FISHERIES 2025: IT WAS ABOUT AS BAD AS WE HAD FEARED

 

It’s that time of the year when I look back at the past year, and try to describe what went right and what went wrong with the fisheries management process over the preceding 12 months.  I know that I tend to get a little long-winded in these blog posts, so I’ll provide this bit of reassurance at the beginning:  It won’t take you very long to read about the things that went right.

On the other hand, the list of what went wrong will go on for a while.  This might be the first time that just about all of my predictions for the upcoming year came true, at least to some degree, and most of those predictions were dire.  So, without more delay, let’s take them one at a time.

THE EXPECTED BAD NEWS          

Striped bass:  Addendum III and beyond

My prediction with respect to Addendum III to Amendment 7 to the Interstate Fishery Management Plan for Atlantic Striped Bass read, in pertinent part,

“At best, the addendum may contain some modest measures intended to make it more likely that the spawning stock biomass will be fully rebuilt by 2029.  Based on the votes at the December 16 [2024] meeting [of the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission’s Atlantic Striped Bass Management Board], any such measures will probably focused on the recreational fishery, while leaving the commercial fishery largely untouched, although in all honesty, I’d be surprised in Addendum III [included] any landings reductions at all.”

And that’s just how things turned out.  The final version of Addendum III contained specific instructions for how to measure as striped bass (with the ruler on a flat surface, and not over the curve of the fish, from the tip of the snout, with the mouth closed, to the farthest extent of a pinched together caudal fin), required that commercially-caught striped bass to be tagged before being brought ashore (something already the rule in all but three states), and allowed Maryland to reorder its recreational striped bass season in accordance with agreed-upon changes (but didn’t require it to do so).

There were no harvest reductions at all.

And, of course, striped bass recruitment remained painfully low for the seventh consecutive year, establishing a new seven-year average low for the Maryland juvenile abundance index, which over the past five decades or so has been the most reliable gauge of future striped bass abundance.

An administration that weakened the National Marine Fisheries Service and federal fisheries management

In addressing the National Marine Fisheries Service in 2025, it’s difficult to draw a clear line between what NMFS has done and what the current administration has done to NMFS.  A year ago, I had warned that

“we can only fear what [NMFS] will choose to do under an administration that, its first time around, overturned an ASMFC finding that New Jersey was out of compliance with summer flounder regulations, reopened the Gulf of Mexico’s recreational red snapper fishery even though such action would lead to overfishing, overturned the ban on commercial fishing in the New England Canyons and Seamounts National Monument, abolished time and area closures intended to protect giant bluefin tuna from longline bycatch and discard mortality, and issued an executive order intended to “identify and remove unnecessary regulatory barriers restricting American fishermen.”

Nearly a year has passed since that administration returned, and so far, its regulatory actions impacting marine fisheries have been neither as frequent nor as severe as they were the first time around, although it is very clear that NMFS’ conservation mission has already been largely abandoned in favor of strategies that imperil the future in order to increase short-term landings. 

The most egregious action taken by NMFS so far may have been its refusal to honor its commitment, made to settle a lawsuit brought by commercial red snapper fishermen, to end the recreational fishery’s chronic overfishing of the red snapper stock in the South Atlantic.  Last January 14, NMFS issued a rule that would have honored its obligation to end such overfishing, by closing an expanse of water off Georgia and northern Florida to bottom fishing for three months, which closure would have not only significantly lowered recreational discard mortality, but also allowed the agency to roughly triple commercial and recreational red snapper landings.  However, the recreational fishing and boatbuilding industries, adamantly opposed to risking a decline in short-term income, joined by militant “anglers’ rights” organizations such as the Coastal Conservation Association, convinced the agency to renege on its word and issue watered-down regulations that avoided both the area closure and any meaningful reduction in recreational red snapper discards.  Thus, the commercial red snapper fishermen have again brought suit, and this time around, they will probably be far less willing to enter into settlements with an agency which, under the current administration, has proven to be less than trustworthy.

The administration’s failure to honor the government’s obligations under the settlement of the red snapper lawsuit was not the only time it reneged on a fisheries-related settlement agreement this year. 

In 2023, the federal government was party to an agreement, filed in the Federal District Court for the District of Oregon, in which it agreed, in an effort to end decades-long litigation between the United States and the states of Washington and Oregon, four native tribes, and various environmental organizations, to provide funding that

“when combined with other funding that the Administration is anticipated to deliver to the region, will bring more than $1 billion in new Federal investments to wild fish restoration over the next decade and enable an unprecedented 10-year break from decades-long litigation against the Federal government’s operation of its dams in the Pacific Northwest.”

Dam removal would have almost certainly been a part of the remediation program.

However, hopefully to no one’s surprise, the current administration dishonored that promise as well, issuing a “fact sheet” which blared,

“STOPPING RADICAL ENVIRONMENTALISM:  Today, President Donald J. Trump signed a Presidential Memorandum revoking an executive action issued by the prior administration that called for ‘equitable treatment for fish.’”

The news hit recreational fishermen, the affected tribes, and those concerned with the health of the salmon and the rivers extremely hard.  An article in Outdoor Life magazine quoted a letter written by 68 leading fisheries scientists, who said

“The survival problems of various [Endangered Species Act]-listed salmon and steelhead species in the Columbia Basin cannot be solved without removing four dams on the Lower Snake River…

“These four dams must be removed to not only avoid extinction, but also to restore abundant salmon runs.”

Jeremy Takala, chair of the Yakima Fish and Wildlife Committee (the Yakima being one of the tribes involved in the continuing litigation), summed the matter up in a single sentence:

“We reserved the right to actually catch fish, not merely the right to dip our nets into barren waters.”

So, with the administration abandoning this agreement as well, another long and expensive course of litigation will continue to its eventual and uncertain end; in the meantime, another United States fishery will remain in peril.

Given the propensities of this administration, there is little reason to believe that additional fisheries won’t be placed in jeopardy.  Not happy with his Executive Order of May 7, 2020, which among other things sought to

“identify and remove unnecessary regulatory barriers restricting American fishermen,”

and instructed the regional fishery management councils to produce a

“prioritized list of recommended actions to reduce burdens on domestic fishing and increase production within sustainable fisheries,”

President Trump issued a follow-up Executive Order on April 17,2025, in which he claimed that

“Federal overregulation has restricted fishermen from productively harvesting American seafood including through restrictive catch limits, selling our fishing grounds to foreign offshore wind companies, inaccurate and outdated fisheries data, and delayed adoption of modern technology,”

declared his intent to

“unburden our commercial fishermen from costly and inefficient regulation,”

and called upon the Secretary of Commerce to

“consider suspending, revising, or rescinding overly burden America’s commercial fishing…identify the most heavily overregulated fisheries requiring action and take appropriate action to reduce the regulatory burden on them…[and]

“request that each Regional Fishery Management Council…provide…updates to their recommendations submitted pursuant to Executive Order 13921 [issued on May 7,2020] to reduce burdens on domestic fishing and to increase production…[I]dentified actions should stabilize markets, improve access, enhance economic profitability, and prevent closures.”

While such directives are not very different from those contained in his earlier Executive Order, the previous Executive Order was issued in the last year of his term, and with an election only six months away, did not have much time to degrade the federal fishery management system.  The April 2025 Executive Order will have another three years to undermine what has been at least three decades (counting from the passage of the Sustainable Fisheries Act of 1996) of progress in rebuilding and conserving United States fisheries.

It is clear that the current administration wants to fully implement the 2025 Executive Order.  The regional fishery management councils have all submitted suggestions for regulatory change, and NMFS opened a public comment period to obtain input on what changes might be implemented.  Apparently not receiving enough input the first time around, on December 1, NMFS announced that it was reopening the comment period, seeking more suggestions on industry-favored changes, thus signaling its intent to weaken the current regulatory framework. 

And while NMFS follows the administration’s instructions to weaken the federal fisheries management effort, the administration has successfully weakened NMFS itself, cutting its funding and its scientific staff, thus making the agency less able to collect data, perform stock assessments, and otherwise execute its fisheries management responsibilities.  A number of long-awaited stock assessments have already been either delayed or indefinitely postponed, an fact that can only harm the long-term sustainability of the affected fish stocks.

It's virtually certain that the administration’s ill-conceived fisheries actions in 2025 will have negative impacts on the nation’s marine resources that will extend for years into the future.

Congress predictably disappoints

Again, my predictions of a year ago did, unfortunately, prove accurate.  I wrote,

“there is no reason to believe that the incoming Congress will be any more protective of marine fish stocks than the incoming administration.  Instead, we can expect to see an activist, conservation-averse Congress shutting down important conservation initiatives, interfering in the work of professional fisheries managers, and perhaps even threatening the core provisions of Magnuson-Stevens…

”Federal fisheries in the South Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico will probably suffer the greatest level of Congressional interference, but we should also expect damage on a far wider scale, including efforts to cripple the Marine Recreational Information Program, turn responsibility for some federally-managed species over to more politically-influenced state agencies, and very possibly weaken key provisions of the Magnuson-Stevens Act.”

While Magnuson-Stevens remains intact, the fisheries-related bills introduced in Congress so far were in line with what was expected. 

I opened the previous section by explaining how the federal government had agreed to settle a lawsuit challenging NMFS failure to rein in recreational overfishing of red snapper in the South Atlantic, and how the current administration reneged on that earlier agreement.  But just in case that didn’t happen, Congress was preparing to intervene, with Rep. John Rutherford (R-FL) and 26 cosponsors (19 from Florida, two each from North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia, and one from Mississippi) introducing H.R. 470, the so-called “Red Snapper Act of 2025,” just two days after NMFS issued proposed regulations intended to effectuate the settlement.

A bill summary for H.R. 470 stated that

“This bill prohibits the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) from restricting certain fishing activities in the South Atlantic until data from the South Atlantic Great Red Snapper Count study is integrated into the next South Atlantic red snapper Southeast Data, Assessment, and Review (SEDAR) stock assessment.

“The bill provides that NOAA may not issue an interim rule, final rule, or Secretarial Amendment establishing an area closure or a bottom fishing closure for specified species until (1) the study is complete, and (2) the study data is integrated into the first South Atlantic red snapper SEDAR stock assessment that is carried out after the bill’s enactment.  The limitation applies to fishing for species managed under the Fishery Management Plan for the Snapper-Grouper Fishery of the South Atlantic Region, including red snapper, grouper, and porgy.

“(Closures generally restrict recreational and commercial fishing to prevent overfishing and for other conservation purposes.)”

So yes, as soon as January 16, 2025, members of Congress were already taking action to “[shut] down important conservation initiatives” and “[interfere] in the work of professional fisheries managers.”

And Rep. Rutherford wasn’t finished.

On October 8, he introduced H.R. 5699, which he titled the “Fisheries Data Modernization and Accuracy Act of 2025,” and is described in the Congressional Record as

“A bill, to require the Administrator of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to reform the Marine Recreational Information Program of the National Marine Fisheries Service, and for other purposes.”

But H.R. 5699 doesn’t merely seek to “reform” the Marine Recreational Information Program, but rather to replace it with a patchwork of state data collection programs, which would almost certainly not produce mutually comparable data, but would be legally barred from calibrating their output with MRIP’s, interspersed with other states that chose not to invest in their own programs and continued to use MRIP as their primary recreational data source.  H.R. 5699 would also require NMFS to employ and base its decisions upon state data, when available, instead of its own MRIP data, regardless of the relative quality of the data produced.

So saying that the bill would “cripple the Marine Recreational Information Program” is, if anything, an understatement. 

H.R. 5699 would probably also severely damage NMFS’ regional science centers, as it would require the agency to enter into contracts with so-called “independent” entities to develop fisheries data and the resultant science, which would have to be included in stock assessments, provided that the data passed peer review, regardless of NMFS’ scientists’ views of its merits.  Given that Congress only allocates so much money for NMFS’ scientific efforts, the expense of contracting with such outside entities would constitute money no longer available to hire and support the agency’s scientific staff.

The bill is very much alive, and could easily become law before the 119^th Congress ends.

Still, although I predicted some of the unfortunate things that happened this year, I didn’t predict them all.

UNEXPECTED BAD NEWS—THE ASMFC BACKSLIDES

I have long been a critic of the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission, primarily because, in the absence of clear and legally-enforceable standards for fishery management plans, managers facing a controversial issue often take the easy way out and fail to take action to end overfishing and/or rebuild an overfished stock.  Even when action is taken, it is often too little and too late to fully address the problem.

For a while, I thought that the ASMFC might be changing its ways.  Its approach to Amendment 7 to the Interstate Fishery Management Plan for Atlantic Striped Bass, which saw it shore up the conservation provisions of the management plan; its adoption of emergency striped bass management measures in 2023 to help protect the relatively strong 2015 year class; and its adoption of Amendment II to Amendment 7, which made the emergency measures permanent and enhanced them with further restrictions on the commercial fishery and the recreational fishery in the Chesapeake Bay gave me reason to hope that the ASMFC was finally focusing on the long-term health of fish stocks, rather than the short-term economic interests of the recreational and commercial fishing industries.

But multiple events in 2025 more or less dashed those hopes.

American lobster

The first step backward occurred on February 4, 2025.  

After a decline in lobster recruitment tripped a management trigger included in a recent addendum to the American lobster management plan, the ASMFC’s American Lobster Management Board voted to increase the minimum size for the Gulf of Maine/Georges Bank lobster stock, but then delayed implementation of that reduction for over a year due to extremely strong opposition from the fishing industry.

New Hampshire’s governor, Kelly Ayotte, ended up refusing to comply with the increased size limit, should it be implemented, while in Maine, it was clear that any increase in the minimum size would not survive the state’s rulemaking process, which requires some level of fishing industry cooperation.

As a result, at the Management Board’s Winter 2005 meeting, the Board approved a motion

“to initiate an addendum to repeal all gauge and [lobster trap escape] vent changes in Addendum XXVII,”

thus admitting that industry’s concerns about short-term profit declines took precedence over the long-term health of the lobster stock.

To be completely fair, there were extrinsic factors impacting the Management Board’s decision, that had nothing to do with lobster and everything to do with the overall political climate, but the vote represented a step backward, all the same.

Atlantic menhaden

The ASMFC’s spring and summer meetings generally saw the Commission conduct business as usual; nothing notably negative occurred.  However, when the Annual Meeting rolled around in October, a veritable backsliding Olympics occurred.  The failure to include any meaningful conservation measures in Addendum III to the striped bass management plan has already been mentioned, and caused considerable ire among the hard-core striped bass angling community.

But the failure that was probably the most publicized, largely because it involved a heavily politicized fish and got a lot of coverage in the popular press, was the Atlantic Menhaden Management Board’s failure to reduce menhaden landings in response to an updated stock assessment.

Up until this year, scientists believed that the Atlantic menhaden stock was very healthy, with fecundity well above the target and fishing mortality well below.  Unfortunately, a stock assessment update released ahead of the October meeting revealed an error in the previous assessments.  As a result, menhaden abundance over the past few years was 37% lower than previously believed, fishing mortality hovered between its target and the threshold that defined overfishing, and fecundity was just 5% above the threshold that defines an overfished stock.

If the Management Board left the total allowable catch unchanged at 233,440 metric tons, and that full amount was landed, there was a 100% chance that the fishing mortality target would be exceeded, and a 4% chance that overfishing would occur.

The total allowable catch clearly needed to be reduced.

In order to have at least a 50% chance of keeping landings below the fishing mortality target, the total allowable catch would have to be reduced to 108,450 metric tons—about a 54.5% reduction.  That was a very big cut in landings to take in a single year, but it could be hoped that the Management Board might have initiated a phase-in process that used a series of annual cuts to eventually get landings down to where they belonged.

But that didn’t happen.

Instead, the Management Board entertained a series of motions that began with one to achieve the entire 54.5% reduction in a single year.  Not unsurprisingly, that motion failed.  So did a motion to adopt three years of phased-in reductions.

The Management Board finally adopted a motion to reduce the total allowable catch by 20% in 2026, and revisit future years’ TACs at some point next year.  

While that sounds like progress, the 20% reduction to 186,840 metric tons didn’t do much of anything to reduce landings, since the menhaden fishing industry only landed about 80% of its quota in recent years; thus, the supposed “reduction” only maintained the status quo, and took no pressure off the stock at all.

The stock might not be subject to overfishing, but there was also no legitimate effort to reduce fishing mortality at all.  The fishing mortality target became a hypothetical number, completely disconnected from the actions of the Management Board.

Red drum

Typically, when managers establish biological reference points for a stock of fish, they set both a target and a threshold level for both fishing mortality and the biomass (or another value, such as fecundity, which serves as a biomass proxy).  When adopting management measures, managers will try to keep fishing mortality at its target level, and maintain biomass close to its target level as well. 

Things don’t always work out that neatly—neither fish nor fishermen always act according to the managers’ script—but so long as the values stay somewhere between target and threshold, the stock usually remains in reasonably good health.  It’s only when fishing mortality rises above the threshold, or biomass falls below, that the stock is deemed to be experiencing overfishing or to be overfished, and real problems occur.

So managers normally won’t try to manage to the threshold level, as the slightest miscalculation could result in the stock becoming overfished or experiencing overfishing.

Somehow, members of the ASMFC’s Sciaenids Management Board, which manages the species, seem to have missed that message.

Atlantic coast red drum are managed as separate northern and southern stocks, and the problems began after the 2024 benchmark red drum stock assessment reported that, for the southern stock,

“Terminal Age-2 [fishing mortality] (0.509) was above the [fishing mortality] threshold (0.396) and [fishing mortality] target (0.301), while [spawning potential ratio] (0.207) was below SPR threshold (0.300) and SPR target (0.400).  In addition, the stock is below the [spawning stock biomass] target (13,250 mt) and SSB threshold (9,917 mt) with a terminal SSB 0f 8,737 mt.  The southern stock of red drum status is overfished and experiencing overfishing.  [emphasis added]”

Under such circumstances, one would expect managers to do their best to reduce fishing mortality to the target level, or perhaps even to some level below target, in order to rebuild the stock to the spawning stock biomass target within a reasonable timeframe.  Given the degree to which red drum fishing mortality and spawning stock biomass exceeded their respective thresholds, not to mention their targets, it would be reasonable to also expect managers to adopt fairly restrictive regulations to achieve those goals.

But what we see in Addendum II to Amendment 2 to the Red Drum Fishery Management Plan, adopted last October, is not a suite of regulations calculated to achieve the fishing mortality and biomass targets.  Instead, the plan merely requires that

“Southern stock state measures are to achieve the threshold and end overfishing (i.e., F<F_30% or 30% SPR under terminal year fishing selectivity patterns), with a target of decreasing fishing mortality such that it is less than the fishing mortality associated with 40% SPR under terminal year fishing selectivity patterns.  [emphasis added]”

Thus, the Addendum abandons the objective of achieving target fishing mortality and fully rebuilding the stock, relegating such concepts to mere aspirational goals, while requiring the states to accomplish only the bare minimum—ending overfishing—and nothing more.

The man behind the curtain

While the above-described ASMFC actions all describe occasions when the Commission failed to take decisive action to correct an existing problem in a fishery, it is impossible to ignore the role that the federal government plays in Commission decisions.

Representatives of NMFS and, in some cases, the United States Fish and Wildlife Service sit on ASMFC’s species management boards.  In the case of striped bass, both agencies voted against adopting management measures to reduce striped bass fishing mortality in 2026.  I was told by a member of the Atlantic Menhaden Management Board that the federal representative on that panel made it clear that the administration would not support a reduction in the total allowable greater than 20%.

The administration’s position plays an important role in the ASMFC’s actions, because only the Secretary of Commerce can compel a state to comply with an ASMFC fishery management plan, by imposing a moratorium on the relevant fishery in noncompliant jurisdictions.  In the first Trump administration, we saw Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross refuse to support the ASMFC’s finding that New Jersey was out of compliance with the ASMFC’s summer flounder management plan, the first time that any Secretary of Commerce refused to stand behind a Commission determination.  Had the ASMFC gone ahead with an increase in the lobster size limit, or imposed a meaningful reduction in menhaden language, earlier this year, and had a state gone out of compliance with either action, it is very likely that the current Secretary would have again undercut the ASMFC’s management authority.  It is very conceivable that the same thing would have happened if a state demurred from a more restrictive addendum to the striped bass or red drum management plans.

Thus, as easy as it may be to blame the ASMFC for everything that goes wrong with coastal fisheries, when we look at the bigger picture, we often find that there are others who might not be named in a press release, but whose influence contributed to some of the worst management decisions of the year.

SOME POTENTIALLY POSITIVE ACTIONS—ALSO AT THE ASMFC

It would be wrong not to point out that some good things happened at the ASMFC this year, too.

All of them happened in October, and all remain incomplete, but they show at least some movement in the right direction.

In the case of striped bass, the same motion that ended any chance for landings reductions in 2026 also created a Working Group to examine a host of issues impacting striped bass management, and inform future management actions, which are more likely than not to occur after the 2027 benchmark stock assessment is released.  The one problem may be that, while the motion seeks to people the Working Group with a wide variety of stakeholder representatives, including recreational fishermen, the ASMFC’s rules require such working groups to be made up of management board members, and there are very few recreational fishermen who sit on the Atlantic Striped Bass Management Board, particularly outside of the New England states.  That creates a real risk that the supposedly “recreational” slots will be filled by representatives from the recreational fishing industry, or from industry-affiliated groups such as the Coastal Conservation Association, and not by those who will reflect the thoughts and concerns of dedicated striped bass anglers.

In the case of menhaden, the Atlantic Menhaden Management Board has initiated a new addendum which will consider reducing the cap on reduction fishery landings in the Chesapeake Bay by as much as 50%.  The question of whether the reduction fishery causes “localized depletion” of menhaden within the Bay has been debated for close to two decades, and while no one has ever been able to demonstrate that such depletion occurs, it is also true that no one has ever been able to prove that it is not an issue.  The proposed addendum will provide an opportunity to gather all of the science on both sides of the debate, and perhaps cast some light on what has long been a contentious subject.

Finally, an update to the tautog stock assessment has shown substantial improvement in the health of three of the four recognized stocks, with the New Jersey/New York Bight stock still experiencing overfishing, but no longer overfished.  Unfortunately, the Delaware/Maryland/Virginia stock, which had been experiencing relatively good health, was found to be both overfished and experiencing overfishing.  However, the Tautog Management Board has initiated a new addendum intended to address the remaining problems with the latter two stocks. 

THE GOOD NEWS

What might be the one bit of unqualified good news comes from California, where the removal of four dams on the Klamath River has led to an unexpectedly quick return of Chinook salmon to their former spawning grounds.

Just over a year after the last dam was removed, and access to traditional spawning areas was restored, Michael Harris, the Environmental Program Manager for the California Department of Fish and Wildlife’s Klamath Watershed Program, said that

“The speed at which salmon are repopulating every nook and cranny of suitable habitat upstream of the dams in the Klamath Basin is both remarkable and thrilling.  There are salmon everywhere on the landscape right now, and it’s invigorating our work.”

Salmon have ascended the Klamath River all the way into Oregon, and have been seen spawning in tributaries that had been closed to the fish for over one hundred years.  Last summer, juvenile salmon and steelhead trout occupied nearly all of the newly accessible tributaries; in one, biologists counted over 65,000 juvenile Chinook salmon.

Thus, hope remains.

And that may be a lesson that all of us involved in the fishery management process should take to heart.

For over a century, ill-considered government policies denied Chinook salmon access to their upstream spawning grounds on the Klamath River.  But because people were willing to do the hard work, regardless of the obstacles placed in their path, the way was opened for the salmon to return, and once given the opportunity, they are spawning in the river again.

Today, an administration interested only in monetizing our living marine resources is trying to turn back the clock, and return to an age where exploitation and short-term gains were the only objectives, and conservation concerns had no place in the conversation.  Over the next few years, it will probably succeed.

But with time, and work, changes can be made, and the damage done can be overcome.

It will not be easy.  It will not be without costs, and some of those costs will be substantial.

Nonetheless, it can be done.

 

 

 

NEW LEGISLATION THREATENS RECREATIONAL FISHERIES DATA AND MANAGEMENT

 

Legislation introduced into the House of Representatives on October 8, 2025 represents a real threat to the federal recreational fisheries data collection process, and to how that data will be used in the management process.

H.R. 5699, the so-called “Fisheries Data Modernization and Accuracy Act of 2025,” was introduced by Rep. John Rutherford (R-FL), who characterized it as “A BILL To require the Administrator of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to reform the Marine Recreational Information Program of the National Marine Fisheries Service, and for other purposes.”

While that goal might sound laudatory, in practice, the bill would turn recreational data collection on the Atlantic and Gulf coasts into a patchwork of state and federal programs which utilize different methodologies, the results of which would not be directly comparable with one another unless and until the outputs of the various programs were calibrated to report findings in a “common currency” which accounts for how differences in methodology affect the data produced by each state.

That issue arose in the Gulf of Mexico, after Amendments 50A-50E to the Fishery Management Plan for Reef Fish Resources in the Gulf of Mexico (Amendment 50) assigned recreational red snapper quotas to each of the states bordering the Gulf of Mexico, granted those states a limited ability to craft regulations intended to keep anglers within each state’s quota, and allowed those states to develop their own programs to supplement MRIP’s recreational red snapper data.

After the state data programs were initiated, the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) found that “each Gulf state manages the harvest by its private anglers using estimates from its own state data collection program. The Federal Marine Recreational Information Program (MRIP) based catch limits for Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana are not directly comparable to the landings estimates generated by each of those states, and the state estimates are not directly comparable to each other.”

In 2023, to correct that problem, NMFS adopted what it called a “Calibration Framework,” that translated the data from each state program into a common currency that allowed them to be used for effective fisheries management. The Calibration Framework “uses the calibration ratios to adjust each state’s [annual catch limit] into the currency in which that state monitors landings. Those rations are: Alabama (0.4875); Florida (1.0602); Louisiana (1.06); Mississippi (0.3840); Texas (1.00). The MRIP-based [annual catch limits] are multiplied by the rations to determine the state currency [annual catch limits].”

While that worked well for three of the states, which were already producing landings data that was nearly comparable with MRIP, it didn’t go over very well in Alabama and Mississippi, where the original state recreational quotas would be slashed by more than half. The American Sportfishing Association, which represents the fishing tackle industry, complained that “the results for [Alabama and Mississippi] are dire: Alabama’s quota would be cut roughly in half and Mississippi’s would decrease by more than 60%…The concept of calibration isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but many have questioned whether the proposed calibration rations are based on the best available science…One thing that is not being questioned is that pushing these ratios forward would have severe negative economic impacts to Alabama and Mississippi.”

On the other hand, the Ocean Conservancy, which advocates for fisheries conservation and effective fisheries management, was pleased that

NOAA Fisheries is finally taking long-overdue action to address the serious design flaws in the Gulf state management system for the private recreational red snapper fishery…For five years, state management has allowed anglers to chronically exceed sustainable fishing limits for red snapper, jeopardizing the health of this fishery that is still rebuilding from historic overfishing. Since day one of the state management system going into place, managers have known they needed to establish a process to bring disparate state and federal data systems together so they could understand how many fish were being caught across the whole Gulf of Mexico. Because each state’s survey is tailored to the needs of each state and its anglers, the estimates they produce are not directly comparable to one another or established sustainable quotas, so the different sources of data must be calibrated.

After a long, bitter, and often divisive debate that pitted NMFS and the marine conservation community against various industry and “anglers’ rights” organizations, a final rule was adopted on May 14, 2024, which adjusted the calibration ratios for Florida, Alabama, and Mississippi. That appears to have put the issue to rest, at least for the foreseeable future.

Now, H.R. 5699 threatens to reignite the debate, not just for Gulf of Mexico red snapper, but potentially for most federally-managed recreational fisheries on the Atlantic and Gulf coasts, and throw the data collection process into chaos.

One of the bill’s biggest problems is that it is attempting to address a handful of local issues by making wholesale changes to the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act (Magnuson-Stevens), which governs fishing in all of the federal waters of the United States.

It has been said that if the only tool you have is a hammer, everything else begins to look like a nail. A fisheries corollary might be that if you’re a legislator dealing with fisheries issues in the southeast, every fish begins to look like a red snapper. There is little doubt that fishermen’s discontent with South Atlantic red snapper regulations, which has been aggravated by various organizations’ intemperate remarks, is the primary motivation behind H.R. 5699.

The bill provides that if the percent standard error (PSE), the criterion used to measure the precision of MRIP estimates, exceeds 30 for any two-month wave in any “seasonal fishery” (defined as any fishery that is either subject to a closed season or subject to accountability measures that might trigger a closure if the annual catch limit is exceeded), and such PSE cannot be reduced, the recreational component of that fishery should be managed with either multi-year annual catch limits or alternative management measures such as “extraction rates, fishing mortality targets, or harvest control rules,” rather than annual catch limits that are reset each year.

Such a provision would directly impact the South Atlantic red snapper fishery, where all of the single-wave PSEs during the years 2020-2024 ranged from 42.7 to 100.9, and thus allow managers to adopt alternative management approaches that are likely to increase recreational landings. Unfortunately, it would also impact fisheries such as Atlantic cod (PSEs of 13.7 to 59.9), mid-Atlantic/New England black sea bass (PSEs of 8.2 to 72.4), summer flounder (PSEs of 9.1 to 75.3), South Atlantic gag grouper (PSEs of 24.0 to 83.7), and most other federally managed species, effectively undercutting Magnuson-Stevens’ requirement that annual catch limits that prevent overfishing be put in place for all managed species.

H.R. 5699 merely states that “If the PSE for data collected through the MRIP program…exceeds 30 percent” the various alternative management approaches would apply. It doesn’t specify whether such provision only applies to MRIP landings data, or only to catch data, or to any other data collected through the MRIP program, nor does it specify whether such provision applies only to data collected at the regional level, or whether it would apply to state-level data as well.

Such vague language opens the door to arguments, from anyone unhappy with the current management of any federal fishery, that alternative management measures were needed because data for a single two-month wave in a single state had a PSE slightly above 30, even if the fishery was performing well and otherwise appeared to be well-managed.

H.R. 5699 would also require NMFS to prepare a report within six months after a single-wave estimate in any federally-managed seasonal fishery had a PSE exceeding 30, setting forth the management options considered; recommending how to reduce the PSE or, in the alternative, “how to adjust the management of such seasonal fishery in a manner that allows continued access and considers” alternatives to hard-poundage annual catch limits; and including the reasoning for the recommendations made, “written in a manner easily understood by the public.”

Given the broad array of federally managed species that would qualify as “seasonal fisheries,” and the likelihood that PSEs for such species might exceed 30 in a single wave, that reporting requirement would pose a significant and unreasonable burden for NMFS personnel.

Even if the PSE of MRIP data is well under 30, suggesting that the data is reasonably precise, the bill would allow states to petition for alternative management measures if the PSE of the MRIP data is “substantially” higher or lower than the three-year average (meaning that if the precision of the data markedly improves, the state could seek the same remedies that would be applied if the quality of the data had deteriorated), was substantially worse than the PSE of state-gathered data (even though not all state programs use PSE as a measure), or MRIP data is deemed unreliable because the species in question is infrequently encountered or is only caught during a very short season.

H.R. 5699 would also allow NMFS to replace MRIP data with data collected with “alternative data collection and monitoring methodologies” if it determined that it is not practicable to bring the PSE in any wave of a seasonal fishery below 30, and does not create any exception for waves that occur when little fishing for a particular species takes place (e.g., summer flounder in Wave 2, March/April, when the PSE in 2024 was 63.5 just because most states’ seasons were closed). That could result in MRIP no longer being used to collect and monitor data in most federally managed fisheries, and might well lead to abandonment of the MRIP program in its entirety.

Abandoning MRIP, and weakening the federal fisheries management system, seem to be two of H.R. 5699’s goals. A section of the bill, titled “State Fishery Catch and Effort Data Collection,” would authorize states to “collect recreational fishing catch and effort data for individual, or sets of, species that are federally managed.”

Provided that the resulting data met standards to be established by NMFS, states would be granted “the flexibility in the design of [data collection] programs to account for differences in recreational fishing activity between states.”

Although such flexibility would inevitably give rise to the same sort of calibration issues that arose when the Gulf states began collecting recreational red snapper data, NMFS was directed to develop and implement a plan to use such state-collected data “as a baseline for the calibration of historic estimates of recreational catch in place of the data collected through the MRIP [emphasis added],” doing so “without calibration to data collected pursuant to any Federal program, including the MRIP.”

H.R. 5699 further directs that NMFS “shall use the data collected by the State in place of the data collected pursuant to the MRIP, including with respect to management decisions,” thus assuming that data from programs that have not yet even been proposed will somehow be superior to that proposed by MRIP. In line with that assumption, the bill would also shift funding previously used to support MRIP in a state to instead fund that state’s own data collection program, and also provide grants to states who wish to create their own data collection programs.

Allowing some states to abandon MRIP in favor of their own data collection programs, while other states opted not to do so, would create a significant calibration problem even in the cases of red snapper and other reef fish, which typically don’t migrate over long distances. However, it would probably create chaos along the New England and mid-Atlantic coasts, where species as diverse as bluefish and black sea bass frequently engage in long seasonal migrations; some bluefish, for example, might regularly engage in seasonal migrations between Maine and North Carolina, or even farther south, in the course of a single year. Trying to manage such wide-ranging species using uncalibrated data from multiple state programs as well as from MRIP would be a practical impossibility.

H.R. 5699 would also reduce the role of federal fisheries scientists by requiring NMFS to “establish a program to enter into contracts with independent entities on a competitive basis under which such independent entities shall conduct fisheries-independent surveys designed to estimate the absolute abundance of stocks of fish included in the Fish Stock Sustainability Index on behalf of” the agency.

The bill provides that, so long as the independently acquired data passes peer review, NMFS “shall incorporate data collected pursuant to a fishery-independent abundance survey conducted by an independent entity…into management decisions.” It thus strips away the ability of NMFS’ in-house scientists to, in the exercise of their professional expertise and discretion, independently determine the validity and value of the independently-developed data. At the same time, H.R. 5699’s insistence on contracting with “independent entities” would almost certainly result in funding being diverted away from NMFS’ regional science centers in order to pay for the independent research, leading to further reductions in NMFS’ scientific staff and weakening the agency’s ability to study and manage marine fish stocks.

H.R. 5699 clearly fits into the continuing pattern of recreational fishing industry organizations and “anglers’ rights” groups, abetted by friendly legislators, seeking to undermine the federal fishery management system in the southeastern United States, in order to increase recreational landings and fishing activity and, in theory, industry profits, at least in the short term.

However, while previous efforts were limited to a handful of species in the southeast, H.R. 5699 would create fundamental changes to Magnuson-Stevens, so has the potential to disrupt federal fisheries management for just about every species on every coast of the United States.

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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/

BLACK SEA BASS: CUTTING THE BABY IN HALF

 

On the morning of December 17, the Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council and the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission’s Summer Flounder, Scup, and Black Sea Bass Management Board agreed to increase 2026 and 2027 recreational black sea bass landings by 20%, adopting a compromise measure in the face of ambiguous scientific advice and substantial uncertainty.

Whether such compromise constituted a prudent, precautionary approach to black sea bass management or an unreasonably risky decision, whether it created any long-term hazard to the black sea bass or the black sea bass fishery, or whether it will still leave anglers fishing under unreasonably restrictive management measures are questions that the members of the Council and Management Board answered based on their own risk tolerance, their own views of the fishery, and their own concern for the long-term impacts of management decisions.

I first wrote about the impending decision about a month ago, in the context of the November 19 meeting of the Summer Flounder, Scup, and Black Sea Bass Advisory Panel meeting, when many Advisory Panel members supported a 39% increase in black sea bass landings, despite the uncertainty involved.  At the time, I characterized their eagerness to see landings spike as “Imprudence,” and I’m tempted to characterize the recent action of the Council and Board in a similar vein, but that wouldn’t be completely honest, as the issue is complicated, and there are arguably justifications for the 20% landings hike.

Having said that, if I was in a decision-making position, I would have voted the other way, both because of the uncertainty and because of some additional factors that, in my opinion, were largely skimmed over in the Council and Board discussions.  But had I done so, I would have been in the distinct minority (the relevant motion passed by a vote of 15 in favor, 3 opposed, and 1 abstaining at the Council, and 8 in favor, 2 opposed, 1 abstention, and 1 null vote at the Board), and I understand what motivated the majority’s views.

Partly, it was the lack of any clear scientific advice.

In the case of black sea bass (as well as summer flounder and scup) the primary scientific advice comes from the Council’s Scientific and Statistical Committee, which sets the annual catch limit, and from a relatively new innovation called the “Recreational Demand Model” which, among other things, predicts what future landings would be based on what past landings were under existing regulations.

That advice is then filtered through Council staff and the Summer Flounder, Scup, and Black Sea Bass Monitoring Committee, composed of scientists from NMFS, the ASMFC, and interested states, which provides the Council and Management Board with firm recommendations on the appropriate management measures.

At least, that’s the way things are supposed to work.  This time, the process didn’t quite function as planned.

There was no one reason for the problems besetting the black sea bass management process; it was more a question of a number of current and potential issues all converging on managers at the same time. 

A new research track stock assessment, completed in 2023, and subsequent management track assessments, relied on something called the Woods Hole Assessment Model (WHAM) instead of the Age Structured Assessment Program (ASAP) that had been used before, which may have resulted in more accurate data, but also increased the uncertainty associated with some aspects of the assessment.

A government shutdown in the fall of 2025 made it impossible for managers to obtain preliminary recreational catch data for July and August, or revised data for the first six months of the year, in time to include it in the Recreational Demand Model; by the time the shutdown ended and the data became available, it was too late to include it in a new run of the RDM, even though the new numbers suggested that landings during the first half of the year were higher than originally thought.  Although Council staff noted that

“it would be preferable to update the model with preliminary wave 4 data and 2025 black sea bass size distribution information, it is necessary to move forward with the model with the information currently available,”

There was just no time to proceed otherwise.

In addition, standard practice is to update the Recreational Demand Model with projections of the size distribution of black sea bass in the upcoming year which, as a November 7 memorandum from Julia Beatty, the Council staff member responsible for black sea bass, to Dr. Chris Moore, the Council’s Executive Director, notes,

“is consistent with past practice and allows the model to estimate catch based on predicted future availability of different sizes of fish.”

But this year, the Scientific and Statistical Committee didn’t base its calculations on such projections, largely because projections of a declining biomass in previous years proved inaccurate, and drew significant criticism at the December 2024 joint meeting of the Council and Management Board.  That created a situation in which the SSC and the Recreational Demand Model analyses were out of synch, with only the latter considering the future availability of different-sized black sea bass, although, at the December meeting, Council staff raised the possibility that such mismatch might not create material issues.

Still, the increased uncertainty in the Recreational Demand Model’s estimate of 2026 recreational black sea bass landings raised a new question. 

Uncertainty in the Recreational Demand Model’s estimates of future landings is measured by something known as a “confidence interval;” the 80% confidence interval that has been used up to now embraces a range of values above and below the point estimate of future landings (in this case, 5.86 million pounds) which, collectively, have an 80% probability of including the actual level of 2026 landings.  The Percent Change Approach used to set future recreational landings targets for black sea bass is supposed to take such confidence interval into consideration.  If a future recreational harvest limit falls below the lower bound of the confidence interval, managers are required to take a specified action, usually the adoption of more restrictive management meaures.  If the future RHL falls within the confidence interval, managers are required to take a different, specified action, while if the future RHL falls above the upper bound of the confidence interval, yet another specified action, typically relaxing the existing rules, is indicated.

Perhaps because the stock assessment employed the WHAM rather than the ASAP model, the 80% confidence interval for the Recreational Demand Model’s calculation of 2026 landings was very wide, ranging between 4.22 and 8.50 million pounds, while the 2026 recreational harvest limit was 8.14 million pounds, just within the confidence interval’s upper boundary.  Pursuant to the Percent Change Approach, 2026 and 2027 recreational black sea bass landings target should remain unchanged from what it was in 2025.

However, the wide 80% confidence interval led to substantial debate at the November 18 Monitoring Committee meeting.

Four of the 11 Committee members present felt that a narrower, 75% confidence interval should be adopted, which would narrow the gap between the confidence interval’s upper and lower bounds to a range similar to that prevailing for summer flounder and scup when the 80% confidence interval was used.  They argued that a 75% confidence interval would allow recreational management measures to be liberalized (the 5.14 million pound recreational harvest limit would fall just above the 5.06 million pound upper bound of the 75% confidence interval), which they viewed as a good thing given the size of the stock.

Three of the 11 Committee members supported continued use of the 80% confidence interval.  One of those three argued that reducing the confidence interval to 75% could be seen as a move intended to create a particular outcome—more liberal regulations—and argued that any change in the confidence interval should be supported by a strong rationale, which seemed to be missing here.  Another felt that changing the confidence interval felt “ad hoc;” that is, that it was being done to achieve a particular purpose (i.e., to justify liberalization).

The remaining four Committee members claimed to be undecided as to the proper confidence interval, and recommended leaving the decision up to the Council and Board, feeling that it was inappropriate to recommend between 75% and 80% given the impact that selecting either one would have on the outcome.  One member suggested that, lacking a strong rationale to support either choice, the determination should be made “as a policy matter” by the Council and Management Board.

Should the 75% confidence interval be selected, five Monitoring Committee members suggested that the Council and Management Board consider a 10% or 20% liberalization, rather than the 39% liberalization that the Percent Change Approach would allow; one member argued that the full 39% liberalization should occur.

Ultimately, when presented with the choice, the Council and Management Board opted not to address the confidence interval issue at all, but instead cut the baby in half, and increased recreational black sea bass landings by 20%.

Was that the right choice?

The majority of the two management bodies thought so, but as noted above, I disagree, and do so for multiple reasons.

My primary reason is because I believe that fisheries managers are focusing too much on the single statistic of spawning stock biomass, and not taking enough time to consider what that spawning stock biomass looks like.

According to the last research track stock assessment,

“across all stratification variables, maturity increased rapidly between ages 1-3 with an age of 50% maturity of approximately 2-years old and a length of 50% maturity of approximately 21 cm [approximately 8.27 inches].”

That’s a very small black sea bass. 

Fortunately, there are a lot of very small black sea bass around.  Recreational Demand Model results, published on October 24, reveal that black sea bass between two and four years old comprise about 20% of the black sea bass population when it measured in numbers of fish north of Hudson Canyon (although, if the upper bounds of the confidence intervals were considered, could theoretically constitute substantially more), with Year-0 and Year-1 fish making up most of the rest; black sea bass aged five or older seem to account for well under 10% of the population.  

That means that the age structure of the black sea bass population, or at least the northern portion of that population, is significantly truncated, with few larger—or, given the regulations in New York and New England, even legal—fish remaining in the spawning stock, which is largely made up of sea bass less than 15 inches long.

So, while the spawning stock biomass may be very high, and capable of maintaining itself over an extended period if conditions are right, due to the truncated age structure, it is also very vulnerable should conditions change.  And conditions might be changing right now.

A 2016 stock assessment noted that

“warm saline conditions improved juvenile survival,”

and then elaborated,

“Age 0 sea bass, which are generally less than 14 cm [5 ½ inches] when they leave coastal regions, tend to be more generally distributed across the [continental] shelf, perhaps due to slower swimming speeds.  Consequently their survival is related to conditions across the shelf.  If warm saline Gulf Stream water moves onto the shelf in winter, survival is high.  When cold conditions are the norm, survival decreases.”

For that reason, University of Connecticut Assistant Professor Hannes Baumann has commented that

“There are winners and losers when it comes to climate change.  Black sea bass are winners.”

However, even though northeastern waters have exhibited a long-term warming trend that is favorable to black sea bass recruitment, that trend can be interrupted by periods of cooling, and it appears that such a cooling period may already be underway.  Earlier this year, a publication released by the National Marine Fisheries Service, titled "2025 State of the Ecosystem, New England,” noted that

“2024 global sea surface and air temperatures exceeded 2023 as the warmest year on record, but colder than average temperatures were observed in the Northeast U.S.   Oceanographic and ecological conditions in the Northwest Atlantic were markedly different in 2024 compared to recent years.

“…Late 2023 and early 2024 observations indicate movement of cooler and fresher water into the Northwest Atlantic, although there are seasonal and local exceptions to this pattern.  Anomalously cold and low salinity conditions were recorded throughout the Northeast Shelf and were widespread across the Slope Sea for much of the year.  These cooler and fresher conditions are linked to the southward movement of the eastern portion of the Gulf Stream and possibly an increased influx of Labrador Slope and Scotian Shelf water into the system.”

A related NMFS press release stated that

“A companion longer-term outlook, also developed by NOAA scientists, suggests that more frequent inflows of cooler deep water may continue to temper warming in the basin for the next several years.”

The NMFS State of the Ecosystem report predicted that

“Long-term oceanographic projections forecast a temporary pause in warming over the next decade due to internal variability in circulation and a southward shift of the Gulf Stream.  [emphasis added]”

If the decade-long spike in black sea bass abundance has been the result of warm, saline water moving over the edge of the continental shelf during the juvenile fish’s first winter, it’s not unlikely that cooler, less saline water moving over the shelf throughout the next decade might lead to poor juvenile survival, and a sharp decline in black sea bass numbers.  The fact that the spawning stock seems to be concentrated in just three year classes of relatively young fish strongly suggests that if recruitment declines sharply, while fishing mortality remains high through 2027, the spawning stock biomass could decline quickly.

While that’s not an inevitable result, the truncated age structure of the spawning stock biomass makes it much more likely that such rapid decline could occur.

Even if that doesn’t happen, increasing the fishing mortality rate will inevitably result in further truncation of the age structure of the stock; absent measures such as slot size limits intended to focus harvest on younger elements of the population, such increases always have the greatest impact on the oldest age classes. 

Thus, James Gilmore, a Council member from New York and the former Director of the New York Department of Environmental Conservation’s Marine Bureau, should have known better than to say that he was supporting the 20% increase in landings because

“I’m getting tired of catching three million little black sea bass because the biomass is so high,”

for by increasing the fishing mortality rate, he only makes it more likely that the larger individuals will be removed from the population, so that the only fish that remain would be the “little black sea bass” that are still protected and will make up nearly entire spawning stock.

A separate consideration militating against increased landings is that NMFS expects to have revised Marine Recreational Information Program data in place by 2026.  Such revised data will correct previous overestimates of recreational fishing effort, and thus recreational catch and landings, and so is expected to result in lower estimates of recreational harvest.  When that data is incorporated into the 2017 management track stock assessment, assuming that NMFS has the funding and the capacity to perform the assessment as currently scheduled, it will likely lead to the estimate of current spawning stock biomass, as well as the biomass target, being reduced from what it is today.

If that is the case, the current annual catch limit and related specifications, including the recreational harvest limit and recreational landings target, will almost certainly have to be revised downward as well.  Should that be the case, we are likely to see the liberalization in management measures put in place for 2026 and 2027 reversed, and replaced by increased restrictions for the 2028 and 2029 seasons, destroying the sort of regulatory stability that the Percent Change Approach was supposed to promote.

Worse, if the spawning stock biomass estimate is reduced as a result of the MRIP revisions, it will mean that the annual catch limit for black sea bass has been too high since 2017 or so, when the MRIP estimates had been adjusted upwards.  While that won’t matter too much on the recreational side, as the overestimate of both spawning stock biomass and recreational landings will more or less offset one another, it will mean that commercial quotas, which are based on the estimate of spawning stock biomass and the resultant annual catch limit, have been too high for a number of years, and will remain too high through at least 2027, raising the possibility that the stock might have experienced overfishing for part or all of a decade.

Liberalizing recreational landings towards the end of that decade could only make the situation worse.

Given all of those factors, which only contribute to the uncertainty surrounding the state and the future of the black sea bass stock, I believe that liberalizing the recreational management measures for the 2026 and 2027 seasons was the wrong thing to do, and was a mistake that may come to haunt the Council and Management Board, perhaps as soon as 2027, when it begins setting the specifications for the 2028 fishing season.

Once again, we saw mangers’ bias toward increasing recreational black sea bass landings, driven solely by the size of the spawning stock biomass, without any critical analysis of how that biomass is structured and without giving much thought to any other contingencies, lead them away from a precautionary approach.

Having said that, it could have been worse.  There was surprisingly little support for the full 39% increase in landings that might have occurred if the Council and Management Board had decided to endorse a 75% confidence interval.  And the scientific staff, whether at NMFS, the Council, or the ASMFC, were informally charged with examining the confidence interval issue in more detail, to perhaps determine whether standards regarding the proper confidence interval to use might be adopted.

Plus, as Ms. Beatty noted at the December 17 meeting, given the 30% increase in the recreational harvest limit for 2026, had the Percent Change Approach not been adopted, and had the old approach of trying to craft regulations likely to result in landings that approach, but not exceed, the recreational harvest limit were still in place, the 2026 landings increase could have been larger than the 20% that was ultimately approved.

So there were certainly arguments that support the Council’s and Management Board’s decision.

It’s just that, when all of the facts and uncertainties were pooled together, it seems that there were far more arguments that supported the status quo.