BOTTOMING OUT...WISELY

Like most folks who have spent their share of time in boats many miles from shore, I’ve always had a lot of respect for the Coast Guard.  Just knowing that they’re standing by to respond to emergencies at sea is a comfort, and I never forget the fact that, if things ever get truly ugly offshore, they will put their lives on the line to save mine. 

I never questioned their skill and courage.  However, it took me a long time to appreciate how much patience and diplomacy their job required. 

Then came one Labor Day weekend, when I eavesdropped on a radio call that would have tried the patience of Job.

It went more-or-less like this:

“Fire Island Coast Guard, this is the vessel [Anonymous].  We’re in Great South Bay off Good Samaritan Hospital.  Our cabin is filling with water.  Please send us some help.”

“Vessel [Anonymous], this is Fire Island Coast Guard.  Put on your life vests and try to get your boat closer to shore.  We are dispatching a unit that should arrive in 15 or 20 minutes.”

“Fire Island Coast Guard, we have our life vests on, but we don’t want to get much closer to shore; it gets pretty shallow up there.”

The Coast Guard voice on Channel 16 remained cool.

“Vessel [Anonymous], in view of your condition, I repeat, you should try to get closer to shore.”

“Fire Island Coast Guard, please get here as fast as you can.  The water in the cabin keeps getting deeper, but it’s too shallow close to the shore.”

The Coast Guard voice stayed measured and low, but you could begin to hear a touch of frustration creep in.

“Vessel [Anonymous], it sounds like you have a serious problem. You really should get closer to shore.”

“Fire Island Coast Guard, please get here quickly.  Our cabin is filling up, but if we try to get closer to shore, we might hit the bottom.”

And then the Coast Guard asked the core question.

“Vessel [Anonymous], it sounds like you’re going to hit bottom one way or another.  Wouldn’t you rather do it closer to shore?”

Fisheries managers could learn from that exchange.

Everyone hopes that when a fish stock declines, managers can act swiftly to avoid a collapse.  And when a stock is already in bad shape, we hope that managers can take the stress off the fish without putting additional stress on fishermen.

Often, that just can’t be done.

Many fisheries are in such dire condition that the stock can’t be recovered without big cuts in harvest that will cause real hardship to some of the folks involved.  Managers are caught squarely between two opposing forces.  On one hand, there are the people—and, at the federal level, there is the law—demanding that the stock be rebuilt.  On the other hand, there are other people demanding that managers let fisheremen keep fishing, paying their bills and feeding their families.

And that’s where the story about the sinking boat comes in.

Sometimes, no matter what choice you make, something bad is going to happen.  At that point, it’s no longer about avoiding disaster; it’s all about limiting damage and letting folks get on with their lives once that damage is done.

When a fish stock ends up in truly bad shape—Gulf of Maine cod, southern New England winter flounder and South Atlantic red snapper are three current examples—what follows is all too predictable.

Biologists will assess the stock, and recommend the harvest reductions needed to restore it to health.  They might want to shut the entire fishery down for a while.

At that point, anyone who will take a short-term hit as a result of the harvest reductions will bombard regulators, politicians and anyone else who they think might listen with a host of reasons why things should stay as they are. 

If regulators heed the biologists and reduce—or even halt—the landings, many fishermen and fishing-related businesses could be hurt, and a significant number of them might go out of business.

If regulators heed the fishermen and don’t reduce landings, overfished stocks could collapse and collapsed stocks could decline even further, perhaps to the brink of commercial—if not actual—extinction.

One way or another, somebody’s boat is going to sink.  The question is whether managers are going to do their best to see that it sinks close to shore, and limits the risk to all concerned, or whether they let it go down in deep water, and create even greater perils.

In the past—which for these purposes should be defined as before the passage of the Sustainable Fisheries Act of 1996 and before the court decision in Natural Resources Defense Council v. Daley, decisions nearly always went the way the fishermen wanted them to. 

The fish lost just about every round.  And began to disappear.

After NRDC v. Daley, federal and state fisheries managers took divergent paths.

Federal fisheries managers arelegally obligated to end overfishing and promptly rebuild overfished stocks, regardless of the economic hardship.  They have not had an easy time, and have not escaped criticism.

But they have successfully rebuilt many stocks.

The best example is probably the Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council’s restoration of summer flounder.  That stock bottomed out in 1989, when spawning stock biomass dropped to a mere 5,500 metric tons; by 2010, it had increased nearly tenfold, to over 53,000 metric tons. 

But that success didn’t come easily.  Mid-Atlantic managers imposed strict caps on annual harvest.  Businesses dependent on the species experienced difficult years, and some had to close their doors.  However, the summer flounder now enjoys a stable population that includes a large percentage of larger, more prolific spawning females, and thus will be able to support robust commercial and recreational fisheries into the foreseeable future.

In other places, federal managers tried to reach compromise solutions which, at least, on their face, complied with the law, but eschewed hard quotas in favor of input controls such as days at sea, in an effort to accommodate fishermen’s concerns.  

Their results were nowhere near as good. They led to the worst of both worlds.

Stocks failed to rebuild.  Some continued to decline, catching fishermen in a perpetual cycle of regulations that did too little, and were imposed too late, to begin to rebuild fish populations, but still caused real economic distress.  Each assessment showed fish stocks still growing smaller, leading to additional, inadequate restrictions that ratcheted the economic harm up another notch while fish stocks continue to wither.

The history of New England groundfish is filled with such stories, and more are being written this day.

Still, the worst that the federal managers can do is probably better than what happens in the states, where federal fisheries laws don't apply, science may be ignored, overfishing tolerated and stocks never rebuilt.

The Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission probably represents the epitome of state-level management.  For the past twenty years, ASMFC has been enjoying much public esteem for rebuilding the coastal migratory striped bass stock, a task that it completed in 1995.

Unfurtunately, it hasn’t restored a single stock since.

Not one.

Yet during those twenty years, a lot of other stocks slipped downhill, and a few collapsed.  Among the losers, we have alewives, American eel, American shad, blueback herring, Gulf of Maine winter flounder, northern shrimp, southern New England lobster, southern New England/Mid-Atlantic winter flounder, tautog and weakfish (I try to list them alphabetically, to avoid forgetting any, although it’s still possible that I missed one or two).

And striped bass, ASMFC’s singular success, hasn’t been doing so well.  Overfishing is likely to occur, if not this year, than in 2015 (and, at best, there’s a 50-50 chance that it will happen in 2016, too); the steadily-declining population is will become overfished, this year or next, as well.

Because at ASMFC, the decisions still favor the fishermen.

At least, they favor the fishermen in the short term.

Long term, things don’t turn out nearly so well.

The boat is still going to sink.  Some people are going to lose a lot of their incomes, and some businesses are going to close.

But the question is where and when that boat will hit bottom.

Folks can do the cautious thing, and make sure that it sinks in the shallows.  They can cut harvests way back—maybe even to zero—for a while, to let fish stocks rebuild.  As abundance increases, harvest resumes, until a fully restored stock provides an abundance of fish for all.

The passengers from that sinking boat are all able to wade ashore.

Or folks can keep on fishing until a stock collapses.  Then they have to stop fishing anyway, lose money and close their businesses, because there’s nothing left to catch.

They took the risk, and went down in deep water. 

And as the Atlantic halibut taught us, they may wait for a rescue that never comes.

DO JOLTHEAD PORGIES REALLY MATTER?

A little over a year ago, I found myself down in Houston, sitting at a hotel bar and talking about fish.

I was on maybe my third Sam Adams, guzzling beer as I tried to get the bad taste of the day’s meetings out of my mouth.  But as the conversation went on, the sour burn in the back of my throat just kept getting worse.

Like most bad conversations down in the Gulf country these days, this one started out as someone’s lament about the state of red snapper management, but then it took a darker and more ominous road.

“We have to manage for the most economic value,” one of the folks was saying.  “And if that means that we end up overfishing something like jolthead porgies, that’s too bad.”

Jolthead porgies, if you’re curious, are a minor member of the southern reef fish complex.  They live on hard structure with the grunts and the snappers, and feed mostly on things such as crabs.  Anglers catch them accidentally while fishing for more popular snappers and groupers, but don’t target them intentionally.  According to the National Marine Fisheries Service’s Recreational Fisheries Statistics Query database, less than 100,000 pounds were caught last year, so any effort to control jolthead porgy mortality would require managers to curtail the fishery for more popular species. 

Even so, it didn’t seem right to consign a fish to oblivion just because it didn’t generate the same angler dollars as one of the various snappers or groupers.  But when I said so, and noted that my companions’ indifference to the porgy’s fate reminded me of the way some New England trawlers felt about lesser members of their groundfish complex, they told me flat out that the trawlers were right.

“You just can’t forego that much yield,” I was told.  “You can’t leave that many fish in the water just to protect one minor species.”

At that point, the acid in my throat really began to burn.

I suppose that I let my idealism show, and started talking about ecosystems.  About how every fish—every animal and plant—evolved over years to fill a particular niche, and how removing a seemingly minor element—even the jolthead porgy—from such an integrated system would leave a hole that might be filled in some unpredictable and maybe undesirable way. 

I suggested that playing God and trying to re-engineer a complex ecosystem that had evolved over millennia—effectively, trying to turn the natural reef into something like an open-water fish ranch—probably wasn’t a good idea.

But one of the guys cut off that line of thinking with one wave of his hand, and a dismissive “There’s no such thing as a natural ecosystem out there.  We’ve f***ed everything up so badly over the years, we might as well manage it for the best returns.”

At that point, the only thing I could do was walk away.

Because little things can, and often do, make a pretty big difference.

Around the time that I turned twelve, I decided that it was time to learn how to clean and lube my own reels.  The taking-apart phase went pretty well, but then I learned that disassembling a reel was a lot like cleaning a fish; it was really easy to get the insides out, but getting all the parts back inside and working the way they did before was just about impossible…

Eventually, with the help of a little book that came with the reel, I managed to get all of the parts back where they belonged, with the exception of one tiny spring that just didn’t seem to fit anywhere.  With a twelve-year-old’s logic, I figured out that something that small couldn’t be too important, so I turned every screw tight, only to learn that without that one little spring, the reel’s handle spun backward and it’s drag couldn’t work, making the whole device far less useful.

As a twelve-year-old, I was expected to do something dumb.  But when an adult—and one who claimed to be a fisheries expert—just blunders forward and assumes that a jolthead porgy, or any other fish on the reef, isn’t important enough to worry about, he isn’t just being stupid.  He is being irresponsibly reckless, and could easily put public resources at risk.

Just last week, scientists at Brown University, in  Providence, Rhode Island, released a paper that explains why our northeastern salt marshes are shrinking and, in some places, disappearing altogether.

Those salt marshes are critically important to many the of fish that we anglers pursue.  Species as diverse as bluefish and the menhaden that they feed on spawn in deep water over the continental shelf, and let currents carry their larvae to inshore waters, where they settle in the marsh and try to live out the first summer of their lives.

Bigger fish—fish such as striped bass and weakfish—hunt the marsh as adults.  That’s a good thing, because we catch them there; without the marshes, inshore fishing would be far less productive.

So whether you care about fish or about fishermen, the loss of a marsh is a big deal, and scientists have spent a lot of time and money trying to figure out why a lot of marshes are shrinking in size.

It turns out that a crab, belonging to the genus Sesarma, lives in the marsh.  That crab normally eats marsh plants with no adverse effects on the habitat.  But a predator or predators that previously kept the crab population in check has apparently disappeared; as a result, crab numbers have exploded.  The once benign animals are overwhelming the marsh, destroying the root infrastructure that held the marsh banks together in  the process.

Now here’s the kicker—although the scientists have determined that the loss of an important crab predator has caused the problem, they haven’t yet identified the predator in question.

It could be something as seemingly small and insignificant as the jolthead porgy (although not that particular species, which lives farther south).

Which means that folks—and we have a lot of such folks up here—who want to kill off seals, cormorants, spiny dogfish or anything else that might eat the same fish that they do are on the wrong track; killing predators might well result in degraded habitat that supports fewer fish.

And it means that my former companions down in Houston were way off base when they talked about managing a reef ecosystem to favor certain components while disadvantaging others.

Ecosystems just don’t work that way.  Like the reel I took apart as a kid, they function far better with all of their parts intact.

So anglers who depend on such ecosystems for the fish that they catch ought to be very aware of some bad provisions in both the House and Senate Magnuson Act reauthorization bills.

As in everything else, the House draft is the worse of the two.  It relieves managers from developing annual catch limits for “ecosystem component species”, which pretty well leaves fish such as the jolthead porgy (and plenty of others) out to dry.  

They could be overfished with impunity; the draft offers no relief.

But that is just one bad provision in a bill that is as malignant as cancer.  The only way to “fix” the House bill is to excise it from the Congressional calendar.  It has no saving grace.

On the other hand, the current Senate draft is a basically good bill that contains a few unfortunate provisions, which include the new definitions for “target fish”, which would include reef fish such as red snapper, and ‘non-target fish”, which would cover ecosystem components such as jolthead porgies. 

Under provisions of the Senate draft, “non-target fish” get lesser protections, and are not subject to accountability measures in the event of overfishing. 

That’s a little better than the House bill, as annual catch limits could still be set.  But limits without some sort of enforced accountability don’t help to much.  Fortunately, there is an easy fix:  Remove all of the references to “target fish” and “non-target fish”, and the problem goes away.

As it should.

For neither you nor I—nor anyone else—is wise enough to discern the natural role of every fish that swims.  Even when, with our limited vision, such role seems surpassingly small.

For small things can matter—in  a reel, in a salt marsh and—with absolute certainty—in an ecosystem somewhere near you.

A SELF-INFLICTED WOUND

I recently read an article in the Gloucester Daily Times, which lamented the fact that May 1^st had arrived—marking the beginning of a new groundfishing year—without causing much of a stir on the waterfront.

The piece noted that the docks and the boats were not bustling with life, that the folks who fished and the folks who sold fish and the folks who sold supplies and services to all of them were ominously quiet, and seemed to hint at a general mood of silent despair.

The reason, we are told, are regulations that don’t let folks kill enough fish, and a catch share program that further limits the number of fish available to any one vessel.  These are man-made evils, we’re led to believe, that keep seamen away from the sea.

Nowhere in that dolorous piece does the author point out that the cod stocks are down, haddock is slipping and winter flounder are just about gone.

Those are man-made evils we seem meant to ignore, that are reality out on the sea.

Before I go any farther, I should probably explain, for those who don’t know, that there is more than one “Gloucester” in the United States, and the original over in England, but the one where the Daily Times is printed is up in Massachusetts, sited just about dead in the middle of the New England coast. 

Gloucester was one of the earliest—its residents claim the earliest—fishing port in what is now the United States, and that’s important, because when you do something for four hundred years, you can develop bad habits that are real tough to break. 

And what those folks in Gloucester have done for those years is kill fish—particularly codfish—for a living, working hard every day to kill as many fish as they can, and make as much money as they can, without anyone from the government or anywhere else standing around and telling them that killing a few less might just be a good idea.

That worked for 350 years or so, but a couple of decades after the last naval war ended, the same sort of technology that swept German U-boats from Gloucester’s neighboring sea started showing up on fishing boats, which threatened to sweep the last cod, haddock and flounder from those very same waters.

Some of those boats were Gloucester boats, and a lot of them were from places such as Poland, Japan and the Soviet Union, but the fish didn’t care where the nets that engulfed them were made; they just packed into the cod-ends and died.

So many died that the independent souls of the New England shore, who before had sought no help but God’s, turned to Congress and asked for a bill that would make the great northeastern cod banks America’s own, and push the foreigners out of our sea.

Once the fishermen got what they wanted—a bill that, some years and some amendments later would be known as the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act—and the foreigners stopped killing the fish, the New England boys got government loans to build bigger and better-equipped boats, then stepped up to the plate and started killing those fish themselves, just like they had for the past four centuries or so.

Of course, the fish didn’t care who killed them, and kept dying all the same, and by the time the 1990s rolled around, there weren’t too many cod around to be caught.  A lot of boats spent a lot of time tied up to the docks, because they weren’t catching enough fish to cover the costs of their trips. 

Fishing got bad enough that Congress stepped in again.  In 1996, they passed a law that, for the first time, required the National Marine Fisheries Service to end overfishing, rebuild stocks and make sure that harvests did not exceed sustainable levels.

Fishermen, and fisheries managers, ignored the new law at first, but then a court decision in a case called Natural Resources Defense Council v. Daley said that regional fishery councils couldn’t treat the law’s rebuilding provisions lightly.  Management plans had to rebuild stocks within the 10-year time period required by law; those which didn’t wouldn’t survive a court’s review.

The fishery management plan that was rejected in Natural Resources Defense Council v. Daley had been put together by the Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council.   Once the court handed down its decision, that council changed its approach to management.  It started imposing hard quotas on its fishermen, and closed down fisheries when those quotas were reached.

It was tough on everyone for a while, particularly in the beginning when fish populations were low.  But over time, fish in the Mid-Atlantic began to rebuild.

Other regional fishery management councils saw the writing on the wall, too, and after the court decision was handed down, they started putting management plans in place that put real restrictions on harvest, and started to rebuild previously overfished stocks.  The new law was working as it should, and fish were becoming more abundant.

That was the case everywhere, except in New England. 

Up there, fishermen had no intention of being told how many fish they could catch.  And since fishermen held most of the seats on the New England Fishery Management Council, that council wasn’t about to put hard quotas in place, or shut down seasons when too many fish were brought back to the dock.

Instead, it adopted “input controls” that determined how and when a person could fish, but didn’t cap the fleet's overall landings.  And those so-called “input controls” weren’t really good at controlling how many fish came back to the dock. 

There were ways to get around the rules, and after 400 years of learning how to catch cod and other groundfish, the folks on the New England boats got to know just about all of them.  So while their “days at sea” appeared to decline, their catch stayed pretty high.

Fish stocks, however, were sliding downhill.

By the time Congress stepped in for a third time and imposed hard quotas on everyone, including the New England fleet, the huge stocks of cod that once fed a good part of the western world were whittled down to a mere remnant.  Many other groundfish had suffered the same fate, and although the New England fishermen rail against restrictive harvest caps, the fact is that the fish just weren’t there to catch any more.  

Fishermen railed at quotas for being too low, but were still unable to fill them.

NOAA Fisheries has just released a report on the status of America’s fish stocks in 2013.  The figures in that report pretty well say it all.  

In 2013, nine New England stocks were subject to overfishing (i.e., harvest was at unsustainably high levels), a net increase of one stock compared to 2012 (two species of skate were added to the list, while white hake was no longer undergoing overfishing, and was removed).  In addition, twelve stocks were still overfished (the population was less than half of that needed to produce maximum sustainable yield); that was one less than in 2012, as the health of the white hake population improved.

So even in these days of catch shares and supposedly low quotas, New England fishermen still aren't doing enough to rebuild stocks and get overfishing under control.

On the other hand, in the Mid-Atlantic, where hard quotas and other real restrictions on harvest have been in place for over a decade, no stock is subject to overfishing, and none are overfished.  

Mid-Atlantic fishermen bit the bullet, limited their kill and rebuilt all of their stocks.  They are now enjoying the fruits of their previous sacrifice.

So yes, it is quiet on the New England docks these days.  

That's because, instead of biting the bullet, the New England fishermen shot themselves in the foot.

They spent decades trying to avoid harvest caps, and created clever ways to comply with the letter, but not the spirit, of federal fisheries law.  They never made a serious effort to restrain their harvest and restore their stocks.

Now, they have left themselves with little to fish for.

Yet the fleet still wants to change federal fisheries law, so that it may profit in the short term by killing off the fish that it needs to assure its long-term survival.

Four hundred years have come and gone since the first commercially-caught cod were landed in Gloucester.  But now Gloucester's docks have gone silent, as the fleet slowly bleeds from self-inflicted wounds.

U.S. SENATE CONSIDERS THE MAGNUSON ACT

A couple of months ago, I wrote about the House “discussion draft” of a bill reauthorizing the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act.  That was a pretty frightening draft that would gut the most important provisions of federal fisheries law, and could well take us back to the sort of unregulated overfishing that collapsed stocks along every coast of the United States.

When I closed that piece, I noted that the Senate was still working on its own initial “discussion draft,” and that I thought it would probably take a more rational approach than that taken by the House. 

That Senate draft was finally released around the middle of last month, and I was relieved to learn that my guess was correct.  While the Senate draft isn’t perfect, it is far better than the proposed House bill.  It includes a couple bad provisions that need to be removed, and some other ambiguous and potentially harmful constructions that ought to be revised.  But it also contains some very good provisions that will move the fishery conservation effort forward.

All in all, it isn’t a terrible initial effort.  With a little work and cooperation, could easily be shaped into a worthy bill.

The draft was authored by a bipartisan committee drawn from many different states, and contains language supported by a majority of the committee members.  But as one reads the language of the proposed bill, one can’t help but believe that a lot of the credit has to go to Senator Mark Begich of Alaska, who has taken principled stands on conservation issues before—most recently, his courageous opposition of the so-called Pebble Mine, which posed an existential threat to the rich Bristol Bay salmon fishery—and comes from a state that daily reaps the benefits of enlightened fisheries management measures.

The biggest single issue of this Magnuson reauthorization cycle is the concept of “flexibility.”  I addressed the issue generally in an earlier essay; noting that, while it sounds like a reasonable idea, “flexibility” has become a euphemism for continued overfishing—something that is anything but reasonable.  The House draft has fully embraced that approach, and incorporates a host of provisions that would allow such overfishing to continue unabated for extended periods and would likely pose real barriers to ever fully rebuilding still-overfished stocks.

The Senate draft takes a more rational approach. 

It would make the rebuilding provisions species-specific, establishing a rebuilding time equal to the minimum time it would take to rebuild the stock (presumably if no fishing at all took place, although that should be clarified in the draft bill) plus one mean generation time—the average time it would take a member of such stock to reach reproductive maturity. 

Linking the rebuilding time to such species-specific periods should eliminate objections to the current 10-year rebuilding period by those who claim that it is “arbitrary”; at least in theory, rebuilding times under the Senate formulation could be either longer or shorter than 10 years. 

Unfortunately, there’s not enough available fisheries science to determine mean generation times and minimum rebuilding periods for many stocks.  The authors of the Senate draft have thus wisely provided that, when fisheries scientists are not in general agreement on the length of such periods, the current 10-year deadline would remain in effect.

Species-specific provisions would seemingly eliminate the need for language that currently extend rebuilding periods beyond the 10-year default for biological or environmental reasons.  However, the Senate draft retains such provisions; in order to keep a court from reading the statute in an unintended manner, such exception language should be revised.

Yet even if some of the rebuilding language of the Senate draft needs to be tweaked a bit, that draft enters upon important new ground when it recognizes the need to manage forage fish not only for harvest, but to assure that there are enough around for other fish to eat.  Arguably, the new language doesn’t go far enough—it doesn’t assure that all forage species will be managed, and doesn’t consider the forage needs of marine mammals, birds, etc.—but it represents real progress all the same.  So does an additional language that sets out guidelines to regional fishery management councils who would like to manage resources on an ecosystem basis. 

As anglers, we should be pleased by the inclusion of language that would establish standards for the  regular review of the allocation of fish made to the recreational and commercial sectors.  Such regular reviews would help alleviate the current situation, in which sectors are locked into allocations that reflect harvest and demographic patterns that existed in the past—often decades ago—rather than those that reflect today’s realities or the future needs of the nation. 

The Senate draft would also require—subject to available funding and absent explicit waiver by the agency—that existing stock assessments be updated on a regular basis, and that currently unassessed stocks be promptly subject to stock assessments.  That can only be a good thing for everyone.

Having said that, the bill contains some unfortunate language, too.

Probably the single worst provision is one which would include information obtained from sources such as “fishermen, fishing communities…and other appropriate entities” within the definition of “best scientific information available” and authorize its use to “form the basis of conservation and management measures as required” by the law.

Let’s be honest.  Anecdotal information provided by fishermen interested in the outcome of a management decision does not constitute the kind of objective data that can be labeled “scientific information.”  Fisherman don’t gather their information objectively; bias is unavoidable.  

Even in the best of circumstances, their very expertise and experience on the water is likely to lead to false conclusions, for a good fishermen can rely on accumulated knowledge and experience to find fish even when stocks are in serious decline.  That doesn’t mean that fish are abundant, even though fishermen often interpret their success in that way.

Anyone who has spent much time at fisheries hearings has heard the three timeless mantras of fishermen who hope to avoid regulation:  “There’s plenty of fish out there—you just don’t know where to find them,” “The decline’s not our fault, it’s just ‘The Cycle’” and “They just went somewhere else; they’ll be back in a while.” 

The thought of such comments being treated as “the best scientific information available” boggles the mind; these sections just have to go.

Another big problem arises out of a concept newly introduced in the Senate draft, that of “non-target fish.”  Such “non-target fish” are defined as “fish that are caught incidentally during the pursuit of target fish in a fishery, including regulatory discards which may or may not be retained for sale or personal use.”  That definition provides a lot of opportunity for mischief.

The first obvious problem is the phrase “caught incidentally during the pursuit of target fish in a fishery,” since that can mean just about anything, from an obscure species of grunt or grouper that occasionally comes up when folks fish for snapper to broadbill swordfish killed by a squid trawler’s net.  A species may be a “target fish” in one fishery and a “non-target fish” in another.  And that is a real issue, because “non-target fish” aren’t given all of the protections that “target fish” enjoy.

Certainly, the blurred line between “bycatch” and “non-target fish” creates ambiguity.  As just one example, “non-target fish” includes fish that are “caught incidentally…which may or may not be retained for sale or personal use” while “bycatch” includes “non-target fish that are harvested in a fishery and retained.” 

So when does a minor component of a mixed-stock fishery stop becoming a “target fish” (i.e., “a fish that is caught for sale or personal use”) that needs to be managed pursuant to the act, and becomes “bycatch” as a “non-target fish that [is] harvested in a fishery and retained” for sale or personal use?

Just looking at the New England groundfish fishery, how would such provisions impact such badly overfished species as Atlantic halibut, spotted wolfish or ocean pout?  And down south, where ecosystems are far more diverse, how many reef fish, from goliath grouper to the smaller wrasses, grunts and groupers, will be put in harm’s way if the catch of “non-target species” is no longer subject to accountability measures and other protections provided by current law?

The notion of “non-target fish” is badly in need of rethinking.

But then, it’s rare that anyone gets something perfectly right on the first try.

The Senate discussion draft is a full 90 pages in length, far too long for a single blog post.  So I only provided the highlights most likely to interest anglers, and left out the species-specific stuff.

Given the difficult political climate in Washington, it makes a good starting point for legislation that not only maintains, but improves, the health of our fish stocks over the next decade or so.

But that’s not going to happen by itself.  There are plenty of folks out there, mostly from the commercial fishing industry but, unfortunately, from the underside of the angling community as well, who would gut the Magnuson Act’s most important provisions in order to add a bit of weight to their wallets.  They can easily win if responsible folks stay disengaged.

Throughout the reauthorization process, I will be making periodic comments on the progress, and setbacks, that occurs.  I urge you to follow the process yourself, to contact your elected representatives and to demand that our salt water fish stocks be managed for health and abundance, so that you can enjoy the benefits of fishing in a bountiful sea.

Otherwise, we can go back to the way it was before the ’96 Act.

I was there.

Fishing in a largely empty ocean just wasn’t much fun.

STRIPED BASS, ROUND TWO: MAY AT ASMFC

ASMFC’s Spring Meeting will take place during the week of May 11, down in Alexandria, Virginia.  The Atlantic Striped Bass Management Board will meet on the 13th, when it will hopefully put together a draft addendum to the fishery management plan that will determine how bass will be managed for the rest of this decade.

The Management Board was supposed to put out one draft addendum in February.  That one would have incorporated the new fishing mortality reference points—F_target=0.180 and F_threshold=0.219—that were endorsed in the benchmark stock assessment that was presented last October.  That addendum would have been finalized thid May, and a second draft addendum addressing the regulations needed to constrain harvest within those reference points prepared at the May meeting.

However, the Management Board punted in February, purportedly to present both issues at once, so the timeline for getting everything done has gotten a little compressed.  Still, there’s plenty of time to get regulations in place for 2015—provided that no one slows up the process.

Right now, professional managers are sending out word that all will be well.  I have heard them say that efforts to reduce striped bass harvest WILL be in place for the 2015 season.

I know they believe that, and I think that they’re right, but I can’t help worrying about the amateurs on the Management Board who might not go along, and will see any delay as a victory.

Adopting the new, lower reference points should be a slam dunk, if we believe the Commission’s charter.  Section Six, subsection (a)(2), of the Interstate Fisheries Management Program Charter states very clearly that “Conservation programs and management measures shall be based on the best scientific information available,“ and if a peer-reviewed stock assessment of striped bass, one of the most data-rich stocks in the country, doesn’t qualify as “the best scientific information,” I’m not sure what does.

But nothing is ever easy at ASMFC, in part because there is no court oversight.  Sure, the Charter says that “the best scientific information“ must be used, but if the Management Board thinks otherwise, who can intervene?  Right now, a Federal Appellate Court decision says “Maybe nobody.”

It’s not even clear to me why the management plan doesn’t provide that the results of any such assessment—clearly “the best scientific information“—will be incorporated automatically, since the matter really shouldn’t be debatable; such debate only makes it harder for ASMFC to do the right thing.  It would be nice if the Management Board put such language in the May draft addendum, but in the real world, that’s not going to happen.  It’s a fight for another day and likely for another lifetime.

The real fireworks are going to start when the management board proposes regulations that would make any harvest cuts real.  Right now—and this isn’t final, because ASMFC’s Striped Bass Technical Committee is going to revisit the issue on the 1^st of May—it appears that we’re looking at a 31% cut, which could be achieved by either going to one fish at 28 inches or two at 33; there will also be talk about a slot limit, and between the three options, there’s plenty for folks to fight about.

Personally, of the three choices, I’d take one fish at 28 inches.  Given current conditions, it would do the least harm to the stock.  

A 28-inch bass is going to be six or seven years old in 2015, which means that it will come from the 2008 or 2009 year class; both year classes were below average, so there won’t be many barely-legal fish around.  But 2007 was a pretty fair year—the best ever in the Hudson River, and a little above-average in the Chesapeake—so there should be a decent number of 10-12 pound stuff around for the folks who want to take a fish home.  The rest of the mortality could be spread among the older fish.  Most of those older fish would be 2001s and 2003s, but there would be enough big fish from the 1996 and even 1993 year classes to keep things interesting (and we can hope that most of the guys good enough and patient enough to land those big ones will also be wise enough to set them free.)

The tackle shops should be happy to keep the 28-inch limit, and the party boat folks should be as well, since it’s small enough to make their customers believe that they might take a legal fish home. On the other hand, I can hear the charter boats that specialize in catching big fish on bait howling, because they'll no longer be able to hang a dozen big bass for photos at the dock, and their customers won't be able to take all those big fish home to show off to their neighbors, forget in their freezers and feed to their tomatoes the following spring. 

Those boats will want to see two at 33”, which would be a truly bad idea.  Right now, most of the striped bass’ spawning potential is locked up in older year classes. The youngest of those are the 2003s, and they passed the 33-inch mark a couple of years ago.  Let the boats concentrate on the big fish—giving anglers a chance to take two on each trip—and the 2003 year class--as well as every other older year class--is going to get beat up pretty badly.  

Better to limit them to a single fish.

The other possibility that’s floating around out there is a slot limit.  It’s not clear what such a slot would look like, since the Technical Committee hasn’t provided any guidance yet, but some parameters will be available by the time that the Management Board gets together.  If the slot takes its usual form—that is, if it allows fish less than 28 inches to be caught and sets an upper limit somewhere below 30 inches--slot limit proponents may get an unexpected surprise.

Anglers often view slots as a conservation measure, but that's not really true.

If we look at a couple of real-world examples, Maine’s recreational slot and the commercial slot in place in New York, that becomes apparent pretty quickly. 

When Maine adopted its slot—which allows anglers to take either one immature bass in the 22-26 inch range or a prime spawner more than 40 inches long—it was forced to cut its bag limit from two fish to one in order to achieve “conservation equivalency” to two at 28 inches.  And when New York went to a 24-36 inch commercial slot to minimize the concentration of PCBs in the fish sold (PCBs bioaccumulate, and larger fish have higher concentrations), it had to compensate by cutting its commercial landings by more than a quarter.

So if we’re starting with one fish at 28 inches, cutting the bag limit to compensate for harm a slot does to the stock won’t be an option; managers will be forced to impose some sort of season.  And the odds are that such season would take a pretty big bite out of either the spring or the fall fishery.  For that reason alone—most fishermen want to be able to get out on the water as much as they can—a slot seems like a poor option.  But it also presents another problem.

Right now, anglers and fishery managers alike are pinning a lot of hope on the big 2011 year class, the first truly large year class since 2003.  Although a few early-maturing females from the 2011 year class will become a part of the spawning stock in 2016, a majority will not mature until 2018, when the 2003s will be 15 years old and starting to show the effects of 8 years of coastwide harvest (on top of another 4 years of harvest while still juveniles in Chesapeake Bay).  So does it make sense to adopt a slot limit which will take a significant number of the 2011s out of the population before they have a chance to spawn even once? 

I don’t think so.

But I do think that we should be looking a little farther into the future.

The 2011 year class was solid, but the 2012 year class was the worst ever recorded; even during the depths of the collapse, more young bass were spawned.  And if the pattern that Maryland scientists have noted is true—that cold winters and cold, wet springs lead to good spawns, and warm winters and dry springs lead to poor ones—the current climate trends don't favor the production of dominant year classes.

Thus, I tend to see the Technical Committee’s recommendation as a starting point.  When the Management Board prepares the draft addendum in May, it shouldn’t consider any harvest reductions that are smaller than that recommended.  However, it probably should consider some larger cuts—one of forty and maybe even one of fifty percent—and give the public the chance to decide whether greater precaution should be employed.

Because when the Management Board drafts an addendum, it often includes a lot of options that folks say they want to see, whether or not such options reflect the majority view.  And sometimes, during the public hearing process, some of those options get a lot more support than anyone expected.  So the key is to try to get as many good ideas into the addendum, and try to keep as many bad ideas out, as you possibly can.  Otherwise, some bad ideas can get legs and some good ones might go ignored.

I plan to submit my comments to the Management Board—the address is on the ASMFC website—by April 30, so that they get into the meeting materials.  I’ll send a copy to my state commissioners, too (they can be found on another part of ASMFC’s site).

You should do the same. 

Consider May 5 your deadline, and get it done.

YESTERDAY, THE WHALES; TOMORROW, RED SNAPPER!

The Senate has released an initial “working draft” of its Magnuson Act reauthorization bill.  It’s not a bad piece of legislation.  It’s certainly far better than the dangerous piece of junk that Doc Hastings put together in the House, and clearly shows the influence of its primary sponsor, Senator Mark Begich of Alaska, who lives in a place where the Magnuson Act and its sustainable fisheries practices have brought tangible benefits to the local population.

Having said that, the working draft has some warts (I’m going to discuss the entire bill in more length next Thursday).  You would expect such flaws in any collaboration that brings together legislators from both political parties and all parts of the nation, each of whom brings their own parochial concerns to the table. 

It’s only natural. 

I try to be rational and detached when I analyze fisheries management measures, but in the end I am an active angler up in New York state, so I can’t say that I’m disappointed to see language from Senator Charles Schumer’s “Fluke Fairness Act” make it into the working draft…

But there’s a difference between provisions that address local concerns in a reasonable way (Schumer’s “Fluke Fairness” language merely requires the National Marine Fisheries Service to use the latest and best data to allocate summer flounder landings) and those that undermine the very purpose of the law.

Most folks have a conscience, and know when they’re about to do the wrong thing.  To make themselves feel better, they’ll usually try to clothe essentially selfish actions in a sheer veil of respectability.  If we set the Magnuson Act aside for a moment, and look at marine resource management on a global scale, the best example may be Japanese “scientific whaling.”  Over the years, many hundreds of cetaceans have been killed in the name of “science” and , after a very cursory examination, cut up and sold in retail outlets throughout Japan.

Japan’s “scientific whaling” has been widely condemned.  The activity falls so far short of legitimate research that, earlier this year, the International Court of Justice found that Japan was using “science” as a sham justification for engaging in what would otherwise be a prohibited commercial harvest, and ordered that nation to cease whaling immediately.

Given the calumny that folks in the United States leveled at Japan’s fake “scientific” activities, it is somewhat disconcerting, to see a similar sham research program included in the Senate’s working draft of the Magnuson reauthorization bill.  But in that case, the animals involved aren’t whales in the Antarctic Ocean, but red snapper off our South Atlantic coast.

Today, the recreational catch of South Atlantic red snapper is insignificant.  The species comprised just 0.11%—yes, about one-tenth of one percent—of all fish caught by anglers in the South Atlantic last year. 

What a lot of folks don’t realize is that, historically, South Atlantic red snapper have always been an insignificant part of the recreational catch.  They accounted for 0.19% of the catch in 2003 and 0.17% in 1993.  If you go all the way back to 1983, you’ll see that number jump to 0.33%--a whopping one-third of one percent of all recreationally-caught fish in the South Atlantic!  

Not exactly a big deal, if you look at things objectively.

Of course, not everyone can be objective.  I still don’t understand it, but there’s something about red snapper, whether in the South Atlantic or in the Gulf, that seems to induce a kind of blind irrationality in otherwise sensible anglers.  And after seeing the section titled “South Atlantic Red Snapper Cooperative Research Program” in the working draft, I have to think that the fish can induce irrationality in United States Senators as well.

For what the Senate working draft proposes is a “research program” that would make Japan's Institute for Cetacean Research green with envy. 

The program would begin “no later than 90 days after” the Magnuson reauthorization bill was enacted, and would last for six years.  During that time, “research permits” would be issued to commercial and recreational fishermen, as well as members of the for-hire industry.  Each permit would allow the capture of one red snapper outside of the established season.

For the first two years of the program, the number of permits will be decided by Congress, who need not pay any attention to overfishing or the ultimate health of the stock.  

After that, the South Atlantic Council would determine the number of permits issued “using the best available science,” which seems reasonable on its face until you read another section of the working draft, which would expand the definition of “best available science” to include anecdotal comments made by participants in the fishery, who—one could easily suspect—might have some motivation for overstating the health of the stock.

There’s no apparent limit on the number of permits that might be issued to any one person.  Allocation of the permits between the sectors would be determined by the South Atlantic Fishery Management Council, and the National Marine Fisheries Service would be allowed to charge a nominal fee for each one. 

Permits would be freely transferrable between fishermen who participate in the program.  Supposedly, fishermen may not receive any payment for transferred permits but—well, this is the real world, and let’s see how NMFS manages to enforce that one…

Anyone who obtains a permit would be prohibited from landing red snapper during the regular season.  However, that’s hardly a hardship, given that the current red snapper “mini-season” in the South Atlantic lasts, at best, for just a few days.

And just what sort of “research” are the fishermen supposed to conduct?

Well, at the end of each fishing year, everyone in the program would have to tell NMFS the weight and length of each fish landed, and the date on which the relevant permit was issued.

Nothing more.

Which means that fishermen could fish where red snapper are most likely to be, and report only those fish that they kept—which would likely be some of the oldest and largest fish caught, and thus create a pool of biased data that could then be used to “prove” what the same fishermen had asserted all along—that “there are plenty of big old red snapper out there.”

As “science,” it’s pretty worthless.  As a “research program” designed to let folks evade restrictions on harvest, it’s “scientific fishing” in the best Japanese tradition.

In one aspect, the proposed snapper “research” is probably worse than Japanese “scientific whaling.”  For the Japanese just ignored the sham science and kept killing whales.  The “data” from the red snapper “research” would likely be used to impeach legitimate scientific studies and affect policy in a way that’s detrimental to both the long-term health of the snapper stock and the greater public interest.

It also creates a license to steal.

I’ve spent all my life around the water, mostly in southern New England and the upper Mid-Atlantic, places where phrases such as “Who’s gonna know?” “It’s not illegal until you get caught” and “Ya gotta do what ya gotta do” are a regular part of fishermen’s conversations.  

I doubt that, except for their accents, South Atlantic fishermen speak very differently.  

Which means that, when they have half a dozen “research” permits in their pocket and half a dozen red snapper in the box, they’re not likely to end their fishing for the year.  They’ll just land their fish without fanfare and take the same permits out on their next trip offshore.

After all, who’s gonna know?

We have something called the “Research Set-Aside” program here in the northeast, which lets fishermen buy small lots of fish at auction, which they can then legally land when the regular season is closed.  The money for the auction is used to fund fisheries research, which is a good thing, and there are supposedly safeguards to prevent abuse—fishermen have to call in before making an RSA trip, and detailed reports of each trip must be regularly given to managers.

And yet, some fishermen will always be what they are.  In the past few months, two New York commercial fishermen have been convicted, one for landing 86,000 pounds of illegal RSA fluke, one for a whopping 310,000 pounds.  To believe that fishermen would comply with a program that has no safeguards at all is beyond naive.

But then, the “South Atlantic red snapper cooperative research program” isn’t about research, it’s about killing more red snapper.  So maybe that’s OK…

And even if fishermen choose not to poach—a pretty unlikely prospect, given the way too many fishermen think—it is inevitable that a lot of them will try to manipulate the annual reports by submitting fabricated data meant to convince NMFS that restrictive regulations aren’t really needed.

Because that’s how “scientific whaling”—or “scientific fishing”—is meant to work.

Even so, the proposal could be fixed to yield something very worthwhile.

Instead of issuing “research permits” that allow fishermen to kill red snapper out of season, NMFS might instead issue tags—not very different from the tags issued to folks who hunt deer, black bear or turkey here in New York—that must be immediately attached to snapper iced during the regular season.  Such permits could be issued annually, through a lottery, just as many states issue limited big game hunting permits today, and NMFS could charge a fee covering the cost of the program from each entrant.

That would be a pretty good start at ending the current “derby” fishery and keeping red snapper landings under control while the stock rebuilds.  Cheating could be minimized—it could never be completely eliminated—by requiring boats bringing back fish to call in via cell phone before the fish are landed (and maybe to call in to a recorded line before going out).  

In return for the inconvenience, managers could do away with the season and let tagholders fish whenever they want to throughout the year.

It might actually create a workable process.

Unfortunately, it wouldn’t let fishermen kill more red snapper.

For that you need to do “research”.

Just ask the Japanese whalers.