STRIPED BASS AND BLUEFISH: SAME PROBLEM, DIFFERENT MANAGERS, VERY DIFFERENT APPROACHES

Striped bass and bluefish just go together.

They’re both premier inshore gamefish of the New England and mid-Atlantic coasts. They frequently prey on the same schools of bait, with the bluefish slashing through the harried forage, while the bass follow beneath, feeding on the dead and the wounded.

And they’re both overfished.

But that’s where the similarities end, because the primary responsibility for managing striped bass and bluefish belong to two different fishery management bodies, that operate under different laws, take different approaches to fishery management, and have very different records of success.

Striped bass are managed by the states, through the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission’s (ASMFC) Atlantic Striped Bass Management Board (Bass Board). Every coastal state between Maine and North Carolina, including Pennsylvania and the District of Columbia, along with the Potomac River Fisheries Commission, National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS), and United States Fish and Wildlife Service, have one vote on the Bass Board. Each of the states has three representatives on that board, which must include a state fisheries manager, who serves as the administrative appointee, a legislative appointee, who often appears by proxy, and a governor’s appointee. Although there are some exceptions, the legislative appointee’s proxy and governor’s appointee are typically not professional fisheries managers, but instead fishermen or people connected in some way to the fishing industry.

When any matter comes before the Bass Board for a vote, the members of each state delegation first caucus, with each member taking a position on the issue in question. The position taken by a majority of members in each state’s caucus decides how that state will vote on the issue (in the event that no majority position emerges, the state will cast a “null vote” that has no effect on the final decision).

The ASMFC’s Interstate Fisheries Management Program Charter (Charter) states that fishery management plans “must include conservation and management measures that ensure the long-term biological health and productivity of fishery resources under management,” that such plans “shall be designed to prevent overfishing,” and that in the case of overfished stocks, “programs shall be designed to rebuild, restore, and subsequently maintain such stocks so as to assure their sustained availability in fishable abundance on a long-term basis.” It also states that “Conservation programs and management measures shall be based on the best scientific information available.”

However, there is no statute that legally obligates the ASMFC to adhere to the mandates set forth in the Charter, and in 2010, a federal appellate court found that ASMFC’s fishery management actions were not subject to judicial review. As a result, the ASMFC’s various species management boards have very broad discretion to act as they choose, even if such actions are completely arbitrary, contrary to the Charter, or ignore the clear requirements of a fishery management plan.

Thus, in 2011, the Bass Board took no management action after being warned in a stock assessment update that striped bass would become overfished by 2017. In 2014, it failed to comply with an explicit provision of the management plan that required the Bass Board to initiate a 10-year rebuilding program to restore the female spawning stock biomass, which had declined well below the target level in the face of rising fishing mortality.

The Bass Board received formal notification that the striped bass stock was both overfished and experiencing overfishing when the final version of a benchmark stock assessment was presented at its April 2019 meeting, although it became aware of those problems when the initial version of the assessment became public six months earlier. The assessment’s findings triggered additional provisions of the management plan that required the Bass Board to end overfishing within one year, and rebuild the spawning stock biomass in no more than ten years.

In October 2019, the Bass Board adopted management measures intended to end overfishing by reducing fishing mortality by 18 percent, but it has yet to take any action to rebuild the stock within the next 10 years. Even the measures adopted at the October meeting, a one-fish bag and 28 to 35-inch slot limit on the coast, and a one-fish bag and 18-inch minimum size in Chesapeake Bay, will probably not be implemented by many states; as a result the planned 18 percent fishing mortality reduction will probably not be achieved.

That’s because the ASMFC embraces the concept of “conservation equivalency,” which allows states to adopt regulations other than those proposed by the Bass Board (or other species-specific management board), so long as those regulations have the same conservation impact on the stock as those preferred by the Bass Board. It makes sense in theory, but runs into problems in practice, as conservation equivalency can result in neighboring states adopting regulations which work at cross-purposes. And because the Bass Board-approved rules will have a different impact on each state, depending on the characteristics of its particular fishery, conservation-equivalent rules can frustrate the goals of the management plan.

Current striped bass management efforts provide examples of both problems.

The Bass Board decided to adopt a slot limit rather than a fixed minimum size. The virtue of such slot is that it protects the older, larger females that produce more and more viable eggs than do smaller fish; the virtue of the rejected 35-inch minimum size is that it would protect females that were just recruiting into the spawning stock for a couple of years, and allow them to spawn for a couple of years before recruiting into the coastal fishery. But conservation equivalency allows some states to adopt slots, protecting the big females while catching the smaller ones just entering the spawning population, while allowing other states to adopt regulations that result in big females being killed while protecting the younger fish. In such situation, both the smaller, younger members of the spawning stock and the larger, older fish would be vulnerable to harvest at some point during their migration, and the effectiveness of the states’ regulations would be compromised.

In addition, the Bass Board decided that conservation-equivalent regulations only have to match the 18 percent coastwide mortality reduction, and not the actual reduction that the slot limit would have achieved in a particular state. In New Jersey, where anglers land more striped bass than they do in any other coastal state, the Bass Board’s preferred slot probably would have reduced fishing mortality by at least 40 percent. But, because New Jersey is only required to reduce striped bass mortality by 18 percent, its regulations can be far less restrictive than the slot limit would have been. As a result, the likelihood of achieving an 18 percent coastwide reduction is significantly reduced.

We won’t know what each state’s conservation equivalency proposals will look like until the Bass Board’s February 2020 meeting and, because some states are likely to propose and obtain approval for a number of alternate sets of regulations, we won’t know what each state’s regulations will actually look like until some time after that.

And we won’t know what sort of action the Bass Board will take to rebuild the spawning stock biomass for more than two years after that, as any rebuilding measures will probably be included in a new amendment to the management plan, which the Bass Board will just begin working on in May 2020. There is even a substantial chance that, instead of adopting measures to rebuild the biomass to the target level within 10 years, as the management plan requires, the Bass Board will “fix” the rebuilding problem by reducing the biomass target and overfishing threshold, instead of increasing the number of striped bass in the ocean. Such reduction has already been suggested by Bass Board members, who argue that the existing biomass target is unrealistically high.

Thus, when the entire process is over, there is no guarantee that measures adequate to reduce fishing mortality to the target level, or rebuild the biomass to its target, will be adopted by the ASMFC.

Bluefish, on the other hand, are primarily managed by the NMFS, pursuant to advice received by the Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council (Council). Both management bodies have a legal obligation to comply with the provisions of in the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act (Magnuson-Stevens). The ASMFC manages bluefish in state waters, but generally follows the Council’s lead.

In late August, a newly-released operational stock assessment revealed that the bluefish stock was overfished, and that recreational landings were higher than previously believed.

In October, the Council, along with the ASMFC’s Bluefish Management Board (Bluefish Board) set a 2020 catch limit that would reduce landings for both the commercial and recreational sectors and assure that overfishing did not occur.

In late November, NMFS provided the Council with formal notification that the stock was overfished, so at the Council’s December meeting, it and the Bluefish Board authorized scoping hearings for a rebuilding amendment that must be completed in time for the 2022 season. The amendment must contain measures likely to rebuild the bluefish spawning stock biomass to the target level within 10 years.

At the same meeting, the Council and Bluefish Board cut the recreational bag limit from 15 bluefish to three for anglers fishing from shore and from private boats, and to five for those fishing from for-hire vessels. Such bag limits will apply in all federal waters. States may propose alternative, conservation-equivalent rules, but such rules would not apply in federal waters, nor would they apply to for-hire vessels with federal bluefish permits.

Thus, less than four months after learning that bluefish were overfished, the Council and Bluefish Board adopted commercial and recreational regulations intended to constrain recreational landings to the target level, and began work on a 10-year rebuilding plan. Thanks to the clear requirements of Magnuson-Stevens, the Council and Bluefish Board were able to quickly address the problems besetting the bluefish stock.

On the other hand, more than a year after learning the results of the benchmark striped bass stock assessment, and more than seven months after such assessment was officially released, the Bass Board has taken no action to initiate the 10-year rebuilding process required by its own striped bass management plan. The Bass Board has adopted a plan to return fishing mortality to the target level, but because of loopholes attributable to conservation equivalency, that plan will probably fall short of its goal.

The contrast between the Council’s prompt and decisive response to the operational assessment’s finding that the bluefish stock had become overfished, and the ASMFC’s lumbering and uncertain response to the benchmark assessment’s finding that the striped bass stock is both overfished and experiencing overfishing, is stark.

It illustrates why the NMFS’ record of ending overfishing and rebuilding overfished stocks is so much better than the record of the ASMFC, which has never in its history succeeded in rebuilding even a single fish stock and subsequently maintaining that stock at sustainable levels.

It also illustrates why a law such as Magnuson-Stevens, that compels fishery managers to adopt effective conservation measures, is so critical to the success of the fishery management process.

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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/

THE WISDOM OF REGULATING THOSE "OTHER" SPECIES

We’re getting to that awful point in the year when the stock of fish in the freezer starts to dwindle, and the survivors of last year’s catch are getting lost beneath the packs of frozen beans and onion rings.

The last of the black sea bass graced our table on Christmas Eve; all that was left after that was kingfish, a pack of blowfish tails, and some lake trout fillets from a Finger Lakes trip in September.  Once those are gone--and the last kingfish will be eaten today--unless I manage to make my way upstate for an ice fishing trip, we probably won’t be able to have fish for dinner until spring, probably sometime in May.

So in a year when the fluke fishing was again disappointing, and even small bluefish were scarce, it was nice to have the kingfish and blowfish (more properly, “northern puffer”) around to put away for the winter.

I suspect that the party boats and tackle shops liked having the kingfish and blowfish around, too, because they gave people something to fish for when the wind didn’t let boats out of the inlet and there wasn’t too much else to fish for inside the bays.  Small, good-eating species such as kingfish and blowfish are also perfect “family fish,” easy enough to catch that children can enjoy them, easy to clean and cook, and very good-tasting.

That being the case, it’s a little surprising that regulators haven’t done more to stabilize populations of these “other” fish, the low-profile species that aren’t on the radar of federal fisheries managers or the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission, but nonetheless provide anglers with some fun on the water, and some quality food when they come home.

I remember catching blowfish when I was very young, back in the early 1960s.  I lived in Connecticut then, and fished in Long Island Sound.  It didn’t matter whether you were fishing over mud, for flounders and eels, or fishing over rocks for blackfish (“tautog”); from late spring through early fall, so long as your hooks were small enough to fit into their mouths, you caught blowfish, and you caught a lot of them.

But by the time the ‘60s were done, blowfish largely disappeared from those waters.  Every now and again someone caught one, but they never appeared in abundance.  In the early 1980s, my wife and I moved to the South Shore of Long Island, and caught  few blowfish, but the fishing was undependable.  One year they would show in abundance, the next year, they were gone.

In 2019, the blowfishing was very good, perhaps the best it’s been since we lived on Long Island, with the fish both abundant and—at least for blowfish—large.

I have no idea why the blowfish disappeared from Connecticut waters more than a half-century ago, but it’s not hard to believe that our Long Island blowfish suffer from pulse overfishing, which is what happens when fishermen—almost always, but not necessarily, commercial fishermen—overfish an abundant stock, cause it to become overfished, and then move on to another, more abundant species, allowing the overfished stock to recover, at which point the cycle of overfishing begins again.

Because there are no regulations on either the recreational or the commercial blowfish fishery, periods of abundance become times of excess.  Many anglers fill buckets with blowfish of all sizes, returning none to the water and giving no thought to how everyone’s harvest will impact the stock.  I recall a time back in the ‘80s when blowfish tried to come back for a year or two, and seeing one angler with a pail filled with fish he must have caught in a net, because they were far too small to take a baited hook; blown up, they might have looked like a bucket of ping pong balls. But the guy took offense when asked why he killed so many small fish, indignantly answering “They’re good in the sauce!”

And yes, a year or two later, the fish disappeared once again.

Of course, that sort of recreational fishing still doesn’t make the kind of mark that unfettered commercial fishing can cause. 

Blowfish are easily caught in simple fish pots, and are a frequent bycatch in crab pots as well.  They’re one of the few fish that a traditional bayman, fishing simple gear from a small boat, still can catch easily.  And because, according to NOAA Fisheries, they command an ex vessel price of about $1.50 per pound here in New York, they’re a profitable fish to catch.  Thus, when blowfish become abundant, they’re quickly targeted by many in the small-boat commercial fleet.

That can quickly create a problem when too much gear targets what is still a relatively small number of fish.

Northern kingfish are a small fish not too distantly related to weakfish.  They average less than a pound in weight, and never grow much over three.  They're rarely seen in fish markets or restaurants, and face little commercial fishing pressure, but are a traditional summer target of daytime surfcasters, who have little to fish for during the warm months, when striped bass and bluefish become scarce.  

  

kingfish used to be a reliable fixture in the summer surf, where they eagerly ate sand fleas, or pieces of bloodworms or clam, that anglers cast somewhere between the wash and the first bar.  But they, too, grew scarce, only to stage something of a comeback in the past few years, when both surfcasters and boaters inside the bay began catching them in decent numbers.

Yet, once again, kingfish landings are completely unregulated, and there is the chance that too much attention could drive their numbers back down again.

Both blowfish and kingfish are data-poor species.  Even if regulators wanted to put measures in place to avoid overfishing, they wouldn’t have the basic information needed to put science-based rules in place.  And historically, regulators have been reluctant to adopt precautionary measures that are intended to avoid overexploitation, but aren’t based on verifiable data.  Thus, species such as blowfish and kingfish exist in a sort of netherworld where they are subject to harvest, but not to prudent management.

The good news is that’s slowly changing, at least here in New York.  The Department of Environmental Conservation’s Marine Division is beginning to investigate blowfish, in an attempt to develop some basic data, such as age at maturity, which will help them determine if and how to regulate landings.  The DEC has agreed to provide some preliminary feedback to New York’s Marine Resources Advisory Council at some point this spring.  

While it’s not clear what, if any, regulations will result, the fact that work is being done is still a hopeful sign.

Because, although you might not believe it after reading the various angling publications, both off- and on-line, fisheries management is not just about cod, striped bass, red snapper and sea bass, even though those species get most of the press.  Every coast has its blowfish, its cunner, its sand trout or surf perch, which don’t get a lot of media or regulatory attention, but support local fisheries that, in turn, are important to many fishermen and fishing related businesses.

Those “other” fish, and the fisheries that they support, deserve a bit more respect than they’re historically gotten.

It's the "other" fish that keep fishermen fishing when the striped bass, the cobia and the salmon are scarce. It's the "other" fish that can still introduce a new generation to angling, now that traditional "kids's fish" such as winter flounder are gone.  And it's the "other fish" that will provide a few meals when fluke are scarce, and legal-sized sea bass and scup are all out in deep water, and not in the bays.

Regulators only have so much time and money that they can spend, and given the burdens being placed on them by the federal and interstate management systems, as well as the compelling needs of their own states, it's easy for the lower-profile species to fall through the cracks.  But managers have a duty to maintain the a healthy and intact ecosystem, which is made up not only of the popular species, but also includes  many other stocks that rarely come into the spotlight.

Thus, they ought to turn just a bit of attention to the "other" fish stocks which, if healthy, can divert some pressure from stressed populations, and perhaps better assure that the whole will thrive.

2020 BLUEFISH REGULATIONS: A RECIPE FOR FAILURE?

By now, most East Coast anglers have heard that an operational stock assessment has found the Atlantic bluefish stock to be overfished, and that more restrictive regulations are on the way for the 2020 bluefish season. 

But the question that no one can answer right now is whether the regulations adopted by the Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council and Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission’s Bluefish Management Board at their joint meeting last December will be restrictive enough to keep anglers from exceeding the recreational harvest limit this year.

Two other questions that folks ought to be asking is whether managers can legally avoid imposing even more restrictive regulations for the 2021 season, and whether the current recreational harvest limit of 9.48 million pounds is adequate to prevent real-world overfishing in both this year and 2021.

There is good reason to believe that the answers to all three of those questions are no, no and no.

As I listened to the Council and Management Board discuss bluefish issues at their October and December 2019 meetings, I couldn’t help thinking that they were putting together 2020 regulations that, while legally sufficient, would neither constrain recreational landings to the harvest limit nor offer real assurance that the overfished bluefish stock would not be subject to overfishing in this season and next.

And as I listened, I couldn’t help coming to the conclusion that many Council members, and many members of the Management Board, knew that they were adopting regulations that probably wouldn’t get the job done, but were more interested in minimizing shock to the fishery in the upcoming year than in conserving the bluefish stock.

Let’s start with a little bluefish history, and the 2020 regulations.

The data time series used to assess the bluefish stock only dates back to 1985, when the spawning stock biomass was slightly above 400 million pounds, which was very good, but still slightly below the 438 million pound target.  The stock was already suffering from overfishing in 1985, and by 1987 the fishing mortality rate approached 0.6, three times the threshold fishing mortality rate of 0.183 that defines when overfishing begins.

In response to such high levels of overfishing, the bluefish stock rapidly declined, becoming overfished for the first time around 1988 and remaining overfished for more than ten years.  In response to reduced landings and a fishing mortality rate that, while still too high, had fallen to about half of its 1987 level, the spawning stock biomass climbed slightly above the biomass threshold in the late 1990s.  Fishing mortality began to ramp up somewhat around 2010, and that increase, coupled with sub-par recruitment, caused the stock to become overfished again in 2013, and it has remained so ever since.

In 2018, bluefish landings dropped to the lowest level ever recorded, but for the first time in the entire 33-year time series, overfishing did not occur.  The fishing mortality rate for 2018 was 0.136.

The 2020 regulations are based on an acceptable biological catch of 16.28 million pounds, which was set by the Council’s Scientific Statistical Committee, and on the Council's and Management Board's estimate of what the final 2019 landings would be.  While the SSC’s figure for acceptable biological catch is based on sound science, things began to go off the rails with the estimate of 2019 landings.

The Bluefish Monitoring Committee, which is composed of scientists from the Council, ASMFC, the National Marine Fisheries Service and a number of states, recommended a 2020 commercial quota of 2.77 million pounds, and a recreational harvest limit of 3.62 million pounds, both substantial reductions from 2019.

In 2019, the commercial quota was 7.71 million pounds, but it included 4 million pounds of supposedly “unused” recreational allocation.  Once updated recreational effort and landings data revealed that anglers were not only catching, but substantially exceeding, their recreational harvest limits on a regular basis, such transfer would no longer be made.  The reduction in the total allowable commercial catch, without any transfer being considered, was slightly less than a million pounds—from 3.71 to 2.77 million.

While that’s a big cut, it’s pretty simple to explain. 

It takes a little more time to describe why the Monitoring Committee recommended cutting the recreational harvest limit from 11.62 million pounds in 2019 to just 3.62 million pounds in 2020.  While the answer, in one word, is “discards,” understanding how discards matter takes a little longer.

Managers have always relied on the premise that the size of the bluefish that anglers released are no different than the size of the fish that the anglers kept.  If that is true—and the NMFS’ Greater Atlantic Fisheries Regional Office assumes that it is—then about 4.03 million pounds of bluefish were predicted to die after being released in 2020.

Those dead discards would have to be deducted from the recreational annual catch limit in order to calculate the recreational harvest limit that would be used to set regulations.

But the Monitoring Committee, along with the scientists who performed the stock assessment, didn’t agree with that approach, nor did they agree with the assumption that released bluefish were the same size as those that anglers kept.  Instead, the Monitoring Committee

“generally agreed that this [4.03 million pound] estimate does not fully capture what is happening in the recreational fishery because length frequency data suggests that most anglers keep smaller bluefish and release larger bluefish...”

The Monitoring Committee’s approach to calculating discards

“uses the Northeast Fisheries science Center (NEFSC) discard estimates, which incorporates a length-weight relationship for released fish data from the [Marine Recreational Information Program], American littoral Society tag releases, and volunteer angler surveys from Connecticut, Rhode Island, and New Jersey.”

The inclusion of such data seemed to support the Monitoring Committee approach, but also had problems, as

“this sampling approach does not characterize the entire coast, which adds to the uncertainty in these estimates.  Furthermore, NEFSC staff suggested that the uncertainty in these estimates has grown in recent years as the availability of bluefish has apparently decreased.  In previous years 1,000+ fish were collected, but only 522 were collected in 2018.  Moreover, outliers tend to shift the average discard weight.”

Under the Monitoring Committee’s approach, 2020 bluefish discards wouldn’t be just 4.03 million pounds, but 9.90 million pounds, more than twice the previous estimate.

Anglers who are at all familiar with the bluefish fishery would instinctively suspect that the Monitoring Committee was right.  Many recreational fishermen don’t like to eat bluefish at all, believing that the fish’s flesh is too oily and strong-tasting to be enjoyable.  But those who enjoy eating bluefish, and I include myself in their number, usually opt to keep the smaller ones that, because they’re not feeding on large, oily baitfish such as menhaden, generally taste better than the large, bunker-fed bluefish do.  

Yet when the issue of discards came up at the October Council/Management Board meeting, not a single recreational fishermen on either body mentioned that simple truth. 

Council and Management Board members aren’t appointed because of their knowledge of fisheries science; it’s the job of the SSC, committees, and Council and ASMFC staff to provide the scientific information that management decisions are based on.  The job of Council and Management Board members is to provide advice based on their experience in the local fisheries, so that the scientists’ information can be applied in more effective ways.

Yet even though “I only eat the small ones,” is something all of the recreational representatives on those bodies must have heard anglers say dozens, if not hundreds, of times, the only recreational representatives who spoke on the issue chose to focus on the uncertainties, question whether the data was biased, and remain silent on one fact that they knew was true:  Most anglers tend to keep the smaller bluefish, if they keep any at all, and release the large ones.

Most chose not to speak at all.

The reason for their silence was perfectly clear.  If the Monitoring Committee’s approach was approved, and the 9.90 million pound discard figure accepted, the recreational harvest limit would have been a mere 3.62 million pounds.  

But if the Council and Management Board rejected the Monitoring Committee’s approach, and stuck with the traditional method of calculating discards, which was also the approach recommended by Council staff, the recreational harvest limit could be set at 9.48 million pounds, a level much more acceptable to some recreational fishermen and most of the fishing industry.

And, in the end, that’s just what the Council and Management Board ended up doing, even though they had to know that, if the Monitoring Committee's premise was right, their vote would probably cause the overall recreational catch--landings and discards combined--to exceed the annual catch limit for the recreational sector.

But that was only their first misstep, which set the stage for a much worse decision, which would sharply increase the odds that overfishing would occur in 2020, and that anglers would be facing necessarily harsh accountability measures in 2021.

For in December, the Council and Management Board recommended the regulations intended to constrain anglers' harvest to the 9.48 million pound recreational harvest limit.  To do that, they first had to figure out how many bluefish would be landed by anglers in 2019, so that they could modify 2019 regulations in a way that would hopefully keep 2020 recreational landings within the new limit.

The process of estimating 2019 landings was, in many ways, as much art as science.  When the December meeting was held, the Council and Management Board only had recreational landings data through August 31, so they had to predict the future, and decide what the next four months' landings were likely to be.  

There were three approaches that they could use to figure out what the full year’s landings would be.

They could just assume that landings in 2019 wouldn’t be much different than they were in 2018.  In some ways, that approach made sense, as regulations had not changed, and consistent regulation might well lead to a consistent level of landings.  However, would only happen if weather, the availability of other species, or some other factor didn't change angler behavior, and if bluefish were equally available, and equally catchable, over the course of both years.

As mentioned before, 2018 saw the lowest level of bluefish landings in the past 33 years, and there was also a distinct possibility that landings might rebound in 2019.  That possibility was probably transformed into a probability with the release of recreational landings estimates through August 31, 2019.  

For all of 2018, anglers landed less than 13.3 million pounds of bluefish, with 8.2 million pounds of that landed by August 31.  By the time last December’s meeting was held, Council and Management Board members knew that anglers had already landed 12.4 million pounds of bluefish by August 31, 2019, which was about 50 percent more fish than they had landed by the same point in 2018, and nearly equaled their landings for all of the previous year, with four months of fishing yet to go.

Thus, it was pretty clear to Council staff that landings in 2019 would almost certainly be much higher than they were the year before.  A staff memo noted that

“Bluefish advisors and [Monitoring Committee] members suspect that 2018 may have been an anomalous fishing year and may not fully represent trends in landings.  To help account for this variability, the [Monitoring Committee] initially recommended that the Council approve using the three-year average for expected recreational landings (23.15 million pounds).  However, the Council used 2018 landings as a proxy for expected recreational landings in 2020 and 2021 because 2018 represents the most recently competed fishing year and is consistent with how expected recreational landings have been proposed in recent years.”

And, of course, the fact that it resulted in the smallest permissible reduction in landings didn’t hurt either…

But to be fair, using three-year averaging, and including landings from years when bluefish were more abundant, probably wasn’t the right approach either, and would have resulted in a 2019 landings estimate that was much higher than what 2019 landings were likely to be.

That left what we might call the Goldilocks option, a third choice that was likely to produce an estimate close to the actual 2019 landings:  Projecting landings through August 31 out for the rest of the year.  As the staff memo also reported,

“Similar to the approaches used to project landings for other Council managed species, the [Monitoring Committee] can project 2019 bluefish landings using data from waves 1-4 to estimate overall 2019 landings.  This estimate results in 17,122,744 pounds harvested compared to the Council approved 13,270,862, which represents a difference of 3,851,882 pounds.  Understanding the difference between the 2018 landings and 2019 projected landings as the assumed expected recreational landings will assist in avoiding a [recreational harvest limit] overage in 2020.  Using the Council approved estimate, constraining harvest to the RHL would result in a necessary 28.56% reduction while constraining harvest using the 2019 projected landings would result in a necessary 44.63% reduction.  [emphasis added; internal reference omitted]”

That last sentence explains what happened next. 

Given a choice between two alternatives, both of which could arguably constitute “the best science available,” the Council and Management Board opted for the alternative that would result in the smaller harvest reduction and provoke the least hostile comment, even though it probably didn’t reflect reality, instead of the alternative that was likely to yield a far more accurate estimate, but would have led to more restrictive regulations and greater outcry from some of the stakeholders. 

Today, we already know that the Council made the wrong choice.  

We now have recreational landings estimates which show that, through October 31, 2019, anglers had landed about 15.8 million pounds of bluefish, which is about 2.5 million pounds more than they landed in all of 2018.  If they land the same 1.5 million pounds in November/December of 2019 that they landed in the same months of 2018, the 17.1 million pound projection would have been almost precisely on target.

But it’s probably too late to worry about that now.  The decision has already been made.  We’ll be looking at a 3-fish bag limit (5 on for-hire boats) and a 28.56% reduction in bluefish landings this year.

And if 2020 landings do end up coming close to those of 2019, we’ll also be looking at landings that will exceed the 2020 recreational harvest limit by millions of pounds.

That would lead to real consequences, and real pain, in the 2021 season.

First, regulations will have to be tightened again, to achieve the rest of the 44 percent reduction that we should have achieved this year.  But that’s not all.

Because the bluefish stock is overfished, any overage in 2020 will trigger accountability measures that will require pound-for-pound paybacks in 2021, meaning that regulations will have to be tightened even more to account for the previous year’s excesses.

A 1-bluefish bag could be a very real possibility.

Over the course of two meetings, the Council and Management Board adopted a recreational harvest limit that probably underestimated the impact of discard mortality and will, in reality if not on paper, cause anglers to exceed their annual catch limit in 2020.

Then, they based 2020 regulations on what they had to know was an underestimate of 2019 landings, which will almost certainly cause anglers to exceed their 2020 recreational harvest limit, and compound the likelihood that they’ll also blow though their ACL.

And by setting anglers up to exceed their recreational harvest limit in 2020, the Council and Management Board have made it very likely that anglers will be hit with punitive accountability measures in 2021, even though they followed all the rules that those bodies had set.

In short, the Council and Management Board have set themselves up to fail.  But it will be bluefish anglers, and perhaps the bluefish themselves, that will be forced to pay the price. 

2020 FISHERIES ISSUES: THEY LOOK A LOT LIKE THOSE OF 2019

Folks who have been following this blog for a while know that at this time of year, I take a look at the fisheries issues that are likely to crop up in the upcoming year.  As I began pulling my thoughts together to do that again, one thing quickly became clear.

The fisheries issues that we’re going to face in 2020 are going to look a lot like those that we dealt with in 2019.

Ending striped bass overfishing, and rebuilding the overfished striped bass stock, was arguably the hottest fisheries issue of 2019.  That’s probably going to be the case in 2020, too.

The Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission adopted Addendum VI to Amendment 6 to the Atlantic Striped Bass Interstate Fishery Management Plan in October 2019, which was intended to end overfishing.  However, because of a poorly thought out “conservation equivalency” provision included in the Addendum, it is unlikely to reduce fishing mortality to the target level.  

We won’t know just how far the states will deviate from the 28- to 35-inch slot limit adopted in the addendum until the asMfC meets again in february, and its striped bass Technical committee provides advice on each state’s supposedly “equivalent” measures.  However, from the rumors currently circulating—most states haven’t been willing to reveal the proposals that they’ve submitted for Technical Committee approval—the chances of Addendum VI achieving the needed 18 percent reduction in fishing mortality are very low.

states are expected to submit multiple, alternative sets of supposedly equivalent proposals, so once the Technical Committee has spoken, the debate will then return to each state, where the management measures will ultimately be decided.  Right now, instead of the universal 28- to 35-inch slot limit recommended in addendum VI, we are likely to see a hodgepodge of state regulations that change from jurisdiction to jurisdiction and, in the end, will not achieve the Addendum’s goal.

And it’s possible that, for the striped bass, things could head downhill from there.  

Despite clear language in Amendment 6 to the management plan directing that, if the stock became overfished, the Management Board had to rebuild that stock within 10 years, Addendum VI doesn’t address such rebuilding obligation.  At last August’s meeting of the ASMFC’s Atlantic Striped Bass Management Board, that Board decided to move forward with a new Amendment to the management plan, beginning in May, which presumably will deal with the rebuilding mandate. 

At that meeting, G. Ritchie White, the Governor's Appointee from New Hampshire noted that

“I’ve been certainly getting a lot of e-mails about don’t start an amendment; it will mean that you’re going to be less conservative.  An amendment doesn’t mean less or more conservative, and I’m certainly going to support an amendment, and I’m going to support an amendment to be more conservative.

“…We’ll look at more structural parts of striped bass management in an amendment, and hopefully it will be more conservative so we won’t have to undergo issues we’re undergoing now.  Put something in place so the stock stays in a good situation.”

Mr. While has long been one of the foremost champions of striped bass conservation on the Management Board, and I hope that the majority of his fellow board members share his sentiments.  But there is reason to believe that he might have been overly optimistic—something that he tacitly admitted when he said that any new amendment will “hopefully” be more conservative—because there are others on the Management Board who have expressed an intent to weaken the ASMFC’s management program in order to permit higher landings in the short term.

Maryland state fishery manager Michael Luisi has probably been the most consistent advocate for liberalizing the striped bass reference points (to permit a higher fishing mortality rate and lower the female spawning stock biomass target) in order to allow higher landings.  At the October 2017 Management Board meeting, where that possibility was being discussed, he said

“I’m happy to hear that these reference points are something that is being raised to this level of importance.  I’ve always been one that has thought that the current targets that are set for spawning stock biomass or set to a point where they’re unachievable.  They may be achievable, but we’re unable to maintain them.

“It sets a false expectation for fishermen along the coast…”

In summarizing Management Board members’ thoughts about an amendment, Max Appelman, the Fishery Mamagement Plan Coordinator, noted at the May 2018 Management Board meeting 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 versus allowing fishing…”

So it’s pretty clear that there are a lot of people who don't share Mr. White's vision of a more conservative amendment.  

But there is one truism in the fishery management process  It is always easier to influence that process at the beginning, before any particular options are set in stone.  The Management Board is likely to release the Public Information Document that will kick off the comment process later this year—if I was to guess, I’d say after their August meeting—and anglers need to stand ready to get involved in order to help assure that Mr. White’s vision of the final amendment has a chance to prevail.

The February ASMFC meeting will also see the Atlantic Menhaden Management Board discuss a new benchmark stock assessment for that species.  It’s going to be an interesting meeting, not only because it will be the first meeting held after the Secretary of Commerce found Virginia out of compliance with the management plan, and announced that he will impose a moratorium in June if Virginia doesn’t comply by then, but also because the Management Board will get its first chance to consider “ecological reference points” that would, if adopted, see menhaden managed in a way that allows it to fulfill its role as a forage species, and not merely for sustainable harvest.

So with menhaden, we’ll have two things going on at once.

The bigger issue, in the long term, is 1) whether the Management Board will take the big step and begin the process of managing menhaden in accordance with ecological, rather than traditional single-species, reference points and 2) whether those ecological reference points will have a substantial impact on annual harvest limits and the current allocations.

The other issue, which is limited to Virginia but can have impacts elsewhere on the coast, is whether any legislation to bring Virginia into compliance with the management plan will be narrowly drafted, and merely lower the cap on reduction harvest in Chesapeake Bay, or whether it will be broader, and grant the Virginia Marine Resources Commission full management authority over the species, and thus bring menhaden management in line with the management of all other marine species in the state.  

There is little doubt that Omega ProteinCorporation, the biggest menhaden harvester on the East Coast, will be seeking the narrowest possible landings, so that it can still exert its considerable political influence to have menhaden managed in the way most favorable to Omega.

Which is precisely why a more broadly-worded bill is badly needed.

With striped bass and menhaden out of the way, the next big issue for 2020 will probably be bluefish.  That stock, too, is overfished, and the Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council and the ASMFC have begun the process of preparing a rebuilding plan.  Scoping hearings on that plan, along with some allocation issues, will probably be held in January and February; the plan itself will have to be completed and in place before the 2022 season in order to meet the requirements of federal law.

The bluefish management plan will present anglers with the unique opportunity to argue that when managing a fishery that is dominated by recreational fishermen, who release far more fish than they retain, maintaining an abundance of fish in the ocean is more important than maximizing the number of fish that may be killed.  So everyone who’d like to see that outcome ought to be ready to show up and speak when the scoping meetings are held.

In the meantime, the Mid-Atlantic Council and ASMFC have reduced the recreational bag limit from 15 bluefish to 3 (5 for anglers fishing from for-hire vessels) in order to prevent overfishing.  That reduction, based on 2018 landings, probably won’t be enough.  For all of 2018, anglers landed about 10.2 million bluefish, weighing a little under 13.3 million pounds.  Right now, the 2019 landings figures only include the first 10 months of the year; we won’t see the November and December numbers until mid-February.  But even so, landings through October 31, 2019 already exceed bluefish landings for all of 2018, at 11.6 million fish weighing more than 15.8 million pounds.

That means that the odds favor anglers overfishing in 2020, and if we do, we’re going to get hit with a double-whammy:  First, we’ll be facing a harvest reduction to prevent overfishing occurring again in 2021, and on top of that, because bluefish are overfished, we’ll be looking at a pound-for-pound payback of the 2020 overage in the following year.

Don’t be surprised to see a 1-bluefish bag limit in the 2021 season, and don’t be surprised if the December joint meeting of the Mid-Atlantic Council and ASMFC’s Bluefish Management Board becomes somewhat heated as a result.

The other Mid-Atlantic Council-managed species important to anglers—summer flounder, scup and black sea bass—will also be in the news, as the Council and ASMFC work on an allocation amendment that, based on revised recreational effort, catch and landings figures, could increase the recreational (and decrease the commercial) allocation for all three species.  

Such reallocation would be the most significant, and is the most badly needed, in the case of scup, as recreational scup landings have exceeded the recreational harvest limit at the same time that commercial fishermen have been chronically underfishing their quota.

Both the Council and the asmfc have recommended status quo management for all three species in 2020.  However, in the case of scup, that would lead to anglers exceeding the recreational harvest limit and catching far more than the 22 percent of the total catch allocated to them in the management plan.  In the case of black sea bass, it would probably result in anglers landing more than their recreational harvest limit, and an overall catch that exceeded the acceptable biological catch established by the Council's Scientific and Statistical Committee.  The latter situation poses a real legal issue for NMFS, which isn’t allowed to set harvest limits above the fishing level established by the SSC.

Thus, there is a chance that NMFS will fail to approve the Council’s recommendation on black sea bass, and a smaller but not trivial chance that NMFS will reject the scup recommendation as well.  Should one or both of those recommendations be sent back to the Council for further action, those discussions are likely to be very heated, as well.

Offshore, other issues loom, none more serious than the serious decline of the shortfin mako shark.  

Efforts to end all retention of shortfin makos were frustrated at the 2019 meeting of the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas, with opposition from the United States and European Union being the primary reason for the impasse.  ICCAT, understanding the need for further action, has scheduled a meeting to address only shortfin mako issues during the summer of 2020, where management measures will hopefully be adopted.  However, any further management measures will certainly face strong opposition from the European Union, and probably also from elements of the U.S. sportfishing industry.

Beyond that lies the biggest sportfishing issue of all.  

Towards the end of 2019, Rep. Jared Huffman (d-ca), Chair of the House Natural Resources Water, Oceans and Wildlife Subcommittee, has been holding “listening sessions” in advance of introducing legislation to reauthorize the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act.  Such listening sessions will continue into early 2020, at which point we can expect a reauthorization bill to be introduced in the House.  

Given Rep. Huffman’s history on conservation issues, that bill is very likely to maintain a strong Magnuson-Stevens, with improvements suggested by stakeholders, and will need the support off concerned anglers as it makes its way through the legislative process.

And that’s about it.

New issues will probably crop up when least expected, and there is always the possibility that some of the current issues will fade a bit, and not be as controversial as had predicted.

But one way or another, as new issues arise and old ones are resolved or fade, 2020 is likely to be a busy year.