WORDS MATTER: CALL THEM "RELEASES"

Language has power.

Although words seem ephemeral, they have the ability to transform anything, even the most seemingly solid and immutable objects, through the power of perception.

Consider “used car.”  

When you first hear those words, it’s not unlikely that you think of some clunker, sitting on a lot amid dozens of its kind, with a price and some sort of come-on phrase luridly painted across its whole windshield.  And maybe you think about semi-bald tires, sawdust in the transmission, and maybe a fast-talking, ethically-challenged salesman or two.

You don’t see many folks selling “used cars” any more, at least not many people connected with major dealerships.  If you see any at all, it usually involves a small, ill-lighted lot in a disreputable section of town, or an obnoxious ad that blasts through the speakers of your truck's radio.

On the other hand, you see plenty of folks selling “pre-owned vehicles” these days. 

I think that Mercedes might have started that trend, but these days you’ll see pre-owned Fords, Nissans and Hyundais, too.  Even though you know, in your head, that they’re all just used cars, essentially no different than what you would have found on the same dealer’s lot a decade ago, down in your gut they seem somehow far better than the “creampuff” you bought, in your youth, from that guy in the plaid suit, who was always chewing on a cheap cigar.

Words can, is such ways, upgrade the mundane.

They can downgrade the virtuous, too.  

Unfortunately, for an example of that, we only need to turn to federal fisheries managers, and how they deal with catch and release.

And maybe the first thing we ought to consider is how, and then perhaps, why, they don’t really acknowledge "releases" at all.

Instead, they call them “discards,” tossing them into the same big pot as “regulatory discards,” the undersized, over-limit and out-of-season catch that fishermen might want to keep, but aren’t allowed to by law, and “economic discards,” fish that may be legally kept but, to a commercial fisherman, aren’t worth the time and the trouble—and the hold space—to bring back to the dock.

The shared characteristic of regulatory and economic discards is that folks don’t want to catch them.  For commercial fishermen, discards of any sort just take up valuable time on the water that could be better spent catching something with real market value.  For anglers, days spent catching shorts and out-of-season, non-target fish are usually not too much fun.

Fish caught by a catch-and-release angler, who heads out on the intending to let everything go, are something essentially different.  They are not “discarded.”  They are not returned to the water because of legal restrictions or because they are perceived to have little value. 

Very much to the contrary, such fish are usually caught during the open fishing season, and are frequently big enough to keep.  They are released not because they are worthless, but because they are held in such esteem by the angler that, in the words of the late angler and author Lee Wulff, they are thought

“too valuable to be caught only once.”

Unfortunately, the National Marine Fisheries Service doesn’t see things the same way that anglers do.

I was reminded of that yesterday, as I was reading through the just-released Fisheries of the United States 2017, NMFS’ annual report to Congress which, in its preliminary comments on the recreational fishery, notes that

“The 2017 U.S. marine recreational fishfish catch, including fish kept and fish released (discarded) on the Atlantic, Gulf, and Pacific coasts (including Alaska, Hawaii, and Puerto Rico), was an estimated 1 billion fish taken on an estimated 202 million fishing trips…”

While a significant proportion of the fish released probably did represent legitimate regulatory discards, having been undersized, over-limit or out-of-season when caught, a significant portion were also undoubtedly legitimate “releases”—fish that could have been retained by an angler who just preferred to set the fish free.

NMFS’ failure to distinguish between regulatory discards and intentional releases needs to be remedied, because it has real and unfortunate policy consequences.  The most recent, and one of the most unfortunate, is currently unfolding at the Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council, which has begun work on what it calls the “Bluefish Allocation Amendment,” a pending amendment to its bluefish management plan that could permanently shift some of the annual allocation from the recreational to the commercial sector.

Ad hoc reallocations of bluefish are already permitted under the current management plan, which was last amended in 1998.  It provides that

“If the commercial quota was less than 10.6 million lbs, the quota could be increased up to 10.6 million lbs if the recreational fishery was not anticipated to land their allocation for the upcoming year.”

The key word in that provision is “land”; as the management plan is written, the goals of the recreational fishery are deemed to be the same as those of the commercial fishery—harvesting bluefish.  No consideration was given to the catch-and-release fishery at all.

That’s important in the case of bluefish which, because they can be strong-tasting, particularly if not bled and iced down as soon as they are caught, are not particularly valued as food.  However, they are valued for their fight, and many anglers are completely content to catch and release bluefish all day, without keeping a single fish.

The Bluefish Allocation Amendment could end up punishing anglers for releasing fish that they don’t intend to eat.  It is somewhat ironic that if recreational fishermen killed more of their catch, and used the unwanted fish for fertilizer or just dumped them at the local landfill, as happened far too often in the past, no one would be talking about reallocation.  But because the anglers are returning live fish to the water, to help maintain abundance, provide good fishing in the future, and perhaps bolster the spawning stock, they could be subject to a punitive reallocation.

Reading the Scoping and Public Information Document, Bluefish Allocation Amendment to the Bluefish Management Plan, which kicked off the public comment process on the amendment, makes the bias against, and nonrecognition of, catch and release fishing clear.  The scoping document notes that

“A coastwide time series of recreational harvest and catch (harvest and discards) in numbers of fish is provided…  [emphasis added]”

Four more times in the text, the term “discards” is used, including one sentence noting that

“Discards in the recreational fishery remain relatively high throughout the time series.  [emphasis added]”

Discards.  

The word “releases” is not used one single time in any section of the document describing the fishery or the possible goals of the amendment.  It is as if, to managers, the catch-and-release fishery did not exist at all, and was unworthy of consideration if it did.

Since anglers don’t seem to value bluefish—after all, they “discard” most of their catch rather than, at the least, taking them home and feeding them to the tomatoes—some fishery managers would just shift recreational quota to the commercial sector, which apparently values the species enough to want to kill more of them.  (It should be noted here that few commercial fishermen support reallocation, so this is not criticism of them, but of the management mentality that makes such reallocation a worrying possibility.)

That sort of thinking is possible because federal fishery management is strangely schizophrenic when it comes to catch-and-release angling.  One of the clearly stated purposes of the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act, which governs all fishing in federal waters, is

“to promote domestic commercial and recreational fishing under sound conservation and management principles, including the promotion of catch and release programs in recreational fishing.  [emphasis added]”

The law also defines “bycatch” to include

“fish which are harvested in a fishery, but which are not sold or kept for personal use, [including] economic discards and regulatory discards.  Such term does not include fish released alive under a recreational catch and release fishery management program.  [emphasis added]”

Both “economic discards” and “regulatory discards” are also defined, but Magnuson-Stevens does not define any other sort of “discards” that would seem to include those fish voluntarily returned to the water by anglers.  And since released fish are, by definition, not “harvested,” it doesn’t seem that they’d be bycatch, either.

Looking at the letter of the law, it would seem that a released fish should be treated by managers as, well, a released fish, and not as a discard.

But that’s not the way things have played out.  Instead, regulations adopted by NMFS in 2008 state that

“A catch-and-release fishery management program is one in which the retention of a particular species is prohibited.  In such a program, those fish released alive would not be considered bycatch.”

Thus, if I’m fishing south of Long Island, and I catch and release a sandbar or a dusky shark, neither of which I am legally allowed to keep, that released fish is not considered to be “bycatch.”  On the other hand, if I release a bluefish that happened to show up in my chum slick, that bluefish constitutes…

It’s not really clear what.  

While a strict wording of the law would lead to the conclusion that such bluefish was not “bycatch,” because the fish wasn’t “harvested.” Because I would have been legally able to retain the bluefish had I elected to do so, it wouldn't be a regulatory discard, and it’s difficult to call it an economic discard, either, as the release wasn't because “of an undesirable size, sex, or quality,” nor for any “other economic reasons.”  

But under current NMFS regulations, that bluefish probably would be considered bycatch, and/or some sort of undefined “discard,” with all of the negative connotations those words imply.  That's a problem, because managers are required to “minimize bycatch” pursuant to National Standard 9 of Magnuson-Stevens, and so minimize “discards,” too.

And that puts catch-and-release anglers, and catch-and-release fisheries, in a very strange and very undeserved place.

The simple act of releasing a fish, something that conservation-minded anglers have always deemed laudable, has been twisted by the language of fishery management into an act that, at best, has no legal standing and, at worst, managers should strive to prevent.

That’s a situation in very dire need of change.

In a troubled ocean where an increasing human population, warming waters, resource extraction, pollution and a host of other factors place increasing stress on fish populations, catch-and-release angling should be recognized as an effective way to do what Magnuson-Stevens requires—maximizing recreational opportunities, while protecting marine ecosystems—and not as an activity that produces nothing but bycatch and discarded fish.

So when Congress again considers reauthorizing Magnuson-Stevens, let's try to convince our legislators to call voluntary releases what they are—RELEASES—not “discards” or “bycatch” or terms of that sort, and recognize that such releases plan an important role in the health of salt water fish stocks.

TROUBLING THOUGHTS, OF A TROUBLED FUTURE

Mike Mucha and I have been fishing together for a very long time.

I first met him back in the ‘70s, at a tackle shop where I worked during the summers of my college and law school days that served as a hangout for a lot of the town’s striped bass anglers.  We started making some bass trips together, tossing bucktails into the tide that flowed past the sod banks and mansions that lined our local shore.

We had good times back then, starting the season with winter flounder during the first, blustery days of spring, and usually ending it with flounder, too, in November, although blackfish—what most folks call “tautog”—and maybe a late striper or two were also a part of the mix.  In between, there were striped bass and bluefish, weakfish and fluke, and sometimes a trip to Rhode Island to chase big fish offshore.

I was on his boat one morning in ’81, when we caught what remain my two largest bluefish, 19-10 ½ and 20-10 ½, on a glass-calm morning off Greenwich Point.  And it was on his boat that my father, Mike and I enjoyed an exceptional hour and a half catching weakfish, landing 13, weighing between 7 and 14 pounds, off Eaton’s Neck.  Mike took the 14-pounder on 4-pound; we learned, too late, that it would have been a line-class world record at the time, if it hadn’t ended up just being fillets instead.

When my father was in his late 80s, and couldn’t come out to fish with me on Long Island any more, Mike took him fluke fishing in the Sound, something he enjoyed up until the year that he died.

Since I moved to Long Island, we’ve developed a kind of shuttle-fishing system.  

He comes out and stays at my place, where we run offshore to fish for sharks, tuna and such, and I make the 0-Dark-30 runs up to his dock, where we head out onto home waters I’ve fished since I was two years old.  Over the years, we’ve won our share of tournaments, with Mike or his brother Gerry on the rod, while I mapped out our strategy, ran the boat and sank the gaff home at the end of the fight.  

Though we’ve long since grown out of our tournament phase, we’ll never forget the bigeye and yellowfin, bluefin and albacore, mako and marlin, and all of the other fish, that we caught both in competition and when we were out just fishing for fun.

It’s not hard to understand that fishing, particularly salt water fishing, has always been a big part of both of our lives.

So it was a bit of a shock when, I while ago, we were on his boat talking, and he said “If I was young right now, just starting out, I don’t think that I’d buy a boat.  It just isn’t worth it.  There aren’t any fish any more.”  

He’s repeated similar sentiments a few times since, most recently a month ago, when we were anchored up on some rocks off the Greenwich shore, hoping to put a few blackfish in the box.

It was one of those days that started well before sunrise, bucktailing stripers, and ended up in the afternoon, dropping green crabs down to the bottom where blackfish ought to have been.  

Throughout all those hours, there was some action and much disappointment.  All day, the sky above Long Island Sound had been dotted with small flocks of gulls hovering above schools of feeding striped bass, and the water’s rippled surface regularly exploded into bursts of white foam as schools of migrating fish chased bait into the air.  But the fish were all tiny, mostly three-year-olds from the big 2015 year class; even our pre-dawn efforts failed to move a single fish over five pounds. 

The hordes of small bass might bode well for the future.  If they can survive their sojourns in Chesapeake Bay, where 19-inch bass are still legal to kill, and if they manage not to end up in somebody’s cooler as a “bonus fish” during the fall run off New Jersey, where a special permit allows anglers to kill one little striped bass that is nearly, but not quite, large enough to spawn for the first time, those 2015s could help to rebuild the spawning stock.

If.

For the lack of larger fish was disturbing.  The tide, time of day and season was right, but larger fish just were not there.  Where were the 2011s, fish from an even larger year class than that in 2015.  They had been billed as the fishery's future, but anglers up and down the coast have not been finding them as abundant as had been expected.

Blackfish was much the same story.  We eventually found a little fast action, after spots that once were productive had provided no action at all, but almost all of the fish were very small, with only one above the 16-inch minimum.  Back in the ‘70s, we could have done better fishing from shore at the town beach.

And that was Mike’s point.  

He’s a hard-core angler, experienced, with a lot of free time, but for much of this summer, he hardly fished at all.  There were no striped bass.  Even bluefish were scarce, and fluke fishing was pretty slow.  And soaking clams for porgies and a few black sea bass just didn't hold much appeal.  Looking back on the past season, he just doesn't believe that such poor fishing could justify the expense of buying and maintaining a boat, if a person hadn't owned one before.

I understand how he feels.

My wife and I moved to Long Island in ’83, during the nadir of the striped bass collapse.  I had started fishing offshore to fill the void, and Long Island, with fluke, flounder and weakfish in the bays, and tuna and makos just a short run offshore, seemed like a natural place to be.  And for a short time, it was. 

But now, the winter flounder are gone, the fluke have been headed downhill and weakfish are far from abundant.  Bass are around for a few weeks in late spring, and another few weeks in the fall, but those windows of abundance are getting smaller every year, and lately we don't even have bluefish to fill up the gap.  

For a while, black sea bass out on the wrecks kept me active, but those fish, while still abundant, are shrinking, too.  Where I once found plenty of quality “knotheads” in the three to four pound range, I’m now working hard for fish half that size; numbers remain high, but few survive to grow large.

Offshore, we see the same thing.  Makos are shrinking and getting scarce; the last stock assessment was dismal.  Out in the canyons, the action is only a shadow of what it was when I first fished those waters back in the ‘80s.  The bigeye tuna population has fallen to 20% of historical numbers, and it’s showing up in the catch.  Yellowfin are much smaller and scarcer.  Even albacore, which used to almost become pests when they hit the lures four or five at a time and disrupted the hunt for larger tuna, have all but disappeared.

I can’t recall the last time that I saw white marlin inshore.

My entire season could largely be summed up as a few months of threshers and brown sharks, late-summer dolphin and false albacore; I hardly bothered fishing the bay.  While I enjoyed myself, I enjoyed myself far more in past years, when an abundance of inshore and offshore fish provided readily-accessible action that began before St. Patrick’s Day and continued ‘til after Thanksgiving.

Faced with that sort of reality, Mike’s comment rings true.

Fishing isn’t much fun when there’s few fish around, so why would anyone spend tens of thousands of dollars on a boat and motor, and commit themselves to years of bills for insurance, dockage, repairs and fuel, just to head out onto an increasingly empty ocean? 

Those of us born to the sport can’t walk away, and we’ve learned enough over the years to find a few fish even when only a few are around.  But green anglers, new to the sport, are more likely to just find frustration, and walk away.

SOUNDS LIKE BAD NEWS FOR STRIPED BASS

I spent a lot of time trying to decide whether I should write this particular blog.

Usually, when I write about specific fisheries actions, I’m very careful to get the facts right, and provide links to any information that I may have, so that you can check it out for yourself.  I let you know when the data’s not clear, and try hard to avoid anything that smacks of reckless hyperbole or worse, crying wolf.

But today, I’m going out on a limb. 

The new benchmark stock assessment went through a peer review meeting a little over a week ago.   Because I wasn’t able to listen in, I normally would have waited until the official reports from the meeting came out, before I addressed what might have happened there.  But a lot of unofficial reports are already coming out of that meeting.  All are saying about the same thing.

And none of what they’re saying is good.

So, because striped bass are such an important fish to Atlantic Coast anglers, and because, if the stories are right, we’re likely to have a big fight on our hands very soon, I decided to take a chance and report on what I’m hearing now, even if that means that I’ll have to recant some or all of it at some point down the road.

I wish I could have been at the peer review meeting, because the assessment team has put together a new model that tries to assess the striped bass population at a stock level, breaking out the fish that spawn in Chesapeake Bay, assessing their biomass separate from that of the fish from Delaware and the Hudson River, and assigning the Chesapeake fish their own fishing mortality thresholds, both for the time that they were in the bay and when they migrate along the coast.  Similar biomass and mortality reference points were established for the combined Delaware and Hudson stocks, so that striped bass could be managed in a more precise, stock-specific manner.

The new model found that the striped bass isn’t doing all that well.  To quote from the assessment report,

“Female SSB₂₀₁₇ for the Chesapeake Bay stock was estimated at 24,688 [metric tons], less than the SSB_threshold of 52,893 mt, indicating the Chesapeake Bay stock is overfished.  The associated F_threshold was 0.297 for the Chesapeake Bay fishery and 0.353 for the ocean fishery; F₂₀₁₇ was 0.255 in the Chesapeake Bay and 0.400 in the ocean, indicating that the Chesapeake Bay stock is experiencing overfishing in the ocean but not in the Chesapeake Bay.

“For the Delaware Bay/Hudson River stock, female SSB₂₀₁₇ was 21,347 mt, below the SSB_threshold of 24,683 mt, indicating the Delaware Bay/Hudson River stock is overfished.  F₂₀₁₇ was 0.400, above the F_theshold of 0.340, indicating the Delaware Bay/Hudson River stock is experiencing overfishing.”

I received the report as a downloaded file, so I can’t provide a link at this time, but the above language makes it perfectly clear that, according to the new model, the striped bass is overfished, whether one looks at the overall population, or breaks it down into two distinct, overfished spawning stocks. 

It’s also clear that the striped bass is experiencing overfishing throughout its range, except for the Chesapeake Bay stock, which is not experiencing overfishing during that time when it remains within the confines of Chesapeake Bay.

That accords with reports I’ve received from folks at the meeting, who said that they were hearing “mostly bad news.”

What is not clear at all is whether the new assessment will pass peer review.  We probably won’t know that until early next month, when the peer reviewers’ reports are released.  However, there are persistent rumors, supposedly originating from reliable sources, suggesting that the new model still needs too much work to be deemed suitable for management purposes.  

If that is the case, then its finding of overfishing and overfished stocks will play no role in striped bass management for the next five or so years.

That doesn’t mean that managers are without an acceptable population model.  It is my understanding that, because presenting a new model always carries some risk of rejection, a second model was also prepared, one that is similar to the model used to manage striped bass today, but which has been updated with the most recent fisheries data, including the revised recreational catch and effort data that was released last July.

Again, I wasn’t at the stock assessment meeting, nor was I able to listen in on the webinar/call that ran at the same time.  However, it seems that such second model was probably responsible for a slide that was shown at the webinar, and captured by a striped bass conservation advocate, which is clearly labeled

“SAW-66 ASSESSMENT SUMMARY REPORT

“B.  ATLANTIC STRIPED BASS ASSESSMENT SUMMARY FOR 2018”

and says

“The current [Spawning Stock Biomass] threshold for Atlantic striped bass is the 1995 estimate of female SSB. The [Fishing Mortality] threshold is the F value that allows the stock to achieve the SSB threshold under long-term equilibrium conditions.

“Female SSB for Atlantic striped bass in 2017 was 68,476 [metric tons], less than the SSB_thresold of 91,436 mt, indicating that the stock is overfished.  The associated F_threshold was 0.240.  F₂₀₁₇ was 0.307, indicating the stock is experiencing overfishing.”

So that model, despite its different reference points and different estimates of both spawning stock biomass and fishing mortality in 2017, also found that the striped bass stock is overfished and experiencing overfishing.

Unless there’s some other information out there that no one is talking about, and hasn’t yet been leaked by someone in the know, it looks like the bass is in trouble.  Again.

The question is, what happens now?

Amendment 6 to the Interstate Fishery Management Plan for Atlantic Striped Bass, which supposedly governs the species’ management, makes that pretty clear.  It contains “management triggers” and language that reads

“Upon reaching any (or all) of these triggers, the Management Board is required to alter the management program to ensure the objectives of Amendment 6 are achieved.  [emphasis added]”

Two of those triggers read,

“If the Management Board determines that the fishing mortality threshold is exceeded in any year, the Board must adjust the striped bass management program to reduce the fishing mortality rate to a level that is at or below the target within one year,”

and

“If the Management Board determines that the biomass has fallen below the threshold in any given year, the Board must adjust the striped bass management program to rebuild the biomass to the target level within [ten years].”

Whichever population model survives peer review and ends up being used, those two triggers will have been tripped, and seem to give the Atlantic Striped Bass Management Board clear marching orders, and a mandate for what they need to do.

But anyone who has watched ASMFC at work over the years knows that words like “required,” when used in a management plan, don’t mean exactly what they mean in the outside world.  For example, there is another trigger in Amendment 6 that says

“If the Management Board determines that the female spawning stock biomass falls below the target for two consecutive years and the fishing mortality rate exceeds the target in either of those years, the Management Board must adjust the striped bass management program to rebuild the biomass to a level that is at or above the target within [ten years].”

But when the last benchmark stock assessment indicated that such trigger had been tripped, Amendment 6’s requirement was completely ignored.  After a full year of debate, the Management Board finally, if somewhat reluctantly, reduced fishing mortality to the mortality target, as required by yet another trigger, but it never addressed rebuilding at all.

If it had, maybe the bass would be in a better place now; perhaps still having problems, because no one foresaw the impact of the revised recreational catch figures back then, but at least less in the weeds than we find them today.

But far too many people still haven’t learned that putting off needed management measures today just means that they’ll end up paying the Piper at some point in the future, nor have they learned that the Piper will always charge interest, at usurious rates, when that bill finally becomes due.

Folks who don’t pay attention to how things can work at ASMFC also forget that there are two ways to get fishing mortality below the F_target and get female spawning stock biomass above the target for SSB.

One is to do it the hard way, working out management measures that will increase biomass to levels that best assure a healthy and sustainable stock, even if adverse spawning conditions intervene for a few years, and keeps fishing mortality low enough to assure long-term abundance.

The other is to change the reference points, reducing the spawning stock biomass threshold and allowing higher levels of fishing mortality, accepting decreased abundance and increased long-term risk to the stock, in exchange for keeping landings, and incomes, high in the short term.

ASMFC’s Atlantic Striped Bass Management Board has already discussed taking the latter course; at the May 2018 Management Board meeting, the Fishery Management Plan Coordinator for the species acknowledged that

“we’ve heard some concerns from members around this table that the current reference points may be too conservative and/or are restricting fishing unnecessarily; which has raised questions about whether the [Fishery Management Plan] objectives have changed since the implementation of Amendment 6, and maybe those acceptable risk levels have changed as well—an example being the balance between preserving biomass and allowing fishing…”

There are certainly Management Board members from some jurisdictions, particularly those that abut the Chesapeake and Delaware bays, who have expressed those concerns, and will be very reluctant to further reduce harvest.  On the other hand, there are also many Management Board members who support meaningful conservation measures.

Right now, it’s not clear which philosophy is in control.

But it looks like we’re going to find out.

As I said when I started this piece, the final decision of the peer review committee has not been released, and won’t be until next month.  There is no official word.  So it’s possible that much of what I wrote in this piece is wrong.

For the sake of the striper, I hope that it is.

But anglers ought to start thinking about what we’ll need to do, and how we’re going to do it, in the event that it’s all too correct.

ICCAT NATIONS BETRAY BIGEYE TUNA

Hudson Canyon is a doglegged, miles-long gash that was carved out of the continental shelf during the last ice age, by a Hudson River that first met the ocean a very long way from where it does so today. Located about 100 miles southeast of New York City, it is the largest submarine canyon on the East Coast, and one of the largest in the world.

Hudson Canyon is also where, three decades ago, I encountered my first bigeye tuna, a 166-pound fish that came out of nowhere to grab a trolled lure, then rocketed back to the deep, though tethered to the surface by a thin nylon line.

I wasn’t the angler who caught that first bigeye; I was running the boat, and just left the controls at the last minute to sink a flying gaff in the tuna’s side. Still, when it lay on the deck, sides reflecting the sun, I celebrated its capture as much, if not more, than the angler himself.

That’s because bigeye are different.

Unlike bluefin or yellowfin tuna, they don’t come close to shore, nor do fishermen find hordes of them chasing bait on the surface. Instead, bigeye are a fish of deep waters, that seek out their prey, usually squid, along canyon walls, the face of the continental slope, and in mid-ocean gyres of clear, warm blue water that break off from the Gulf Stream and wander across the face of the sea.

On occasion they school, but they are seldom common. More often, bigeyes come one at a time, or in small packs that will pop up behind a boat to hit four, five or six lines at the same time, and turn an orderly cockpit into a scene of hopefully-controlled chaos. Back at the dock, captains brag about how they went “four for five”‘ when the tuna attacked. And when they attack, those on the boat need to do everything right, because if they miss that one chance, they might not get another for the rest of that trip. Or on the next trip. Or the one after that…

So it’s not hard to understand why bigeye tuna are a prized offshore catch.

They’re prized in the commercial fishery, too. Although bigeye, reaching a maximum size of about 400 pounds, don’t grow as large as bluefin tuna and are not anywhere near as well known as the charismatic “giants,” they support a more valuable commercial fishery, in which large numbers of small bigeye are caught in purse seines for the canned tuna market, while a lesser number of larger fish are caught on longlines and other hook-and-line gear, for eventual sale to sushi shops, other restaurants and the retail trade.

And that’s where the bigeye has gotten into trouble, for in the words of Paulus Tak, an officer of the Pew Charitable Trusts who works on tuna management issues, “Bottom line, there are simply too many boats in the water chasing too few fish.”

Because bigeye are a highly migratory species, which cross through many nations’ waters in the course of their migrations, they are managed by the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas (ICCAT). In 2015, ICCAT established a 65,000 metric ton (mt) annual catch limit, but it only applied to the seven nations that harvested the largest amount of bigeye tuna; other nations were not subject to any landings restrictions at all.

As a result, total Atlantic bigeye landings soared well beyond the catch limit established in 2015, exceeding 80,000 mt in 2017. Such landings are too high to allow the bigeye stock to rebuild (even the 65,000 mt limit established by ICCAT, if not exceeded, had only a 49% chance of restoring the population by 2028); instead, scientists who assessed the stock again in 2018 predicted that, unless bigeye landings were substantially reduced, the stock will collapse within the next 20 years.

Abundance has already fallen to just 20% of historical levels.

At its November 2018 meeting, ICCAT debated the bigeye management issue, but discussions went nowhere, as delegates elevated parochial interests above the long-term health of the bigeye stock.

Some scientists estimated that, if annual landings were cut to no more than 50,000 mt, there was a 70 percent chance that the bigeye population could be rebuilt within ten years. While the United States supported a 10-year rebuilding timeline, there was little political support for such a sharp reduction in harvest.

A number of nations did reach agreement on a 15-year rebuilding plan that would have reduced annual landings to 62,500 mt, required many smaller harvesters to abide by such limit, and restricted the use of fish attracting devices (FADs) that are deployed by purse seiners to aggregate large numbers of immature bigeye and make them far easier to harvest. Unfortunately, such measure ultimately failed to garner enough support, and could not be adopted.

European purse seiners, who are responsible for about one-third of all Atlantic bigeye landings, blamed the failure on longlinersfrom Asia, which account for more than half of the bigeye harvest. A spokesman for the Spanish purse seiners alleged that the longliners “tried to avoid any measure that could affect their fleet.”

At the same time, fishing interests from some of the smaller harvesters that are currently exempt from catch limits, including Brazil, Senegal, Guatemala and Cape Verde, blocked efforts to include them among the regulated nations.

The various factions refused to engage in any meaningful effort to reach a compromise that would adequately protect and rebuild the bigeye. As Grantly Galland, a representative of the Pew Charitable Trusts who was present at the meeting, observed, “Everyone is to blame for this one. Each individual member is more concerned with its own priorities than finding consensus on a real recovery plan.”

In the face of such discord, the current 65,000 mt catch limit, applicable to just seven nations, was extended for another year, and some limitations on FADs were adopted.

Such measures will are not enough to halt the bigeye’s decline, and were condemned by John Henderschedt, Director of NOAA’s Fisheries’ Office of International Affairs and Seafood Inspection, who is one of the United States’ three ICCAT commissioners.  Henderschedt stated, in part, that

“Earlier this year, a stock assessment confirmed that Atlantic bigeye tuna is overfished and subject to overfishing. The United States advocated strongly for the adoption of measures that would end overfishing immediately, rebuild the stock within 10 years, establish greater accountability to catch limits, and take appropriate account of the relative impact of various fisheries by reducing the catch of small bigeye tuna in purse seine fisheries. The United States is disappointed that ICCAT failed to adopt measures that will ensure the long-term sustainability of the bigeye tuna stock.”

There is no guarantee that such badly needed measures will be adopted next year, either, for as the head of South Africa’s ICCAT delegation noted, “The industry wants to make money and in the quickest way it can.”

But that’s just the kind of short-term thinking that ICCAT is supposed to avoid.

The Preamble to ICCAT’s Basic Texts, which established the Commission, states that “The Governments whose duly authorized representatives have subscribed hereto, considering their mutual interests in the populations of tuna and tuna-like fishes found in the Atlantic Ocean, and desiring to co-operate in maintaining the populations of these fishes at levels which will permit the maximum sustainable catch…resolve to conclude a Convention for the conservation of the resources of tuna and tuna-like fishes of the Atlantic Ocean…”

By failing to reach an agreement on management measures that will adequately conserve the bigeye, and restore its abundance to sustainable levels, ICCAT has betrayed its stated purpose, and the international agreement that created the organization.

And, far worse, it has betrayed the bigeye as well.

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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/

DEFENDING MAGNUSON-STEVENS FROM THE LAME DUCK

The 115th Congress is on its last legs.

Both chambers adjourned before the midterm elections to let their members campaign ahead of the vote. Now, they are meeting in a so-called “lame duck session,” which will provide outgoing members, and outgoing majorities, one last chance to pass their priority legislation before the 116th Congress ushers in newly-elected legislators, and new legislative priorities, in 2019.

The House of Representatives plans to meet for 16 days before year’s end, although that schedule could be changed if compelling reasons to do so arise. The remainder of the Senate’s 2018 session isn’t so clearly defined, but it’s safe to predict that it will probably meet for 20 days or so before adjourning.

That’s not a lot of time to get things done, given the outstanding issues. A continuing resolution to finance a number of government agencies expires on December 7; before then, Congress must either agree to provide further funding for those agencies or face a partial government shutdown.

The Senate needs to act on a number of pending judicial and agency appointments; should they fail to do so before the end of the year, the appointment process for the open positions must begin anew in 2019.

And the two chambers still need to find common ground on a Farm Bill, legislation that has been stalled for much of this year.

Even as those issues are being debated, there will be a lot of pressure on legislators to pass other bills during the closing days of the 115th Congress, and some of those bills could have a negative impact on the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act (Magnuson-Stevens), the nation’s most important fishery management law.

Such harmful legislation, in both the House and the Senate, fall under the general rubric of the “Modern Fish Act.”

The Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership (TRCP) recently called for Congress to pass the Modern Fish Act in the lame duck session. At the same time that it admitted that TRCP’s efforts to pass that bill represented “a Hail Mary pass,” it argued that “our coastal economies deserve to see us build upon the bipartisan support for [the Modern Fish Act], not head back to the drawing board in January.” Members of the recreational fishing and boating industries have echoed that sentiment.

The TRCP statement provides grounds for concern, because it also stated that the Modern Fish Act “passed out of Senate committee and House this summer,” despite the fact that the House and Senate bills were very different bills.

The Senate Modern Fish Act, S. 1520, is a somewhat sullen piece of legislation being advanced by some elements of the recreational fishing community, who feel ignored by federal regulators and are striking out against commercial fishermen who, they believe, are getting all of the regulators’ attention. At least one national angling group has complained that Magnuson-Stevens “has never taken recreational anglers into account, favoring instead commercial fishing interests.”

Although S. 1520 would make a few things harder for some members of the commercial fishing industry, and would deprive federal fishery managers of some useful management tools, it is relatively harmless, and more of a nuisance than a threat to the fishery management process.

That can’t be said of the House bill, H.R. 200, the so-called “Strengthening Fishing Communities and Increasing Flexibility in Fisheries Management Act.” It is a far larger and more comprehensive bill than S. 1520, and seeks to make substantial revisions to Magnuson-Stevens and weaken many of the conservation and management provisions of the current law. Modern Fish Act provisions make up only a small part of the House bill.

Even so, Modern Fish Act supporters seem to consider S. 1520 and H.R. 200 different faces of the same legislation. That was clearly implied in the TRCP statement, as well as in a joint press release issued in February 2018 by ten of the Modern Fish Act’s largest institutional supporters. Such release noted that H.R. 200 had been approved by the House Natural Resources Committee and said that “the coalition [that issued the release] encourages Senate leadership to quickly bring S. 1520 to the floor for final passage. Marine recreational anglers and boaters are eager to see this landmark legislation move through the House and Senate and signed into law.”

That statement appears to describe a process in which H.R. 200, which has since been passed in the House, would be conferenced with S. 1520, should that bill ever be passed in the Senate, a process that could allow many of the harmful provisions of H.R. 200 become law.

Jeff Angers, president of the Center for Sportfishing Policy, an organization that has been coordinating the political efforts of Modern Fish Act supporters, has adamantly denied any plan of conferencing H.R. 200 with S. 1520, despite what would appear to be contradictory language in the TRCP announcement, the joint press release, and other statements made by Modern Fish Act supporters.

Whether or not Modern Fish Act supporters ever planned to conference the two bills, the time remaining in the lame duck session seems insufficient for any such effort, as it is very unlikely that a conference committee could meet, reach an agreement, and then see both the House and the Senate approve the final, compromise bill before the end of the year.

Even if conferencing the two bills is no longer a practical option, it’s clear that Modern Fish Act supporters will try to have S. 1520 passed in the Senate this year, and then get it approved by the House. That will also be a difficult task, as it’s hard to see the House approving such legislation without Rep. Young or some other member attaching one or more pet provisions to it along the way. Even if any such amendments, should they then be approved by the Senate, resulted in less harm than a conference with H.R. 200, they could still do some real damage to federal fishery law.

The bottom line is that there is no scenario in which the Senate’s approval of S. 1520 would help federal fishery managers maintain healthy and abundant fish stocks, or assure that such stocks will remain healthy and abundant for future generations. S. 1520 is an ill-conceived bill that deserves to die without reaching the Senate floor; the fact that, standing alone, it won’t do much harm is hardly a reason for passage.

Thanks to the mid-term elections, the climate in the House will change from one that promoted short-term exploitation, and bills such as H.R. 200, to one that favors conservation and managing fish stocks for the long term. In such an environment, legislators are unlikely to amend Magnuson-Stevens piecemeal, with bills such as the Modern Fish Act. 

Instead, those who supported such bills will have the opportunity to come forward with proposals that address their concerns within the context of a comprehensive review of federal fisheries law.

But until then, Magnuson-Stevens must be defended in the lame duck. To do that, the Senate must allow the Modern Fish Act to die in the 115th Congress, so that it can begin anew, and with a clean slate, in 2019.

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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.com/blog/