Forage fish—the small, low trophic level fish and, in some
cases, crustaceans and cephalopods—that serve as food for larger predators, are
a critical part of marine ecosystems.
Unfortunately, many important forage fish, including Atlantic and Gulf
menhaden, Atlantic herring, and Atlantic mackerel, have become the targets of
high-volume, low-value fisheries that remove too many fish from the water,
depleting forage fish populations and having potentially negative impacts on
marine predators and recreational and commercial fisheries.
Other forage fish, such as alewives and blueback herring
(collectively, “river herring”), American shad, and hickory shad, are killed as
bycatch in other fisheries, collateral damage in mid-water trawls and other
fisheries directed at other forage fish species.
While a
few biologists have argued that forage fish fisheries create no threat to
predator populations, most notably Dr. Ray Hilborn, et al., whose 2017 paper,
“When does fishing forage species affect their predators?” argued that
natural variations in forage fish populations have much more impact on forage
fish abundance than do directed fisheries, the consensus is that directed
forage fish fisheries need to be carefully managed, in order to prevent harm to
marine predators.
In the same vein, also in
2017, the Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council adopted its Unmanaged
Forage Omnibus Amendment, which, according to the Council,
“prohibits the development of new and expansion of existing
directed commercial fisheries on unmanaged forage species in mid-Atlantic
federal waters until the Council has had an adequate opportunity to assess the
scientific information relating to any new or expanded directed fisheries and
consider potential impacts to existing fisheries, fishing communities, and the
marine ecosystems.”
The Omnibus Amendment was intended to protect important
forage fish that don’t have the “celebrity” status of menhaden or river
herring, forage fish that most people don’t think about, and many people
haven’t even heard of, such as argentines, greeneyes, halfbeaks, lanternfish,
pearlsides, sand lances (“sand eels”), cusk-eels, Atlantic saury, krill, etc.
Because forage fish are unquestionably important, it didn’t
come as a particular surprise when I learned of the formation of a new organization calling itself
“The Forage Fish Campaign.” According to
its web page,
“The Forage Fish Campaign is a united coalition of captains,
business owners, recreational anglers, and small-boat commercial fishermen.
“We’re concerned about the health of our coastal
communities—and we’re fighting back.
“We’re engaging at the local, state, and federal levels to
address the root of the problem: not our
hard-working Americans—but industrial exploitation of our shared resources.”
That all sounds fine.
There is a list of folks who have signed up as members, some of whom I
know, many of whom I don’t. But I tend
to get very nervous when I hear the word “campaign,” and here’s why: I believe that fisheries management ought to
be based on the best available data.
Sometimes that data isn’t available, and in such case, it’s entirely appropriate
to worst-case the uncertainties, and take a more precautionary approach, but to
the extent that the data is there, it ought to drive the decisions.
But that’s not exactly how “campaigns” function, because
data and statistics are boring. Instead,
campaigns are all about public relations, about catching the public’s
attention, appealing to their emotions in an attempt to gain their
support. And often, when people do that,
the truth can be sacrificed for a more appealing story line.
And that’s what seems to have happened here.
“OVERHARVESTING OF FORAGE SPECIES HAS COLLAPSED COMMERCIAL
FISHERIES COAST-WIDE”
Really? Which
fisheries would those be? And what data
did they have to support that claim of collapse?
So, the next time, I watched the video with the sound on,
and heard the narrator, a New York charter boat captain and commercial
fisherman, say,
“Used to go out in the fall, from deep in the heart of
Raritan Bay, OK, towards Keyport, all the ways to Fire Island, there was
bunker. Like 30 miles of bunker. Where are they today? I think it’s pretty obvious to say that the lion’s
share of the bunker are being harvested by the bunker boats. The scale of their operation is enormous. The impact they’ve had is unbelievable. You could just talk to any fisherman, what’ll
they say: “Oh, fishin’s terrible. Oh,
there’s no bait. No bait!”
That might sound heartfelt, and some might even find it
convincing, but it is not exactly the sort of hard science that should be
underlying fisheries management decisions, yet when paired with video of a
menhaden reduction boat setting nets, it probably is effective “campaign”
material.
“What Happened to the bunker executive order you promised me?”
which was introduced with the legend,
“At your request you asked me to meet you at your golf
course. You assured me come Monday
morning you would have in place an Executive Order to remedy the slaughter
unchecked. Well its been quite sometime
Sir with all due respect we need your help.
Now I understand you have a lot on your plate…
“Let’s revisit this.
Lunch is on me.”
So it’s clear that, even outside The Forage Fish Campaign,
this particular fisherman is really trying to shut down the
menhaden reduction fishery.)
But getting back to the Campaign, the rest of the video was
a bit more disturbing than the start.
After all, the beginning merely reflected one fisherman’s honest
belief that the menhaden reduction fishery had a negative impact on the quality
of fishing in his region. But some of
the rest seemed misleading, although whether through intent or mere negligence
and sloppy research isn’t clear.
The problems come in the form of another graphic, this one
showing a pair of mid-water trawlers pulling a net. Superimposed over the image of the net are the
images of seven species of forage fish, all but menhaden bearing a designation
of either “depleted” or “overfished”—which is almost true, although describing
Atlantic mackerel as “overfished” is incorrect; the stock is still rebuilding, but
the population has already risen above the threshold that denotes an overfished
stock.
The biggest problems arise on the right side of the screen,
where the images of 16 fish species, all now or formerly important to the
commercial and/or recreational fishery, are shown, also overprinted with “depleted”
and “overfished” designations, below the image of the two pair trawlers. The narrator says,
“A net is indiscriminate, so if they eliminate the baitfish
from either entering the bay or on our fishing grounds, the fish aren’t going
to come in. They have nothing to eat.”
The implication of the graphic and narration, when
heard/seen in concert, is that a lack of baitfish caused the various targeted
food and recreational species to become overfished, even though that was never
explicitly stated.
In fact, there is no documented, statistical connection
between a shortage of forage fish and the decline of any of the species listed
on the graphic. Most of the listed species,
in fact, are themselves victims of overharvest.
Some of them don’t even eat fish on a regular basis, making
them pretty immune to a forage fish shortage, even if one occurred.
But they’re listed on the graphic anyway.
Consider the two sturgeons.
The
National Marine Fisheries Service tells us that
“Atlantic sturgeon were once found in great abundance, but
their populations have declined greatly due to overharvesting and habitat
loss. Atlantic sturgeon were
prized for their eggs, which were valued as high-quality caviar. During the late 1800s, people flocked to the
eastern United States in search of caviar riches from the sturgeon fishery,
known as the ‘Black Gold Rush.’ By the
beginning of the 1900s, sturgeon populations had declined drastically… [emphasis added]”
There is no reason to believe that a decline in forage fish
abundance contributed to the Atlantic sturgeon’s decline at all—not to mention
that pair trawlers and menhaden reduction boats didn’t even exist at the start
of the 20th century, when the Atlantic sturgeon population had
already crashed.
NMFS also tells us that
“historical landings records differentiate between Atlantic
sturgeon and the smaller shortnose sturgeon,”
making it likely that the reasons behind the shortnose sturgeon’s
demise were similar to those leading to the Atlantic sturgeon’s decline.
“Atlantic sturgeon are bottom feeders. They typically consume invertebrates such as
crustaceans, worms, and mollusks, and bottom-dwelling fish, such as sand lance,”
none of which are targeted by mid-water trawls. Shortnose
sturgeon feed almost entirely on in vertebrates.
So it’s pretty misleading to include either species in a
video talking about mid-water trawls and forage fish depletion.
And then there’s the “white flounder,” which seems to be a
case of a public relations typo, because despite doing a bit of research, I
couldn’t come up with any creature bearing that name; what the graphic depicts appears
to be a winter flounder, which is not overfished, although it does have
severe recruitment issues.
Winter flounder also have little association with forage fish, as they
are small fish themselves, and their mouths are so tiny, optimized for feeding
on worms, tiny shrimp, and the like, that it would be difficult to fit the tip
of an adult’s pinky finger between a fish’s forced-open lips.
Summer
flounder, of “fluke,” aren’t overfished either.
The last stock assessment found spawning stock biomass at 83% of target,
well above the threshold denoting an overfished stock. Summer flounder are aggressive fish-eaters,
but their lower abundance is largely attributable to more than a decade of
below-average recruitment, although slightly above-average recruitment in 2023
and 2024 may bode well for the future.
There is no indication that a shortage of forage is impacting the
population.
Thus, including either flounder in the video is also
misleading.
So is including white marlin, blue marlin, dusky, and
shortfin mako sharks. All of them are
badly overfished, but a shortage of forage fish have nothing to do with
that. Atlantic
blue marlin are victims of pelagic longlines, as well as small-scale
recreational and commercial fisheries.
White
marlin are also victims of pelagic longline bycatch, as
are dusky sharks and shortfin
makos. All are direct victims of
fishing activities, not indirect victims of forage depletion.
Similarly,
sandbar sharks are considered
“very vulnerable to overfishing,”
and, as the State of New York noted,
“The sandbar shark was historically taken in commercial and
recreational fisheries along the Southern Atlantic Coast of the U.S. and in the
Gulf of Mexico, which expanded rapidly in the last 20 years and led to
significant population declines.”
Once again, there is no suggestion that the population
decline of two decades ago was due to depleted forage fish populations, so
there was no reason for them to be mentioned in a video talking about forage
fish management.
It seems that a trend is emerging here. Atlantic
bluefin tuna are not only not considered overfished, contrary
to the video’s assertions, but the
population is doing well enough that the
International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas increased the
western Atlantic quota when it met last November. Far from suffering from a lack of forage
fish, weakfish
are depleted because they have become a forage fish, with natural mortality levels
extremely high, very possibly
because of increased predation by bottlenose dolphin. Striped bass are overfished for the simple
reason that people have been killing too many, with the
fishing mortality rate exceeding the overfishing threshold in 1996, 2004-2006,
and 2010-2017; add that level of fishing mortality to the
worst seven years of recruitment ever recorded in 2019-2025, and there’s no
need to try to blame forage fish shortages for the striped bass’ overfished state—they’re
overfished because of overfishing.
Finally, there’s the Atlantic
halibut; it’s been overfished since the early 1900s, well before the “industrial”
fisheries cited in The Forage Fish Campaign’s video began to target forage
fish.
I could go on, but I think my point is made.
The Forage Fish Campaign has implied that pair trawling and other
high-volume fisheries have driven down forage fish populations, and so led to
the depletion/overfishing of 16 named fish stocks. But with even a modicum of research, it’s
simple to disprove that implication.
Some of the fish named aren’t overfished. Some don’t regularly feed on fish at
all. And of the ones which do feed on
various forage fish species, their depletion is almost universally due to
overfishing, either in directed fisheries or as bycatch; there is no strong
statistical connection between forage fish depletion and any of those fisheries
declines.
Yet The Forage Fish Campaign’s video suggests that there is.
The video ends with more stark black and white text:
“THE US FISHERIES CRISIS IS REAL”
“COLLAPSING OCEAN FOOD SYSTEMS”
“DEVASTATING COASTAL ECONOMIES”
“THIS STOPS NOW”
“PROTECTING US FISHING JOBS IN THE ATLANTIC OCEAN & GULF
OF AMERICA”
As a “campaign,” it’s reasonably good stuff. It’s designed to generate an emotional,
rather than an intellectual, response, that will goad people into donating to
the cause, writing letters to politicians, etc.
But as a factual discussion of the problem, it falls pretty
short. And that’s a problem, from
multiple perspectives.
First, if someone is going to ask me to donate as much as
$1,000—plus a little extra to cover administrative expenses—I need to know that
they are knowledgeable and capable advocates.
When The Forage Fish Campaign calls stocks overfished when they’re not,
and suggest that forage fish are the cause of depletion that can be easily
traced to other causes, they seem woefully ignorant of basic facts relevant to
their campaign, and certainly aren’t anyone I’d want to pay to represent my
interests.
Beyond that, the failure to master basic facts will leave
them with little or no credibility with regulators and other fisheries
managers, who by and large are very conversant with the facts governing the
fisheries that they oversee. Making such
blatant false assertions makes it appear that The Forage Fish Campaign is
either ignorant of the truth about coastal fisheries, or that they are trying
to distort that truth in order to mislead the very people who they are trying
to influence.
Which leads to the final point, and that is the facts really
do speak for themselves. If we were
truly looking at a “crisis” in our fisheries, there would be no need to make
spurious claims or false implications; the data would easily show that a lack
of forage fish was causing a decline in predator species. One only needs to distort the facts if the unvarnished
truth alone is not enough to support one’s arguments, and embellishment was
necessary to make a convincing case.
And that’s a bad place to be, because forage fish
conservation is a real and pressing need.
Not because a decline in forage fish has “collapsed ” fisheries, but
because forage fish are a critically important part of marine ecosystems, and
such ecosystems couldn’t function without them.
Distorted truths and fatuous claims, although perhaps made
with the best of intentions, can undercut the work of legitimate forage fish
advocates who work with the science to seek better regulation and management of
forage fish fisheries, and plays into the hands of those who would overexploit
the resource, who can point out the less than forthright claims in efforts to discredit
the entire conservation community.
Thus, in my opinion, The Forage Fish Campaign’s video does
forage fish no service and, by distorting the facts, only plays into the hands
of those who oppose forage fish conservation.
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