NOT IN MY LIFETIME

When I was a boy, I hadn’t lived long enough to understand change.  Things would, I thought, stay the same forever. 

It didn’t matter whether I thought of my house, my street, my town or the great body of water that stretched out from its shores, to wrap around Long Island, around continents and, eventually, the world.  Things would stay the same forever.

Time, of course, proved me wrong, and I’ve been witness to changes both good and bad.  On the water, I lived through the collapse of both cod and winter flounder, and watched summer flounder, scup and black sea bass make the long climb from depletion to abundance.

Looking back, none of it seemed to take long; in the course of one lifetime, things change a lot.

But lately, I’ve thought about some of the things that I’ll never live to see, such as Atlantic salmon returning to New England’s rivers.  

Hopefully, it will happen one day.  The United States Fish and Wildlife Service, in conjunction with the National Marine Fisheries Service, have just completed a draft recovery plan, intended to rebuild the Gulf of Maine salmon stock, which is currently listed as “endangered” under the federal Endangered Species Act.

The hope is that, if the recovery plan works out, the stock may be upgraded from “endangered” to “threatened” and eventually, if all goes well, won't need to be listed at all.

The problem is that, even if all goes well, the process will take about 75 years, so I’m not going to be around to see it.  

I’ve got some good genes in my family—my maternal grandmother almost made it to 101—but even if my life stretches out as long as hers, I’ll still fall short by 35 years.

Unless you’re still in junior high school, the odds are good that you won't live to see salmon recover, either.

That gives a pretty good idea of how far Atlantic salmon have fallen and, if you’re a fishermen, of what has been stolen not only from you, but from your kids and maybe your grandkids as well.

And the sad thing is, it didn’t take very long for the salmon to crash so very hard.  Maine’s Penobscot River supported a run of about 100,000 fish prior to it being dammed in the 1860s; between 1870 and 1890, commercial salmon harvest from the Penobscot averaged about 20,000 fish per year.  

In 2012, just 624 salmon returned to the river, all but 77 of those hatchery-raised.

Those 624 salmon represented the lowest returns since 2000, when a mere 534 fish found their way home.

Recovery in 75 years remains far from a certainty.  The same things that caused the salmon runs to collapse—dams and road crossings that blocked access to spawning streams, a decline in water and habitat quality and overfishing—remain present today.  Although fish passage is slowly being improved through dam removals and other means, it remains a major problem not only for salmon, but for all anadromous species.  And Greenland has recently refused to reduce salmon harvest in its marine waters, where Maine’s salmon spend much of their time while out at sea.

To add to the salmon’s problems, a warming ocean has already begun to change the North Atlantic ecosystem; continued warming could easily impact the ability of Atlantic salmon to feed while at sea, in the same manner that the so-called warm-water “blob” has caused Pacific salmon runs to crash.

Maybe your grandkids won’t see a restored population after all…

In fact, there are many things that they’re unlikely to see.

The northwestern Atlantic population of Atlantic halibut, the world’s largest flatfish, nosedived in the late 1800s due to severe overfishing.  More than a century later, there is no evidence suggesting that the population has begun to increase.  Things are so bad that NMFS hasn’t even set a target date for rebuilding the stock.

Then there’s the dusky shark.  

Up until about 1990, they were pretty common.  In the unenlightened ‘70s, when Jaws made too many folks think that killing a shark was a good thing to do, it wasn’t unusual to see anglers drag big ones—500 or 600 pounds, and sometimes a little more—back to the dock, hang them up for the weight and a photo, then tow them back out to sea on one final ride.  

Right up into the early 1990s, duskies frequently grabbed chunks of butterfish intended for tuna, and more than one angler out to catch a few 10-pound bluefish was surprised when a six- or seven-foot dusky picked up his bait instead.

The fish killed by anglers didn’t do the duskies much good, but the real harm was done by the longline fleet, which caused the slow-growing (they take about 20 years to become sexually mature) and slow-reproducing (they only produce pups every third year) shark to quickly decline in abundance.  

Depending on the model that scientists use, restoration of the western Atlantic stock, even without legal landings, is estimated to take somewhere between 100 and 400 years.

So we’re not going to be around to see that happen, either.

Atlantic salmon, halibut and dusky sharks are big and/or charismatic fish, but the smaller, unglamorous species have their troubles, too.

I continually lament the fate of winter flounder, once among the most abundant fish in our bays.  The southern New England/Mid-Atlantic stock has fallen on very hard times, and is all but gone from many waters.  There are almost no young fish being recruited into the population.  No one can say when, if ever, numbers will increase again.

A similar fate has befallen Atlantic cod.  Both the Georges Bank and Gulf of Maine stocks have fallen to historically low levels.  Despite managers’ best efforts, they have stubbornly refused to rebuild.

Yet fishermen remain stubborn, and even today oppose the tough actions needed to put both cod and winter flounder, along with other New England groundfish, back on the road to recovery.

It’s a foolish position to take.

A fish population may be depleted, or even collapsed, in just a few years.  But it can take decades, perhaps centuries, to restore it to health.  

And for some, perhaps Atlantic halibut, or perhaps Atlantic salmon, restoration may never occur at all.

THE WASHINGTON TRIBES UNDERSTAND

I’ve always lived in the Northeast, a neighbor to cod and controversy. Inshore, I fish for—and fight for—summer flounder and stripers; offshore, I tag sharks, worry about bluefin and do my best to put mahi and yellowfin into the box.  Once in a while, I’ll fish farther from home, for anything from red drum to red snapper.

But even when I'm away, the sun usually climbs up out of the water, and sets somewhere over dry land.  

Although I’ve fished Magellan’s “peaceful sea” more than a few times, it’s easy to forget that there’s a whole lot of fish, with their own special problems, in that part of country where the sun sinks into the sea.

One of the biggest problems facing Pacific-coast fishery managers today is the damage done to both natural and hatchery-generated salmon runs by the so-called “blob,” a huge patch of warmer-than-normal water in the northern Pacific that has persisted for well over two years.

Scientists believe that the warm water made the northern Pacific less productive than it would normally be, and made it more difficult for maturing salmon to find sufficient forage.  As a result, returning year classes of salmon are much smaller than average.  Even hatchery fish are affected since, once released from the rearing pools, they too must forage for a few years in the open sea before returning to nearshore fishing areas and then ascending the spawning rivers.

Coho salmon have been hit particularly hard.  According to an article in the Kitsap (WA) Sun,

“Salmon managers faced some tough facts recently when they read over results from a computer model used to predict the effects of various fishing scenarios.  After they plugged in last year’s fishing seasons and this year’s coho forecast, the computer told them that essentially no fish were left to spawn in Stillaquamish River in northern Puget Sound.  Things were hardly better for the Skagit or Snohomish rivers or for streams in the Strait of Juan de Fuca and Hood Canal.”

Coho forecasts for the Columbia River are also poor.  Jim Unsworth, Director of Fish and Wildlife for Washington State, noted that

“We know that severely limiting opportunities will hurt many families and communities that depend on these fisheries.  But conserving wild salmon is our top priority and is in the best interests of future generations of Washingtonians.”

That’s the right way to look at a difficult situation, but it’s not clear that all of the present generation of Washingtonians agree, particularly if they’re engaged in the recreational salmon-fishing industry.  The owner of one Puget Sound charter boat business spoke for a lot of those people when he said

“Salmon is what keeps us going.  It’s our bread and butter.  Fishing can be like a roller coaster.  Sometimes it’s good, and sometimes it’s not…The loss of coho fishing on the heels of losing central Puget Sound Chinook [salmon] fishing last year would be absolutely devastating for me, my business.  I have a family.  I have children.  Our sole livelihood depends on depends on these fisheries.”

Noting that

“Even catch and release fishing would be better than no fishing,”

he suggested that regulators should open a fishery that required native coho to be released, but allowed the retention of at least some hatchery-raised fish, which can be identified by their clipped adipose fin.

However, there are other residents of Washington State who want to take a far more precautionary approach to coho salmon management.  They are the members of the various native tribes, who relied on Pacific salmon for their very survival since the retreat of the last glaciers, even before the tribes and cultures ever adopted their current forms, more than 10,000 years ago—and perhaps for quite a bit longer, if some theories about early American migrations turn out to be true.

Lorraine Loomis, Chair of the Northwest Indian Fisheries Commission, notes that

“Coho returns in 2015 were as much as 80 percent below pre-season forecasts.  The Nisqually Tribe cancelled its coho fishery when fewer than 4,000 of the 23,000 expected actually returned.  The same story was repeated in many Tribal fishing areas.

“That’s why western Washington treaty Tribes are calling for greater caution in fisheries management planning this year…

“Coho salmon that managed to make it back last year showed frightening effects of poor ocean conditions.  Most were 20 to 30 percent smaller than normal.  Females returned with about 40 percent fewer eggs.  This will likely result in lower natural and factory production and fewer fish in the future.”

Here on the East Coast, we often hear fishermen and fishing-related businesses cite “social” and “cultural” considerations as part of the reason for their opposition to harvest reductions.  But even venerable Massachusetts, arguably the spiritual heart of the opposition to federal fishery management, didn’t exist four hundred years ago.

Thus, it’s hard to argue that the cultural significance of, say, Georges Bank cod permeates the culture of coastal New England in the way that salmon permeates the cultures of the western Washington tribes.  As Shawn Yanity, chairman and fisheries manager for the Stillaguamish Tribe observes,

“They’ve always fed our people.  They’re one of the links between us and the river.  They’re in our songs, they’re in our stories, they’re in our creation.”

Yet, despite the importance of the salmon harvest to the Washington tribes, Loomis said, on behalf of the twenty tribes belonging to the Northwest Indian Fisheries Commission,

“Our cultures, treaty rights and economies depend on salmon.  But the resource must come first.

“We face an extraordinary conservation challenge this year.  In many instances returns will likely be far below minimum levels needed to produce the next generation of salmon.  Conservation must be our sole focus as we work to rebuild these stocks.

“We don’t know how many we’ll see, we don’t know how healthy they’ll be, and we don’t know how many eggs they’ll have.  That means we need to be careful, because if we don’t know how healthy these fish are when they come back, a lot of damage could be done.

“We have never seen runs this low, so we don’t know how well they might bounce back.  Zero [harvest] must be the starting place for fisheries management this year.  [emphasis added]”

It’s probably impossible for an East Coast angler to fully imagine the sort of hole that a moratorium on salmon harvest would tear into the social, cultural and economic fabric of the western Washington tribes, but we can understand that such tear would be large. 

It would certainly be far, far larger than any temporary, adverse “socio-economic impact” that the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act might have on the recreational or commercial fishing industry. 

Yet, while so-called leaders of the recreational fishing community are doing their best to tear the heart out of Magnuson-Stevens, willing to accept greater short-term gains at the long-term health of the resource, and many in the commercial fishing industry are eager to do the same, the united voice of the Washington tribes say “The resource must come first…Conservation must be our sole focus…Zero [harvest] must be the starting place…”

For the tribes understand something that the industry folks, and the “anglers’ rights” spokesmen, are not yet wise enough to know.

If you depend on fish for your very being, you had better protect them well.  For without them, you’re nothing at all.

COOKING THE BOOKS ON MENHADEN

Earlier this month, a report entitled “The Fate of an Atlantic Menhaden Year Class” was distributed by the Menhaden Fisheries Coalition.

That report concluded that fishing mortality is a very small part of overall menhaden mortality, and implied that further landings reductions will have little benefit for the stock.  It’s just the sort of conclusion that one would expect in a report commissioned by a group commissioned by the menhaden industry, which is trying hard to defeat conservationists’ efforts to further regulate menhaden harvest.

The menhaden report is interesting, because the data it presents isn't wrong.  It was lifted from the most recent menhaden stock assessment, which determined that the stock was not overfished and not subject to overfishing.

But that’s not the point.

It wasn’t the data, but how it was used, that ought to raise eyebrows.

The hot issue in menhaden management right now is the so-called “BERP,” Biological and Ecological Reference Points.  It’s cutting-edge stuff, and scientists are still trying to figure out the best way to figure things out. 

In traditional, single-species fisheries management, the key concept is “sustainable yield,” with “yield” being the operative term.  Biologists calculate the size of the stock that will allow the greatest volume of fish to be harvested over the long term, and then designate that stock size as Bmsy—the biomass that produces maximum sustainable yield.  It usually becomes the stock rebuilding target.  Harvest levels are then set at or, more typically, modestly below maximum sustainable yield.

The definitions can differ from species to species, but ½ Bmsy is usually the threshold that defines an overfished stock.

Although that’s not exactly how menhaden are managed—the key metric isn’t biomass, but rather fecundity, or the number of eggs produced by the spawning stock—the principal is the same, with the overfishing occurring when fecundity is one-half of the fecundity target.

However, that definition only considers one parameter, the ability of the stock to sustain current harvest levels without declining in abundance.  What it doesn’t consider at all is whether a stock size limited to Bmsy will provide adequate support for the greater ecosystem in which it exists.  

That’s important in the case of menhaden, because they’re one of the most important forage fish on the East Coast.  At some time or another during their lives, everything from the humble sea robin to the great whales will feed on menhaden at least some of the time.

The Menhaden Fisheries Coalition’s report doesn’t consider BERP at all.  It tries to argue, using questionable logic, that menhaden harvest removes such a small percentage of fish from each year class that current harvest levels are fine.  By taking that approach, it also implies that the conservationists’ efforts are, at the least, misguided.

Although the document is structured to resemble a scientific paper, it’s not.  It is an industry propaganda piece, and needs to be read with that in mind.  For example, the paper notes that

“The analysis depicts the magnitude of losses for the year class as it ages, keeping the losses of natural mortality and both types of fishing mortality, reduction and bait, in the proper perspective.  [emphasis added]”

Yet who is to determine what the “proper perspective” should be?  Giving that responsibility to the menhaden industry permits it to bias the reader in favor of its own analysis. 

That alone should raise warning flags.

And those warning signs are certainly justified by the way the Menhaden Fisheries Coalition tried to address the issue.  

Earlier, I noted that the report ignored BERP.  However, it also ignored fishing’s impact on the fecundity of the stock—the very measure that biologists use to determine the health of the menhaden population.

Instead, the report compares removals from fishing activities, over the life of a typical year class, to the size of that year class at the beginning of its very first year of life--before the juvenile menhaden begin experiencing any sort of predation or environmentally-related loss.  Based on that comparison, the author assures us that fishing has relatively little impact on the stock, accounting for a meager 6.4% of all mortality throughout the life of the year class.

Does that even make sense?

All species of fish probably experience their highest levels of mortality, in absolute terms, during their first year, when the juveniles are small enough to be vulnerable to just about anything that swims.  The size of a typical Age 0 year class of menhaden, when measured in individual fish, is so large that a comparison to the number of older fish harvested would, of necessity, make that harvest appear surpassingly small.

When losses from fishing mortality are calculated in that manner, the report is completely correct when it states that

“Whatever way you wish to calculate the impact of fishing, both reduction and bait, on the size of the standing stock [measured in individual fish], the overall percentage remains remarkably small.”

But there’s another, equally correct statement that deserves attention, and that’s when the report notes that

“with the greatest majority of natural mortality occurring on age zero and 1 year old fish, it is a fair assumption to identify predation as a major contributor of these small fish.”

That sentence is important for a couple of reasons.  First, is an acknowledgement of how important menhaden are as a forage fish; second, because it must be read in conjunction with a sentence from the benchmark stock assessment, which states

“Throughout the time series, age-2 and age-3 fish have produced most of the total estimated number of eggs spawned annually; however, in more recent years, ages-4+ have contributed more significantly to the overall number of eggs.”

Thus, when fecundity is the measure of a stock’s health, the measure used by the Menhaden Fisheries Coalition to measure harvest’s impact is completely inappropriate.  What matters isn’t the number of fish harvested compared to the original size of a year class. 

What matters is the number of fish harvested compared to the overall abundance of the older fish that produce the eggs.

And when we use the report’s data to tell that particular story, fishing mortality rises to a lot more than 6.4% of the stock. 

It breaks down like this:

At age 2, about 23% of the year class is removed.  At age 3, the number drops a bit to 16%.

After that, the number of fish begins to drop off quickly, since the reduction fleet concentrates on age-2 and age-3 menhaden, the most reproductively important age classes in the population.

Once the fishery is dominated by the bait fishery, percentages drop sharply, to 9% at age-4, 2% at age-5 and effectively 0% at ages-6+. 

The removals of the reproductively imporant menhaden total about 19%, roughly triple the 6.4% removal figure touted in the report.  The removals of the most important spawners—the age-2s and age-3s—is a little higher yet, about 21%.

Maybe that's still low enough to avoid overfishing, but it sure doesn’t tell the whole story, for the critical question isn’t just how many menhaden may be taken out of the water, but also how many must be left in to provide adequate forage for restored stocks of fish.  Everything from the summer flounder that might snatch a peanut (age-0) or two when they swim past an inlet sandbar to adult bluefin tuna that slam into schools of adult fish in winter off North Carolina, regularly feed on menhaden, and there must be enough left in the water to fulfill their needs.  

And that’s before we even begin to consider the ospreys, humpback whales and everything else that make menhaden part of their diet.

We won’t even come close to knowing how many menhaden they all will need until the BERP calculations are done.

In the meantime, we need to keep viewing the issue from the “proper perspective.”  And that’s the perspective that we deem to be proper, and not the one that the industry tells us to choose.

"SCIENTIFIC BULLSHIT"

One of the joys of writing a blog is that once you let your thoughts loose on the Internet, you never know where they will land. 

You always hope that wherever your words alight, they have a chance to take root in open, fertile minds, where they can contribute to worthwhile debate.  In the two years that I’ve been a blogger, my essays have been read by many people not only here in the United States, and in many places throughout the world.  Over that time, I’ve had the privilege of exchanging ideas with anglers, scientists, regulators, legislators and others concerned with the fate of many different fisheries.

Of course, I’ve also run into my share of boors, loudmouths and trolls.

The latest example came a couple of days ago, in response to a piece that I wrote for the Marine Fish Conservation  Network, and reprinted on this site.  The topic was winter flounder, and made specific reference to my 30-plus years of experience with that species on Long Island’s Great South Bay.  

In response to what I had written, someone named Mike Paladino wrote

“Your [sic] a disgrace.  Your scientific bullshit is putting our sea bass fishery in the toilet.”

At first glance, that comment didn’t seem to have much to do with winter flounder, but first impressions can be deceiving.  

When you look a little harder, it was very relevant, indeed.

The first thing that you need to know is that there is a Captain Mike Paladino who operates party boats on the western South Shore of Long Island.  It’s not clear that’s who wrote the comment, as “Mike Paladino” is not really an uncommon name, but it’s certainly possible.  You also need to know that just a couple of days before the comment was posted, I attended a meeting of New York’s Marine Resources Advisory Council, where black sea bass were discussed.  At that meeting, I opposed regulations favored by some party boat captains from the western South Shore of Long Island…

So that sort of explains why a comment about sea bass showed up in response to a blog about flounder; it doesn’t, however, explain why the comment was relevant to the flounder themselves.

The key lies in the phrase “scientific bullshit.”

For as I had explained in that blog, as early as the mid-1980s, biologists in New York and elsewhere began to voice some concerns for the health of winter flounder stocks, and began suggesting that regulations were needed to prevent a problem.  

Those concerns were driven by science.

However, the party boat fleet didn’t want to see any restrictions put in place, because they might discourage customers and so reduce the boats’ incomes.  They didn’t want fisheries managers to base their decisions on “scientific bullshit,” but rather on the party boats’ economic concerns.  

In that case, they got their way.

There really aren’t any winter flounder around anymore…

Black sea bass are in a lot better shape.  Biologists believe that stock size is 102% of the target level—right about where they want it to be.  

The last benchmark stock assessment failed to pass peer review, but a team of scientists led by Jason McNamee of the Rhode Island Division of Fish and Wildlife devised a way to regulate harvest that will actually allow the annual catch limit to be increased by 20% in 2016.

The stock is healthy, and anglers are catching a lot of them.  So many, in fact, that in states between New Jersey and Massachusetts, 2016 recreational landings are going to have to be reduced by 23%, compared to such landings in 2015, despite the 20% increase.

That’s the “scientific bullshit” that commenter Mike Palladino was apparently so upset about.

His upset is not atypical.  When all is said and done, it is that dissatisfaction with “scientific bullshit” that lies at the root of most of our major fisheries debates.

Consider New England cod.

After a new, more accurate stock assessment was performed on the Gulf of Maine stock in 2011, it was clear that cod harvests would have to be cut back sharply.  John Bullard, the regional administrator for the National Marine Fisheries Service, said plainly,

“The stock is in free-fall.”

That was mainly because the New England Fishery Management Council had managed to avoid the “scientific bullshit” for years, and instead continued to manage all New England groundfish for the largest harvest, resulting in the largest possible short-term profit, that the law would allow.  

But ignoring all that “scientific bullshit” has consequences, for as noted by Peter Baker, a fisheries specialist for the Pew Charitable Trusts,

“The cod collapse is largely due to a long history of risky management decisions that failed to rein in chronic overfishing, did not keep accurate track of how many fish were caught or killed, and did not do enough to protect ocean habitat.”

Even so, there are plenty of folks who still want to take a different approach.  

In the Gulf of Mexico, the National Marine Fisheries Service, relying heavily on “scientific bullshit,” is successfully rebuilding the red snapper stock. 

In the early 1990s, the population had fallen so low that its spawning potential ratio (SPR)—the difference between its current spawning potential and that of an unfished stock—had fallen below 3%; today, that ratio has increased to about 13%, and is halfway to the 26% SPR target that, according to biologists, will indicate a full recovery.

In some ways, Gulf red snapper are a lot like black sea bass here on Long Island; they’re a structure-dependent species that congregate on pieces of hard bottom, wrecks, artificial reefs and the like, making them easy to find, and they’re rarely shy about hitting any attractive bait or lure that passes by their noses.  Thus, they can appear to be a lot more abundant than they are, at least until a lot of the fish are cleaned off a particular piece of structure by heavy fishing pressure.

Harvest of both species is also governed by the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act, which requires that

“Conservation and management measures shall be based upon the best scientific information available.”

In other words, federal fisheries managers actually have to pay attention to all of that “scientific bullshit” that Mike Paladino dislikes.

It turns out that, down in the Gulf of Mexico, some organizations who seem to share Mr. Paladino’s view of science-based fisheries management have banded together under the banner of the Center for Coastal Conservation to create a recreational red snapper fishery where such “scientific bullshit” does not apply.

Instead, they are seeking federal legislation that would strip the National Marine Fisheries Service of all authority to manage red snapper, and turn such authority over to state regulators.  In doing so, they would be able to escape a management system dominated by “scientific bullshit” and replace it with a system dominated by politics, profit and similar short-term considerations.

They would make it possible for the red snapper’s future abundance to more closely resemble that of winter flounder and cod.

Worse, they have endorsed H.R. 1335, legislation that would amend Magnuson-Stevens in a way that would allow federal fisheries managers on every coast, regardless of species, to pay less attention to “scientific bullshit”  and give greater consideration to “cultural and economic needs” of fishermen and the angling and boatbuilding industries.

If they had their way, cod and winter flounder could be the model for the way all of our federal fisheries are managed, without much—or any—“scientific bullshit” at all…

Mike Paladino isn’t going to like to read this, but I’m not going to jump onto the bandwagon.  When advising New York’s Department of Environmental Conservation as a member of the Marine Resources Advisory Council, I am going to continue to base my recommendations on “scientific bullshit.”

I hope that fisheries managers here in New York, and across the nation, continue to do so as well.

For in many ways, salt water fisheries management is still a new science, with new information constantly becoming available.  There is still much that we don’t know.

Limited by the available data, we remain far too ignorant of far too many things.

That is unfortunate, but excusable for now.

However, calling the information we do have “scientific bullshit,” and not using it to manage our fisheries is simply abhorrent.

For willful ignorance is not excusable at all.

WINTER FLOUNDER: THE BILL HAS COME DUE

Here on Long Island, St. Patrick’s Day—March 17—was always the unofficial start of the winter flounder season.

That date wasn’t imposed by law. For many years, there was no closed season, and an angler who knew what to do could catch at least a few flounder at any time that the bays weren’t sheathed in ice. But even so, St. Pat’s was the day that things really got started.

From the East End of Long Island to Brooklyn’s Sheepshead Bay, party boats would leave their docks and head for sheltered flats, where dark mud bottoms held the thin warmth of the sun, and encouraged flounder to feed. Even on raw, windy days, the party boats carried lots of anglers, who hid from the weather in crowded deckhouses until it was time to fish.

A surprising number of private boats jointed in the hunt, despite often unpleasant conditions. Anyone who grew up on the bay can tell stories of huddling, exposed, on the thwart of a rowboat, not minding the chill once the flounder decided to bite.

The action got better as the water warmed; on a nice April day in the mid-1980s, anyone driving across the Robert Moses Bridge, which spans Great South Bay, could look to the east and see a solid fleet of small boats extending from the bridge pilings out to the channel that lay more than two miles away.

Party boats sailed just about every day, shaking off their long winter torpor. Tackle shops, gas docks and boat rental stations also kick-started their seasons, as anglers emerged from hibernation. From mid-March right through May, many thousands of fishermen turned to the bays, and brought flounder home for their dinners.

They caught a lot of fish, for a while. In 1984, New York anglers removed nearly 7.5 million winter flounder from their state’s waters.

That sort of harvest just couldn’t last; New York’s flounder stocks began to decline.

Beginning in the late 1980s, fisheries managers proposed regulations to protect New York’s flounder. Their efforts were strongly opposed by the fishing industry, and particularly the party boat fleet, which claimed that anglers would not pay to go fishing absent the “perception” that they could have a “big day” when they took home a pailful of flounder.

The result was a compromise: regulations put in far too late, which did far too little to halt the winter flounder’s decline. 

That was the pattern established for winter flounder management all along the coast. Fisheries managers recognized the need to reduce winter flounder landings, but were frustrated by concerted opposition from the recreational fishing industry, which depended on flounder-related business to keep their doors open during the spring.

It didn’t help that, after flounder left the bays in late spring and entered the ocean, the New England Fishery Management Council (NEFMC) managed their harvest. The same sort of ineffective fishery management plans that led to the decline of other New England groundfish affected the flounder as well. While anglers didn’t catch many in the open ocean, the trawler fleet did, and excessive commercial harvest also played a big role in the flounder’s demise.

Winter flounder were caught between state managers’ reluctance to harm their recreational fishing industries and the NEFMC’s reluctance to impact the incomes of the commercial groundfish fleet.

In February 1999, the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission’s Winter Flounder Management Board (ASMFC Management Board) decided to ignore its previous decision to adopt more restrictive state regulations if harvest exceeded the fishing mortality threshold (F=0.40), because the NEFMC would not adopt similar cutbacks.

Roles were completely reversed in 2009, when the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) determined that the southern New England/Mid-Atlantic stock of winter flounder was so badly overfished that it declared a complete moratorium on harvest in federal waters. Then, the ASMFC Management Board refused to follow suit, and merely reduced recreational and commercial landings in state waters.

In more recent years, NMFS again opened federal waters to winter flounder harvest, while the ASMFC Management Board elected to quintuple the length of the recreational season.

So many years of mismanagement has led to the inevitable result. Last year, New York’s anglers landed fewer than 5,000 winter flounder, roughly seven-hundredths of one percent (0.07%) of what they harvested three decades before.

Extensive research carried out at New York’s Stony Brook University suggested that New York’s winter flounder population has fallen so low that the fish could be extirpated in some or all of the state’s coastal waters.

Even so, New York’s party boats and fishing tackle businesses tried to wring the last drop of blood from a dry and crumbling stone. They asked the Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) to relax regulations, as neighboring states had already done, and allow anglers to increase their kill of the few fish that remained. Fortunately, the folks at the DEC’s Marine Bureau had the wisdom to refuse their request.

This year, when Saint Patrick’s Day rolled around, Great South Bay was empty. Captree’s party boats remained in their winter slumber; the once-busy docks were a ghost town.

The scene was the same from Brooklyn to Montauk, from the North Fork of Long Island to Little Neck Bay—with the flounder all but gone, and the season shut down, marinas are quiet. Tackle shops are empty and still.

When the season reopens on April 1, a few party boats will sail. Most will stay dormant for a couple weeks more, until angler interest increases enough to barely make sailing worthwhile. On a Saturday afternoon late in April, a driver crossing the Robert Moses Bridge should be able to look to the east and see at least two or three boats still seeking flounder.

Back in the ‘80s and ‘90s and early 2000s, the New York’s party boats and tackle dealers wanted to keep their customers’ flounder catches high. So they fought regulation, borrowing from the future in order to maintain a higher harvest than science or common sense allowed.

Today, the bill for that borrowing has come due with interest; folks are not pleased to learn what they owe.

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This essay first appeared in "From the Waterfront", the blog of the Marine Fish Conservation Network, which may be found at http://www.conservefish.org/blog/

HOUSE BACKS DOWN ON EEZ STRIPER BILL

Last December, I wrote about H.R. 3070, a poorly-drafted and even more poorly conceived piece of legislation introduced by Rep. Lee Zeldin (R-NY), which would have opened up some federal waters surrounding Block Island to striped bass harvest, and turned such waters over to the states’ jurisdiction with respect to all fisheries matters.

The bill’s primary, and perhaps only substantial support, came from party and charter boat operators on the East End of Long Island, who wanted to target striped bass in areas that, for the last quarter-century or so, have been off-limits to striped bass fishing.  When the House Natural Resources Committee held a field hearing on New York on December 7, 2015, only one out of the seven witnesses who testified, Capt. Joe McBride of the Montauk Boatmen’s and Captains’ Association, spoke in favor of the bill.

On the other hand, the legislation ran into substantial opposition from recreational and commercial fishermen in the region.  The strongest opposition came from the State of Connecticut, where both state officials and its Congressional delegation went on record in opposition to the bill, largely because of its potential effects on Connecticut commercial fishermen who fish in federal waters that would be affected by the bill.

Recreational fishermen all along the coast also took up arms against Zeldin’s legislation.  Stripers Forever, a national organization that advocates for healthy striped bass populations, issued an alert that stated, in part

“Stripers Forever regards this bill as a danger to the health and recovery of wild Atlantic striped bass.  Not only will it increase pressure on striped bass stocks, but it sets a bad precedent by ceding federal waters to state control.  The water that would be opened to state management—and thus commercial fishing—is well known for attracting large female stripers, the very fish on which the future of the species depends…”

The New Jersey Outdoor Alliance carried an article on its Facebook feed, in opposition to Zeldin’s bill, which began

“Bill HR 3070, sponsored by Representative Zeldin of New York would allow fishing for striped bass in a portion of the EEZ off Montauk and out toward Block Island and Rhode Island.  We all know that opening of the EEZ for striped bass would result in more stripers being killed at a time that we are supposed to be conserving them.”

Up in Rhode Island, one of the most directly affected states, the Rhode Island Saltwater Anglers’ Association published an editorial entitled “Keep the EEZ closed to striper fishing.” It noted that

“Currently all waters beyond three miles of the shoreline is considered ‘federal waters’ and the EEZ (Exclusive Economic Zone).  In 1990 a federal moratorium was created prohibiting fishing for striped bass in the EEZ to protect them from overfishing (especially in the south).

“An attempt to reverse this was tried in 2006, but after receiving over 8,000 public comments supporting the continued closure, NOAA [decided] to keep the closure in place.

“So now another attempt is made to create a special open zone here in our backyard.  Bill H.R. 3070 was introduced by Rep. Lee Zeldin from New York and referred to the House Natural Resource Committee…

“What would happen if H.R. 3070 passed?  The SW Ledge [off Block Island] would not only be inundated with Rhode Island anglers, but an armada of fishing boats from New York would flood Block Island waters.  

“In an article on this subject, John McMurray, an New York Charter Captain who always sides ‘for the fish’ said, ‘The Montauk charter/party boat fleet is arguing that such a regional opening would provide economic benefits’

“’Perhaps it might,’ continued McMurray, ‘But the larger question is whether such potential economic benefits, for what appears to be a narrow special interest, trump the long term health of a public resource.’”

As I said before, the majority of the striped bass angling community was not pleased with the introduction of Rep. Zeldin’s bill...

Thus, there was some dismay in striped bass angling circles when news came out that the House Natural Resources Committee gave its unanimous approval to H.R. 3070.

Speaking personally, I was dismayed, but not surprised, as the current majority of that Committee is usually in favor of anything that provides an economic boon to narrow groups of special interests, while impairing the greater public interest in conserving America’s natural resources.  Approving H.R. 3070 would have been just another step taken along the same ill-advised path.

However, things were not as simple as they originally seemed.

It turns out that the only similarity between the legislation debated at last December’s hearing and the one reported out of Committee last week was the bill number.  Even the name had changed.

The original version of H.R. 3070 was entitled the “EEZ Clarification Act,” and began by stating that

“For purposes of all Federal laws governing marine fisheries management—

(1)     the landward boundary of the exclusive economic zone between the area south of Montauk, New York, and the area south of Point Judith, Rhode Island, shall be considered to be a continuous line running…”

And the boundaries were set forth from there.

The new version of H.R. 3070 was provided not by Rep. Lee Zeldin, but by Rep. Paul Gosar (R-AZ).  It is entitled “EEZ Transit Zone Clarification and Access Act,” and begins

“IN GENERAL—The Secretary of Commerce, in consultation with the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission, may issue regulations to permit and regulate recreational Atlantic striped bass fishing in the Block Island Sound Transit Zone…  [emphasis added]”

In other words, the bill has changed from one which threatened to open the EEZ off Block Island to striped bass fishing, and handed all fishery management responsibilities within the proposed boundaries over to the states, into one that does nothing at all.

The key is in the word “may,” which means that the Secretary of Commerce is allowed to amend current regulations to permit striped bass fishing in the so-called “transit zone” between Block Island and the mainland, but only if the Secretary should choose to do so.

And that has always been the case.

The current prohibition on striped bass fishing in the EEZ was imposed by regulation, not by legislation.  The National Marine Fisheries Service, a branch of the Commerce Department, considered reopening the EEZ to striped bass fishing in 2006, but ultimately decided that it was the wrong thing to do.  Commerce could reopen the question at any time, should it decide to do so.

So all that the current H.R. 3070 does is reaffirm the status quo.  The Secretary of Commerce still has the power to open the EEZ to striped bass fishing, and the power to keep the EEZ closed.

Hopefully, the closure will continue, and H.R. 3070 will soon be lost in the mists of obscurity, a fate that it most certainly deserves.