifically defensible…”

Florida made that claim even though the current annual catch limit for the recreational red snapper fishery was derived from data collected on an annual, regional basis, not on landings in any one state or during a particular time period (which finer-scale data tend to be more uncertain), and despite the fact that most angling-linked fishing mortality is attributed to red snapper that die after release; the uncertainty associated with the release estimate, at least for four of the past five years, was acceptably low under NMFS guidelines for data quality, although the data related to the much smaller number of red snapper that are intentionally harvested is plagued by higher level of uncertainty.

Why the data collection study could not have been truly limited, and accomplished with a smaller number of anglers, rather than the entire red snapper angling community, fishing under the EFP remains unclear.

While allowing widespread recreational fishing under an exempted fishing permit occurred once before, when red snapper anglers were allowed to do so in the Gulf of Mexico, the Gulf EFPs restricted anglers to the federally established annual catch limit.  The South Atlantic EFPs apparently don’t include that requirement because, as Roger Young, the executive director of the FWC, whined to Secretary Lutnick,

“Florida’s EFP did not mirror the Gulf of America exactly because of decades of mismanagement in the South Atlantic.  For example, consider the way NOAA Fisheries manages Red Snapper in the South Atlantic in comparison to the Gulf of America.  In the South Atlantic, dead discards are directly taken ‘off the top’ of the Red Snapper ACL, reducing allowable recreational harvest from 365,404 fish to 22,797 fish.  In the Gulf of America, discards are not ‘taken off the top,’ providing significantly more harvest opportunities…”

While that may be true, South Atlantic anglers are still killing far more red snapper than they land as a result of release mortality, and those fish need to be considered when calculating overall removals and how such removals impact the health of the stock.

Florida, and all of the EFPs, seem to be ignoring those discards entirely.

So, there is no reason to assume that the EFPs will result in lower overall fishing mortality.  After all, even if release mortality is high, and leads to hundreds of thousands of dead South Atlantic red snapper, some percentage of the released fish survive, while the mortality rate of retained fish is always 100%.  So while the EFPs will allow some current discards to be converted into landings, unless anglers stop fishing entirely once they put their first red snapper in the boat—and I don’t think any of us are naïve enough to expect them to do that—the overall impact on red snapper discard mortality will probably be close to nil.

And given that we’re still talking about a 326-day closed season off Florida, and a 303-day closed season off the rest of the South Atlantic states, when people are still going to be fishing for other bottom fish, and incidentally catching, releasing, and killing large numbers of red snapper in the process, anyone who believes that the EFPs will lead to lower overall fishing mortality is only kidding themselves.

Which leads to what may be the key question in the lawsuit.

Can an exempted fishing permit which will inevitably lead to severe overfishing be validly issued by NMFS?

Florida’s Roger Young contends that it can, arguing that

“there is nothing in the Magnuson-Stevens Act…that dictates an EFP’s harvest be included in annual catch limits.”

While that may be true, Magnuson-Stevens does state that

“Conservation and management measures shall prevent overfishing,”

and also requires that any fishery management plan

“shall contain the conservation and management measures…which are necessary and appropriate for the conservation and management of the fishery to prevent overfishing…  [formatting omitted]”

The law contains multiple provisions relating to ending overfishing, but nowhere states that overfishing pursuant to an exempted fishing permit is acceptable.  Considering Magnuson-Stevens’ general policy of preventing overfishing from occurring, the legality of issuing an exempted fishing permit that will inevitably cause substantial levels of overfishing is certainly open to question.

Whether the South Atlantic red snapper EFPs, with their broad application to all red snapper anglers and the certainty that they will lead to extreme overfishing of the red snapper stock, can escape legal sanction merely by stating that the annual catch limit and accountability measures will not apply to any red snapper fisherman in the South Atlantic this year is a question that only a court can decide.

We can only hope that the court deciding this action recognizes that the South Atlantic red snapper EFPs are not about experimental fishing at all, and that the motivation for their issuance was less about data collection than about finding a creative way for recreational fishermen to kill more fish while escaping any accountability for overfishing the red snapper stock.

The Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act has already been weakened by court decisions like the one in Natural Resources Defense Council, Inc. v. Raimondo, which allowed recreational fishermen to sidestep some of the conservation provisions of federal law, and decided that an annual catch limit was not, in itself, an absolute limit on anglers’ landings.

Should the farce that is the South Atlantic red snapper EFPs be adjudged a legal management action, the court’s decision will inevitably encourage other assaults on Magnuson-Stevens, which could easily leave the law so weakened and vulnerable to further attack that regulators will no longer be able to effectively manage recreational fisheries.

That would constitute a temporary victory for the recreational fishing industry and the anglers’ rights crowd, but the fish, and all fishermen, would only lose in the end.

GOOD NEWS FOR ATLANTIC BLUEFIN ANGLERS

 

I’m drafting this post aboard an Amtrak train, headed from Washington back up to New York’s Penn Station, where I’ll grab another train out to Long Island.  For the last few days, I’ve been attending the spring meeting of the National Marine Fisheries Service’s Highly Migratory Species Advisory Panel, where we spent much of the meeting’s first day talking about bluefin tuna.

For recreational fishermen, the news was good.

The recreational bluefin tuna fishery was in a bit of disarray last year, after unusually high landings in the General, Harpoon, and Angling categories in 2024 caused the United States to exceed its quota, established by the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas, by 141.2 metric tons.  78% of that overage, or 110.1 metric tons, was attributable to the Angling Category.  Because ICCAT requires that any nation that overfishes its annual ICCAT quota must pay the overage back in the following year, and because the United States allocates the payback across sectors in proportion to each sector’s overage, that meant that the 2025 Angling Category quota had to be reduced from 297.4 metric tons to just 187.3 mt.

In addition, the early season fishing for bluefin in the lower mid-Atlantic was extremely good in early 2025, leading to the Angling Category Trophy allocation for the southern region to be quickly exceeded.  There were also significant early landings in the Large School/Small Medium Category.  Because a new administration had just come into power in Washington, bringing along not only the usual bureaucratic disruption that occurs during any administration change, but also a temporary ban on all new regulations, NMFS couldn’t deal with those landings on a timely basis, leaving managers with even less Angling Category fish to work with. 

That left the managers walking a very fine line.  They wanted to let recreational fishermen catch their entire 2025 allocation, and allow the season to run as long as possible, to provide anglers along the entire East Coast a chance to participate in the fishery and so maximize social and economic returns.  At the same time, they had to be very careful not to exceed the overall 2025 quota, for ICCAT rules provided that, if any nation exceeded its quota two years in a row, that nation could be required to pay back a minimum of 125%, not merely 100%, of the overage in the following year.

NMFS ultimately adopted a 1-fish bag limit and 27- to 73-inch size limit for private boats, with an extra 27- to 47-inch bluefin for for-hire vessels, and even with those restrictive rules had to close the Angling Category fishery in early August.  A lot of fishermen, for-hire vessel operators, and folks in the fishing tackle industry were very unhappy with that outcome.

However, it turned out that NMFS knew exactly what it was doing.

We learned at the HMS Advisory Panel meeting that the Angling Category landings were just 101% of the category’s 2025 allocation, meaning that anglers were allowed to land every pound of fish that they were entitled to, but their overharvest was so small that it was essentially meaningless.  At the same time, the combined United States landings were only 94% of the adjusted 2025 quota, so we avoided exceeding the quota for a second consecutive year, and will not have to pay back any overage at all.

Thus, in 2026, the Angling Category will be able to fish on its full bluefin tuna allocation.  And the news gets better, for while the 2023, 2024, and 2025 allocations were based on an overall United States base quota of 1,341 mt, the 2026, 2027, and 2028 allocations will be based on the higher 1,490.38 mt base quota that was established at the November 2025 ICCAT meeting.

The Angling Category is allocated 22.6% of the overall United States quota, so the increase in base quota means that the Angling Category’s quota should be bumped up from 297.4 to 341.3 metric tons this year, although the regulations needed to implement the increase won’t be finalized until sometime in late summer or early fall.

Right now, the default recreational bluefin tuna regulations are in effect, which permit Angling Category vessels, including those with Charter/Head Boat permits fishing under recreational rules, to retain one bluefin between 27 and 73 inches in length each day, and one “Trophy” of 73 inches or more each year (except for boats fishing in the South Trophy region, which was closed on January 13 when its allocation was exceeded).

However, those regulations won’t be in place throughout the season.  Now that the Advisory Panel has had an opportunity to provide their thoughts on 2026 management measures, we can expect NMFS to put together a suite of rules intended to keep the season open through December 31, if that is at all possible. 

A lot of different considerations will come into play when those management measures are being drafted.

One priority is allowing anglers to fully utilize, but not exceed, their entire quota.  There is no simple formula for accomplishing that goal and, because several factors such as weather and the local availability of fish are beyond NMFS’ control, setting effective quotas is something of a mixture of art and science. 

Sector allocations, as well as the base quota itself, is measured in weight rather than in the number of fish, so regulations that focus on harvesting School category bluefin, rather than Large School and Small Medium fish, tend to favor a longer season, while those that allow a significant harvest of larger fish are more likely to lead to anglers exceeding their quota.  At the same time, once one gets up to Massachusetts and into the Gulf of Maine, School bluefin become more and more difficult to find, with larger fish dominating the fishery; School bluefin-oriented regulations can make it more difficult for northern New England anglers to harvest legal fish, making some sort of compromise necessary.

Historically, there has also been a tendency to favor for-hire vessels over private boats, on the theory that for-hire anglers are more likely to book trips if they can take more fish home.  We can expect that trend to continue in 2026.  There was also some talk at the meeting of providing party/head boats with more liberal regulations than those that govern the charter boat fleet, as the party boats carry more passengers and arguably need even more liberal regulations than the charters in order to sell trips targeting bluefin. 

In an effort to keep such special privileges from getting out of hand, perhaps to the point that they disadvantage the private boat fleet, I suggested that such special regulations be limited to a season that opens later in the year, after private vessels and traditional “six-pack” charters have had abundant opportunities to utilize the available fish.  Others made similar suggestions.

Weather is obviously out of human control, but if we get a situation where a large body of bluefin sets up close to active fishing ports for an extended period, and the weather permits anglers to take advantage of the nearby abundance, landings can spike very quickly.  It was just that sort of situation that caused the big recreational overage of 2024.  Fish concentrating in a particular area, and the resultant sharp increase in landings, can also disadvantage anglers elsewhere on the coast, as the sort of early closure of the fishery that occurred last year can keep anglers in places that traditionally host later-season fisheries to be denied access to the bluefin resource.

To avoid such outcomes, I was one of a number of Advisory Panel members who asked that managers employ regional quotas, with northern and southern regions separated by a line drawn at 39^o 18’ N, which would place the dividing line off southern New Jersey.  The current regulations already allow the use of such regions; separate quotas would help to prevent large early harvests off Virginia and North Carolina from harming northern New England anglers, whose season typically begins later in the summer, while also preventing high harvests off New Jersey, New York, and New England from depriving anglers fishing in places like Ocean City, Maryland of their fisheries, which typically begin later in the fall.

While it is impossible to say with any certainty what 2026 regulations will look like, I’m comfortable in predicting that the bag limit will be two, or perhaps three, fish for the private boats (maybe something like one or two School bluefin and one Large School/Small Medium, or possibly one fish between 27 and 73 inches, plus a second School fish), with an extra bluefin for the for-hires, and a season that will hopefully last throughout the year.

Depending on how many fish anglers land as the season progresses, it is very possible that whatever management measures are originally put in place will either be liberalized, if landings are lower than expected, or made more restrictive, if early harvests are high.  Another season closure is not out of the question, although it would probably occur in the fall, and not at the height of the summer season like it did in 2025.

The bottom line is that the regulations, whatever form they ultimately take, are likely to be significantly less restrictive than they were last year.

Before closing this post, I probably should also address something that wasn’t mentioned at the meeting—which can hopefully be viewed as a very good thing.

In April, I reported that the United States had sent a letter to ICCAT, notifying it that the U.S. would no longer be counting recreational bluefin tuna landings against its annual quota.  At the time, I noted that there was nothing in the relevant ICCAT recommendations that could reasonably be interpreted to support such action, and further noted that it seemed to violate the current ICCAT management approach, and was being condemned by other ICCAT members.  I also observed that, in order to exclude recreational landings from the United States’ quota, NMFS would have to initiate a new rulemaking that authorized such change.

No one from NMFS even alluded to, much less addressed, any such action at the Advisory Panel meeting.  The upcoming bluefin rulemaking, which would adopt the increased base quota, still allocated 22.6% of that base quota to the recreational sector, and the discussion of upcoming rulemaking did not mention any change to how NMFS might treat recreational landings vis-a-vis the U.S. quota in the future.

While the topic did not come up in the meetings, it did come up in casual conversations held among Advisory Panel members over lunch, dinner, and/or drinks.  We were all pretty much in agreement that it was better not to make any official inquiries as to whether the idea still had legs.  A few folks suggested that the person who wrote the letter is no longer in the same position at NMFS, and that maybe whoever replaced him is more then willing to let a bad idea die quietly and with no fanfare at all.

Hopefully, that is the case.

The new, higher recreational allocation, and the fact that we won’t have to be paying back any overages, suggests that 2026 (and, hopefully, 2027 and 2028) could be a very good year for recreational bluefin fishermen.

It would be a shame to screw things up now.

 

 

 

NEW NATIONAL SALTWATER RECREATIONAL FISHERIES POLICY EMPHASIZES ECONOMIC ISSUES

On April 13, 2026 the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration issued a press release announcing its newest version of the National Saltwater Recreational Fisheries Policy (Policy), which stated that “The purpose of this policy is to provide guidance for NOAA Fisheries’ consideration in its deliberations pertaining to development and maintenance of enduring and sustainable high quality saltwater recreational fisheries.”

The release further stated that “The policy identifies goals and guiding principles to be integrated into NOAA Fisheries’ planning, budgeting, decision-making, and activities regarding saltwater recreational fishing and includes examples of implementation concepts and strategies supported by NOAA Fisheries.”

The Policy replaces NOAA Fisheries’ original National Saltwater Recreational Fisheries Policy, which was adopted in 2015. Although the Policy remains, in principle, substantially similar to the 2015 version, it places more emphasis on the economic aspects of recreational saltwater fishing. The Policy is also somewhat more detailed than the policy that it replaces, and it addresses some issues for the first time.

Thus, while the original policy simply stated that “It is the policy of [NOAA Fisheries] to foster, support, and enhance a broadly accessible and diverse array of sustainable saltwater recreational fisheries for the benefit and enjoyment of the nation,” and described the scope of the policy by saying, “The policy pertains to non-commercial activities of fishermen who fish for sport or pleasure, as set out in the Magnuson-Stevens Act definition of recreational fishing. That could be retaining (e.g., consuming, sharing) or releasing their catches, as well as the businesses and industries (e.g., the for-hire fleets, bait and tackle businesses, tournaments) which support them,” the current Policy places more focus on the business aspects of recreational fishing.

While the first sentence of the current Policy is not meaningfully different from that of the original policy, additional provisions have been added which recognize “new and emerging priorities,” and specifically state NOAA Fisheries’ interest in “protecting the vibrant tourism and recreation industries that depend on healthy coastal ecosystems.” The language setting out the scope of the Policy has also been expanded, by stating the agency’s commitment to promoting and growing sustainable saltwater recreational fisheries.

The Policy’s focus on enhanced sustainability is encouraging, and is further reflected in a lengthened list of “strategic goals.” While the original policy listed only three such goals, including the support and maintenance of sustainable fisheries resources, including healthy marine habitats; promoting recreational fishing “for the social, cultural, and economic benefit of the nation;” and enabling long-term participation “through science-based conservation and management,” the Policy has expanded that list.

The Policy now recognizes five strategic goals. It retains, in substance, the three included in the original 2015 policy, although it now seeks to promote recreational fishing not to preserve its social and cultural virtues, but instead to do it in a way that “maximizes economic growth and supports coastal communities, tourism, and marine recreational industries.”

That change could, if truly integrated into NOAA Fisheries’ decision-making, move managers away from managing fisheries for abundance (described, in one Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission document, as “put[ting] the interest of the species before the fishery”), so that anglers might encounter more fish, including some large fish, when they venture out on the water, and toward a fishery managed largely for yield, with a higher fishing mortality rate and a population composed primarily of smaller fish, that is intended to appeal to tourists and other anglers more interested in taking fish home for dinner than in fishing for sport. Managers would place less emphasis on the preferences expressed by individual anglers and more on the preferences of the for-hire fishery and the rest of the recreational fishing industry.

The two new goals are far more benign. One would have NOAA Fisheries “Improve the responsiveness of fisheries management to current and future ocean conditions,” which is about as close to an acknowledgement of climate change and a warming ocean as one is likely to see from the agency, given the current atmosphere in Washington, as well as a reason to hope that NOAA Fisheries might finally confront the issue of shifting fish stocks. The other seeks to “Cultivate active stakeholder engagement in the stewardship of recreational fisheries,” something that could only improve the fishery management process.

Just how all of the goals might be achieved is outlined in the Policy’s final section, “Guiding Principles for the Saltwater Recreational Fisheries Policy.” Such principles, largely carried forward from the earlier policy, include “Foster Stewardship,” “Improve Access,” “Promote Participation,” “Increase Engagement,” “Strengthen Partnerships,” and “Advance Innovative Solutions.” All, on their face, are worthy of support although, as always, the devil is in the details, and in this case, some of the details are worthy of a little extra attention.

For example, in the “Foster Stewardship” section, one proposed strategy is to “Support cost-effective community-based restoration, conservation, and enhancement of essential fish habitats. [emphasis added]” While that all sounds fine at first reading, the qualifications of “cost-effective” and “community-based” restoration and conservation could well get in the way of essential habitat projects. That is particularly true of one of the most effective habitat improvement projects of all, dam removal.

On both the Atlantic coast, in places such as Maine’s Penobscot River, and on Pacific waters such as the Yakima River, the removal of dams that had long prevented anadromous fish from reaching their historical spawning grounds has resulted in immediate benefits to a plethora of fish species. However, dam removal can be both costly and controversial, and requiring it not be both “cost effective” and “community-based” could create severe obstacles to any significant dam removal projects.

The next principle, “Improve Access,” is also problematic, as it immediately leads to the question, “What, precisely, does “access” mean?”

“Improve Access” could mean removing physical barriers that separate anglers from the fish they seek, by providing funding to support working waterfronts, maintaining navigable waterways, or perhaps eschewing the creation of marine protected areas where angling is not allowed. Unfortunately, in recent years, we have also seen the recreational fishing industry use the word “access” as a euphemism for killing fish at rates that exceed the mortality levels recommended by fisheries managers. South Atlantic red snapper provide a recent example.

While removing barriers that keep anglers from their quarry is always a good thing, using “angler access” as an excuse to sidestep science-based fisheries management most definitely is not.

Another potential pitfall can be found under the “Increase Engagement” heading, where one strategy would “Develop and ensure meaningful pathways exist for community knowledge and needs to enter the science and management process. [emphasis added]”

There are potentially two problems here.

One is the concept of “community knowledge.” It is true that people who work on and around the water come to understand, through years and even generations of observation, the relationship between the fish that they catch and other natural phenomena. But recognizing that a relationship exists is very different from understanding why it occurs, and anecdotal observations are not the factual equivalent of data-based scientific conclusions. I once had the deckhand on a trawler insist that some birds, like mayflies, only lived for a single day, a conclusion he reached after fishing during the autumn migration and finding the bodies of scores of warblers and other birds, which died of exhaustion after overrunning Long Island during the night, littering the vessel’s decks in the morning.

Local knowledge can be a starting point for scientific research. Many years ago, commercial fishermen argued that the mandatory escape vents in black sea bass pots were too large. The size of the vents, which were intended to allow undersized black sea bass to escape, were based on fish measured at the surface; the fishermen claimed that water pressure at the bottom compressed fish’s bodies and allowed legal-sized fish to escape. Subsequent research demonstrated that the fishermen’s claims were true.

At the same time, anyone who has attended many fisheries hearings, in particular hearings on regulations intended to reduce catch, knows that fishermen will invariably rise to claim that “the science is wrong,” “there are plenty of fish out there,” and “we’re on the water every day and know what’s really going on.” Such comments are frequently made by for-hire vessel operators and other members of the recreational fishing community. While such comments are often made in good faith, they also typically reflect a certain level of confirmation bias, which develops when fishermen focus on good catches made at certain times in certain places and, ignoring other days when fishing is poor, convince themselves that fish populations are healthy and regulations aren’t needed.

The “science…process” should be driven by hard data, and nothing else.

The notion that “community…needs” should “enter the science and management process” is equally dangerous, for biology is objective, while “need” is a very subjective concept. Biology is also non-negotiable. If scientists determine that a certain, specified level of fishing mortality will cause a fish stock to decline, the fact that the fishing industry, or a fishing community, supposedly “needs” to harvest more fish to remain viable will not change the fact that, if that threshold level is exceeded, abundance will decline, and fishermen will end up catching less, not more, in the long term.

Sticking to the science, and only to the science, is critical to a sustainable management process.

Finally, under the “Advance Innovative Solutions” heading, there is the strategy to “Develop and apply aquaculture tools and technologies that support recreational fisheries and coastal ecosystems.” Stripped of its formal wording and reduced to the language of the everyday angler, that means “Build more fish hatcheries,” and some recreational fishermen will have no problem with that, as hatcheries allow jurisdictions to dump a multitude of artificially propagated fish into coastal ecosystems, so that anglers can take more fish home.

Texas, which has long employed hatcheries to produce red drum, spotted seatrout, and other coastal species, readily admits that hatcheries “are a tool used…to ensure that harvest levels are sustained.” Hatcheries free fisheries managers from the need to maintain fish populations that are capable of sustaining themselves through natural reproduction, and from the restrictive regulations that are often needed to do so. Instead, hatcheries allow anglers to chronically overfish popular species, and remove fish from coastal waters at rates that could never be supported by natural reproduction.

Yet, once marine fisheries managers and recreational fishermen become dependent on hatcheries, it is very difficult to end that dependence, even though hatcheries do little to restore natural fish populations. The first hatcheries for Pacific salmon were built in the late 1800s, and many others have been built since. Yet, despite nearly 150 years of hatchery production, 28 runs of Pacific salmon and the closely-related steelhead trout are currently listed as “endangered” or “threatened” under the federal Endangered Species Act, while no run that was previously “enhanced” with hatchery fish has ever been restored to the point that it could sustain itself solely through natural reproduction. The story is the same for other species, including red drum, spotted seatrout, southern flounder, Florida pompano, and white seabass; hatcheries may provide anglers with more fish to take home, but at least in saltwater, they have never led to a self-sustaining, naturally reproducing population of any recreationally important species.

It could thus be argued that hatcheries are the antithesis of effective fisheries management, and not a strategy that the Policy ought to contemplate.

The bottom line is that the Policy isn’t perfect. It contains some clearly problematic provisions. Yet it remains a valuable document that built on its 2015 predecessor and, if followed by NOAA Fisheries, should provide real benefits to both recreational fishermen and the fishes that they pursue.

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This essay first appeared in "From the Waterfront," the blog of the Marine Fish Conservation Network, which can be found at http://conservefish.org/blog/