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/
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