BEATING UP ON BLUEFIN

Bluefin tuna have fascinated me since 1960 when, at the age of six, I walked the docks at Provincetown, Mass. with my parents, and saw giant tuna—fish that seemed impossibly large to a kid used to flounder and snapper blues, who thought that a codfish was big—bulking silver and huge in the cockpits of charter boats returning from sea.

As I grew older, and could (barely) afford my own trips on charters, bluefin were one of the first fish that I sought.

Once I bought my first (barely) offshore-capable boat, bluefin were always in my sights.

Years passed, and boats came and went.  I caught plenty of bluefin, and killed at least my share.  I fished tournaments, and put my anglers on tuna that won them first prize.

And the bluefin steadily dwindled.

At first you could write it off to water temperature, a lack of bait or to that conveniently mysterious “cycle.”  But by the mid-1990s there was no way to doubt that the bluefin population was under serious stress.

So we stopped killing bluefin, but catch-and-release was still on the agenda.  We beefed up our gear to prevent tuna “burnout,” but still pulled feathers and cedar jigs and various plastics through Long Island’s ocean, seeking and finding what remained of a once-robust stock.

But we even stopped that back in 2006, when the big 2003 year class became “school” bluefin big enough for anglers to target.

At first, we avidly joint the fleet of boats that ranged from flyfishing skiffs to big, rigged-out sportfishermen that jumped on the little tuna every time they turned up anywhere along the coast.  That changed on one July morning that found us pulling lures a dozen miles south of my inlet, hooking up bluefin almost as fast as we could get our lures in the water. 

All was going well until a fish blew up behind a Green Machine bar, coming in from straight behind the trailing lure and swallowing it so deep that not even the head poked out of the little bluefin’s mouth.

Catch-and-release wasn’t an option with that one.

So we bled the fish and put it on ice, pulled the lines and went in; the limit was one bluefin per boat, and we didn’t want to risk injuring another fish that would have to be returned to the water to die.

But whatever we did, a lot of bluefin got killed.  Despite the restrictive bag limit, quite a few boats took plenty more and, when anyone mentioned the law, denied that the fish were bluefin at all.  They said that taking three yellowfin per angler was legal, and “Look at the f***ing fish.  They got yellow fins…”

And there were far too few enforcement folks around—working for the state or the feds—to tell such anglers that they were mistaken.

Maybe that’s why so many of the bluefin that those anglers caught ended up being sold at the back doors of sushi shops, markets and restaurants…

It was a pretty sad scene, and quite honestly, I had no desire to be a part of it.  When that small bluefin died on the deck of my boat, I decided that it would be the last one, until the stock showed signs of recovery. 

I knew that it was a futile gesture, and that one person’s actions would have no effect on the whole, but even so, sometimes doing what you think is the right thing is reason enough.

But, God, I was alone…

As the 2003s grew older and larger, anglers continued to kill them.  Law enforcement didn’t get any better, and violations continued apace.

Even the simple requirement that anglers report their catch to federal managers was largely ignored; the National Marine Fisheries Service estimated that about 20% of anglers called in as required.

The sushi shops’ business continued to thrive…

Now, the 2003s have reached breeding size (generally believed to begin between 8 and 12 years old, although a recent paper argues for a younger age), which also makes them large enough for legal commercial harvest, and it appears that the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas may start piling on.

After all, who wants to have a bunch of old, fecund bluefin around..?

Up in Massachusetts, commercial tuna fishermen are having their most successful season in years.  A lot of the fish that they’re catching are 2003s.

Current regulations let them kill quite a few.  However, the ICCAT’s annual meeting begins tomorrow, and next year, they might get to kill more. 

One of the goals of the United States’ delegation is to

“Adopt a two-year catch limit for western Atlantic bluefin tuna that is in line with the science advice and supports the goals of the rebuilding program by avoiding overfishing and allowing continued stock growth.”

That sounds good on paper, and we can only hope that it translates into maintaining quotas at moderate levels so that substantial numbers of the 2003 year class can survive and remain an important component of the spawning stock.

However, other nations have already made their intent to kill more tuna clear.

Frank Stanek, a spokesman for Canada’s Department of Fisheries and Oceans, has noted that

“the stock has grown substantially in recent years and could support a moderate quota increase.”

The fact that Stanek qualifies his statement by using the same sort of language embodied in the United States’ goals, saying

“Canada will continue to advocate for all management decisions to be based on the best available scientific information to ensure that these economically important fisheries remain sustainable,”

provides little comfort, and might even cause the U.S. statement to be viewed with suspicion. 

That is particularly true given how U.S. commercial fishing groups are spinning a recent bluefin tuna stock assessment.  For example, the American Bluefin Tuna Association has triumphantly declared that

“the best available science now indicates a stunning increase in abundance of [bluefin tuna] on both sides of the Atlantic…

“Consequently, the SCRS report stated that an increase in quota, up to 2,250 mt from its presently level of 1,750 mt, is consistent with ongoing ICCAT management objectives. The report states that spawning stock biomass is presently 2 ¼ times greater than necessary to sustain a quota of 3,050 mt each year, going forward…”

Congressman Walter Jones jumped on the “spin the bluefin” bandwagon, issuing a press release that said

“…last month ICCAT scientists released new data showing that western bluefin stocks are more than twice the size suggested in previous assessments and are now more than rebuilt.   They also concluded that the western Atlantic quota could be increased from the existing 1,750 metric tons to up to 2,250 metric tons without hurting the stock.  In a letter sent today, Jones urged U.S. fisheries administrators to “follow the science and do all you can at the November ICCAT meeting to secure an increase in the western bluefin quota to 2,200 metric tons.”

However, an objective reading of the facts doesn’t quite support such exuberance.  Nor does it support the position of ABTA or Congressman Jones.

What the stock assessment really says is that

 “A key factor in estimating [maximum sustainably yield]-related benchmarks is the highest level of recruitment that can be achieved in the long term.  Assuming that average recruitment cannot reach the high levels from the 1970s, recent [fishing mortality] (2010-2013) is 36% of F_MSY and SSB₂₀₁₃ is about 225% of SSB_MSY…  [emphasis added]”

Thus, the ABTA/Jones position is justifiable, but only if one makes the most pessimistic assumptions about future bluefin spawning success.

Addressing that very point, the assessment clearly states that

“In contrast, estimates of stock status are more pessimistic with respect to spawning biomass if a high recruitment potential scenario is considered, with F=88% of F_MSY and SSB₂₀₁₃=48% of SSB_MSY.”

That’s a pretty big difference.

The assessment notes that the low recruitment scenario results in an “improved fit of assessment outputs” in the population model, but that both the low-recruitment and high-recruitment scenarios are

“plausible (but not extreme) lower and upper bounds on rebuilding potential.”

If the quota is increased as proposed by low-recruitment advocates such as the ACTA and Jones, no long-term increase in population size is likely to occur.  Instead, the population will decrease in the short term, but by 2019 should equal 2013 levels.

On the other hand, if the high-recruitment scenario is the more accurate of the two, and recruitment increases as the population grows larger, an increased quota will result in the population failing to meet the rebuilding target by the 2019 deadline.

In the end, the only way to find out which of the scenarios is correct is to keep quotas low, preserve as much of the 2003 year class as one practically can, and see what happens. 

If populations continue to rebuild, the high-recruitment scenario will have justified itself, even if populations fall a little short of 1970 (the base year) levels.

On the other hand, if the population remains constant, even after the relatively strong 2011 and 2013  year classes enter the spawning stock, the low-recruitment advocates can justifiably say “We told you so” and quotas can be increased.

However, if we increase quotas now, before all of the evidence is in, we may never know just what we have missed, or how badly we’ve cheated ourselves.

DID THE FISH WIN OR LOSE IN THE MIDTERM ELECTION?

The political landscape changed on November 4, when the Republican Party gained control of the United States Senate. 

When Congress convenes next January, the federal legislature will no longer be gridlocked; with the same party controlling both houses, we should see far more bills passed by the House and Senate and forwarded to the President’s desk.

The only question left to be answered is whether those bills will be good or bad for the future of America’s living marine resources.

Right now, I’m cautiously pessimistic, but there’s a lot that remains to be seen.

It’s not merely an issue of one party versus another.  Folks like to stereotype Democrats as supporting conservation measures and Republicans as opposing them, but in the fisheries arena, that’s far from true.

Some of the staunchest Democrats in the Senate, including New York’s Charles Schumer and Kristen Gillibrand, New Hampshire’s Jeanne Shaheen and North Carolina’s Kay Hagan (who lost her seat in the mid-terms) have either supported so-called “flexibility” legislation that would weaken the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Magnuson Act or otherwise attempted to defer the application of needed fisheries conservation measures.

On the other hand, President George W. Bush, a quintessential Republican, did far more to promote marine fish conservation than any other president.  Former Maryland Congressman Wayne Gilchrist was one of the prime movers behind the Sustainable Fisheries Act of 1996, the landmark law that changed the face of fisheries conservation in America.  And the late Republican Senator Ted Stevens of Alaska was such a noted champion of good fisheries management that the law governing U.S. fisheries now bears his name.

However, the current Republican leadership has rejected the strong support for conservation that was, for many years, a party tradition dating back to President Theodore Roosevelt.  Instead, it has adopted a policy that is blatantly anti-science, anti-wilderness and anti-clean water, and extremely pro-development, pro-exploitation and pro-short-term profit.  Risks to the ecosystem that we must continue to live in, and to the integrity of natural communities, are dismissed out of hand—if they are considered at all.

Thus, once the new Congress is seated, they are likely to pose a number of direct and indirect threats to marine fisheries resources on every coast of the United States.

Up in the pristine waters of Bristol Bay, Alaska, the world’s largest surviving salmon run—and the recreational and commercial fisheries that it supports—will likely face greater threats with a resurgent effort to permit the proposed Pebble Mine to begin operations.

For those unfamiliar with the Pebble Mine, the proposed mining project would create two separate operations that would remove about 7.5 billion metric tons of copper, gold and molybdenum ore from watershed of the Iliamna River, a waterway which supports not only a thriving sockeye salmon run, but also a robust population of large, wild rainbow trout.  

The resultant commercial and recreational fishing industries are important drivers of the local economy; both fishermen and the broader conservation community have opposed the mine fearing that mine tailings and toxic byproducts of the mining operations could easily end up in the river, severely degrading its ability to sustain the trout and salmon runs.  

Earlier this year, the Environmental Protection Agency agreed, placing a serious roadblock in the way of future mine development.

However, the EPA decision has been criticized not only by Senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, who wrote that

“We already have undeniably grave problems with federal agencies blocking resource production on federal lands in Alaska.  Now to see a federal agency overstep its authority and move prematurely to block even the consideration of a permit for potential activity on state lands is something I simply cannot accept,"

but also by Senator David Vitter of Louisiana who, although his state had no direct interest in the mine, claimed that

"When it comes to the Pebble Mine, EPA has shown that they are willing to disregard due process and lawfully established permitting procedures to ensure the failure of any project like this. EPA's desperate attempt to kill a potential mine should signal a major red flag to businesses."

Senator Mark Begich, who represented the State of Alaska, staunchly opposed the mine.  However, he lost his seat in the mid-term election, and his successor, Dan Sullivan, has objected to the EPA action in language very similar to that of Sen. Murkowski.

On the Atlantic coast, we see the same Sen. Vitter opposing legislation that would help control pollution in Chesapeake Bay and thus enhance the Bay’s ability to support healthy fish populations.  Vitter justifies taking another position with no immediate impact on his home state of Louisiana by saying that, pursuant to the settlement of a lawsuit arising out of earlier legislation intended to clean up the Chesapeake,

“the EPA agreed to establish a Total Maximum Daily Load (Bay TMDL) for nitrogen, phosphorous, and sediment flow into the Chesapeake Bay…EPA has purported to dictate not only the total amount of nitrogen, phosphorous, and sediment that can flow into the Chesapeake Bay, but, by allocating those loads in excruciating detail and crediting only the load reduction actions that are included in its Chesapeake Bay Watershed Model, EPA also dictated the manner in which individual companies and sectors within the economy must comply with the total load limitations.

“EPA's Bay TMDL has enormous repercussions for private landowners, small businesses, and local governments throughout the Chesapeake Bay region…Left unchecked, the TMDL could represent a national precedent that would force state and local officials across the country to cede their land use authority to EPA.”

One senator’s hostility to conservation efforts certainly shouldn’t be used to taint the reputation of an entire party.  We can only hope that there will be more than a few Republican senators who will place their constituents’ interests in clean water and healthy fish stocks, now and in the future, above a party dogma that often opposes even reasonable regulations.  

However, given party leadership’s frequently expressed preference for promoting business activity at the expense of environmental and conservation concerns, there is real reason to be concerned that views similar to Vitter’s may be held by other lawmakers.

And that would do our fisheries no good at all.

As a salt water angler, my greatest concern relates to the reauthorization of the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act, which many expect to be reauthorized sometime in 2015 or 2016.    

In the current session of Congress, the reauthorization bill that took shape in the Republican-dominated House of Representatives, sponsored by Rep. Doc Hastings of Washington, was so bad that those concerned with marine conservation gave it the sobriquet of the “Empty Oceans Act.”  It was a bill that would turn back a decade and a half of progress and take federal fisheries management back to the days when stocks need not be rebuilt and short-term economic concerns trumped every other issue.

On the other hand, the bill that has been taking shape in what had been a Democrat-controlled Senate held a lot of promise.  It wasn’t perfect, but it kept the key concepts of existing law intact, and included additional provisions that would help to fine-tune the management process.  However, it was sponsored by Sen. Begich, who lost the election, and the membership and composition of the subcommittee charged with drafting the bill will change somewhat in the upcoming year, so it’s hard to predict just what will occur.

It’s virtually certain that Senator Marco Rubio of Florida will chair the subcommittee.  Sen. Rubio was the ranking member of the subcommittee that produced the most recent Senate draft of the bill, which could not have emerged without his cooperation, so there is reason to at least hope that such draft might serve as a starting point for Senate discussions next year.

Thus, if Sen. Rubio lived in Alaska, where the benefits of fisheries management have long been accepted and understood, I probably wouldn’t be overly worried right now.  

Unfortunately, he represents Florida, where fisheries issues—and most particularly the fierce and often irrational red snapper debate at both the South Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico fishery management councils—rage and some constituents will undoubtedly be demanding some sort of fundamental change in the law.  Such demands are likely to push Sen. Rubio toward amendments that are not in the long-term interests of either fish or fishermen.

There is also the question of whether, in the runup to a presidential election in which Sen. Rubio might well wish to compete, party ideology and the need to demonstrate an ideological purity to potential primary voters who sit on the right wing of his party might influence how Sen. Rubio might address both the conservation and the economic aspects of the Magnuson Act.

The possibility that the ranking member, or one or more other minority members, of the subcommittee might wish to weaken conservation measures should not be ignored.  It is not yet clear who the ranking member might be, but if he or she comes from a state where the fishing industry is militantly anti-Magnuson, the impetus to weaken the law might well come from the Democratic side of the aisle.

So will the Republican takeover of the Senate help or hurt fish populations?

Right now, I can’t honestly say.

I’ve been a Republican  since 1972, when I tujrned 18, and quite a few—I suspect most—of the folks who I fish with are Republicans, too.  So I would like to believe that legislators in the party that I’ve belonged to for 40-plus years would walk in the steps of Republicans before them and protect our fish populations.

On the other hand, over the past decade, my party’s leadership has become far less receptive to conservation concerns, and much more willing to degrade the environment that we all live in, justifying such short-sighted action by claiming that it will produce a few jobs or stimulate some sort of economic activity.

Fisheries issues have often transcended mere party politics, with regional concerns and—dare I say it—constituents’ wishes opening the door to true bipartisan solutions.

At the same time, today’s political polarization is more intense than it was at any time in the history of the Magnuson Act, and may just be too much to overcome.

So, for now, we can just wait and watch, and be ready to intervene with our own local legislators, attempting to put them back on track when they seem ready to stray and encouraging them to stay on course when they do the right thing.

Any way that you look at it, it’s going to be a long couple of years.

THE UNEASY ARMISTICE: RED SNAPPER AND AMENDMENT 40

A little time has now passed since the Gulf of Mexico Fishery Management Council passed Amendment 40 to the Fishery Management Plan for the Reef Fish Resources of the Gulf of Mexico, which introduced the concept of “sector separation,” that is, splitting the recreational fleet by giving for-hire boats a defined percentage of the landings, distinct from the allocation allotted to private boat anglers to Gulf waters.

Some people liked the idea and some simply despised it.  In the aftermath of the Council’s action, the first volleys of rhetoric have been filed and forgotten, and folks on both sides of the issue are plotting their strategies for what to do next.

Whatever they decide, sector separation in the Gulf red snapper fishery will likely become the law of the land by 2015, unless opponents put together a strategy far more successful than those they’ve come up with so far, that will convince the National Marine Fisheries Service to reject the Council’s advice.

The fight over recreational red snapper regulations, and sector separation in particular, was a triangular conflict that pitted private-boat recreational anglers against the party and charter boat operators and members of the marine conservation community, which as time went on became somewhat aligned with the for-hires, although I suspect that, in their minds, they’d argue that they were fighting on behalf of the fish.

I know and have spoken to—and sometimes argued with—people who stood on all three legs of that triangle.  From my observations, it seems that everyone believes that they’re trying to do the right thing and, in fact, so believed so deeply in the rightness of their efforts that they saw little or no reason to consider any of the ideas or suggestions that others have made.

They were so focused on this single issue that no one seemed to give any thought to the policy or political fallout that might flow from the sector separation decision.

And as I watched the three sides alternately stumble and march toward the Gulf Council meeting last month, my thoughts traveled back about one hundred years, to the day when a lone Serbian gunman killed an Austrian archduke, causing a lot of people and nations who really knew better to ineptly maneuver themselves into a long and brutally murderous war.

I’ll admit right out front that I don’t like sector separation.  I believe that anglers are anglers, and should all abide by the same set of rules, whether they fish from their own boats, for-hire boats, beaches, bridges or piers.  Balkanizing the angling community into parochial sub-groups does little save ignite petty jealousies that split anglers apart and hinder efforts to conserve and rebuild affected fish stocks.

At the same time, the private-boat anglers in the Gulf grew so stiff-necked and self-righteous with respect to their own situation that they never stopped to acknowledge that the for-hire folks had their problems, too.

They did plenty of howling over their 9-day federal season, with but never mentioned that seasons ran longer in the inshore waters of every Gulf state—from a 365-day season in Texas (which also allows anglers to keep twice the federal limit of red snapper, which may be one inch shorter than the federal rules allow) and Louisiana (which is attempting to usurp federal jurisdiction for red snapper in a band of water between 3 and 9 nautical miles off its shores) to a 52 day season in Florida, to far shorter seasons in Alabama and Mississippi.

Thus, private-boat fishermen shut out of the red snapper fishery in federal waters by the short open season could often still pursue red snapper in state waters, and in Texas and Louisiana, could harvest them year-round.  On the other hand, party and charter boats with federal snapper permits are bound to follow federal regulations even when fishing in state waters, which means that they had no recourse that allowed them to keep catching red snapper when the federal season closed.

As Kevin Anson, chief biologist for the Alabama Department of Conservation noted,

“NOAA’s Fisheries Service doesn’t segregate or count federally caught fish or fish living in federal waters from fish that are living or caught in state waters. They combine those as one stock and one resource and then that’s how the quota is drawn from.”

Private-boat anglers had no problem with that reality; in fact, they provided much of the impetus for the extended state seasons that not only gave them exclusive use of the inshore red snapper resource, but also caused the length of the federal season to shrink.  However, many party and charter boat operators viewed that system as unfair, and badly in need of change.

Capt. Troy Frady, owner-operator of the charter boat Distraction, out of Orange Beach, Alabama, said

“What happened in Alabama for instance is we had 9 days for federally charter boats. The private recreational angler or the guy who owns his own boat continued to fish for 27 days and that is unfair because the people who come to our Gulf Coast and contribute to our booming economy deserve access to those fisheries."

Florida charterboat captain Michael Colby echoed those sentiments when he wrote

“This year, Florida anglers who rely on charter boats to go fishing only had nine days to fish for red snapper, while individuals who own their own offshore boats had the luxury of being able to fish for red snapper in state waters for 52 days. This is not acceptable…The folks that fish from Florida charter boats or headboats deserve a system that makes sure that their ability to fish for red snapper isn't curtailed by the interests of those who are lucky enough to own their own boats.”

The Gulf of Mexico Fishery Management Council, agreeing that changes needed to be made, and voted 10-7 to set aside up to 47% of the recreational red snapper quota for the for-hire vessels.  That immediately led to new cries that the system was unfair, but this time those complaining came were the private-boat fishermen, who took a position essentially the same as that expressed by Bill Bird, Chairman of the Coastal Conservation Association’s National Government Relations Committee.

“This amendment will create such striking inequities for private recreational anglers that it is difficult to understand how this amendment will be sustainable. It is infuriating that the Gulf Council continues its give away of a public resource when the public has neither a reasonable season nor reasonable size and bag limits for that same resource.”

Of course, what Bird doesn’t say is that the “striking inequities for private recreational anglers” that he mentions are largely self-inflicted wounds.  Camp Matens, a recreational fishermen from Louisiana who sits on the Gulf Council, worried that

“On Jan. 1, the total allowable catch begins for next year and now that we have states that are noncompliant, any [red] snapper caught between then and when the feds will allow the recreational season to begin, that catch from the noncompliant states will have to come off the top of that allowable catch.”

A “noncompliant” state is one which has a season, size or bag limit (or, in the case of Texas, all three) which are more liberal than the corresponding federal regulation.  So if anglers are really concerned about extending the federal season, bringing state regulations into compliance with the federal rules would be the first step.

But don’t expect that to happen anytime soon.  The thought that anglers in Texas, for example, might voluntarily ask Texas regulators to shorten its 365-day season, or change its four fish bag and 15-inch minimum size to the federal two fish at 16 inches, so that their counterparts in Mississippi or Alabama might enjoy a few more red snapper does not reflect today’s reality at all.

Still, the private-boat anglers’ anger continues to simmer, and the for-hire sector would be well-advised not to let it simmer too long.

The present uneasy armistice will hold only so long as the anglers feel that they can’t change the status quo.  In the meantime, they will think and plan, and try to come up with a way to get back into the fight and this time emerge with a win.

For just as a one-sided armistice signed in Versailles in 1919 planted the seeds for another terrible fight twenty years later, the adoption of sector separation could, in the long run, end up hurting not only red snapper, but every fishery on every coast of the United States.

As we sit days away from a midterm election that may sweep supporters of federal fisheries legislation out of their positions of power in the Senate, we see organizations that once stood tall in support of such legislation calling for red snapper management to be handed over to the states, and backing papers that advocate weakening the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act.

Working relationships between such angler organizations and fisheries conservation groups that they once worked with have been badly weakened, and conservationists may well find themselves standing alone in defense of the Act.

That would be a very bad thing.

Fortunately, Amendment 40 itself may provide a way out, as it was given a life of only three years.  After that, the Amendment will be reviewed, and its provisions only renewed if they are found to provide a real benefit.

This, then, is the time to find middle ground. 

The for-hires, and those in the conservation community who supported sector separation, now hold a position of relative strength.  They can, and should, be willing to continue talks with those representing the private-boat anglers, knowing that if they can craft a compromise, they will be helping both fish and fishermen in the end.

I suggest that they begin with the issue that vexed the for-hires, and now troubles anglers as well. 

That is the non-complaint states.

The Magnuson Act is a federal law, and normally doesn’t apply in state waters.  But there is an exception written into Section 306 (b) of the Act, which reads

(1) If the Secretary finds, after notice and an opportunity for a hearing in accordance with section 554 of title 5, United States Code, that--

(A) the fishing in a fishery, which is covered by a fishery management plan implemented under this Act, is engaged in predominately within the exclusive economic zone and beyond such zone; and

(B) any State has taken any action, or omitted to take any action, the results of which will substantially and adversely affect the carrying out of such fishery management plan;

the Secretary shall promptly notify such State and the appropriate Council of such finding and of his intention to regulate the applicable fishery within the boundaries of such State (other than its internal waters), pursuant to such fishery management plan and the regulations promulgated to implement such plan.

If that doesn’t describe the primary problem in the red snapper fishery, I’m not sure what does.

It’s exactly the opposite approach of those who would weaken the law by handing management over to the states, just so they might kill a few more fish a little sooner.

And it would level the playing field for everyone.


Which means that it is probably a pretty good place to start.

ASMFC ALMOST GETS IT RIGHT WITH STRIPED BASS

I entered the meeting room with some trepidation.

For the past year, the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission had been debating the implications of the most recent benchmark assessment of the striped bass stock, and whether changes needed to be made to management measures.  And for the past year, I and a host of other anglers who cared about the striped bass resource had been speaking to whoever would listen, arguing for conservative, science-based striped bass management.

For some of us, this was a new fight.  For many others, it was the possible culmination of a debate that began back in 1995, when ASMFC declared the bass stock recovered and set annual catch limits that seemed far too high.  For a few of us, gray-haired and long in the tooth, it was one more vital battle in a war that began in the seeming mists of time, when the bass collapsed in the late 1970s.

But whatever our experience, it was a battle we feared we might lose.

It shouldn’t have been that way.  The science, the management plan and even ASMFC’s charter were all in our favor.  Public opinion was overwhelmingly on our side. 

But this was ASMFC, where a few dozen commissioners, most with no formal training in fisheries management and unbound by law or the courts, could ignore all that and vote as their whim and their wallets desired.

An influential commissioner from Maryland had already put a proposal on the table to overthrow a vital conservation provision in the management plan, arguing that “socio-economic impacts” justified such a change.

Ahead of the meeting, I had a quick talk with a commissioner I knew from New England, and he told me what I had suspected:  From the talk at the dinner the night before, the outcome was truly in doubt.  One or two votes could decide things.

A former commissioner caught me walking in the door, and said that even the vote of my home state of New York was in doubt.

And so the battle was joined…

It was soon apparent that the Chesapeake Bay jurisdictions—Maryland, the District of Columbia, Virginia and the Potomac River Fisheries Commission—were hoping to frustrate the process.  It was also apparent that a few commissioners from a few other states wanted to see them succeed.

Their attack began well before the general debate, when they began a close questioning of the folks presenting the science to the Striped Bass Management Board.  The facts were clearly against them, but as an attorney, I recognized their tactic.  Like defense counsel in a capital case, they were trying to raise “reasonable doubt” about the stock assessment—just enough doubt to convince the panel to let the bad guy go free.

Adam Nowalsky, a charter boat captain and the legislative proxy from New Jersey, asked questions about retrospective bias in the assessment which suggested that it underestimated biomass and overestimated fishing mortality.  His question was later echoed by Emerson Hasbrouck, governor’s appointee from New York, and Robert O’Reilly of the Potomac River Fisheries Commission.  But a Technical Committee representative made it clear that any biases that did exist were no worse than those in any other management plan.

 Hasbrouck then asked whether the projections for stock recovery under the various options presented—which showed that making all harvest cuts in a single year would lead to the quickest recovery—were statistically similar when the uncertainty inherent in each calculation was considered.  A Technical Committee representative conceded that they were, but Hasbrouck lost the point after Jim Gilmore, New York’s marine fisheries director, pointed out that the one-year option was the only one that might let managers know whether the new management measures were working before the next stock assessment was done.

And the Chesapeake jurisdictions kept hammering at the fact that a smaller population than we have today can still produce good year classes every now and then, asking the tech folks to confirm that was not true.

By the time that the voting started, what should have been a routine matter—accepting fishing mortality reference points from a peer-reviewed stock assessment that clearly represented the best available science—turned into a grudging, grinding retreat by the Chesapeake folks, that took far longer than it should have.

O’Reilly opposed accepting the science, calling the reference points “extremely conservative” and warning about the “ecological consequences” of high striped bass abundance—most particularly his concern that the striped bass will eat too many blue crabs (which got along with the stripers perfectly well for thousands of years, until the watermen that O’Reilly represents started to kill them).

Martin Gary of the Potomac River Fisheries Commission questioned whether the spawning stock reference points in the assessment “are even achievable,” while Kyle Schick, proxy for Virginia’s legislative appointee, blamed declining striped bass catch not on a shrinking population, but on a poor economy and the effects of Hurricane Sandy.

But Paul Diodati, the marine fisheries director for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, called the assessment “one of the best I’ve seen” and just about everyone agreed.  The reference points were adopted by a vote of 12 in favor and the four Chesapeake votes against.

It was harder than it should have been, but the striped bass won its first fight of the day.

After that, the Management Board addressed the core issue—how long it should take to reduce fishing mortality to the new, lower target.

The current management plan makes it clear that all reductions must be made in one year, and Diodati of Massachusetts made a motion to that effect.  To no one’s surprise, O’Reilly of the PRFC quickly moved to amend, replacing one year with three, and thus began an hours-long grind.

In previous posts, I observed that the striped bass vote would test the credibility and integrity of ASMFC.  Thus, I was pleased to see that there were many folks on the Management Board intent on honoring its commitment, including Richie White, governor’s appointee from New Hampshire, who forthrightly stated that the debate

“comes down to the credibility of the commission…I gave my word to the public at this time [when Amendment 6 to the Interstate Fishery Management Plan for Atlantic Striped Bass adopted the requirement to reduce harvest within one year]”

Pat Keliher, marine fisheries director of the State of Maine, echoed those sentiments, saying that it was

“time to honor our commitment to the resource and to the public.”

Dr. Louis Daniels, fisheries Director of the State of North Carolina also stood on principle, saying

“We made a commitment in Amendment 6 and we need to stick with that commitment.”

Representative Sarah Peake, the legislative appointee from Massachusetts, opposed dragging the cuts out over three years, noting the overwhelming public support for making them all in one year and saying

“The public has expressed that they have a sense of urgency about this.”

Of course, the Chesapeake Bay states had no intention of giving up their fight to delay stock rebuilding, and they pulled out all the stops trying to make their case.

Schick of Virginia, perhaps remembering Richard Nixon’s conjuring of a “silent majority,” argued that the anglers providing public comment were just a small minority of the millions of people who fish for striped bass and who—if they had spoken—would have supported a three-year phase-in.  A couple of dozen supporters of the 1 @ 32” Pledge responded by holding up bright yellow “1 @ 32 inches” signs, which clearly made Schick uneasy.

Dan Ryan, representing the District of Columbia, tried to elicit sympathy by arguing that the fishermen he represented only caught bass under 20 inches long, and did it from shore, claiming that if the harvest cuts were taken in a single year

“We will effectively eliminate the fishery for our shorebound anglers,”

who apparently need to pound on the 2011 year class before it matures.

Thomas O’Connell, the Maryland marine fisheries director who first put the three-year option into the draft addendum, began to realize that the tide had turned against his position, and asked for sympathy of another sort, saying that he knew that the Chesapeake states didn’t have the votes to prevail, but that he hoped that the rest of the states would view the three-year option as an “olive branch” offered up by the Bay states that he hoped would be accepted.

And just in case the olive branch wasn’t accepted, another Maryland commissioner, Russell Dize, proxy for the legislative appointee, assured the Management Board that he’d been a waterman for 55 years, and that the most striped bass that he’d ever seen in his life were swimming around out in Chesapeake Bay right now.

And, of course, those bass were eating up all of the crabs…

Someone, I don’t remember who, also argued that if people were required to release most of their fish, some of those released fish were going to die.  Massachusetts’ Paul Deodati put the comment in perspective by noting that

“Eight or nine percent release mortality is a lot less than the 100% mortality from keeping the fish.”

In the end, New Jersey and Delaware joined with the four Bay jurisdictions, but the three-year proposal went the way of the dodo, with six in favor and the other ten against.

Still, the other states weren’t completely unsympathetic to those bordering Chesapeake Bay, and made it clear that a reasonable compromise would be considered.  However, when O’Connell of Maryland proposed splitting the baby and taking two years to reduce harvest to target levels, neither the Management Board nor the audience, which was allowed to make limited comments, was particularly impressed, and the motion was ultimately withdrawn.

So O’Connell tried again, making a motion that would require coastal harvest to be reduced by 25% next season, but only require a 20.5% cut—calculated to reduce harvest to target within those two years—in the Bay.  The compromise was unlikely to reduce overall harvest to target levels within one year, as the majority wanted, but the coastal harvest was so much larger than that in the Bay that the technical folks suggested that it probably wouldn’t take too much longer.

Still, there was plenty of wrangling, with Tom Fote, governor’s appointee from New Jersey, strongly objecting to a proposal that would allow the Bay jurisdictions to cut back less than the coast.  There was some merit to that case, but in the end, the motion was overwhelmingly accepted, with only New Jersey and Delaware voting against.

The bass had won another round, although not as decisively.  And they won another when every state but New York voted against allowing the transfer of commercial quotas, a proposal that, if it had passed, made it very likely that the commercial sector—which was already going to take a smaller real cut than the anglers—would have maintained its current level of harvest.

After that, things grew a lot less exciting.  The 28-inch size limit was retained for both recreational and commercial fishermen, and the recreational bag limit was reduced to a single fish.  However, as is typical in ASMFC management, states will be allowed to propose alternate measures deemed to have “conservation equivalency” with the proposal adopted. 

That debate took a strange turn.  One fish at 28 inches or more would reduce harvest about 31%, but the Management Board decided that states could achieve conservation equivalency with measures that only achieved the 25% reduction needed to reduce mortality to target within one year.  Thus, the states who opt for conservation equivalency will be able to take a smaller cut than those which actually adhere to the measures that the Management Board approved.

So, in the end, ASMFC almost did the right thing, which is a lot better than what usually happens.

Still, in requiring just a 20.5% cut in Chesapeake Bay, and in making the 25% coastal commercial reduction from Amendment 6 quotas rather than from the reported landings, the actual reduction will be somewhere below 25%.  Since ASMFC started out with just a 50-50 chance of reducing fishing mortality to target within one year, even if the full 25% reduction was achieved, we’re left with a management plan that will probably fail to achieve its objective.

In addition, the decision to grant conservation equivalency to management measures that only reduce a state’s harvest by 25% could tempt a lot of jurisdictions to come up with ways to kill a second fish, which can hardly be good for a stock that is almost certain to be overfished by next year.

Given where a lot of us feared we’d end up going into the meeting, we’re not in a bad place right now, but the outcome of ASMFC’s Striped Bass Management Board meeting really highlights the reasons why the federal fisheries management system, and the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act’s mandates, are far superior to those of ASMFC.

For if ASMFC had to abide by the Magnuson Act’s standards, the striped bass’ recovery would have begun on January 1, 2014—if not before.  The fishing mortality reference points from the benchmark stock assessment would have been adopted more than a full year ago, and measures to reduce harvest to target, and to rebuild what will soon be an overfished stock, would have been adopted soon after.

There would have been no opportunity for states to try to game the system, using conservation equivalency, to kill more than one fish or reduce the minimum size.  One striped bass of 28 inches or more would have been the law of the land in every state on the striper coast, applicable whether the angler fished from a private boat, a party or charter vessel, a bridge, the beach or a pier.

Striped bass would be governed by a single, uniform standard, wherever they happened to swim.

We’re not going to get to that point for quite a few years, if we ever do (and I think that we really should try).

In the meantime, striped bass anglers should be happy just with the fact that, for once, ASMFC almost got it right, that striped bass will have some real added protection next year, and that we’re now at a place where we can put pressure on our own state managers to be true to the votes that they cast at the meeting and give the striper a real chance to thrive.

Everyone who took part in this fight should feel proud.

STRIPED BASS TEST ASMFC'S INTEGRITY

It’s not often when everything falls together and points toward a single, clearly correct course of action.

But that’s what we’re seeing right now, as the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission’s Striped Bass Management Board is moving toward a landmark management decision next Wednesday.

We have a recent benchmark stock assessment—clearly the best available science—that calls for reducing the fishing mortality target from the current F=0.30 to F=0.18.

The same updated assessment warns us that even

“If the fully-recruited F decreases to the current F_target (0.180) and is maintained through 2013-2017, the probability of being below the [Spawning Stock Biomass] reference point [which denotes an overfished stock] reaches 0.77 by 2015 and declines thereafter.”

In advance of next Wednesday’s meeting, ASMFC’s Striped Bass Technical Committee advised the Management Board that 

“Reducing [fishing mortality] to the target in one year will be more beneficial to increasing [spawning stock biomass] and protecting strong year classes than reducing [fishing mortality] to the target in three years.”

ASMFC itself is guided by its Interstate Fisheries Management Program Charter, which says

“It is the policy of the Commission that its [Interstate Fisheries Management Program] promote the conservation of Atlantic coastal fishery resources, be based on the best scientific information available, and provide adequate opportunity for public participation.”

Such Charter also notes that

“Management measures should focus on conservation,”

and that

“Above all, [a fishery management plan] must include conservation and management measures that ensure the long-term biological health and productivity of fisheries resources under management.  [emphasis added]”

In accord with those mandates, in 2003 the Management Board adopted Amendment 6 to the Interstate Management Plan for Atlantic Striped Bass, which included the provision that

“If the Management Board determines that the fishing mortality target is exceeded in two consecutive years and the female spawning stock biomass falls below the target within either of those years, the Management Board must adjust the striped bass management program to reduce the fishing mortality rate to a level that it at or below the target within one year.  [emphasis added]”

The stock assessment demonstrated that the fishing mortality rate has now risen above the target of 0.180 for more than two years, and female spawning stock biomass fell beneath the target a number of years to go—and continues to decline.

In hearings held over the past two months all along the striper coast, 81% of the people who made public comments urged the Management Board to adhere to the Amendment 6 mandate and make all of the needed harvest reductions within a single year.  When all public comments were tallied—those sent in by mail, by fax and by e-mail, along with those made at the public hearings, the percentage of folks favoring Amendment 6’s one-year mandate increased to an astounding 93%.

So we have a stock assessment that tells us that fishing mortality must be reduced, and the Technical Committee advises that reductions should all be made in a single year.  

The current management plan requires such action, and the public overwhelmingly wants it.

ASMFC’s policy, as set forth in its Charter, it to “promote the conservation of Atlantic coastal fishery resources,” and that Charter also says that ASMFC “must…ensure” the long-term health of the stocks that it manages.

Given all that, if ASMFC, as an organization, has any integrity at all, the outcome of next Wednesday’s meeting would seem to be predetermined.  There will be harvest cuts, and they will be made in one year.

And that’s what’s going to happen.

If ASMFC has any integrity at all.

And that’s the thing that we have to worry about.  Because, while I have great respect for the staff at ASMFC, which have a tough job and always try to do it surpassingly well, the various management boards—the Striped Bass Management Board right up there among them—are a different thing entirely.

On each management board, you have three representatives of each state.  One is a state fisheries professional; the other two are appointees, and the great majority of the appointees either have a direct economic interest in one or more of the fisheries they are managing, or close personal and/or professional ties with people who do.

Being in that sort of position is difficult; it requires a good bit of personal integrity to discharge your duties in a manner that best serves the public interest, rather than your own interests or those of your friends, colleagues and business partners.

It’s made even more difficult when you know that the Management Board can do just about anything that it wants to, without legal constraints.  Unlike federal fisheries management councils, there is no law to say that a management board must end overfishing, rebuild overfished stocks or follow the scientists’ advice.  And unlike federal or even state management agencies, they know that their decisions, however bad they may be, will not be subject to judicial review.

So the question becomes very real:  Will the Management Board vote in accordance with the science, the overwhelming majority of the folks who made comments and the policy of ASMFC itself, and impose the full harvest reductions in 2015?

Or will it breach the covenant that it made with the public when it adopted Amendment 6, violate the public trust and rewrite the Amendment in order to satisfy the small minority of stakeholders who would put the striped bass at risk in order to protect their own bank accounts?

Will the Management Board heed 81% of the people who attended the public hearings, or will they heed self-serving folks such as Capt. Robert Busby of the North Fork (New York) Captain’s Association, who wrote

“Of course, we would like to continue to see charter/party boat regulations be improved [sic] over normal recreational regulations, thereby giving people another reason to sail with us”?

Unfortunately, I suspect that there are members of the Management Board who would be willing to subordinate the majority of anglers to for-hire captains who want all of us to get less so that they can get more.

There are also undoubtedly members of the Management Board who will not only support, but actively promote, what is undoubtedly the most parochial and self-serving document of all, the so-called Chesapeake Bay Jurisdictions White Paper on Draft Amendment IV for the Striped Bass Management Plan.

That’s a document that can be described in a number of ways, but can be basically boiled down to say “If you folks really want a one-year harvest reduction out on the coast, we’ll go along, provided that you don’t apply those reductions to the big 2011 year class down here in the Bay.  We want to beat up on those fish for another three years.”

Right now, I can’t know whether the Management Board will have the integrity to do what the science, the public and ASMFC policy demands.

I can't know whether they’ll turn their back on their obligations to the public and embrace the very small minority of people who believe that short-term economic concerns should trump the long-term health of the stock.

But I do know that Al Ristori, long-time angler, author, charter boat captain and member of ASMFC’s Striped Bass Advisory Panel got it right when he wrote

“the credibility of the ASMFC is at stake on this issue since the biological reference points for the species have been reached. Failing to take some action under these circumstances would be a serious failure.”

I don’t want to see the ASMFC’s Striped Bass Management Board fail.

I want to see it embrace its obligation to do the right thing.

I will be doing my best to be at the meeting, so I can hear with my own ears and see with my own eyes whether the Management Board does what we want and expect it to do.

For when a course of action is as clear cut as that of the Management Board, making the decision is no longer a question of opinion, debate and discretion.

It is a question of basic integrity.

And I want to be there to see for myself just what the Striped Bass Management Board is made of.