RESPECT AND RESPONSIBILITY (OR THE LACK THEREOF) IN RECREATIONAL SALTWATER FISHERIES

 

Last week, The New York Times published an article on surf fishing for sharks here on Long Island.

It’s something that has been going on for a very long time, but for many years, it has passed under the radar, as a handful of traditional surf fishermen, secretive folks by nature, spent the dark hours of summer pursuing big, toothy fish from the beach.

In some areas, such as Florida and Texas, shark fishing from the surf has been a big deal for a long time, with anglers developing ways to fish heavy gear, and catch truly big fish, from the beach.  

The world-record tiger shark, a fish of 1,780 pounds, was caught off a pier in South Carolina back in 1964, and while that wasn’t exactly the same as catching it from the surf, the angler still had to stand up to a fish weighing nearly a ton, without being able to maneuver or back down the way boat fishermen do.

While that tiger shark was far larger than the typical shark caught from the beach—it was a world record, after all—southern shark fishermen regularly catch fish of more than 500 pounds while standing on the sand.

Further north, the fish are typically smaller; here on Long Island, most are either sandbar sharks weighing less than 100 pounds, or sand tigers, which might weigh more than twice that much, but are typically smaller.

And that’s a big part of the problem.

If we discount dogfish, surfcasters fishing north of Chesapeake Bay are most likely to catch one of three shark species—sandbars, sand tigers, or duskies.  None of those species are doing well.  The National Marine Fisheries Service lists both sand tigers and dusky sharks as “prohibited species” that must be immediately released by recreational or commercial fishermen.  Recreational fishermen are also prohibited from keeping sandbar sharks, although there is a very small, very restricted, and very heavily monitored commercial fishery for that species.

Thus, there is a real question as to whether it is appropriate for recreational fishermen to target those species.

I’ll note right here and now that I am a shark fisherman, and have been for more than 40 years.  But I fish from a boat, and each year, in order to obtain a shark endorsement for my Highly Migratory Species permit, I have to watch a brief video and take a brief quiz intended to refresh my memory of how to identify and safely release prohibited species of shark in a way that will best assure each shark’s survival. 

As a boat fisherman, I never take a hooked shark out of the water, do my best to minimize fighting and handling times and, when the time for release arrives, use a bolt cutter to cut through the hook, so that it doesn’t remain in the fish once it’s again swimming free.

But because surfcasters operate solely within state waters, no such permit is required.  And once a shark is caught, the needs and future health of the fish too often take a back seat to the sort of photos and videos that attract a lot of attention on social media.

As The New York Times reports,

“…The prize [for catching a shark from the beach] is usually a very impressive selfie before the shark is released—or something darker.  One picture shared in a private Facebook group this summer showed a sand tiger shark discarded on a Long Island beach with its head cut off.

“’The shark angling community has a greater percentage of people that have this macho-man ‘I’m going to conquer giant beasts’ attitude,’ said David Shiffman, a marine conservation biologist and shark expert at Arizona State University.

“One particular set of photos from July caused a stir:  In them, a college student from suburban Manhasset, N.Y. posed for a series of pictures, flexing and reclining alongside a large shark that he had caught and later released.  In one, he pulled its nose up to show its teeth…”

It’s probably important to note that sharks’ jaws are hinged to open downward, and that the fish don’t have a neck that normally arches well backward when the shark bites something, so bending the shark’s head back that way places unnatural stress on the spine.  In fact, I remember fishing for cod on New England party boats when I was young, and seeing the boats’ mates bend the heads of spiny dogfish back in just that way, until the spine snapped and the fish was returned to the water to swim, upside down, in weak circles until it died.

Bending the head back, even if less violently, will never do the shark too much good.

Not all surf-based shark fishermen approve of mishandling fish that way, something that the Times makes very clear.  But most of them will remove the fish from the water for photos and to remove the hook, leaving the weight of the fish’s entire body unsupported, and forcing it to put unnatural pressure on the animal’s organs and connective tissues.  Given that sharks don’t have any bones—the skeleton is composed entirely of softer and more flexible cartilage, that doesn’t do the fish any good, either.

As the Times notes,

“the nature of land-based shark fishing, as opposed to fishing from a boat, brings a high probability that the shark will be harmed at some point between its initial hooking and ultimate release…

“Just because a shark swims away doesn’t mean that it will survive for very long afterward, according to shark experts.  Stress and exhaustion from the fight on the line—and abrasions from being dragged up the sand—can leave lasting damage.

“In almost no case, Dr. Shiffman said, should there be time to pose for photographs.  ‘Doing it right, leaving the shark in the water so that its gills are partially submerged, you don’t get as cool a picture,’ he said.  ‘But you’re less likely to kill the shark.’”

Yet to those who see themselves as social media celebrities, getting the “cool…picture” is the whole point.  In this “photos or it didn’t happen” age, the simple satisfaction that the traditional surfcaster felt when he landed a fish is no longer enough.  Internet likes and, for many, the Internet followers that can lead to a profitable YouTube channel, are what matters most.

Thus they abandon the realm of the responsible sportsman, who always gives the highest priority to the health of the resource that he or she pursues, and worship on the altar of Internet fame—or notoriety, depending on one’s point of view.

What makes that worse, and a further death knell to any notion of sportsmanship, is that in many places, targeting prohibited species is illegal.

That’s certainly true here in New York, where the state’s Department of Environmental Conservation informs anglers that

“It is illegal to take or possess prohibited shark species.  The definition of ‘take’ includes pursuing, hunting, killing, and capturing prohibited shark species.  Anglers must release any prohibited shark immediately, in a manner that maximizes its chances for survival.  Do not fish for or target prohibited sharks.

“Commonly encountered prohibited shark species found in New York state waters include the Sandbar (‘Brown’), Dusky, and Sand Tiger sharks.  These three species are primarily the only species of large (non-dogfish) shark anglers will encounter from shore.”

So surf fishermen who target sharks pretty well know that they’re illegally targeting prohibited species, but do it anyway, showing no respect for the fish and no responsibility as anglers as they continue to drag such sharks, which already have enough problems, over the sand.

They try to justify such behavior, with the Times reporting that

“Shark anglers would say they don’t ‘target’ particular species and that they cannot always control what gets hooked on their lines.”

But when prohibited species make up more than 90 percent—probably more than 95 or 98 percent—of your catch, it’s hard to credibly argue that you’re really fishing for the legal blacktips, tigers, threshers, or hammerheads that might very, very rarely take a bait, and only caught one of the prohibited sharks by accident.

The argument doesn’t gain any credibility when some anglers, including some video celebrities, are recommending that shark fishermen tell all and sundry that they’re targeting bluefish, not sharks, in order to get around the law. 

And it’s not only sharks that engender such misbehavior.  A popular angling discussion board, which generally focuses on striped bass and surfcasting topics, in currently embroiled in a hot debate about whether a photo that shows a Florida tarpon lying in an inch or two of water, being lapped by the waves, violates a Florida regulation that prohibits removing large tarpon from the water.

Once again, the angler involved is an Internet celebrity, apparently an “influencer” that pushes particular brands of fishing gear, and the photo was originally posted by the rep of a fishing rod company, who was trying to engender interest in the company’s products.  

A Florida fisheries manager weighed in, saying that in his opinion, the tarpon photo probably violated the state regulations and endangered the health of the tarpon, but that didn’t do much to stem the discussion of whether the fish was really harmed, whether the law was broken, and whether the promotional shot was ethical.

The rod company rep claimed that he would also seek an opinion from the State of Florida, but has not provided any such opinion as yet, claiming that the state never responded.

That could even be true, but the fact remains that, once again, the desire to get a good Instagram photo trumped any sense of responsibility for the health of the fish or complying with the intent—and probably the letter—of Florida law.

But another Florida angler found out the hard way that the law means what it says.  After a Florida college student posted a photo of himself holding a goliath grouper—another species that may not be removed from Florida waters—on the Internet, he was visited by fish and wildlife enforcement officers, charged with a misdemeanor, and briefly held in the local jail before being released on a $7,500 bond.

That’s a big price to pay for irresponsibility and a moment of Internet fame.

But anglers’ lack of respect for the fish that they catch, and their failure to take responsibility for those fishes’ survival, doesn’t only extend to prohibited or heavily protected species such as some sharks, tarpon, and goliath grouper.

Ever since the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission adopted Addendum VI to Amendment 6 to the Atlantic Striped Bass Interstate Fishery Management Plan, with its 28 to 35-inch slot limit, the Internet has been flooded with photos of big striped bass—fish well over 35 inches—being held out of the water while photos were shot.

Some of those photos show fish with their bellies bulging with unsupported internal organs.  Some show fish with anglers’ hands shoved under the gill plates, putting the gills themselves at risk.  Some show fish that seem to be losing quite a bit of blood.

But all of those photos show fish with a decidedly reduced chance of survival, because anglers thought that posting bass photos on the Internet was more important than getting the fish back in the water quickly—or never taking it out in the first place—even though the photos meant that the fish was more likely to die.

It’s a sad story that is constantly repeated in this Internet age, and just demonstrates why anglers need to begin showing more respect for their quarry, and accepting the responsibility that goes with catching a fish:  If you’re not going to kill it and eat it, you have an obligatio to do all you can to make sure that it doesn't die after release.

In these days when so many fish stocks are not in good shape, risking a fish’s survival just to take a few photos and get your 15 minutes of Internet fame is not a responsible option.

 

ACCURATELY COUNTING THE CATCH IS MORE EASILY SAID THAN DONE: PART II--THE RECREATIONAL CATCH

 

There is no gentle way to say it:  Surf and private boat recreational landings can constitute the black hole of the fisheries management process.

Prior to 1981, and the implementation of the Marine Recreational Fishing Statistics Survey—the infamous “MRFSS”—it’s safe to say that recreational landings were a complete unknown, and that any landings included in a stock assessment, or used in the regulatory process, were nothing more than a semi-educated guess.

MRFSS attempted to bring order out of chaos, and appeared to be a statistically valid, peer-reviewed approach to estimating recreational catch, effort, and landings.  While it was better than nothing, it turned out to be not too much better than nothing, with the National Academy of Sciences noting, in its extensive 2006 study of MRFSS,  Review of Recreational Fisheries Survey Methods, that

“Both the telephone and access components of the current approach have serious flaws in design or implementation and use inadequate analysis methods that need to be addressed immediately.”

The National Academy went on to explain why recreational data was so difficult to estimate, saying

“it is much more difficult to collect data on recreational saltwater anglers than on commercial fishing operations.  There are far more saltwater anglers than commercial fishermen—approximately 14 million anglers fished annually in recent years—and  they do not land their catches at specific points where there are dealers, as do commercial fishermen.  In addition, there are many modes of fishing (e.g. anglers who fish from head boats or charter boats, with guides, from shore, on private boats, from private property), and many anglers release fish they catch.  Some anglers travel far to fish and only fish a few times each year, which makes them difficult to encounter in surveys.  Others, who live within 50 miles of the coast, are much more likely to be intercepted by the MRFSS.  Finally, most surveys of anglers depend to some degree on the anglers’ recall and willingness to volunteer valid information.  As a result, designing a survey that will provide accurate and timely information, with good coverage at an acceptable cost, is a major challenge.”

In response to the MRFSS’ problems, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration developed the Marine Recreational Information Program, which received a generally favorable, if not unqualified, review from the National Academy, and brought fisheries managers much closer to having accurate and reliable catch data.  While there are still problems with the new MRIP—anglers still have the right to refuse to cooperate with surveyors, and COVID-19 has temporarily (hopefully) reduced both the number and temporal range of the surveys completed in 2020—its structure represents a big improvement over the MRFSS.

Unfortunately, managers have made far less progress improving the way MRIP is used.

As a survey, in which the sampled population serves as a proxy for every angler on the coast, the MRIP will never yield perfectly accurate estimates.  NOAA explains,

“Sampling errors are inherent in sampling surveys, and can impact estimate precision.  The size of the sampling error can depend on the size of the sample, the design of the sample, and natural variability within the population sampled (increasing sample size, for example, generally decreases sampling error).  [emphasis omitted]”

Because of that, MRIP estimates of seldom-encountered species are notoriously unreliable, while its estimates of commonly-encountered species are reasonably precise.  Such precision is measured by the “percent standard error” of the estimate; according to NOAA

“This value indicates how far the point estimate is likely to deviate from the actual population value, expressed as a percentage of that estimate.  The lower the [percent standard error], the more precise the estimate.”

Thus, when MRIP estimates that about 21.8 million black sea bass were caught in the Mid-Atlantic region last year, and notes that such estimate has a percent standard error of just 7.6, fisheries managers can place their faith in that number, knowingly that while it’s not perfectly precise, it is precise enough for management purposes.  Regional regulations based on any such estimate are likely to work reasonably well.

On the other hand, managers would be foolish to use MRIP’s estimate of just 485 southern flounder being caught in the Mid-Atlantic in 2019, for that estimate has a percent standard error of 101, which renders it completely worthless.  

Since error can cut in either direction, it is entirely possible that the 485 southern flounder was a gross over-estimation of the number of fish caught; samplers may have come across just a single angler, who had a single flounder in possession, but that fish later grew into 485 individuals through the interpolation process used to create the estimates—even though it was the only southern flounder caught in the entire region.  At the same time, it is just—and perhaps more—possible that the number of southern flounder caught in the region stretched well into the thousands, but MRIP surveyors just didn’t come across enough anglers who caught such fish to document the trend.

The fact that, over the past decade, the number of southern flounder reportedly caught in the region varied widely, from well over 5,000 (PSE=69.6) in 2018 to -0- (no PSE calculated) in five separate years illustrates that issue very well, although the fact that 9 of the 10 estimates were under 500 suggests that the number of flounder actually caught is probably very low.

So it’s clear that for the MRIP to provide in accurate estimate, not only must a reasonable number of anglers be sampled, but those anglers must encounter a reasonable number of the species in question.

To show how that works, we need to take another look at the Mid-Atlantic black sea bass catch in 2019.

As noted earlier, fishery managers could use the 2019 annual catch estimate to come up with some reasonably effective black sea bass regulations.  But the Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council and the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission, which jointly manage black sea bass in the region, have decided to manage the fish on a regional basis, establishing the states between Maine and New York, New Jersey, and Delaware through Virginia (actually, through North Carolina, but that state hosts two different black sea bass stocks, making its reported figures difficult to work with) as separate regions for regulatory purposes.

But that isn’t quite all, for even within a region (except, obviously, for New Jersey), the states don’t have to adopt the same management measures, but instead may establish supposedly “conservation equivalent” rules, based on MRIP but different from those of other states in the region, if the ASMFC agrees to let them do so.

But the black sea bass catch estimates, on a state-by-state level, no longer have a percent standard error of just 7.6, instead, just among the Mid-Atlantic states, the error associated with state-level estimates ranges from a still-reasonable 10.9 in New York to a borderline unreliable 38.9 in Maryland, with the other states mired in the mid- to high teens.  That’s still not too bad, but any regulations based on such estimates will necessarily have a lower chance of success than those based on the regional estimate, because they embrace a smaller population and so inherently increase the likelihood of error.

But the states don’t stop there.  Of the Mid-Atlantic states, two, New York and New Jersey, also have different regulations depending on the time of year (MRIP estimates are broken down into two-month waves, with Wave 1 including January and February, Wave 2 March and April, etc.). 

When we break things down to that level, we find New York percent standard error ranging from 16.3 in July/August, when the most people are on the water, to 27.6 in November/December, when most boats have already been taken out of the water for the winter.  New Jersey shows an even greater spread, from 18.6 in May/June to a dismal 43.2 in November/December.  In both cases, such PSE’s represent another step away from the accuracy of black sea bass data on an annual level, 10.9 and 13.0, respectively.

So, again, regulations that change during the year are less likely to succeed than those that remain consistent throughout the year; however, such changing regulations shouldn’t impact the accuracy of stock assessments, as there recreational catch can be estimated on an annual, coastwide basis. 

So whether the MRIP works as well as it should depends, in part, on why fish are being counted.  Annual, coastwide estimates with low PSEs work well in the assessment process, but state-level estimates may not be good enough to adopt effective regulations that are not consistent throughout the year.

The bottom line is that accurate recreational catch estimates are an important part of the fishery management process.  But the accuracy of such estimates isn’t merely dependent upon the MRIP survey process.  It also depends on how estimates are used. 

To the extent that estimates are used in ways that don’t maximize their precision, such estimates will continue, at times, to lead managers astray.

 

ACCURATELY COUNTING THE CATCH IS EASIER SAID THAN DONE: PART ONE--THE COMMERCIAL CATCH

 

It’s impossible to manage marine fisheries without knowing just how many fish are removed from the populations each year.  Some of those removals take the form of commercial catch, some take the form of recreational landings, and some—and some of the hardest to quantify—take the form of fish returned to the water, either as regulatory discards, economic discards, or fish that anglers catch and voluntarily release, but don’t survive the experience.

Together, those fish make up the overall level of fishing mortality, often designated by the symbol “F” in stock assessments, management discussions, and scientists’ calculations.  In every case, the accuracy of the managers conclusions is heavily dependent upon the accuracy of their calculations of F.

Some fishing mortality is relatively easy to quantify.  

Commercial fishermen are generally required to report their landings, and when the fish landed are sold to a dockside buyer, as is typically the case, managers can compare the buyers’ records with those of the fishermen, and quickly detect any discrepancies that might suggest that someone is not reporting accurately.

We saw something like that happen last November, after the Coast Guard analyzed three separate databases, and determined that, between 2011 and 2015, over two thousand trips, accounting for about 2.5 million pounds of New England groundfish, were misreported.

Further investigation showed that most of the misreporting was probably accidental, with boats fishing close to management area borders—the National Marine Fisheries Service divides the ocean into “statistical reporting areas” that fishermen are supposed to cite when filling out their catch reports—inadvertently attributing catch to an adjacent reporting area, rather than the one in which it was actually caught.  But in the case of more than 350 trips, the misreporting seemed to be intentional.

Such misreporting generally involved just four different species, winter flounder, yellowtail flounder, code, and haddock.  The Gloucester [MA} Times, which reported on the misreporting issue, noted that

“The goal of the misreporting, according to the [Coast Guard’s] report [of its findings], is to keep fishing without exceeding catch limits and annual catch entitlements”

for designated stocks in the fishery.

In the northeast, misreporting not only of reporting areas, but also of the species caught, reached its known apex in the case of Carlos Rafael, the so-called “Codfather,” who was sent to federal prison for falsely reporting between $1.4 million and $3.7 million (depending on how the valuation was done) in New England groundfish.

Rafael was only able to get away with such gross misreporting because he owned both the boats and the fish house that purchased the catch.  Thus, both the fisherman and the buyer were easily able to conspire in order to keep both the vessels’ trip reports and the fish house’s weigh-out slips from conflicting.

It would be nice to believe that Rafael’s wrongdoing was a singular event, but that is, unfortunately, not the case.  Here in New York, fishermen’s abuse of the Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council’s Research Set-Aside Program was so severe that the Council ultimately decided to suspend the program.

NMFS described one of the cases this way:

“…an investigation initiated in July 2010 by NOAA’s Office of Law Enforcement (OLE) culminated in the sentencing of a Levittown, NY, fisherman, who was convicted of mail fraud, wire fraud, and falsifying federal records charges.

“Anthony Joseph was sentenced to seven months incarceration and three years of supervised release by federal court in the Eastern District of New York.  Joseph was also ordered to pay $603,400 in combined fines and forfeitures.

“The [Research Set Aside] program was established as a mechanism to fund research and compensate vessel owners through the sale of fish harvested under a research quota or research days at sea.  When using set-aside days or quota, vessels were often exempt from trip limits, some seasonal closures, or other restrictions that would otherwise apply.

“However, numerous people, including Joseph, found ways to misuse the program which led to its reorganization and restructuring.

“In all, OLE agents determined that Joseph filed 158 false fishing logs and was complicit in the submission of 167 false dealer reports.  These violations led to a plea of four felony charges…

“Joseph concealed the over-harvests by underreporting his total catch to NOAA.  He then used two cooperating dealers to file false federal dealer reports to avoid detection.  The two related dealers, Alan Dresner and Jones Inlet Seafood, have been charged and the cases have been adjudicated.”

While it’s nice to believe that fishermen such as Carlos Rafael and Anthony Joseph are just two bad apples in an otherwise sound barrel, another issue that arose in New York casts doubt on that rose-colored view of life.  It is described in the complaint that New York State filed in its lawsuit against multiple plaintiffs, including the Secretary of Commerce and NMFS, over the state’s commercial fluke quota.

In that complaint, New York argues that the data used to allocate summer flounder among the states, in an action taken by the Mid-Atlantic Council in 1993, is outdated and no longer represents the best available science.  One of the reasons that continuing use of such data is inappropriate, according to one paragraph of the complaint, is that

“When the 1993 Allocation Rule was adopted, the state allocations were based on commercial landings of summer flounder reported for the respective states between 1980 and 1989.

“During that period, landings in New York were underreported as a result of the infiltration of organized crime in the state’s fishing industry at the onshore purchase and wholesale level, which infiltration has subsequently been eradicated.  [internal numbering omitted]”

The way one commercial fishing representative described it to me, fishermen would drop off their summer flounder to a dockside packing house.  The fish were then boxed and shipped to the Fulton Fish Market, which was then controlled by the New York mob.  Some time later, the fishermen would get an envelope containing payment for the catch.  

Sometimes, the envelope was a thin one, containing a check, while on many other occasions, the envelope was fat and filled with cash. 

Landings that generated checks were reported, both to NMFS and to the Internal Revenue Service; landings that generated fat envelopes, on the other hand, were never mentioned again.  Thus, the fishermen got an illegal tax break when they were paid in cash, but when NMFS got around to allocating the summer flounder among the states, based on past landings, New York fishermen were not credited for the unreported landings.

Today, the fishermen are calling that situation unfair.

Others might just call it karma.  After all, the fishermen still could have reported their landings, despite the cash payments, if they had opted to do so, and accepted the tax consequences that would have been triggered by such reporting.  The fishermen chose to avoid such consequences, by avoiding such reporting, instead.

Efforts to avoid consequences doesn’t just impact landings reporting.  They impact bycatch reporting, too.

Bycatch is even more difficult to quantify, because out in that big ocean, there’s usually no one to see and report what gets dumped over the side.  And when fish returned to the water dead can result in a significant cut in the annual quota, fishermen have an incentive not to report such discards.

That’s a particularly big issue in New England, where cod stocks sit on the verge of collapse and fisheries managers have been unable to put them on the path to rebuilding.  Back in 2015, the Conservation Law Foundation noted that

“…the claims that fishermen can’t get away from legal-sized cod wherever they turn creates at least the appearance of abundance of Gulf of Maine cod…

“Under these circumstances, one would expect to see high catch and discard numbers reported for Gulf of Maine cod in May and June, i.e. lots of apparently abundant post-spawning cod being caught either to be landed or pitched overboard.  What’s curious about this case is that we aren’t.

“For the first two months of the year not only were the reported commercial cod bycatch numbers low—at 7% which is still just slightly above the normal range—but the overall number of cod reported as caught (landed plus discards) seems low at only 13% of the greatly reduced annual catch limit.

“So, if we are to believe the claims, why didn’t the obvious happen?  Why didn’t the reported catch reflect the reported increase in cod abundance and the newly opened areas?...

“a fair number of fishermen tell us that there are few rational reasons under the present circumstances for a fisherman to accurately report the number of cod he or she is actually catching.  Under this hypothesis, massive numbers of cod are simply being pitched overboard on un-observed trips, dead or dying and never accounted for as ever been caught.  [emphasis added\”

In theory, the true level of discards should be picked up by observers, who record the level of bycatch and its ultimate fate each time they go out on a fishing vessel.  But right now, observers are only carried on a minority of all codfishing trips, and fishermen can easily abandon their typical fishing behaviors on those few trips when they have an observer on board.  

A 2018 memo to the New England Fishery Management Council’s Groundfish Committee included a list of uncertainties that could impact commercial landings estimates, including

“Unreported and misreported catches (landings and discards) by species/stock,”

“Lack of independent verification of landings may lead to catch reporting conspiracy/collusion between a dealer and a vessel, and has occurred,”

“Fishermen behave differently when observers are on-board,”

and

“Incentives exist in any quota-based system for misreporting/unreporting of catch (landings and discards).”

Now, two groups that advocate for better fisheries management, the Conservation Law Foundation and the Environmental Defense Fund, are calling for more effective groundfish management.  As reported by seafoodsource.com,

“The groups…take federal officials to task for not having good data available.  They claim the Atlantic cod stock is overfished to the point of potential collapse, and they also say, citing government reports, that fishermen also discard tons of cod without it being officially recorded by government observers.”

In response to the problem, the New England Council is proposing that 100 percent observer coverage be required on groundfishing vessels.

But, as The Gloucester Times reports, that proposal isn’t going over very well with fishermen.

“…the fishermen made their displeasure clear, skewering some of the data that was used to tabulate the estimated costs and benefits of going to 100% monitoring levels and flatly proclaiming that forcing the industry to pay for 100% monitoring would bring an end to the historic commercial fishery…

“’This amendment will put the final black mark on the industry,’ said Angela Sanfilippo, the president of the Gloucester Fishermen’s Wives Association and a longtime fishing advocate.  ‘It’s not fair to fishermen and it’s not fair to taxpayers.’

“Gloucester fisherman Paul Vitale veered away from the data to talk about the simple act of fishing and how the constant presence of monitors aboard his 48-foot Angela + Rose will impact how he does his job.”

If the conservationist’s suspicions are right, the constant presence of monitors aboard all groundfishing boats might have its greatest impact on the estimates of how many cod are discarded dead; a higher estimate would either shut down the fishery or require fishermen to go out and purchase unused quota from others, at what would undoubtedly be a very high price, in order to cover their discards and allow them to keep on fishing for other species.

And those are things that few, if any, fishermen want to see.

So the incentive to misreport discard numbers remains strong, as does the incentive to go out and convince the New England Council that it shouldn’t require universal observer coverage.

Without such coverage, cod discard numbers will continue to be suspect, and it may be impossible for managers to rebuild the stock based on the data that they now have on hand.

But to fishermen who want to keep fishing, a badly depleted cod stock remains the lesser evil, when compared to being tied up to the dock, and not making money, in order to let the cod stock rebuild.

 

 

 

 

 

SALTWATER FISHING: WHEN IS IT TIME TO STOP TAKING, AND START GIVING BACK?

 

Fishing regulations are, or at least should be, rooted firmly in science, and tempered by social and economic considerations only to the extent that the science allows.  Ethical issues should be left up to philosophers, poets, and the temper of the times.

But the temper of the times does not shape itself.  It is shaped by events, and the impacts of those events upon people, and upon society as a whole.  John Donne, an early 17^th Century English poet, once wrote

“No man is an island,

entire of itself;

every man is a piece of the continent,

a part of the main…”

While Donne penned those words to champion the relationship of people to each other, they work just as well to remind us that our actions cannot be viewed in a vacuum; even the smallest thing that we do has implications that touch others.

In a fisheries context, perhaps Donne could have written “No man is an island…every man is a piece of the ecosystem,” as everything we do impacts the web of life in which we, too, reside.

Thus, it’s not enough to say that we follow the law when we go fishing, and only take so many fish as the law allows.  Nor should we heed the oft-heard injunction to “Mind your own business” and pay no attention to the fish that others are taking.  Because in the end, both they and we are part of the same ecosystem, making the fish that others remove from the water, legally or otherwise, necessarily our business, too.

We also must always remember that “legal” is not the moral equivalent of “right,” and that the law often trails ethics by quite a few years.

In my lifetime, I’ve seen the ethics of saltwater angling transform.

When I was young, in the late 1950s, ‘60s and early ‘70s, there were very few regulations governing salt water angling; where I lived, in Connecticut, there was a 16-inch minimum size for striped bass and nothing else.  Most decisions were up to the angler.

So boats came back to dock with garbage cans filled up with bluefish, the anglers asking “Who wants some fish?” even before the boat’s lines were secured.  Fishermen kept winter flounder smaller than the palms of their hands, arguing that “the sweet little ones” made the best eating.  Freezers were cleaned out every spring, when piles of freezer-burned fish made their annual migration to the local landfill.

Elsewhere, many marlin, sailfish, tarpon and even bonefish were caught, killed, and hung up for photos, then tossed back into the sea the following day.  Sharks were also regularly killed and dumped; I recall, even as late as the mid-1980s, going to shark fishing lecture, and hearing the speaker explain how to best dispose of a tiger shark after it was weighed.  “Remember to slit the belly open,” he said, “and get rid of the liver so that it doesn’t float.”

Things have changed a lot since then, but they probably wouldn’t have if anglers had all minded their business, ignored others’ excesses, and made no effort to alter the angling ethos.

Probably nothing in my lifetime changed angler attitudes as much as the striped bass collapse of the late 1970s and early 1980s.  Prior to that event, anglers typically ended a successful trip with anywhere from two to two dozen big striped bass in the boat, fish that were often sold the next morning.  Even in my native Connecticut, where such sale was illegal, the majority of the most skillful anglers lined up at the back doors of seafood restaurants and fish markets to offload their catch for cash.

But after the bass collapsed, and anglers realized what they could easily lose, a conservation ethic pervaded many serious striped bass fishermen.  While there are still too many unreformed striped bass anglers out there, people too ignorant, too self-centered or just plain too stupid to understand how their actions can impact the stock, the temper of the times has changed, and conservation has become integrated into the ethos of the striped bass fishery.

We’ve seen the same sort of sea change with fisheries for sharks, billfish, tarpon and such.  While kill tournaments still exist, and a few fish still die for photos, the old “weigh ‘em then dump ‘em” mentality has, by and large, faded away.

That, too, is largely because thoughtful anglers spoke out, and began to condemn those who wasted and abused the resource.  For fishing is, for most anglers, a social activity.  If showing off a good catch wins them accolades, anglers kill fish and weigh them, and have their pictures pinned up on the tackle shop wall; if such behavior only earns them disdain, they’ll take some fish for food, and release the rest, because there is no longer any emotional reward for doing otherwise.

Yet, while dead fish aren’t earning the accolades that they received in the past, too many anglers are unintentionally killing fish of various species that they mishandle and keep out of the water for far too long, in order to obtain Instagram-worthy snapshots.

While no species is immune to such behavior, surf-caught sharks are probably the biggest victims.  They are regularly dragged out on the beach, where the weight of their entire body bears down on their unsupported vital organs.  At that point, the angler will typically straddle the beached fish’s back, grab it by the snout, and bend its head backward, forcing the spine into an unnatural angle to show the world what they already know:  Sharks have teeth.

So it’s probably past time to give photos of ill-handled fish the treatment that they deserve.

While this is a blog about fish and fishing, and I’m highlighting anglers’ misdeeds, bad behavior occurs throughout the outdoor community.  It was a couple of articles in the Mountain Journal, which had nothing to do with salt water, that inspired this essay.

The first, written by an off-road bicycle rider, was titled “Why Wilderness Matters More than Your Desire to Take It.”   In that piece, the author said,

“…I felt like it was my right, my social entitlement, to access this public land by bicycle…

“Something changed within regarding how I think about wilderness.  Chalk that up to the perspective offered by the march of time, a view shaped by seeing so many pristine places become so heavily overused.  Whether a tire tread, a hiking boot or cars crammed into a trailhead parking lot, they all bear the same message:  The consequences of our individual actions ripple beyond ourselves and the present moment.”

Change “wilderness” to “a fish,” “overused” to “overfished,” and add a dead fish to the list of human impacts, and the message is just as applicable to those who fish our salt waters as it is to those who bike the slickrock trails outside Moab, Utah.

The other piece was a little more pointed.  In “It’s Time for Outdoor Recreationists no Not Be Just Takers,” author Lesli Allision observed that,

“Too often throughout human history we’ve repeated a pattern, use up one place or resource and move on to the next.  This public investment [in the Great American Outdoor Act, recently signed into law], however, does not obviate the need for greater personal responsibility or the fact that outdoor recreation is fast becoming another form of consumerism generating industrial scale impacts on our environment and on wildlife.

“We are wiping out the last refugia for wildlife, yet there is no talk of limits to human recreation, only talk of expansion.  Even the ‘Leave no Trace’ messaging of old have been trampled under the stampede for more and more public access…

“We have to recognize that conservation and recreation are not one and the same.  The question needs to be asked:  what are recreationists personally giving back relative to the impacts we are generating?”

Those comments, although addressing land use in the western states, are particularly germane to marine fisheries issues.

“Use up one…resource and move on to the next…”

In the course of my life, I’ve seen the focus of local inshore recreational fisheries change from winter flounder, which were once ubiquitous throughout the year, to summer flounder and bluefish, then to the recovered striped bass population, then back to summer flounder after that stock rebuilt, until now, when stripers, blues and summer flounder are all tough to find, and black sea bass are asked to carry the burden. 

Throughout all of those changes, too many anglers, and most of the recreational fishing industry, turned their back on any concept of personal responsibility for the health of fish stocks, and instead fought needed conservation measures, demanding continued or greater “public access,” and more dead fish on the dock.

In the recent past, we saw some of the biggest saltwater angling organizations in the nation, along with the two largest fishing tackle and boating industry trade groups, urging Congress to pass the so-called Modern Fish Act, a bill that, in its original form, would have provided greater access—that is, more dead fish—while at the same time weakening the conservation requirements underlying the federal fishery management system, and putting the future health of fish stocks at risk.

No sign of “giving back” there…

Do anglers or angler-related businesses ever give anything back?

There are some.  There are the anglers who make the time and the effort to attend fishery management meetings, and learn the intricacies of the management system, not to obtain more dead fish—more “access”—for themselves, but to argue for science-based management measures, so that anglers may enjoy healthy populations of fish well into the future.

And there are members of the recreational fishing industry, such as the American Saltwater Guides Association, Captains for Clean Water, and the American Fly Fishing Trade Association, who spend their time and money advocating for the conservation of coastal resources, and not for more “access” today, because they know that the future of their businesses ultimately depends on the future health of our marine fish stocks.

It’s a start, but it’s not enough.

More anglers, and more angling-related businesses, must stop focusing on their “right” to kill fish today, and begin focusing on their responsibility to ensure that enough fish remain for the next generation of anglers to enjoy long into the future.

For you can only move on from one resource to the next for so long.  At some point, there’s nowhere left to go.

STRIPED BASS: STAYING FOCUSED ON WHAT MATTERS

 Rebuilding the overfished striped bass stock to its target level will not be easy. 

Conservation advocates won’t only be facing the usual resistance from fishermen and from fishing industry spokesmen focused on harvest and short-term gain, and from a risk-tolerant Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission that is resistant to change and to making the decisive moves necessary to best assure that recovery of any fish stock, including striped bass.  

This time around, conservative striped bass management is also threatened by the pending Amendment 7 to the ASMFC’s Atlantic Striped Bass Interstate Fishery Management Plan, which could, in the wrong people and states get their way, condemn the bass stock to lower abundance and higher fishing mortality for years into the future.

If there is to be any chance of restoring the female spawning stock biomass to its target level, striped bass advocates will have to walk a narrow and difficult path, remaining assertive in the face of strong opposition while maintaining their credibility by steadfastly sticking to the facts surrounding striped bass management and the striped bass fishery.

As part of that essential strategy, conservation advocates must avoid getting bogged down in peripheral issues that are not essential to the effort of rebuilding the striped bass stock, but waste time and effort while casting doubts on the motives and understanding of at least some in the conservation community.

A good example of what not to do is playing out right now in Massachusetts.

Massachusetts has the largest commercial striped bass quota of all the coastal states, slightly more than 713,000 pounds.  The state had historically kept its commercial minimum size at 34 inches, the minimum set when Amendment 4 to the ASMFC’s striped bass management plan was adopted in 1989, and left it unchanged even after Amendment 5 to the management plan allowed such size limit to fall to 28 inches.  In 2019, due to a dearth of larger striped bass in the population, Massachusetts commercial fishermen did not come close to landing their entire commercial quota.

This year, after the ASMFC adopted Addendum VI to Amendment 6 of the management plan, which called for an 18 percent reduction in striped bass fishing mortality and established a coastal recreational slot limit of 28 to 35 inches, Massachusetts raised its commercial minimum size to 35 inches.  That one-inch increase facilitated law enforcement efforts, as anyone possessing a bass over 35 inches in length, but not possessing a commercial fishing license, was clearly violating the law.  

But striped bass more than 35 inches long are hard to find this year, at least as hard as 34-inch fish were to catch last year.  As a result, Massachusetts’ commercial fishermen are having a very hard time landing their entire quota.  As of 7:15 this morning, August 27, they had landed only about 263,000 pounds of bass, not quite 36 percent of the quota.

That’s a big change from what went on in the recent past, when Massachusetts’ commercial striped bass fishermen typically caught their entire quota, and occasionally just a bit more, before the Labor Day weekend.

Their failure to come anywhere close to doing that today stands as mute and convincing testimony to the sad state of the bass population.  It’s impossible to catch what just isn’t there, and given that after the dominant year class produced in 2003, it took 8years, until 2011, to produce another one.  In between were some years with average spawning success, and a lot of years with below-average recruitment.  Given that a 35-inch striped bass is typically 9 or 10 years old, the typically sub-par recruitment between 2004 and 2010 is showing up in Massachusetts’ commercial fishery.

In Massachusetts, commercial striped bass fishing is only permitted on Mondays and Wednesdays.  Because they have caught so little of their quota so far this year, Massachusetts is proposing expanding striped bass fishing days to Tuesdays and Thursdays, beginning on September 1, and to every day of the week beginning on October 2, provided that the quota has not been filled by then.

Massachusetts proposed something similar last year, but ultimately decided not to go through with it, in part because of the number of comments that it received in opposition to the idea.  It called for comments on the extra fishing days this year as well; the comment period ended last Tuesday, and everyone is waiting to see what Massachusetts will do.

As was the case last year, various organizations, in particular Stripers Forever, are calling on Massachusetts to take no action on the proposal, and only allow commercial bass fishing on two days each week, throughout the rest of the year.  If Massachusetts decides to take that course, the state’s quota will almost certainly remain unfilled.

Stripers Forever notes that it is

“adamantly opposes this proposal [to increase commercial fishing days], believing that increased commercial fishing pressure on striped bass is a mistake.  In October of 2019, in response to years of diminishing numbers, the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission (ASMFC) declared that the population of wild Atlantic striped bass was ‘overfished, and overfishing is occurring.’  Commercial and recreational regulations were changed to reduce fishing pressure and begin the process of rebuilding a healthy, sustainable striped bass fishery.

“Massachusetts’ failure to catch its full commercial quota is an indication of the declining quality of the fishery.  In past years the entire [pre-2015] quota of over a million pounds of striped bass was caught within a few weeks.  Furthermore, the minimum commercial size of 35” means nearly all striped bass harvested in Massachusetts are mature, breeding female fish—the very fish needed to propagate the species back to abundance.”

Again, given that the striped bass stock is overfished, any reduction in harvest would be a good thing, and that includes Massachusetts striped bass landings that fall well below the state’s quota.

That being said, Massachusetts’ striped bass fishery is not an existential threat to the stock, probably ranks fairly low in the overall threat matrix, and doesn’t deserve all of the effort that has been focused on it, either this year or last.

The entire commercial fishery, from Massachusetts to NorthCarolina, and including the Chesapeake Bay, is only responsible for about 10 percent of all striped bass fishing mortality.  In addition, the commercial quotas reflect the 18 percent reduction in fishing mortality required by Addendum VI, as well as the earlier 25 percent reduction (20.5 percent in the Chesapeake Bay) imposed by Addendum IV,beginning in the 2015 season.  And if any state exceeds its commercial quota, the overage is taken of that state’s quota for the next fishing year.

The overall commercial striped bass quota established by Addendum VI is a little under 5 million pounds, and the amount of striped bass that remain uncaught in Massachusetts is about 450,000 pounds, or about 10 percent of the overall commercial quota—which in turn makes up only 10 percent of all striped bass fishing mortality.

So what we’re ultimately talking about is 10 percent of 10 percent—that is, a mere 1 percent—of overall striped bass fishing mortality.

That’s just not a big deal, particularly when we’re talking about a quota that already reflects an 18 percent reduction from 2019 figures.

What is a big deal is recreational fishing mortality, which accounts for 90% of all bass killed by fishermen.  But it’s kind of strange, because when it comes to recreational overages—overages, mind you, and not just fishermen catching their allotted quota—the recreational community is remarkably quiet.

For example, there is no commercial striped bass fishery in New Jersey, yet New Jersey still has a commercial quota.  So-called “gamefish” advocates, such as Stripers Forever, claim to be opposed to a commercial striped bass fishery, yet they have never voiced any opposition to New Jersey’s so-called “bonus” stripedbass program, which allows recreational fishermen to kill a portion of thatstate’s commercial quota—even though all of that kill is composed of 24 to28-inch fish, including a preponderance of immature females that never had a chance to spawn, not even once.

Objectively, dead is dead, and those bass killed in the bonus program are just as dead as they would have been if killed by commercial fishermen, yet the “gamefish” folks raise no objection.  They didn’t even object last spring when New Jersey was seriously considering (although it ultimately decided against) amending its bonus program to allow anglers to keep a fish over 43 inches in length which, in Stripers Forever’s words “are the very fish needed to propagate the species back to abundance.”

The impact of such a move might not have been too much different than allowing Massachusetts’ commercial fishermen to catch bass on Tuesdays and Thursdays, but for some reason, the “gamefish” advocates apparently thought it was OK.

To its credit, Stripers Forever did oppose the use of “conservation equivalency” to set recreational regulations, and approach that allowed states such as New Jersey and Maryland to get away with overly liberal rules that resulted in an Addendum VI more likely to fail than succeed.

But no one complained a few years ago when, instead of reducing its recreational striped bass fishing mortality by 20.5 percent, as it was supposed to pursuant to Addendum IV, Maryland actually increased fishing mortality by 50 percent in 2015, and kept it excessively high for years after that.  And the excess wasn’t trivial over that time; Maryland anglers landed about 720,000 bass in 2012, and if they made the required mortality cuts, should have landed no more than about 572,000 in each year between 2015 and 2019; instead, the actual figures for those years were 1,112,000, 1,546,000, 1,092,000, 993,000, and 765,000.

Yet if, by some unlikely chance, Massachusetts’ commercial fishermen end up exceeding their 2020 quota because of the extra fishing days, they will have to repay that overage in 2021, while Maryland’s anglers suffered no consequences at all as a result of their failure to make the reductions required by Addendum IV; Maryland wasn’t even required to amend its regulations when the 2015 overage came to light. 

If anything, Maryland anglers were rewarded for their non-compliance, for when conservation equivalency was calculated pursuant to Addendum VI, it was based on the 1,092,000 fish actually landed in 2017, and not the 572,000 that would have been landed, had the 20.5 percent reduction been achieved.

Given that the average fish caught by anglers in Maryland weighs far more than 1 pound, that means that for the years 2015-2019, Maryland anglers landed a greater poundage of fish, in excess of what they should have landed, in each of those years, than Massachusetts’ commercial fishermen might possibly land in 2020 as a result of the extra fishing days—and even if they land the full 450,000 pounds, they will still be within their quota, not over it.

Yet none of the folks who rail against the possibility of Massachusetts’ commercial fishermen catching their 2020 quota raised their voice when Maryland anglers overfished by so much for so long, and were allowed to get away with it.

Which suggests that hostility toward the commercial sector, and not conservation, drives their efforts.

And that, in turn, affects their credibility when it comes to striped bass management issues.  For it's always easy to conserve someone else's fish, but far, far harder to conserve your own.

The bottom line is that, in order to rebuild the striped bass, we must reduce fishing mortality.  And with 90 percent of the fishing mortality driven by the recreational sector, that means we must focus on the recreational fishery to get the job done.

Yes, commercial landings need to be cut too, and in proportion to the recreational reductions.  But focusing on the commercial fishery, without giving the recreational fishery the attention that its harvest demand, won’t get the job done.

If we want to rebuild the striped bass stock to its full potential, we need to focus on the primary problem, and not waste time on peripheral issues.

And we need to accept that as anglers, the primary problem is us.

 

SIGNS OF HOPE FOR BRISTOL BAY--AND WHAT THAT TEACHES

Fisheries advocacy can be a hard and, at times, seemingly hopeless slog.  Too many times, we put in hours—or, in many cases, years—trying to move the management process forward, only to find that our efforts seemed futile.

Sometimes, contrary to science and public opinion, we see the short-term thinkers win, as current landings and current income are deemed more important than the future of a particular stock of fish.

Sometimes, we try to push the process forward, only to see backward-looking managers cling to the paradigms of a forever-gone past, forcing us to rearrange our thinking until, when things don’t get any worse, we can still view it as some kind of win.

Do that for enough years, and it can’t do anything but begin to erode your resolve, and get you thinking that if you never seem to win, maybe there’s no point in keeping up the fight.

These days, I hear that a lot with striped bass, particularly after the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission’s adoption of Addendum VI to Amendment 6 to the Atlantic Striped Bass Interstate Fishery Management Plan which, largely because of concessions made to New Jersey and Maryland, is more likely to fail than succeed, and contains no clear plan for rebuilding the striped bass stock—even though Amendment 6 to the management plan clearly states that the ASMFC’s Atlantic Striped Bass Management Board “must” rebuild the stock within 10 years, once it becomes overfished.

I know quite a few striped bass fishermen who tell me that they don’t even know whether it’s worth trying to affect the direction of the upcoming Amendment 7 to the striped bass management. Because, they say, they know that the ASMFC is more interested in killing fish and maximizing current profits than in conserving fish and providing for a healthy and abundant stock in the future, so why waste time pretending otherwise?

And given the ASMFC’s record so far, it’s hard to provide any examples that support an opposing view.

So instead I just tell them that the battle isn’t over, and that the only time that you truly lose is the day that you lay down and stop fighting.  So long as you fight, you have hope.

So what does that have to do with Bristol Bay, it’s salmon, and the infamous Pebble Mine?

In fact, quite a bit.

For those who aren’t completely familiar with what’s going on in Bristol Bay, here’s a quick primer:

Bristol Bay is a nearly pristine waterway, fed by a system of rivers that host runs of all five species of Alaskan salmon, including the world’s largest run of wild sockeye.  And all of those salmon are completely wild; not a single hatchery scars the watershed’s shores.

The United States Environmental Protection Agency described the region this way:

“The Bristol Bay watershed provides habitat for numerous animal species, including 29 fishes, more than 190 birds, and more than 40 terrestrial mammals.  Chief among these resources is a world-class commercial and sport fishery for Pacific salmon and other important resident fishes.  The watershed supports production of all five species of Pacific salmon found in North America:  sockeye, coho, Chinook, chum, and pink.

“…the Bristol Bay watershed supports the largest sockeye salmon fishery in the world, with approximately 46% of the average global abundance of wild sockeye salmon…

“The Alaska Native cultures present in the Nushagak River and Kvichak River watersheds—the Yup’ik and Denna’ina—are two of the last intact, sustainable salmon-based cultures in the world.  Salmon are integral to the entire way of life in these cultures as subsistence food and as the foundation of their language, spirituality, and social structure…

“These cultures have a strong relationship to the landscape and its resources.  In the Bristol Bay watershed, this connection has been maintained for at least the past 4,000 years and is in part due to and responsible for the pristine condition of the region’s landscape and its biological resources…”

“The Bristol Bay watershed supports several economic sectors that are wilderness-compatible and sustainable:

·         commercial, sport and subsistence fishing

·         sport and subsistence hunting

·         non-consumptive recreation (e.g. wildlife viewing and tourism)

Considering all these sectors, the ecological resources of the Bristol Bay watershed generated nearly $480 million in direct economic expenditures and sales in 2009, and provided employment for over 14,000 full- and part-time workers.”

It seems almost too good to be true:  A pristine wilderness with abundant natural resources, that nonetheless generated 14,000 jobs and nearly half of a billion dollars in direct economic benefits each year.

Bristol Bay sounds like a model for economic development in a wilderness setting.

Unfortunately, good things never seem to last, and always end up being threatened.

In the case of Bristol Bay, that threat came in the form of the so-called Pebble Mine, a proposed open-pit mine that would gouge a hole a mile square and a third on a mile deep in what now is wilderness.  The mine would consume 35,000,000,000 gallons of water each year, some taken from two nearby rivers, the rest from underground aquifers. 

Substantial construction of infrastructure to support the mine would be required. 

Closest to the site, the mine would require the building of earthen berms to facilitate the creation of vast tailings ponds, which would be needed to store the waste, much of it toxic, from the mining operations.  Leakage from such ponds is inevitable, and in the Bristol Bay region, where earthquakes are far from unknown, the complete collapse of a berm from a seismic event, leading to toxic waste flowing into the salmon’s natal rivers, is a distinct possibility.

On a broader scale, it would be necessary to build a 165 mile long natural gas pipeline to bring fuel to the mine, and another 80 mile long pipeline to transport ore-bearing mine slurry from the mine to the nearest deep water Cook Inlet—where a port would have to be constructed to accommodate the vessels needed to transport the slurry to a refinery.  An 80 to 100 mile long road would also be built to the new port, in order to bring supplies to the mine.  It would probably also be necessary to build overhead power lines to bring electricity to the mine from farther south in Alaska—perhaps from the Anchorage region.

Such development would clearly destroy the pristine wilderness of the Bristol Bay watershed, and poses an existential threat to the health of the Bay’s salmon runs and to the 14,000 jobs that the salmon and other natural resources of the Bay can provide year after year, the Pebble Mine is likely to provide only 1,000 jobs, and only for twenty-five years.

It’s hardly surprising that most Alaska residents, and a large majority of the residents of the Bristol Bay region, oppose the Pebble Mine.

Across the United States, people who understand what the Bristol Bay watershed offers, and the damage that mining there would do, have lined up to oppose the Pebble Mine.

 The sportsman- and outdoor industry-oriented Save Bristol Bay effort has mobilized more than 250 businesses and advocacy groups, and 31,000 individuals, to ask President Trump to stop Pebble Mine.  All of the major environmental organization have come out in opposition as well.

The fight intensified about fifteen years ago, and in March 2014, Gina McCarthy, the Environmental Protection Agency administrator appointed by President Barak Obama, invoked provisions of the Clean Water Act to place a hold on any development of the Pebble Mine, saying that

“Extensive scientific study has given us ample reason to believe that the Pebble Mine would likely have significant and irreversible negative impacts on the Bristol Bay watershed and its abundant salmon fisheries.”

Although Northern Dynasty Minerals, the Canadian corporation seeking to develop the Pebble Mine, sued the EPA in response, it appeared that the mine’s opponents had scored a major victory.

But President Trump was barely in office four months when, in May 2017, his new EPA Administrator, Scott Pruitt, reversed the Obama-era hold, and allowed the permitting process for the mine to continue.

Opponents of the Pebble Mine had their seeming victory stripped away, and were forced back into a fight that they had thought was largely over.  And now they were fighting on unfavorable terrain, finding themselves arrayed not only against Northern Dynasty, but against a Trump administration, and an EPA Administrator, more concerned with exploiting and extracting natural resources than in protecting them.

After that, everything seemed to head steadily downhill. 

In July 2019, the EPA formally reversed the Obama-era decision that the Pebble Mine would do irreversible harm to the Bristol Bay watershed and its salmon fishery, bringing the mine one step closer to development.

But the opponents of Bristol Bay hung tough, and continued to fight.

A year later—just a little over a month ago—the Army Corps of Engineers issued its final environmental impact statement finding--to no one’s great surprise, given the history of the Corps--that the Pebble Mine would remove 99 miles of fish habitat from the Bristol Bay watershed but, despite that, would not do significant harm to the watershed or to the salmon fishery.

The Corps went so far as to argue that some of Alaska’s other fisheries are conducted adjacent to various extractive industries, primarily oil and gas, and have not been harmed, noting that

“The Cook Inlet salmon fisheries exist in an active oil and gas basin and have developed headwaters of Anchorage and the Matanuska-Susitna areas.  The Copper River salmon fishery occurs in a watershed with the remains of the historic Kennecott copper mine and the Trans-Alaska Pipeline System in the headwaters of portions of the fishery.  Both fisheries average higher prices per point [sic] that the Bristol Bay salmon fishery.”

Wilderness values were, of course, not an issue.

At that point, it seemed as if the Pebble Mine was unstoppable, unless litigation might block it, but going to court is always a crapshoot, and seen as a last resort.

Still, the opponents of the Pebble Mine kept fighting, kept asking for help, refused to surrender.

And a few weeks ago, something unexpected happened.

Donald Trump Jr., the President’s son, came out against the Pebble Mine, saying

“As a sportsman who has spent plenty of time in the area, I agree 100%.  The headwaters of Bristol Bay and the surrounding fishery are too unique and fragile to take any chances with.”

Nick Ayers, the former Chief of Staff for Vice President Mike Pence, uttered similar sentiments.

Early last week, Tucker Carlson, the Fox News commentator and Trump supporter, aired a segment titled “The Case Against Alaska’s Pebble Mine,” where he noted that

“Suddenly, you are seeing a number of Republicans, including some prominent ones, including some very conservative Republicans, saying, ‘Hold on a moment—maybe Pebble Mine is not a good idea.  Maybe you should do whatever you can not to despoil nature…”

Of course, the mining folks are fighting back, with Tom Collier, CEO of the Pebble Partnership, trying to trivialize the opposition by saying

“There is a group of elitist sportsmen in America that want to keep Bristol Bay as their personal playground.”

(“Elitist sportsmen.”  That’s a phrase that advocates of striped bass conservation might just have heard once or twice, cast in their direction.  It seems that wherever you are, folks with no leg to stand on try to win fights the same way.)

Despite Coller’s comments, Pebble Mine opponents suddenly had reason to hope that, just maybe, their fight wasn’t in vain.

Yesterday, they got a bit more good news.

The New York Times reported that the Army Corps of Engineers has decided that the Pebble Mine does pose a threat to the Bristol Bay region, and that it won’t move forward unless and until additional mitigation measures are put in place.  That decision will probably push the permitting process back into next year, when a new Administration, with different views on the value of wilderness, might be in charge.

But even that would provide a chance for the mine to move forward.  POLITICO has reported even more encouraging news, saying that

“The Trump administration is planning to block the proposed Pebble Mine in Alaska early next week, six people familiar with the plans told POLITICO, marking a surprise reversal that could be the death knell for the massive copper and gold project.

“…The people said they’re not entirely sure what form Trump’s disavowal will take, although they said it is more likely to come as a rejection of the Army Corps of Pebble’s water permits rather than a veto from EPA, which earlier this year said it would not exercise that power.”

But, in the end, the form doesn’t matter.  Nor does it matter why Trump, who has always seemed deaf to conservation arguments, seems willing to take on Pebble Mine.

Maybe he’s doing it for his son.  Maybe he’s doing it for other Republicans, who understand Bristol Bay’s value, or to placate important donors ahead of what promises to be a very expensive campaign.  Maybe he wants some sort of pro-environment message that he can take into the Republican Party convention; it’s hard to find a better message than one that makes environmentalists happy, makes sportsmen happy, makes Alaskans happy, won’t harm a single American company, and will only hurt the business prospects of foreign mining interests.  That sounds like a win for everyone.

Except, of course, for the Pebble Mine folks.

That’s why you can never stop fighting.  Sometimes, the stars just align, and you catch a break.

I experienced the same sort of thing years ago, when we were trying to rein in a runaway commercial blackfish (tautog) fishery.  Blackfish had been a low-value species, but after an ethnic live-fish market exploded in the northeast, live blackfish became a much in-demand, high-value item.  The stock was crashing right before our eyes.

As usual, the ASMFC didn’t do anything, adopting half-measures and then delaying even their implementation in the face of political opposition.  At the time, I belonged to a conservation group in New York that was trying to get the state to adopt significantly stricter regulations; while New York adopted a few stricter measures, opposition from the commercial and for-hire fleets kept it from doing enough.

Finally, we put together a bill and went to the state legislature, asking them to make it happen.  If we got the bill through, commercial blackfishermen, which had no trip limit at all, would only be able to take 25 fish per day, and gill netting for them would be outlawed.  It seemed like a Hail Mary pass, with virtually no chance of success.

But a friendly lawmaker took up the bill, and it just so happened that the Chair of the Assembly Environmental Conservation Committee liked to catch blackfish.  So he got the bill through Committee and onto the Assembly floor.  Support in the Senate wasn’t as strong, as commercial fishermen had a little more influence there.

But the Assembly committee chair liked to play bare-knuckle politics, and it just so happened that the Department of Environmental Conservation’s authority to regulate blackfish was expiring.  Unless it was renewed, blackfish would not be regulated at all.  So the Assembly made passage of the blackfish conservation bill a condition precedent to renewing the Department’s regulatory authority, both bills were passed, and the 25-fish trip limit remains on the books to this day.

So yes, the stars did align.

But for that to happen, we had to stay in the fight, even when the odds were against us.

I bring that up to give everyone hope, especially with the new striped bass amendment looming.

Things might not look too good right now.  But when you keep fighting, sometimes unexpected things happen, and if you’re nimble enough to take advantage of them, you can unexpectedly win,

It happened with blackfish.  It looks like it might happen in Bristol Bay.

It can happen with striped bass and bluefish, too.