ASMFC FAILS STRIPED BASS--AGAIN

Last Thursday, the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission again demonstrated why it has been unable to restore even a single fish stock over the past twenty years.

In November 2014, ASMFC’ Atlantic Striped Bass Management Board adopted Addendum IV to Amendment 6 to the Atlantic Striped Bass Interstate Management Plan, which has the stated purpose of

“reducing [fishing mortality] to a level at or below the target beginning in 2015…conservation of the strong 2011 year class and conservation of spawning fish to enhance the long-term sustainability of the striped bass resource and the fisheries that it supports.  [emphasis added]”

The Addendum was adopted in response to a benchmark stock assessment released in late 2013, which showed that the striped bass stock had experienced repeated episodes of overfishing over the previous 10 years, and that there was a substantial chance that the stock would become overfished if no remedial action was taken.

Addendum IV established a fishing mortality target of 0.180, and a fishing mortality threshold of 0.219, both substantially lower than previous fishing mortality reference points.  In order to reduce fishing mortality to the target level, coastal striped bass harvest was reduced by 25%, compared to harvest in 2013, while harvest in Chesapeake Bay was reduced by 20.5%, compared to harvest in 2012.

The Addendum seemed to have been achieving at least two of its three goals.  A 2016 Striped Bass Stock Assessment Update revealed that fishing mortality in 2015 had been 0.16, marginally below Addendum IV’s target.  A separate analysis performed by ASMFC’s Atlantic Striped Bass Technical Committee found that coastal harvest, which for the most part targets spawning-sized fish, showed significant decreases of 24.9% in the commercial fishery and 47.0% in the recreational fishery. 

However, efforts to protect the 2011 year class fell short, as the Chesapeake Bay jurisdictions failed to protect those fish from excessive recreational harvest.  Instead of reducing landings by 20.5%, as explicitly required by Addendum IV, the Chesapeake Bay states allowed recreational harvest to spike up by 58.4%.  According to the 2016 Update,

“Coast-wide recreational harvest was dominated by the 2011 (age 4) and 2010 (age 5) year-classes in 2015…Recreational harvest from the ocean states (includes Delaware Bay) was comprised mostly (70%)  of ages 5-10, while harvest in Chesapeake Bay (MD and VA) was dominated by age 4-8 (70%).”

So if the 2011s, which Addendum IV was supposed to conserve, was one of two year classes that dominated the 2015 harvest, if such 2011s were only an important part of the recreational landings in Chesapeake Bay and if Chesapeake Bay anglers increased their harvest by 58%, instead of reducing it by 20.5%, it’s pretty clear what changes, if any, ought to be made in the striped bass management program.

But if you believed that ASMFC would really try to live up to the conservation goals set out in its management plan, or hold a state accountably for flagrantly ignoring its obligation to a public resource, you haven’t been paying much attention to how things are done at the Commission.

Instead of taking actions that might help to insure the stock’s recovery, the Management Board has moved toward relaxing the restrictions imposed by Addendum IV, even though the 2016 Update let everyone know that spawning stock biomass stands at an estimated 58,853 metric tons, well below the 72,032 metric ton target but just slightly above the 57,626 metric ton threshold that defines an overfished stock.

As ASMFC announced after its 4-Day Winter Meeting,

“The Commission’s Atlantic Striped Bass Management Board initiated the development of Draft Addendum V to Amendment 6 to the Atlantic Striped Bass Fishery Management Plan (FMP) to consider liberalizing coastwide commercial and recreational regulations.  The Board’s action responds to concerns raised by Chesapeake Bay jurisdictions regarding continued economic hardship endured by its stakeholders since the implementation of Addendum IV and information from the 2016 assessment update indicating fishing mortality is below the target.”

It’s hard to even discuss such a foolish action.

The Chesapeake Bay jurisdictions, and particularly Maryland, did not want to see the Management Board adopt Addendum IV in the first place.  At the October 2014 Management Board meeting, all four—Maryland, the District of Columbia, Virginia and the Potomac River Fisheries Commission—voted against using the best available science, in the form of the fishing mortality and spawning stock biomass reference points determined by the benchmark stock assessment, to manage striped bass.

They then fought doggedly to prevent a 25% harvest reduction, based on that good science, from being imposed in 2015.  First, they tried to stretch the reduction out over three years, then over two and finally asked for and received special treatment in the form of a 20.5% reduction, instead of the full 25% reduction imposed on all other states.

But no good or thoughtful deed goes unpunished, and despite the Management Board's concession on the size of the harvest reduction, at the November 2015 Management Board meeting, Maryland’s marine fisheries director, Michael Luisi, was already complaining about how

“The charter, the recreational and the commercial industry are suffering greatly as a result of the reduction’s we’ve taken,”

and trying to undo the science-based measures of Addendum IV.

We now know that, at least with respect to the recreational fishery, Mr. Luisi's statement was patently false, given that recreational fishermen suffered no reduction at all, but actually substantially increased their landings in 2015.  Even so his tales of hardship have survived all confrontations they have had with the truth, and formed the basis for last Thursday’s motion to begin relaxing striped bass rules.

However, the motion also relied on a memo from the Technical Committee, which found that regulations could be relaxed to allow a harvest about 10% above 2015 levels, without exceeding the F=0.180 target.  With that memo in hand, the Management Board moved forward, to initiate a new Addendum V.

I have to admit that I have read the Technical Committee’s memo a few times, trying to find anything in it which supports such action. 

To begin, without any change in regulations at all, striped bass fishing mortality for 2016 seems likely to fall somewhere between 0.190 and 0.194, depending on how it’s calculated, which is already above the fishing mortality target.

Based on that, alone, Mr. Luisi already has the 10% increase in landings that he’s been looking for.

The Technical Committee calculated that, in order to bring 2015 landings levels up to a 0.180 fishing mortality rate, between 303,800 and 341,186 additional fish could be killed.  However, it appears that anglers landed more than 500,00 more fish in 2016 than they did in 2015, so based on 2016 landings, harvest would have to be reduced by 6% to keep fishing mortality from exceeding its target.

So, somehow, the Technical Committee decided to effectively ignore 2016’s reality in favor of two theoretical calculations.  One of those assumed that the fishing mortality rate would equal 0.18 in both 2016 and 2017; we already know that fishing mortality was at least 0.19 in 2016, so that calculation already rests on a faulty foundation. 

The other calculation assumes actual F for 2015 and 2016, but again assumes that fishing mortality in 2017 will return to the target level.  Why that assumption was made, rather than an assumption that 2016’s rate of 0.19 would prevail, was never explained.

A look at fishing effort data, as estimated by the National Marine Fisheries Service, suggests that just the opposite would be true.

For the five years between 2010 and 2014, the states between Massachusetts and New Jersey, which account for most of the coastal striped bass harvest, averaged about 4.6 million striped bass trips per year (for the purposes of this discussion, a “striped bass trip” is a trip on which striped bass are the primary target). 

In 2015, that number dropped to less than 3.4 million trips.  

However, for just the first ten months of 2016, anglers in those states had already taken about 3.3 million trips; during the period 2010-2016 (excluding 2012, when Hurricane Sandy disrupted late-season angling activity), New York and New Jersey alone averaged more than 500,000 striped bass trips in November and December, suggesting that the actual number of trips made in 2016 was somewhere in excess of 3.8 million.  (It should be noted that the Technical Committee did try to estimate November/December 2016 landings when calculating 2016 fishing mortality.)

Thus, it is likely that 2015 effort and landings estimates were well below average, and that as a result, 2015 provides a poor baseline to use in predicting future recreational striped bass landings.  The coast will not always make up for the excesses in Chesapeake Bay.  If Addendum 5 is ultimately adopted, such landings could well approach or exceed the threshold, and cause overfishing to occur.

That is particularly true because, as the Technical Committee noted in its recent memo to the Management Board,

“although the assessment is very good, it may not be able to distinguish between fishing mortality point estimates of 0.16 and 0.18.  In other words, the upper and lower bounds of the confidence intervals for both F estimates would essentially overlap.”

Which means that the fishing mortality rate in 2015 may already have been 0.18, and that no underage ever occurred.

And that demonstrates the essential weakness of the ASMFC system.  

Unlike federal fisheries managers, which are required by law to employ the best available science, avoid overfishing and rebuild overfished stocks in a timely fashion, state managers, acting through ASMFC, know no such constraints.

If a manger down in Maryland wants to live a lie, and insist that his recreational fishermen have “suffered” as a result of reductions that never occurred, and if he chooses to halt the recovery of the striped bass stock, and risk pushing that stock down to “overfished” status merely to gain a transient economic advantage for a handful of watermen in his state, he’s free to do so, if he can convince the rest of the Management Board to go along.

Hopefully, the Management Board will, in the end, not be convinced, and will stop the Addendum V process.

However, hope rarely accomplishes much without people working to turn such hopes into reality.  

Right now, there is little to do but stay informed, and let fellow anglers know that this problem has arisen.  But at some point before the May ASMFC meeting, we should get a look at the draft Addendum V.

When we do, we will have to do just what we did when Addendum IV came out—let our state representatives to ASMFC know how we feel.  

We’ll have to go to the hearings, make our thoughts known, and make it clear that we are not willing to let the progress already wrought by Addendum IV be squandered.

The public is entitled to a healthy and fully recovered striped bass stock.

NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES PRAISES MARINE RECREATIONAL INFORMATION PROGRAM

 Whenever fishery managers propose regulations that restrict anglers’ landings, someone will always complain that such rules are not needed, and challenge the data on which they are based.

While biological data, such as stock assessments, receive some criticism, most anglers’ rancor is reserved for the National Marine Fisheries Service’s (NMFS) estimates of the recreational catch.

Anglers, and the organizations that represent them, typically argue that recreational catch is overestimated, and that more accurate data would show that further regulation isn’t needed. However, sometimes anglers try to increase their share of the recreational/commercial allocation; then, they do an about-face, and claim that recreational harvest estimates understated landings, but only during the years used to calculate the recreational/commercial split.

Regardless of what they are trying to prove, opponents of recreational regulation have, for a very long time, routinely claimed that recreational harvest data was “flawed”, “obsolete“, “fatally flawed” and “unreliable.”

For many years, such criticisms may have been justified.

In 2006, the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) reviewed the Marine Recreational Fishing Statistics Survey (MRFSS), and found that “the current methods used in the MRFSS for sampling the universe of anglers and for determining their catch and effort is inadequate.” It recommended that “The MRFSS…should be completely redesigned to improve its effectiveness and appropriateness of sampling and estimation procedures, its applicability to various kinds of management decisions, and its usefulness for social and economic analysis.”

NMFS took that recommendation to heart, and embarked on a multi-year effort to improve its recreational catch estimates. The result was the Marine Recreational Information Program (MRIP), which was designed to address MRFSS’ shortcomings.

In early 2016, NMFS requested that NAS review MRIP, to determine whether it had successfully overcome MRFSS’ problems. On January 10, 2017, NAS released a report of its findings.

A summary of those findings declares, “Work to redesign the National Marine Fisheries Service’s recreational fishery survey program (now referred to as the Marine Recreational Information Program) has yielded impressive progress over the past decade in providing more reliable data to fishery managers. Major improvements to the statistical soundness of the survey designs were achieved by reducing sources of bias and increasing sampling efficiency as well as through increased coordination with partners and engagement of expert consultants.”

MRIP, like MRFSS, incorporates two different surveys, one designed to measure angling effort, and one that intercepts anglers as they come in from fishing and records their actual catch. The NAS report concluded, “The methodologies associated with the current Fishing Effort Survey, including the address-based sampling mail survey design, are major improvements from the original Coastal Household Telephone Survey that employed random-digit-dialing to contact anglers.”

The report also found that “The new Access Point Angler Intercept Survey design [used to interview anglers and record their catch] is a substantial improvement on the MRFSS intercept survey methodologies.”

That was good news. Both legs of MRIP stood on solid ground.

The NAS report also pointed out that MRIP still needed some tweaking, noting that “Some additional challenges remain for the survey program, including those associated with nonresponse, electronic data collection and communication and outreach to some audiences.”

The report warned that the current practice of asking anglers to remember how many times they went fishing over the past two months to be vulnerable to lapses of memory, and recommended that NMFS consider approaches to minimize such problems, “such as asking people in advance to document fishing trips planned over the next two months, to reduce concerns about angler recall.” Collecting information through anglers’ use of electronic devices, such as smartphones, was also recommended, as a more efficient way to gather quality data.

Nonresponse to all or part of a survey, whether caused by anglers who refused to be interviewed, faced language barriers, or were missed by surveyors, also remains a problem. The report recommended that NMFS engage in “targeted annual nonresponse studies…to control its damaging effects on data quality.”

Yet, despite the report’s suggestions for some further improvements to MRIP, its general tone was undoubtedly positive. It confirmed that MRIP would provide fisheries managers with far better recreational landings data than they had ever received before.

That creates a problem for those who typically oppose any proposed restrictions on recreational harvest, and justify their opposition by citing NAS’ 2006 criticisms of MRFSS, since NAS’ most recent report makes it clear that MRIP has eliminated many of MRFSS’ former flaws.

Unfortunately, the early indications are that such opponents of data-based regulations will merely sidestep NAS’ positive comments, and seek new ways to discredit the data.

Shortly after the NAS report was released, the American Sportfishing Association (ASA), which represents the recreational fishing industry, placed an editorial in Sport Fishing magazine. Although it grudgingly admitted that “the NAS report is generally complimentary of progress made recently under MRIP,” ASA’s primary message was that MRIP remains “a system that is not capable of providing information…to the degree necessary to meet current statutory requirements.”

ASA didn’t provide any support for that conclusion. Instead, it was rooted in a simple comment in the NAS report which said that NMFS should “Evaluate whether the design of MRIP for the purposes of stock assessment and the determination of stock management reference points is compatible with the needs of in-season management of annual catch limits,” in order to address concerns previously expressed by “analysts, managers and stakeholders.”

ASA declared that “A full evaluation of this issue would almost certainly conclude what anglers have long known: The inability of MRIP to allow for in-season adjustments exposes one of the core flaws of the federal saltwater-fisheries-management system…NOAA Fisheries should look to the states for proven recreational-fisheries-management approaches that don’t constrain managers to attempt to enforce quotas in real time without the data to do so.”

Thus, ASA proposed that NMFS neither set quotas for recreational fishermen nor use MRIP data to determine whether such recreational fishermen were killing too many fish.

That might go over well with some anglers, who would enjoy less restrictive regulations. At least, they would enjoy them until fish stocks collapsed.

But over the long term, such an approach would do the fish, or the fishermen, no good at all.

Accurate data is a prerequisite for effective fisheries management. Guesses and politically expedient answers are not good enough.

The recent NAS report makes it clear that MRIP will go a long way toward putting accurate recreational catch data into managers’ hands.

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

FISHERIES MANAGEMENT: LIVING IN A POST-TRUTH WORLD

For the past six months or so, some folks in the media have said that we’re all living in a “post-truth world.”

The Oxford Dictionaries, one of the most authoritative sources of words and their meanings, declared “post-truth” as their 2016 Word of the Year, and defined it as

“relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief.

Based on that definition, fisheries management has existed in a post-truth world for a very long time, far before such a world was conceived by the general population.

Fisheries management is a science-based, data-driven process, but any time that new regulations are proposed, at least some of the affected fishermen will inevitably reject biologists’ conclusions, merely because such conclusions don’t mesh with the fishermen’s perceived interests and/or beliefs. 

That’s true regardless of species or coast, although it’s possible that New England fishery managers have been living in a post-truth world a bit longer than the rest of us.  

Nothing illustrates the post-truth world of fisheries management better than a 2014 stock assessment update of Gulf of Maine cod, and the reaction that such update provoked.

The news revealed by the update was dire.

“The Gulf of Maine Atlantic cod stock is overfished and overfishing is occurring.  Spawning stock biomass…levels are the lowest ever estimated and are at 4% or 3% of the [proxy for spawning stock biomass that will produce maximum sustainable yield].  The 2013 fully selected fishing mortality…is more than 6 times greater than  the [proxy for fishing mortality at maximum sustainable yield].   Fishing mortality is near all time highs despite the fact that fishery catches are at the lowest levels in the time series.  The Gulf of Maine cod stock is in poor condition.”

In a truth-based world where public opinion was driven by objective facts, such a report would have driven everyone, including fishermen, to demand that managers impose regulations capable of stemming the decline and beginning the cod’s long road to recovery. 

But in the post-truth world of fisheries management, just the opposite happened.  Fishermen actually started arguing that the cod stock was increasing in size.  According to the Portland Press Herald, fishermen believe

“that scientists are using a mathematical model that is ‘corrupted’ by the use of cod-landings data that does not take into account increasingly stringent regulations that make it harder for fishermen to catch cod…As a result, the smaller catch volumes represent the impact of those regulations rather than the numbers of cod.”

While scientists haven’t found any such flaw in the model, fishermen claim that they are seeing more cod.  It is possible that some of them are; however, they’re not willing to accept that they may only be seeing more fish because

“When populations of schooling fish species, such as cod, plummet, the survivors ‘hyper-aggregate’ in a concentrated area, creating the impression of abundance there while vanishing everywhere else”

yet that is exactly what occurred off Newfoundland three decades ago, just before that stock collapsed and led to a moratorium that,twenty-five years after it was imposed, is just beginning to show some positiveresults.

Such facts do not persuade fishermen, who instead reinforce one another’s beliefs that their views are right, and the science is wrong.

But at least cod had the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act on their side, which requires fishery managers to rely on hard science, and not just fishermen’s beliefs, when preparing fishery management plans.

Southern New England lobster have not been so fortunate.

In 2009, a benchmark stock assessment found that the southern New England stock of American lobster had declined sharply, saying

“Current abundance of the [southern New England] stock is the lowest observed since the 1980s and exploitation rates have declined since 2000.  Recruitment has remained low in [southern New England] since 1998.  Given current low levels of spawning stock biomass and poor recruitment further restrictions are warranted.”

In response, the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission’s Atlantic Lobster Technical Committee investigated the causes and possible remedies for the southern New England stock’s decline, and in April 2010 released their report, Recruitment Failure in The Southern New England Lobster Stock.  Such report found that the stock was “critically depleted,” and stated that

“Overwhelming environmental and biological changes coupled with continued fishing greatly reduce the likelihood of the [southern New England] stock rebuilding…

“In addition to environmental drivers, continued fishing pressure reduces the stock’s potential to rebuild, even though overfishing is currently not occurring…

“Given additional evidence of recruitment failure in [southern New England] and the impediments to stock rebuilding, the [Technical Committee] now recommends a 5 year moratorium on harvest in the [southern New England] stock area…”

That report was peer reviewed by a panel of independent experts.  Two of the three panel members endorsed the Technical Committee’s recommendation for a 5-year moratorium, while the third, who was concerned about the socio-economic impacts of such a closure, recommended that effort be cut by at least 50-75%, and did not entirely dismiss the possibility of a complete closure.

Such were the objective facts.

But, as reported in a story in the New York Times, the lobstermen believed otherwise.

”Mr. Grimshaw [a Connecticut lobsterman], no surprise, disagrees with the diagnosis and the remedy…

“What happened?  He cites lots of things, including the resurgence of predators, like cod, stripers, dogfish, skate, bluefish and seals; the use of pesticides that many lobstermen still blame for the die-off a decade ago; and an oil spill off Rhode Island.  Catches are down in part, he says, because there are fewer fishermen, and in part because of increasing size requirements for harvested lobsters…

“’It’s a multitude of things,’ Mr. Grimshaw said.  ‘We play such a small factor, it’s not even funny.  But we’re the only thing they can regulate.  They can’t regulate water temperature, can’t regulate the fish stocks, can’t regulate the oil spills.  They’re still spraying the pesticides.  This is very speculatory [sic] science…”

Unlike federal fisheries managers, whose decisions are somewhat insulated from the post-truth world by Magnuson-Stevens, ASMFC resides squarely in a post-truth environment, where beliefs and emotion, rather than facts, can determine decisions. 

And in the case of southern New England lobster, they have.  Not only was the recommended moratorium never seriously considered, but effort, and landings, were never significantly contained.  As Addendum XVII to Amendment 3 to the Interstate Fishery Management Plan for American Lobster, adopted after nearly two full years of debate, almost sheepishly admits

“The American Lobster Management Board first initiated this Addendum to reduce exploitation on the [southern New England] stock by 50 or 75% in order to initiate stock rebuilding in 2010.  At the August 2011 Board meeting, the Board changed the document’s purpose to reduce exploitation by 10%.  [emphasis added]”

Because that’s the sort of thing that can happen in a post-truth world, where facts don’t control the debate.

Yet even in such a world, the facts still determine the ultimate outcomes.  In 2015, a new benchmark stock assessment for American lobster was released.  It found that the southern New England stock

“declined steeply through the early 2000s to a record low level in 2013.  Closer scrutiny reveals the inshore portion of the [southern New England] stock has clearly collapsed…It is believed the offshore area of [southern New England] depends on nearshore settlement as a source of recruits.  Therefore, the offshore is also in jeopardy and the Technical Committee and [Independent Peer] Review Panel believe the stock has little chance of recovering unless fishing effort is curtailed…[B]y any reasonable standard, it is necessary to protect the offshore component of the stock until increased recruitment has been observed.  [emphasis added]”

Again, the objective facts are clear.  

The stock is still plummeting downhill.

But in ASMFC’s post-truth world, one of the managers’ first reactions wasn’t to accept the findings of the peer-reviewed stock assessment, but to question them, with David Simpson, Connecticut’s marine fisheries director, taking on the role of the disbelieving lobstermen and saying

“If I were an offshore fisherman, I’d want to know how close [the assessment] is to having it nailed that the faucet has been shut off inshore and the flow of water to the offshore fishery—you know, your fate is sealed.

“Is that really what is going on or is there some sort of dynamic out there that makes the offshore stock self-sustaining; so I think they really need that kind of information.  Right now I think a lot of them feel like it is an inshore problem; it is not our problem.” 

Five Management Board meetings have passed since the new benchmark assessment, which found that the inshore portion of the southern New England stock had “clearly collapsed” and that the offshore portion was “in jeopardy” was released.  No concrete measures to curtail fishing effort have yet been made, although the Management Board has committed to creating an addendum that would “address” (but, by specific vote and amendment, not necessarily “minimize”) stock decline, and finally require binding regulations by June 1, 2019, nearly four years after the 2015 benchmark assessment sounded its dire warning.

For in a post-truth world, there is no need for urgency…  

Although those two examples arose out of New England’s commercial fishery, it would be a serious mistake to assume that only New England fisheries, or only commercial fishermen, exist in a post-truth world.  

Recreational red snapper fishermen in the Gulf of Mexico have led a post-truth existence for at least the past decade.

The problem is that, while the Gulf red snapper stock has come a long way from the late 1980s and early 1990s, when it was close to collapse, it is still very far from rebuilt.   But fishermen who have never experienced a completely healthy red snapper stock are seeing more fish than they have ever seen before in their lifetimes, and mistake that increased abundance for a full recovery.

The science is clear.  

A comprehensive, peer-reviewed stock assessment, which spanned over 1,100 pages of text and data, was released in 2013, and updated a year later.  

Objective facts are not hard to find.

They tell fisheries managers that recreational fishermen catch a lot of red snapper and that, given the heavy angling pressure, restrictive regulations are necessary to prevent overfishing,  

That didn’t go down well with “anglers’ rights” organizations and folks who sell bait and tackle, so instead of supporting science-based management, they are pushing hard for management that instead reflects their beliefs.

Such organizations have created and promoted a belief that, by taking away NMFS’ authority to manage red snapper and handing such authority over to the states, recreational fishermen will be able to kill more red snapper each year, without having any negative impact on the stock. 

They convinced Congressman Garret Graves (R-Louisiana) to introduce legislation that would hand red snapper management authority over to the states.  According to a press release issued by Coastal Conservation Association Louisiana, Graves has said

“For years, the federal government has restricted our anglers access to a public resource, limiting the ability of private citizens in South Louisiana and across the Gulf Coast to enjoy red snapper.  When I was growing up, we could fish snapper year round; this year’s recreational season was just 10 days.  Our state-based approach will eliminate failed fish management that saw only one weekend of red snapper fishing in federal waters, while preventing overfishing.  [emphasis added]”

Exactly how the states can allow more fish to be killed, while still preventing overfishing, was never explained by the Congressman. 

Folks living outside his post-truth world might suspect that no explanation was given because none exists; however, those who live a post-truth existence see no problem at all.  Jeff Angers, President of the Center for Coastal Conservation (since renamed the Center for Sportfishing Policy) endorsed Congressman Graves’ actions, saying

“For too long, the federal government has relied on outdated and inaccurate information to unfairly limit Gulf red snapper fishing to just a single weekend a year.”

Apparently, in Mr. Angers’ eyes, the fact that the federal government relied on a comprehensive, peer-reviewed stock assessment didn’t prevent that information from being “inaccurate,” and the fact that such assessment was completed in 2013, and updated in 2014, didn’t prevent the information from being “outdated” when Mr. Angers made his statement in 2015.

Such is the power of belief over facts…

But as bad as things are in the Gulf, they don’t hold a candle to the post-truth world of the mid-Atlantic summer flounder fishery.

Summer flounder, often called ‘fluke,” are a mainstay of the inshore private boat and for-hire fisheries along a broad swath of the East Coast, from Virginia all the way to Rhode Island.  They are heavily fished, and any change in regulations has a significant economic impact on coastal businesses. 

Summer flounder are deemed to be a data-rich species, benefitting from a statistically robust population model.  The last benchmark stock assessment, which had no problem passing through peer review, came out in December 2013, and is updated annually.  The last update was completed in July 2016.

As is the case with Gulf red snapper, biologists have no shortage of objective data that they can use to manage the summer flounder fishery.

But that doesn’t stop the affected fishermen from seeking belief- and emotion-based management instead.

That became very obvious last fall when, thanks to six consecutive years of below-average recruitment—not many young fish were entering the population to take the place of older fish being removed—the population was found to have fallen to just 58% of target abundance.

Representatives of the fishing industry immediately responded.

An article that appeared in The Fisherman magazine late last year went straight for the gut, trying to get a knee-jerk reaction from anglers by opening with the lines

“I’m about to tick you off.

“Seriously, reading any further is just going to make you incredibly angry.

“There’s no way to sugarcoat this, the coastwide quota for summer flounder (fluke) in 2017 is going to be cut by about 40%.  That means a shorter season, lower bag, an increase in size limits, or any combination of the three.

“Pardon my French, but I told you that you’d be pissed!”

The author didn't mention why such greater restrictions were needed until later on in the piece, after the reader’s emotions had a chance to kick in.  And even then, the facts were presented as slim slices of meat sandwiched between thick layers of indignation that were completely in harmony with their post-truth environment.

The data itself gets an emotional flogging, with statements such as

“So, are you happy with our federal government?  Do you trust the data?  Think one more cutback in the recreational harvest will be the last?...

“I could tell you to make some reasonable argument about fluke population dynamics, the ‘fatally flawed’ [Marine Recreational Information Program] data, or the inherent issues with NOAA’s trawl survey methodologies…”

The Fisherman writer ignores the fact that the Marine Recreational Information Program was never deemed “fatally flawed” by anyone other than such writer and his cronies; MRIP was designed to improve on and replace the Marine Recreational Fishing Statistics Survey, which was deemed ‘fatally flawed” by the National Academy of Sciences—the same National Academy of Sciences thatjust gave MRIP a very positive review.  

He also ignores the fact that, as the benchmark assessment and 2016 update indicate very clearly, the data that suggests poor recruitment and a declining stock isn’t provided merely by NOAA’s trawl survey, but by thirteen separate surveys conducted by the federal government and by every state between Massachusetts and Virginia.

Those are the objective facts.

But the author, by his very words, makes it clear that he lives a post-truth existence, where facts may be casually ignored.

As you probably realize by now, that’s pretty typical in the fisheries world.

And that’s not a good thing.

For as a lot of folks are learning, the post-truth world is a dangerous place.  When you let emotion and personal belief trump objective facts, unexpected and bad things can happen.

So maybe it’s time to return fisheries management to a facts-based plane of existence.

If any such place still exists.

MENHADEN: KEEPING OUR OPTIONS OPEN

The long, winding path of menhaden management is approaching another crossroads.

On the afternoon of February 1, the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission’s Atlantic Menhaden Management Board will meet for a scheduled three hours.  One of the topics that the Management Board will discuss is the proposed Amendment 3 to the Interstate Fishery Management Plan for Atlantic Menhaden, which has the potential to initiate a real sea change in the way menhaden are managed.

Atlantic menhaden are almost certainly the single most important forage fish—that is, fish that other fish (and other animals) eat—on the East Coast.  While other species such as sand eels and mullet may, in some times and places, assume greater significance, no one fish has the same impact when all waters between northern Maine and southern Florida are considered.

However, current menhaden management doesn’t emphasize the species forage role; instead, it is managed in the same manner as high trophic level predators, with the emphasis on maintaining high but sustainable levels of harvest.

Amendment 3 to the management plan has the potential to turn that around; the Management Board is considering the adoption of ecological reference points that would allow the species to fulfill its role as a primary forage species by leaving more menhaden alive in the water to serve as food for various fish, birds and marine mammals, rather than allowing such menhaden to be caught and turned into various industrial products, including the dried fish food used in Chinese fish farms.

The process of amending a fishery management plan is long and complex, and the final version of Amendment 3 is, at best, many months away.  Since last November, ASMFC has been holding public hearings to determine how folks would like to see menhaden managed.  The concept of ecological reference points has achieved wide support, which crossed traditional lines to be shared by many commercial and recreational fishermen, along with conservation groups, whale-watching operations, birders and others concerned with the overall health of the marine environment.

A summary of the public comment prepared by Meagan Ware, ASMFC’s Fishery Management Plan Coordinator for Atlantic menhaden, reveals that out of 25,554 letters received by ASMFC, all but one supported some form of ecological reference points.  25,530 of the letters supported adopting menhaden-specific ecological reference points once the data needed to determine such reference points are developed, and adopting more generalized ecological reference points in the interim, 8 did not support using interim measures but did support menhanden-specific reference points and 7 supported managing menhaden with reference points generally appropriate for forage species. 

226 of the letters supporting ecological reference points were written by individuals, 71 were submitted by various organizations and 25,248 represented individuals who signed on to one of 10 different form letters. 

The sole letter supporting the status quo came from Seafreeze Ltd., a Rhode Island-based commercial fishing operation that specializes in catching large quantities of relatively low-value fish, many if not all of which are important  forage species.  

Omega Protein Corporation, the only industrial harvester and processor of menhaden on the East Coast, was remarkably, and perhaps ominously, silent on the issue.

Other issues are also being considered in the draft Amendment 3, but from a purely conservation standpoint, the adoption of ecological reference points is the big issue.  If the Management Board ultimately goes the wrong way on that one, its actions on the other issues will have relatively little import.  On the other hand, if ecological reference points are adopted, none of the other issues, no matter how they’re decided, can do the resource all that much harm.

Thus, February’s meeting is important, not because a final decision will be made at that time—it certainly won’t be—but because the Management Board is expected to decide which options will be included in—or left out of—the next draft of the Amendment, which will probably be released for public comment in late winter or early spring.

Despite strong public support for ecological reference points, there is undoubtedly other folks politicking behind the scenes.  

Although Omega Protein did not actively engage ASMFC during the public comment period, its representatives were making their opinions clear in the press.  One piece, written by Omega Vice President Monty Diehl, was posted as a rebuttal to an op-ed that appeared in The Virginian-Pilot not long ago.  There, Diehl expressed Omega’s opposition to ecological reference points, saying

“scientists believe that there are sufficient levels of menhaden left in the water for the species to fulfill its ecological role.  The fishery leaves over 93 percent of the fish in the water for just this purpose.  And while special interest activists and sport fishermen like to talk up menhaden’s role as forage for predators, a 2015 study from the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science found that the bay anchovy is actually the most important forage fish in the Bay.  Meanwhile, menhaden was not even in the ‘top three or four.’”

Like most Omega statements, Diehl’s is a garden of misdirection.  If scientists really believe that the number of menhaden available today is sufficient to fulfill the species’ ecological role, then the ecological reference points won’t put any crimp on Omega’s fishing at all, so there is no need to oppose them.  The only reason for Omega to stand against such reference points is that it’s afraid that too many fish really are being removed from the sea.

Certainly, Diehl’s statement that 93% of menhaden are left in the water is a meaningless figure.  The question isn’t how many menhaden we do leave in the ocean under today’s management, but rather how many menhaden should be left in the ocean under tomorrow’s new, hopefully improved management program that matters.  Let’s not pretend that Omega is leaving 93% of the menhaden in the water so that the fish can fulfill their role as forage.  They leave the fish in the water because ASMFC says that they have to, although Omega keeps trying to increase its kill.

And yes, fish in Chesapeake Bay were found to eat things other than menhaden.  If your preferred food isn’t available, you eat something else.  But one study, done at a time when small menhaden weren’t particularly abundant, doesn’t demonstrate what fish would be eating if menhaden were more abundant.

Even though Diehl’s response isn’t particularly convincing, if you’re familiar with all of the relevant data, a lot of people can be swayed by “alternative facts” if they’re presented in an appealing package.  There’s no doubt that Omega will be out there warning Management Board members that if further restrictions—which ecological reference points might or might not require—it will cause them to shut down a part of their operation, lay of fishermen, etc.

What Omega will undoubtedly leave out of that story is that the company has been doing so well that, for the first time in its history, it will pay a dividend to all of its stockholders, which means that any layoffs that might occur will be a matter of corporate priorities, not financial necessity.

So the public has sent in a lot of letters, and appeared at all of the hearings, and argued for ecological reference points.  

That’s good.

But the public must also understand that big outfits such as Omega, Seafreeze and probably others based down in New Jersey will be working in the background right up to the final vote, trying to stem the tide and keep management just as it is.  If the public quits now, ecological reference points might not make it into the next draft of the amendment.

So this is the time to make just one more push.  Go to http://www.asmfc.org and find out who your state’s commissioners are.  Give them a call, or send them an e-mail, and let them know that ecological reference points matter to menhaden, matter to the East Coast ecosystems and matter to you.

Ask them to keep ecological reference points—Option 1D—in the next draft.

Menhaden management is at a new crossroads, and we need managers to make the right turn.

FLUKE: WHAT IF THE SCIENCE IS RIGHT?

Ever since the National MarineFisheries Service announced that the 2017 summer flounder catch limit had to bereduced by 30% compared to the year before, elements within the East Coast angling community have been railing against the new rules, and demanding that nothing change.

The folks who are arguing for the status quo inevitably attack the quality of the science used to make the determination that harvest cuts are needed.

Paul Haertel, writing for the Jersey Coast Anglers Association, said that

“the problem as I see it is not with the fish or the fishermen, but with our fisheries managers.  They set a target of having 62,394 metric tons in the spawning stock biomass (SSB) but that has never been achieved.  In fact, this number seems so high that it may be ecologically impossible to reach…”

Tom Fote, also writing for JCCAA, commented that

“A few years ago [NMFS] declared the fishery recovered since spawning stock biomass came within the target range.  But once we reached a spawning biomass that large, recruitment began to decline.  As you can see from the table [of recruitment and spawning stock biomass published by NMFS], we had better recruitment when the spawning stock biomass was much lower.  I have contended, and some scientists have agreed with me, that we have reached the top of a bell-shaped curve which coincides with the highest levels of spawning stock biomass ever recorded.  The fact that we have exceeded the carrying capacity may be one of the reasons for the poor recruitment…“

Similar comments were made by Jim Donofrio, Executive Director of the Recreational Fishing Alliance, who declared that

“Basing harvest limits on outdated data and models is destroying the New York fishing community.  It is crucial that all federal decisions are based upon the most accurate scientific data and models.  Waiting another day for a new summer flounder benchmark assessment is one day too many.”

Such sentiments have even led to a petition asking regulators to maintain status quo summer flounder regulations in 2017, pending the completion of a new benchmark assessment (which will definitely not occur in 2017, and might not occur in 2018, either).  Proponents of the petition argue that

“What NOAA Fisheries has failed to do is update the stock assessment for summer flounder as the stock has expanded north and east.  Independent reviews found that there are significant deficiencies of [sic] the summer flounder stock assessment and that improvements should be made to the modeling approach.  It is expected that those changes could eliminate or lessen the need for quota reductions but NOAA Fisheries has no plans of updating the assessment before approving the 2017 [acceptable biological catch].

That sounds all very well and good, but one thing isn’t being considered.

What if the current science is right?

Right now, the 2016 update to the benchmark stock assessment (and yes, contrary to what you read in some of the quotes above, the benchmark assessment is not “outdated data” and NOAA Fisheries has not “failed to…update the stock assessment) tells us that the stock is at just 58% of the target biomass, and that recruitment—the number of young fish entering the population—has been below average for six consecutive years, 2010-2015.

Scientists warn that

“the stock biomass is dangerously close to being overfished, which could happen as early as [2017] if increased efforts to curb fishing mortality are not undertaken.”

That warning was supported by the Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council’s Science and Statistical Committee, a panel of eighteen scientists, all possessing doctoral degrees in relevant disciplines.

The benchmark stock assessment itself, which the Mid-Atlantic Council relies on, was peer-reviewed by a panel of independent fisheries scientists, including Dr. Cynthia M. Jones of the Old Dominion University Center for Quantitative Fisheries Ecology, Dr. Robin Cook of the MASTS Population Modeling Group at the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow, Scotland, Dr. Henrik Sparholt, the Deputy Head of the Advisory Department of the Secretariat of the International Council for the Exploration of the Sea (ICES), and Mr. John Simmonds, the Vice Chair of the ICES committee which provides fisheries advice.

That peer review panel analyzed the data used to manage summer flounder, including the biomass target, the stock/recruitment relationship and other relevant parameters, and found such data appropriate for that purpose.  That represents a strong endorsement.

When we look at the folks disputing the science, we find those quoted above—a retired police lieutenant, a former Army officer and an ex-charterboat captain who now serves as excecutive director of an “anglers’ rights” organization—along with a number of other party and charter boat captains, fishing tackle dealers and magazine writers, who may be very familiar with the recreational summer flounder fishery, but have no claim to being called fisheries scientists.

Think about this for a minute.

If you were worried that you might be facing colon cancer, you’d probably look for a qualified gastroenterologist/oncologist.  You wouldn’t take the advice of a plumber, even if he claimed that the colon was more or less the body’s sewer, and the same sort of thing flowed through both kinds of “pipes.”

If you broke your leg, I suspect that you’d want to get to a hospital emergency room posthaste, even if your friend the carpenter lived nearby, and assured you that he could make everything right by just tightening a couple of clamps on your calf and shin.

And if you or a member of your family had the misfortune of being accused of a serious crime, the odds are pretty high that you’d be looking to hire a lawyer, even though someone you knew back in high school spent ten years in jail, assured you that he knew the justice system from the inside out, and could tell you what to say to the judge in your own defense.

In short, when something bad is happening, you probably want the best professional advice you can find to address the problem, and not just try to wing it with amateur help.

Put in the context of the fluke fishery, the fact that the population could become overfished later this year, and that hasn’t seen a good spawn since 2009, is bad.  The fact that no one knows why recruitment has been so poor for so long only makes things worse.

So the question is, should we rely on a team of well-trained fisheries biologists to address and try to fix the problem, or should we accept the assurances of a bunch of boat captains, tackle dealers and various other untrained folks to tell us that things will be OK?

If the amateurs are right, we can maintain the status quo harvest of 5.42 million pounds, rather than dropping down to a harvest of just 3.77 million pounds in 2017.

But if the scientists are right, that 5.42 million pounds could well push the biomass below the overfishing threshold, making fluke even harder to find and depleting the reservoir of large, spawning-sized fish at a time that few young fish were entering the population.

That seems like the wrong way to go.

Anglers need to ask themselves whether they would rather catch fluke, and not bring too many home because of more restrictive regulations that are helping to rebuild the stock, or not catch fluke, and so not bring too many home, because the population has been depleted.

We worry about what feels like a small, 3.77 million pound bag limit this year, enforced by a 19-inch size limit that will force us to release a good part of our catch.

If the science is right, we probably should be worrying about pushing the population back to where it was in 1989, when the size limit was just 14 inches, but even without restrictive bag limits, anglers could only catch about 3.1 million pounds of fluke, because there just weren’t many fish to be found.

The bottom line is that if the science is wrong, and we reduce recreational landings when we could have stayed at status quo, we won’t take too many fish home, the fishing industry will have a slower year (but will also benefit from a likely relaxing of black sea bass rules and the 2011 year class of striped bass entering the fishery), and we’ll catch more fish than we expected in 2018.

On the other hand, if the science is right and we stay at status quo…