BLUEFISH: WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE?

Last Monday, the Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council, along with the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission’s Bluefish Management Board, met to establish bluefish specifications for the 2022 and 2023 fishing years.

Bluefish management has experienced a number of recent changes.  Perhaps most notable was the adoption of the Bluefish Reallocation and Rebuilding Amendment, which was adopted by both the Council and Management Board last June, and forwarded to the National Marine Fisheries Service for implementation.  The new amendment, which NMFS is expected to approve, is intended to rebuild the bluefish stock within 7 years.  It also increased the recreational bluefish allocation from 83% to 86% of overall landings, and made a number of other, technical changes to the bluefish management process.

The Rebuilding Amendment will be reflected in the 2022 and 2023 specifications.

The specifications will also reflect the results of a new operational stock assessment, released earlier this year, which essentially confirmed the findings of the 2019 operational assessment:  The bluefish stock is overfished, but is not currently subject to overfishing.  However, while there is no question that the stock is overfished, the spawning stock biomass is estimated to be only about 5% below the biomass threshold, which suggests that rebuilding it back to target within 7 years should be doable—so long as managers stick to the science, and don’t seek every opportunity to increase short-term landings at the expense of long-term abundance.

They already did that in 2019 when, instead of following established practice and basing predicted 2020 landings on average landings in the three preceding years, instead based them only on landings in 2018, which were the lowest in a time series extending back 35 years.  

While that prevented 2020 regulations from being made more restrictive than the current 3-fish bag limit (5 on for-hire vessels), it also allowed anglers to exceed their 2020 catch limit.  Thus, the recreational sector found itself snagged on the second prong of a classic “you can pay me now or you can pay me later” dilemma; since bluefish are currently overfished, anglers’ 2020 overharvest must be deducted, on a pound-for-pound basis, from the 2022 recreational catch limit.

The recreational sector will be required to pay back 3.65 million pounds of bluefish in 2022.  Fortunately for anglers, the real-world impact of that payback won’t be severe; the combination of a slightly increased recreational allocation and a slightly increased bluefish population means that even after the payback is made, the recreational harvest limit will be 13.89 million pounds, and slightly above the actual 2020 landings.

Thus, if 2021 landings are similar to 2020 landings during the first 8 (or possibly 10, depending on when data for September and October becomes available) months of this year, it is very likely that recreational regulations will remain unchanged next season.

Right now, it looks as if the recreational harvest limit will then make a big jump, to 22.14 million pounds, in 2023; such an increase, if it occurs, will undoubtedly lead to increased bag limits.  However, anglers who want to take home more bluefish probably shouldn’t be buying new chest freezers just yet.

That’s because the Council and Management Board decided to carry 2020 regulations over into 2021; assuming both angler effort and bluefish availability also remain constant, that means that anglers will probably overfish again this season, and thus will have to pay back another 4 million or so pounds of bluefish in 2023.  That would knock the recreational harvest limit back to something around 18 million pounds, which is still a significant increase, and should still lead to higher bag limits, although such limits won’t be as high as they would be if overfishing doesn't occur in 2021.

So, based on what happened last Monday, are bluefish back on the path to renewed abundance and a rebuilt stock?

Maybe.

But maybe not.  Because there are many things playing out in the background that could impact the stock, for good or ill.  Just about all of them can be categorized as some form of either scientific or management uncertainty.

Although the 2015 benchmark stock assessment passed peer review, there were a number of issues that raised significant concerns.  After that assessment was released, the Mid-Atlantic Council’s Scientific and Statistical Committee stated that the most significant sources of scientific uncertainty related to the calculation of the overfishing limit and acceptable biological catch were,

“In order of importance:

·         Uncertainty in the stock recruitment relationship adds to uncertainty in appropriate reference points.

·         The uncertainty in MRIP sampling overall, which is the most influential data in the assessment.  Questions have been raised about the uncertainty in the historical MRFSS/MRIP estimates in general, and are particularly relevant here given the highly episodic nature of Bluefish catches in the recreational fisheries coast wide.

·         Approximately 60% of the population biomass is in the aggregated 6+ age group for which there is relatively little information.

·         The extent to which the MRIP index and MRIP catch are partially redundant in the assessment needs to be determined.

·         Commercial discards are assumed to be insignificant, which may not be the case.”

Six years have passed since the benchmark assessment was completed, and many of those issues remain outstanding; most were at least mentioned at last Monday’s meeting,

Other issues also give reason for pause. 

One is the apparent decline in bluefish catch per trip in the recreational fishery.

A bluefish trip is defined, for determining that value, as a trip that either targets bluefish, or on which a bluefish is caught.  Over the long term, anglers caught an average of 1.5 bluefish on each bluefish trip; in 2020, that number fell to about 1.0.  That would suggest lower abundance, leading to anglers encountering fewer bluefish, and provides cause for concern that the stock may be in even worse shape than the operational assessment suggests.

On the other hand, because a “bluefish trip” includes trips on which bluefish are caught, it could also reflect fewer anglers fishing in places and ways that are likely to yield bluefish bycatch, perhaps as a result of a decline in the abundance of striped bass, summer flounder, or other species.

Another, bigger issue is the difficulty biologists have in quantifying the magnitude of dead discards in the recreational fishery.

The bluefish fishery is somewhat unique, as it is one of the few major recreational fisheries that is not generally governed by a size limit (although some states, mainly in the South, have chosen to adopt one), and there is a big late summer/early fall fishery for young of the year “snapper” blues along much of the coast.  In addition, larger bluefish, particularly those feeding on menhaden, tend to have oilier, more strongly-flavored flesh than do smaller individuals that typically feed on sand eels, spearing, or similar “whitebait.”

As a result, the size of bluefish retained by anglers is strongly skewed to the smaller sizes; in 2019, the last year for which landings data was unaffected by COVID, just over 50% of the bluefish kept by anglers were between 11 and 14 inches long; another 23% of the fish kept fell into the 4- to 10-inch range.  Bluefish measuring 18 inches or more comprised only about 7.25% of the recreational harvest.

The big unknown is whether the bluefish that anglers release are the same size as the ones that they keep.  There is evidence that they may, in fact, be larger.  The 2015 stock assessment noted that

“Although they recruit to the fishery before they are fully mature, larger, older fish are considered unpalatable, reducing demand for those sizes in the commercial market and encouraging the release of those size classes in the recreational fishery.  [emphasis added]”

The assessment relied on information from four different sources, the American Littoral Society fish tagging program, and volunteer angler reporting programs in Connecticut, Rhode Island, and New Jersey, coming to the conclusion that

“The average size of the recreationally released bluefish is larger than the average size of retained fish, an uncommon pattern most likely due to bluefish’s unpalatability at larger sizes.  [emphasis added]”

Anyone who has participated in the recreational bluefish fishery, and has spent any time talking with bluefish anglers, recognizes the truth of that statement.

Yet when the Mid-Atlantic Council and Management Board addressed the discard issue in 2019, they came to a very different result.  If they used the Northeast Fisheries Science Center’s calculation of bluefish that died after release, they would have had to deduct 9.9 million pounds of dead discards from the recreational catch limit, leaving a recreational harvest limit of just 3.62 million pounds, which would have been a huge drop from the 2019 harvest limit of 11.62 million pounds, and would have required extremely restrictive management measures to adequately constrain recreational harvest.

But they found a way around such a big cut in landings, because there were some problems with the Science Center’s estimate of dead discards.  The data it was based on were limited to northeastern states, and didn’t necessarily reflect what went on further south; in addition, the data itself were relatively sparse, as relatively few anglers took part in any of the four programs from which it was derived.  NMFS’ Greater Atlantic Regional Fisheries Office did not use the Science Center data, and instead just assumed that the size of the bluefish released was the same as the bluefish retained, an assumption that was almost certainly false.

Still, if the Council and Management Board adopted the GARFO assumption, rather than the Science Center’s data, they would only be required to deduct 4.03 million pounds for dead discards, which would allow them to set a recreational harvest limit of 9.48 million pounds, a limit more than 250% of the limit that resulted from the Science Center’s data.  Following their well-established principle that “the best available science is whatever lets us kill the most fish,” recreational representatives on both the Council and Management Board strongly supported the adoption of the GARFO assumption, which has been used to calculate the recreational harvest limit ever since.

The difference between the GARFO assumption and the Science Center data continues to inject substantial uncertainty into bluefish management; in 2019, GARFO assumed that recreational release mortality was a mere 4.88 million pounds, compared to the Science Center's calculation of 15.41 million pounds.  In 2020, GARFO assumed release mortality to be slightly less, 4.19 million pounds while, probably due to COVID-limited data, the Science Center did not calculate such removals.

To get some idea of how the Science Center’s approach could impact recreational landings, assume that the Science Center’s 2020 calculation would have the same relationship to the GARFO assumption as it had in 2019, when such calculated mortality was about 3.16 times as large as GARFO assumption.  Multiplying the assumed 4.19 million pounds of dead discards by such amount would yield calculated dead discards of about 13.23 million pounds.  If you subtracted that amount, plus the payback for the 2020 overage, from the 2021 recreational catch limit, the 2021 recreational harvest limit would be 0.66 million pounds.

Instead of seeing its harvest limit increase, as is currently the case, there probably would have been no recreational bluefish landings permitted in 2022.

So how dead discards are calculated makes a very big difference.  If the GARFO assumptions are wrong, and the Science Center calculations reflect reality, anglers will inadvertently overharvest by about 9 million pounds next year.  While such overharvest would have no immediate regulatory impact, because it is currently authorized by the Council and Management Board, it certainly won’t help the already overfished stock to rebuild by its 2028 deadline.

It might not allow it to rebuild at all.

Thus, it would make sense to build some provision for management uncertainty into the 2022 specifications, but that’s not going to happen.

The Bluefish Monitoring Committee is aware of the issue, and intends to investigate ways to quantify the uncertainty and perhaps account for it in future specifications.  But it chose not to build any sort of buffer into its 2021 calculations.

The Monitoring Committee argued that, because it doesn’t know how to quantify the uncertainty, any buffer that it might propose would be arbitrary, and not based on solid scientific calculations.  That position was supported by Dr. Paul Rago of the Northeast Fisheries Science Center, who noted that it isn’t currently possible to scientifically determine the magnitude of the management uncertainty.

That is undoubtedly true.

At the same time, while we should all want management parameters to be calculated in a statistically rigorous manner, with a defensible point estimate, surrounded by a confidence interval, that can survive peer review, sometimes that’s just not possible.

And when you get right down to it, failing to create a buffer for management uncertainty—that is, proceeding as if the magnitude of such uncertainty is zero—is at least as arbitrary as creating a recreational harvest target that is ten or twenty percent below the recreational harvest limit.

Setting the level of management uncertainty isn't foregoing any action; it is affirmatively selecting zero as the most appropriate value.

And, arguably, setting the level of management uncertainty at zero, when the Monitoring Committee acknowledges that such uncertainty exists, if at a yet-unquantified level, is more arbitrary than establishing a buffer at some roughly estimated value, because the value of zero is known to be fals, while some other buffer might, at least, come somewhat closer to the real level of management uncertainty.

Right now, it is extremely likely that, because of management uncertainty, the current specifications will lead to higher than contemplated fishing mortality.  Just how much higher is anyone’s guess.

Fortunately, that situation may only last for a couple of years. 

A benchmark, or “research track,” bluefish stock assessment is scheduled for 2022.  Such assessment will allow scientists to consider new population models, or perhaps revise the one currently used.  It will also offer the opportunity for them to look into sources of uncertainty, including things such as the true level of recreational discard mortality, new ways to accurately survey older and larger fish, and perhaps even a way to survey the number of bluefish found farther offshore, and determine whether they are a part of a permanent offshore population, or merely transit between inshore and offshore waters over the course of the year.

Right now, it’s impossible to predict whether the new stock assessment will find bluefish to be in better or worse shape than currently believed.

Perhaps recreational discard mortality really is close to the GARFO assumption, and the stock is well on the road to recovery.  Perhaps it is closer to the Science Center calculation, and management measures must be made far more restrictive in response.  Perhaps, when all’s said and done, managers still won’t be sure of its magnitude.

In the same way, new surveys may show that there are plenty of bluefish offshore, and that the stock is not overfished.  They may also show that the number of bluefish age 6 and older is far less than previously thought, and that the stock is in real peril.

Again, we won’t know until the assessment is done.  And it’s possible that we won’t even know then, because given the amount of uncertainty biologists are dealing with, it’s always possible, if unlikely, that the new assessment won’t pass peer review.

So where do we, and the bluefish, go from here?

In the short term, into a rebuilding program that may, or may not, rebuild the stock within seven years.  It’s success will depend, in part, on the bluefish—will recruitment, for example, be robust enough to support rebuilding—and in part on the Council and Management Board, which must make hard decisions needed to rebuild the stock, and not the easy ones that might maximize landings for a short while, but lead to decreased future abundance.

Right now, there are reasons to be optimistic, and reasons to be concerned.

And most of all, there are reasons to keep watching the process, to make sure that no one allows itn to go astray.

 

 

CONSERVATION EQUIVALENCY DOESN'T WORK FOR STRIPED BASS

The Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission has long been invested in the concept of conservation equivalency.  Back in 2016, it approved an updated Conservation Equivalency:  Policy and Technical Guidance Document, which states

“Conservation equivalency allows states/jurisdictions (hereafter states) flexibility to develop alternative regulations that address specific state or regional differences while still achieving the goals and objectives of Interstate Fishery Management Plans (FMPs).  Allowing states to tailor their management programs in this way avoids the difficult task of developing one-size-fits-all management measures while still achieving equivalent conservation benefits to the resource.”

It sounds good on paper.  But in practice, conservation equivalency has had very mixed results.

Conservation equivalency’s greatest success is undoubtedly represented by Addendum XI to the Summer Flounder, Scup, and Black Sea Bass Fishery Management Plan, which was adopted in 2004 and brought real stability to the recreational scup fishery.  Prior to Addendum XI, all states between Massachusetts and North Carolina were governed by the same set of regulations, even though scup are primarily a northern species, and just four states—Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, and New York—were responsible for about 97% of all recreational landings.

That was clearly unfair to the states south of New York, which didn’t need to be bound by such restrictive regulations.  There were also problems with data from the Marine Recreational Fishing Statistics Survey, which was then used to estimate anglers’ effort, catch, and landings, and saw such estimates oscillate wildly from year to year.

In response to those issues, the ASMFC’s Summer Flounder, Scup, and Black Sea Bass Management Board adopted Addendum XI, which created a single northern region containing Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, and New York, gave those states a single regional recreational quota, and pooled their catch, landings, and effort data; Addendum XI also required such states to adopt regulations that included the same bag limit, size limit, and season length.  States farther south, which accounted for a very small share of the overall landings, were allowed to fish under more liberal, default regulations.

By taking such action, the Summer Flounder, Scup, and Black Sea Bass Management Board improved the accuracy of the recreational data for the four northeastern states, for the old MRFSS data, like that produced by the current Marine Recreational Information Program, becomes more accurate when the number of anglers surveyed increases.

The result was what is undoubtedly the ASMFC’s most stable and successful recreational management plan; while scup limits have changed in response to the changing size of the scup population, they have avoided the sort of annual amendments, and sometimes seemingly irrational changes, that have often plagued the summer flounder and black sea bass fisheries over the past couple of decades.

For a while, it looked like the Summer Flounder, Scup, and Black Sea Bass Management Board was going to score another win with Addendum XXV to the Summer Flounder, Scup, and Black Sea Bass Fishery Management Plan, which established a regional framework for summer flounder management, most significantly placing New Jersey, New York, and Connecticut into a single region with a single bag limit, size limit, and season length, and so ended a big regulatory disparity, and constantly shifting regulations, in that tri-state area.

Addendum XXV stabilized the tri-state fishery and worked very well for a few years, but in 2016, by adopting Addendum XXVII to the Summer Flounder, Scup, and Black Sea Bass Management Plan, the Summer Flounder, Scup, and Black Sea Bass Management Board allowed New Jersey to weasel out of the tri-state region, and become a region of its own, solely because of New Jersey's claimed need to adopt a smaller size limit for anglers in Delaware Bay.

Addendum XXVII set the table for New Jersey to go further in 2017, refuse to conform to the New York/Connecticut regulations for its fishery outside of Delaware Bay, and appeal its case to the new Secretary of Commerce, Wilbur Ross; since then New Jersey Governor Chris Christie had been an early ally of the incoming Trump Administration, New Jersey’s decision to go out of compliance with the ASMFC’s management plan was quickly blessed by the Commerce Department, which didn’t even bother consulting with the Northeast Fisheries Science Center or NMFS’ administrator of the Greater Atlantic Regional Fisheries Office before making what was, at its heart, an arbitrary political decision that again introduced chaos into the summer flounder management program.

At least Addendum XXV worked for a few years, and would have kept on working if only New Jersey had decided to act in good faith.

But bad faith and conservation equivalency often go hand in hand; a lack of good faith is part of the reason that conservation equivalency has never worked, and will never work, in the striped bass fishery.  And striped bass biology makes acting in bad faith particularly easy.

To understand why that is so, first consider summer flounder.  Like any fish, it experiences highs and lows in recruitment.  Average recruitment is about 53 million fish per year, although over the past decade recruitment has ranged as low as 35 million fish and as high as 61 million fish or, to look at it another way, recruitment in any given year has been between 34% below average to 15% above average.  

That’s a relatively narrow range, particularly given that in adjacent years, the difference in recruitment is typically smaller.  Thus, managers can base the upcoming year’s regulations on the previous year’s landings and have reasonable confidence that, while no two years will be exactly the same, conditions will probably be similar enough that the regulations will come reasonably close to the mark.

That’s not the case with striped bass, which can see recruitment swing wildly from year to year.  If we look at the Maryland juvenile abundance index for striped bass, which is the oldest and probably the most reliable indicator of future striped bass abundance, over the past 10 years, we can see how this plays out.

The long-term average for the Maryland JAI is 11.6.  But over the last decade, we saw that index swing from 34.58, or 198% above average, to 0.89, or more than 94% below average, between 2011 and 2020.  Moreover, the decadal high occurred in 2011, and was immediately followed by the decadal low (which was also the lowest annual value ever returned in the 60-plus year history of the Maryland JAI) in 2012.

Given that the effectiveness of regulations is highly dependent on the availability of fish, and so the number of bass recruiting into the fishery, each year, and on the number of angler trips made in pursuit of those fish (with increased abundance normally leading to sharply increased angling effort), it’s pretty clear that basing future conservation equivalent regulations on past effort and landings patterns, in a fishery with such irregular recruitment, quickly becomes a fool’s errand.

Or, it becomes an opportunity for those who, understanding the system’s serious flaws, choose to use those flaws to game the system and escape some of the burden of striped bass conservation.

Consider the recent history of Maryland’s regulations.

Addendum IV to Amendment 6 to the Atlantic Striped Bass Interstate Fishery Management Plan, adopted in 2014, required Chesapeake Bay states to achieve a 20.5% reduction in striped bass fishing mortality compared to 2012.  The reductions were originally to be based on fishing mortality in 2013, as was the case with the coastal states, but the Chesapeake jurisdictions requested, and the Atlantic Striped Bass Management Board agreed, that 2012 be used for the Bay.

In 2012, Maryland anglers were allowed to keep 18-inch striped bass, and data from the National Marine Fisheries Service shows that most of the bass landed by Maryland anglers that year were between 19 and 21 inches long, meaning that they came from the very weak 2008 (Maryland JAI=3.20) and well below-average 2009 (Maryland JAI=7.87) year classes.

Thus, on paper, the conservation-equivalent regulations for Maryland, based on 2012 recreational fishing mortality, didn’t have to be particularly restrictive in order to achieve the required 20.5% reduction.  A two-inch increase in the size limit, accompanied by a narrow 36 to 40-inch no-kill slot during the spring “trophy” season, appeared to be sufficient to get the job done.

However, what was happening on the water was very different from what was happening on paper.  Everyone recognized that the 2011 year class (Maryland JAI=34.58) was very large (one of the stated goals of Addendum IV was to conserve the 2011 year class in hopes of rebuilding the spawning stock), yet in constructing its supposedly conservation equivalent regulations, Maryland did not make allowances for either the influx of fish or the increased angling effort that such influx would inspire.

Thus, in 2015, the first year that the Addendum IV regulations were in effect, the number of directed striped bass trips in Maryland’s portion of Chesapeake Bay jumped from about 536,000 to nearly 845,000, a 58% increase, and striped bass fishing mortality in Maryland’s part of the bay rose by 54%, instead of being reduced by Amendment IV’s required 20.5%.

At the October 2016 Atlantic Striped Bass Management Board meeting, Maryland was unrepentant about its overage, with fishery manager Michael Luisi stating

“I wanted to thank the Technical Committee for making sure to stress the point that the emergence of the 2011 year class was kind of a game changer.  We were at the point when we were implementing these new measures, where we were seeing just an enormous biomass growth in the Bay, to the point where it was exploitable.  I have no doubt in my mind, as I know the Technical Committee evaluated whether or not harvest reductions happened, by increasing our minimum size.  I just want to read, just to strengthen the comment on the last bullet that’s on the screen right there.

“The actual written report that we have in our briefing materials speaks to the emergence of the 2011 year class.  It reads that ‘the harvest in the Bay in 2015 was undoubtedly lower than it would have been, had regulations remained status quo.’  I just wanted to make that comment, because I believe it strengthens what was reported as kind of a likely reduction.”

Looking at that statement, which essentially says that “No, Maryland didn’t make its agreed-upon reduction, but you should be happy because we would have caught even more fish should are regulations have remained status quo,” it’s easy to suspect that Maryland didn’t adopt its supposedly conservation equivalent regulations in good faith, but did so as a convenient fiction, which made it appear that the state at least tried to comply with Addendum IV, when it knew all along that it was setting up Maryland anglers for wholesale harvest of the “exploitable” 2011 year class as soon as they reached the 20-inch minimum size.

The sad truth is that such behavior, which gives a wink and a nod to the language of a management document, while adopting regulations that are extremely likely to fail, is not in any way discouraged by the Atlantic Striped Bass Management Board.  Maryland faced no sanctions whatsoever for failing to meet the 20.5% reduction required by Amendment IV. 

Instead, it was rewarded, not only because its anglers were allowed to continue to land excessive numbers of striped bass through 2019, but also because, when Addendum VI to Amendment 6 to the Atlantic Striped Bass Interstate Fishery Management Plan:  18% Reduction in Removals & Circle Hook Measures went into effect at the beginning of 2020, Maryland’s required 18% reduction was calculated on its actual catch in 2017, nearly 1,100,000 striped bass, and not on the approximately 572,000 fish that its anglers would have landed in that year, had Maryland lived up to its obligations under Addendum IV.

The benefits of artfully composed conservation equivalent proposals thus continue to pay dividends that extend through time, to the detriment of states that try to play by the rules and adopt coastwide regulations, rather than seek undue advantage for themselves. 

Given that truth, it’s not surprising that in the recent round of public comments on the proposed Amendment 7 to the striped bass management plan, stakeholders roundly criticized the use of conservation equivalency to manage striped bass, saying things such as

“While we are not unconditionally opposed to the notion of conservation equivalency…we also believe that CE can be abused by individual states in a way that jeopardizes the effectiveness of coastwide conservation efforts,”

“Unfortunately, poorly planned conservation equivalency proposals have all too often resulted in less than intended conservation benefit with few consequences for the managers who developed them…The parsing of coastwide data into state- and Wave-specific datasets results in greater risk and uncertainty of achieving conservation goals with little to no accountability possible,”

and

“The fact that…state conservation equivalency provisions have repeatedly been used in ways that appear counter to what is needed to assess and achieve coast-wide fishing mortality and biomass goals [has been]…eroding stakeholder confidence in the ability of the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission to accomplish the intended long-term objectives for striped bass.”

Others, using less formal language, referred to conservation equivalent regulations as “loopholes,” “a way for the states to escape the accountability of conservation minded management plans,” and an approach which has “failed miserably.”

It’s very clear that conservation equivalency isn’t popular with the striped bass-fishing public, who may not understand the calculations used to create conservation equivalent proposals, but do understand, through long observation, that conservation equivalency has rarely, if ever, worked out well in the striped bass.

Instead, the public sees states—and Maryland is only one of them—use conservation equivalency as a means to shirk part of their conservation burden, and shift it onto the shoulders of other states who might, with luck, take up the slack that the supposedly equivalent regulations create.

The Atlantic Striped Bass Management Board will be considering the issue of conservation equivalency when it meets to discuss the proposed Amendment 7 in October.  It is too much to hope that they choose to eliminate conservation equivalency completely, perhaps replacing it with separate sets of management measures for coastal and spawning areas that would remove much or all of the need for conservation equivalent proposals.

But there is still reason to hope that if conservation equivalency is not eliminated, its use carries a price that will make it unattractive to states except under the most compelling circumstances.

The striped bass’ life history, and particular its widely varying recruitment, makes it a poor candidate for conservation equivalent measures.  Add in the bad faith demonstrated by a handful of Management Board members, and it is clear why conservation equivalency doesn’t work for striped bass at all.

 

 

MANAGEMENT BOARD STILL WRESTLING WITH STRIPED BASS RELEASE MORTALITY

Last Tuesday, the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission’s Atlantic Striped Bass Management Board held it’s August meeting.  The agenda was crowded, but one of the more important items was a request for guidance for the Plan Development Team that is preparing the Draft Amendment 7 to the striped bass rebuilding plan.

The Plan Development Team has spent the last couple of months trying to develop options to address the items that will be addressed in the Draft Amendment 7:  Management triggers, recreational release mortality, conservation equivalency, and protecting the 2015 year class as it recruits into the spawning stock.

While the PDT had no problem developing options that addressed many of the open issues, in some cases, it wasn’t clear what direction the Management Board wanted to take, or exactly what the Management Board was hoping to accomplish in Amendment 7.  That was particularly true in case of recreational release mortality; the Management Board expressed a desire to reduce it, but wasn’t very clear about the extent of such reduction, how it should be accomplished, or even about why recreational release mortality was being singled out as a particular problem.

It’s not unreasonable for the Management Board to be concerned about recreational release mortality, as it is the largest single source of striped bass fishing mortality, accounting for 48% of all such fishing mortality in 2017.  Thus, reasonable efforts to reduce such mortality, such as the circle hook requirement that went into effect last year, make a good deal of sense.

On the other hand, efforts to address release mortality can go a little too far, particularly when they begin to single out recreational release mortality from other forms of fishing mortality.  After all, from a biological perspective, a dead fish is a dead fish; whether a bass dies after being released, suffocates on ice in some angler’s cooler, is killed in a gill net, or is dumped overboard dead after running afoul of a squid trawl, the effect on the spawning stock is the same.

In the end, what matters is keeping overall fishing mortality constrained to or below the target level, not how such mortality was produced.

And that’s what make’s the PDT’s job, and the job of the Management Board, especially difficult.  They’re trying to find the right answer to a question based on a false premise, for to rebuild the overfished striped bass stock, managers don’t need to reduce recreational release mortality, they need to reduce fishing mortality, and release mortality is only one part of that.  By placing  particular focus on recreational release mortality, the Management Board is unnecessarily creating confusion, without doing much to help the striped bass.

That came through loud and clear at last Tuesday’s meeting.

Consider the PDT’s most basic question:  How much of a reduction in release mortality does the Management Board want to make?

Yet no one on the Management Board could come up with an answer.

There were suggestions that, instead of shooting for a specific percent reduction, perhaps measures could be designed that would achieve a cut in release mortality that fell within some specified range.  But that’s as far as anything got.  No one even suggested—and so the Management Board could never agree on—what that range ought to be.

Thus, the PDT was condemned to throw darts in the dark, tasked with trying to develop options that would reduce recreational release mortality, but given no direction as to what those options ought to achieve.

The PDT told the Management Board that there were a lot of things that it could do.  It could develop options that would prohibit certain gear and/or practices, such as outlawing the use of treble hooks, or gaffs, or trolling with wire line, although there was no way to know what level of reduction that would achieve.  It could also develop options to implement closed seasons although, once again, it needed some guidance on how closed seasons would work.

Everyone was pretty much agreed that seasons would have to be imposed at the regional level, because a winter closure would do nothing up in New England, while hitting hard down in Virginia and North Carolina, while a summer closure might close down the fishery during the only months when fish can be caught up in Maine, while having no impact at all in Virginia.

But once again, no one was quite sure what the closure was supposed to accomplish.  Massachusetts fishery manager Michael Armstrong noted that the issue was more complicated that it might appear on its face, asking whether the intent of seasonal closures was to

“get people off of catching fish or get people off of catching fish when [water] temperatures are too high [for successful release]?”

A consensus quickly emerged favoring closures imposed on the state or regional level, although Connecticut’s Dr. Justin Davis questioned the wisdom of state-level closures due to the inherent uncertainty of recreational catch and landings estimates when applied on both the state and wave level, while New Jersey’s Governor’s Appointee, Tom Fote, seemed to express opposition to any closure that might impact New Jersey’s kill, specifically mentioning Raritan Bay (apparently afraid that New Jersey fishermen would no longer be able to target egg-laden females that stage there before ascending the Hudson River to spawn) and complaining that closures favor catch and release fishermen who can continue to fish while catch and kill anglers have no reason to head onto the water.

That comment led into the question of whether any closure ought to ban harvest, or ban targeted catch and release angling, too.

Considering the issue in a vacuum, a no-targeting ban seems to make sense.  After all, just prohibiting harvest during a certain season won’t do a thing to reduce release mortality, which is supposedly the whole point of the exercise.  But when everything is considered, things don’t look quite so clear.

First of all, and this is a critical point, the striped bass fishery is primarily a recreational release fishery.  Yes, there’s a small commercial component, but that’s pretty well managed, and there is a catch and keep fishery, too, but the fact remains that anglers release about 90% of all striped bass that they catch, and they do it largely by choice.  The days when every “keeper” was kept are in the long-dead past, and not very likely to return.

The thing to remember is that striped bass has primarily been a recreational release fishery for a very long time.  The PDT presented a slide at Tuesday’s meeting showing that the high rate of releases goes back to the 1980s, a time when the stock was still collapsed and the first effective rebuilding effort was in its infancy.

There have been some small diversions, both up and down, from the norm, but anglers have been releasing a very high percentage of their striped bass since 1988 or so, and the percentage of released fish is, if anything, increasing in recent years.  But it’s clear from the PDT slide that claims that catch and release is something new, and that people always used to catch bass to take home, has no support in the modern history of the striped bass fishery.

It’s also inevitable with such a high level of releases, much of the fishing mortality is going to be attributable to release mortality; when keeping a bass is relatively low on the list of anglers’ priorities, release mortality will inevitably approach or exceed the mortality attributable to landings.

That’s why the Management Board’s focus on recreational release mortality, rather than overall fishing mortality, makes little sense.  For in attempting to reduce fishing mortality, what the Management Board is actually attempting to do, whether it realizes it or not, is to change the basic nature of the fishery from primarily catch and release to primarily catch and kill.  And that’s difficult if not impossible to do.

Anglers want to catch bass, and they want to release them, and as a number of Management Board members noted last Tuesday, regulations prohibiting anglers from targeting, and not just keeping, striped bass are just about impossible to enforce.  If I’m standing on a rock at Montauk, throwing a plug into the night-darkened surf, can anyone prove beyond a reasonable doubt that I’m not seeking one of the “gorilla” bluefish that will sometimes take a lure between dusk and dawn?

No, a responsible angler won’t knowingly break the law, but that angler will be sorely tested to bend it close to the snapping point if he knows that Maryland charter boats are legally killing two immature bass per man, two trips per day, while he is prohibited from even exercising a bass for a few minutes and then setting it free.

William Hyatt, the Governor’s Appointee from Connecticut, noted that he was opposed to prohibitions on targeting and releasing bass not only because they were unenforceable, but because they would cause fisheries laws to be seen as a joke, and reduce public confidence in the management process.

I don’t think that he’s wrong.

Martin Gary, who represents the Potomac River Fisheries Commission, probably placed no targeting rules in their proper context when he noted that they were unenforceable, but still might be useful in places like the Chesapeake Bay and the Potomac River, where high water temperatures and low salinity can combine to make successful release problematic, and anglers should be willing to

“give the fish a break during this metabolically challenging time.”

What he said made sense, particularly because he recognized that the same seasonal closures were probably not needed up in New England, where warm summer waters are typically not an issue.

Of course, there were others who adamantly supported no-targeting rules, seeing releases, and not overall fishing mortality, as the problem that needed to be solved.  Not surprisingly, they included Michael Luisi and Joseph Cimino, fishery managers from Maryland and New Jersey, respectively, who have always fought for bigger kills for their states, and stretched the boundaries of conservation equivalency, in order to maintain such kills, far beyond their original intent.

And they included Tom “the only good fish is a dead fish” Fote, who continued to complain that if catch and release anglers weren’t impacted by seasonal closures, than catch and kill anglers shouldn’t be impacted either.

In the end, it was the comments of Dr. Justin Davis that made the most sense.  He acknowledged that the striped bass fishery is primarily a catch and release fishery, and that as a result, it will always have a high level of release mortality.  He noted his opposition to no-target regulations, because they weren’t enforceable.  And then he observed

“If we’re not talking about a targeting closure, I’m not sure what we’re doing here…It is not entirely clear to me what we’re trying to accomplish…”

And that was really it in a nutshell.

From the comments made by the PDT, and from the comments made—and not made—by the Management Board, it was evident to anyone listening in on the meeting that, with respect to recreational release mortality, no one really knew what they were doing at the meeting, or what they were trying to accomplish.

Sure, everyone recognizes that reducing recreational release mortality would be a good thing, but everyone should also recognize that in a fishery where catch and release is frequently and voluntarily practiced, significantly reducing release mortality is far easier said than done.

Thus, it is probably time for the Management Board to abandon this exercise in futility, and instead focus on something that it can effectively accomplish:  Reducing recreational landings to the point where, when combined with release mortality, overall fishing mortality remains below target.

That is something that the Management Board and the PDT both know how to do.

 

 

 

 

 

 

SHOULD THE ASMFC REBUILD STRIPED BASS?

Over the past few years, it was pretty clear to anyone who regularly fishes for Atlantic striped bass that the stock was declining badly, even before the latest benchmark stock assessment, released in 2019, confirmed what most serious fishermen already suspected—that the stock was overfished and suffering from overfishing.

 What’s not so clear is whether the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission (ASMFC) intends to rebuild the striped bass resource, and if it does, how long such rebuilding might take.

The ASMFC has a dismal record when it comes to rebuilding overfished stocks. Its “ASMFC Stock Status Overview,” last updated in June 2021, reveals that out of the 23 stocks managed solely by the ASMFC (it manages other stocks jointly with the National Marine Fisheries Service), 11 are currently overfished, and that it has allowed the only overfished stock that it ever successfully rebuilt, Atlantic striped bass, to become overfished once again.

 It’s possible that the ASMFC’s record is even worse, for of the remaining 12 stocks that fall solely under its jurisdiction, the condition of 7—more than half—is “unknown.”

Amendment 6 to the Interstate Fishery Management Plan for Atlantic Striped Bass (Amendment 6) contains provisions, deemed “management triggers,” that require rebuilding. Management Trigger 2 states that “If the Management Board determines that the biomass has fallen below the threshold in any given year, the Board must adjust the striped bass management program to rebuild the biomass to the target level within [no more than 10 years].”

While that trigger addresses what the Management Board must do if the stock becomes overfished, a second trigger, Management Trigger 4, requires action when the stock isn’t yet overfished, but is nonetheless in decline. It says that “If the Management Board determines that the female spawning stock biomass falls below the target for two consecutive years and the fishing mortality rate exceeds the target in either of those years, the Management Board must adjust the striped bass management program to rebuild the biomass to a level that is at or above the target within [no more than 10 years].”

The ASMFC isn’t governed by the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act (Magnuson-Stevens), which only applies to fisheries prosecuted in federal waters; even so, Management Trigger 2 is similar to Magnuson-Stevens’ requirements for rebuilding overfished stocks, while Management Trigger 4 is actually more prescriptive than the federal law.

 Yet there is a big difference between federal fishery managers and managers at the ASMFC: When federal managers are required to rebuild an overfished stock, they do so, because they know that they will probably end up in court if they fail to act. At the ASMFC, managers know that their actions aren’t subject to judicial review, and that they face no legal consequences for ignoring the rebuilding requirements in a management plan.

 And so they do just that.

In the case of striped bass, they did it twice in less than ten years.

The first time was in 2014, after a previous benchmark stock assessment, released in 2013, revealed that management trigger 4 had been tripped. The clear language of Amendment 6 allowed no room for discretion; it stated that the Atlantic Striped Bass Management Board (Management Board) “must” adopt a 10-year rebuilding plan. Yet both the Management Board and ASMFC staff ignored that injunction, with Michael Waine, then the ASMFC’s Fishery Management Plan Coordinator for Atlantic Striped Bass advising the Management Board that

 

“Management Trigger 2 [sic] in Amendment 6 says that you need to rebuild the [spawning stock biomass] back to its target over a specified timeframe that should not exceed ten years…The board is acting to reduce [fishing mortality]. Through that action we see the projections showing that [spawning stock biomass] will start increasing toward its target, but we’re uncomfortable with projecting out far enough to tell you when it will reach its target because the further on the projections we go the more uncertainty that is involved. Therefore, I think the trend is to get back towards the target, but we can’t tell you exactly how quickly that will happen.”

Of course, as we now know, the stock didn’t rebuild at all. In the absence of a rebuilding plan, instead of the spawning stock biomass “increasing toward its target,” it continued to decline, until the stock became overfished.

Even then, the Management Board failed to heed the plain language of Amendment 6, and did not put a rebuilding plan in place. Instead, it adopted the ineffective Addendum VI to Amendment 6 to the Atlantic Striped Bass Interstate Fishery Management Plan: 18% Reduction in Removals & Circle Hook Measures (Addendum VI), which had only a 42% probability of reducing fishing mortality to the target level.

Despite the unambiguous language of Management Trigger 2, it did not include a 10-year rebuilding plan.

Once that addendum was completed, the Management Board began work on a new Amendment 7 to its striped bass management plan. It decided that the “guiding themes” for such amendment would not be rebuilding the striped bass stock, as might be expected, nor managing such stock for its long-term health and sustainability. Instead, the Management Board envisioned a management plan built around the bureaucratic ideals of management stability, flexibility, and regulatory consistency, themes that would provide formal sanction for any Management Board failures to act in the face of declining abundance and increasing fishing mortality.

Fortunately, stakeholders insisted that the Management Board do better. They submitted over 3,000 individual comments, in which striped bass fishermen from every part of the coast were nearly unanimous in their demands that the striped bass be managed for abundance, not for yield, that the stock be rebuilt within 10 years, and that the current reference points—the levels of spawning stock biomass and fishing mortality used to gauge the health of the population—remain unchanged.

Recognizing that the public had spoken, the Management Board largely acceded to public demands, and agreed not to change the goals and objectives, reference points, or rebuilding timelines that were established in Amendment 6. But they did not agree with the public comments that supported the management triggers. Instead, it directed that changes to such management triggers be considered in the upcoming amendment.

Thus, the Plan Development Team (PDT) was told to develop new options for management triggers that might be included in the first draft of Amendment 7; some Management Board members emphasized the need for those proposals to promote management stability, flexibility, and consistency, despite the public rejection of such themes. Following the instructions that they were given, members of the PDT designed management trigger options that would allow the Management Board to delay remedial actions; instead of management changes being triggered by a single year of overfishing, a two or three or five year average of fishing mortality exceeding the threshold might be required before any effort to reduce landings began.

And when it came to overfishing, the most remarkable proposal of all was made: A PDT member suggested completely removing the trigger that required rebuilding an overfished stock.

That doesn’t mean that Management Trigger 2 will, in the end, be removed from the management plan. Before that could happen, the Management Board would first have to agree to include that suggestion in the initial draft of Amendment 7, which will be sent out for public comments.

Given the public’s overwhelming support for rebuilding the stock, expressed in the last round of comments, it’s hard to believe that a proposal to eliminate Management Trigger 2 would get any support at all. And we can only hope that the Management Board would yield to public sentiment on that issue.

It’s also difficult to reconcile the Management Board’s decision to maintain the 10-year rebuilding timeline with any proposal to eliminate the management trigger that requires rebuilding, for what use is a timeline when rebuilding need never occur?

Still, the fact that the ASMFC would even consider eliminating the requirement to rebuild an overfished striped bass stock is extremely troubling.

 Striped bass, along with the rest of the fish that swim along the Atlantic coast, are natural resources that belong to every citizen of the United States. The ASMFC, as manager of such resources, has a duty to keep those resources healthy and sustainable in the long term. Part of that duty requires fish stocks to be rebuilt when they become depleted.

The ASMFC has not lived up to such obligations, even under current management plans. If it chooses to blatantly abandon its responsibility to rebuild an overfished striped bass population, it will be time for the public to intervene, and compel the ASMFC to get the job done.

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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/

 

 

MAGNUSON-STEVENS: MAKING A GOOD LAW BETTER

 Last Monday, Rep. Jared Huffman (D-CA), Chairman of the House Natural Resources Water, Oceans, and Wildlife Subcommittee, along with Rep. Ed Case (D-HI), introduced the Sustaining America’s Fisheries for the Future Act.  The Act represents the latest effort to reauthorize the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act, and amend that law to better address problems currently facing the living marine resources of the United States.

Magnuson-Stevens has typically been reauthorized every ten years or so; however, the last reauthorization occurred back in 2006, when new requirements to govern all managed fisheries with annual catch limits, to hold fishermen accountable when such limits were exceeded, and to constrain catch in such fisheries to or below the level established by each regional fishery management council’s Scientific and Statistical Committee were added to the law.

The reauthorization before that one produced the Sustainable Fisheries Act of 1996 which, for the first time, created real, legally-enforceable standards for federal fishery managers, led to the elimination of overfishing in most domestic fisheries, and to the complete rebuilding of 47 once-overfished stocks.

For a while, it appeared that each reauthorization effort fine-tuned Magnuson-Stevens just a little bit more, and made it a better and more effective law.

Unfortunately, for a number of years we have seen legislation that, if it had been adopted, would have reversed that trend, and slashed key provisions out of the current law.  Whether we’re talking about H.R. 4742, introduced by Rep. Doc Hastings in the 113^th Congress, or H.R. 1335 (114^th Congress), H.R. 200 (115^th Congress), H.R. 3697 (116^th Congress), or H.R. 59 (117^th Congress), all were sponsored by Rep. Don Young (R-AK), and all would have caused real harm to what is now the most effective, and most successful, marine fishery law in the world.

So we should probably be happy that Magnusson-Stevens was not reauthorized in recent years.

But now, with the introduction of Rep. Huffman’s bill, there is reason to hope that we will see not only a new reauthorization, but also a reauthorization that continues the tradition of fine-tuning Magnuson-Stevens and making it a more effective tool for fishery conservation and management.

Rep. Huffman didn’t draft his bill in haste.  Before embarking upon that process, he first held “listening sessions” in all of the regions represented by fishery management councils; I was invited to speak at the Mid-Atlantic session, where I joined a panel of anglers, commercial fishermen, conservationists, and academics to provide our views on the law.  Similar panels, convened on every coast, gave the Congressman a chance to hear a wide variety of viewpoints, and to understand why stakeholders were calling for change.

After that, “discussion drafts” of the bill were created, and sent out for further comment, to better assure that the bill, once introduced, would be on the right track.

So the bill that was finally introduced this week represented close to two years of inquiry, investigation, and conversation, all aimed at improving the nation’s premier marine fisheries law.

Upon introducing the legislation, Rep. Huffman stated that

“Americans coast-to-coast depend on healthy oceans and fisheries…We know that the MSA has worked well, but new approaches are needed in this era of climate change, new technologies, evolving science needs, and increasing ocean use…With the Sustaining America’s Fisheries for the Future Act we can strengthen fishing communities and ensure a high standard of sustainable fisheries continues well into the future…”

Rep. Case, the bill’s co-sponsor, noted

“…This reauthorization provides critical updates to ensure the long-term sustainability of our fisheries by integrating climate change as a critical consideration.  I’m especially pleased that this bill includes significant reforms to promote accountability, transparency and representation for our nation’s fisheries management councils…These are long overdue and necessary reforms to ensure long-term public trust in the work that these councils are doing on behalf of our nation.”

The Sustaining America’s Fisheries for the Future Act is a broad bill that touches on many different facets of the fishery management process, from funding ways to maintain working waterfronts and addressing the impacts of climate change on regional fisheries to adopting a new, minimum probability tof success for stock rebuilding after the initial rebuilding plan fails and a new plan must be put in place.

So what does the bill do?

Title I is called “Climate-Ready Fisheries,” and tries to force federal fishery managers to come to grips with climate change, which is a particularly serious problem off New England and the upper mid-Atlantic, something Rep. Huffman has acknowledged, saying

“We heard concerns about climate change everywhere.  But the concerns are different depending on where you are.  So in the North Atlantic, it’s ground zero for shifting stocks…”

The bill directs federal fishery managers to take account of climate-related stress in fishery management plans, and to identify the stocks most vulnerable to climate change in order to develop ways to maximize such stocks’ resilience to changing ocean conditions.

Another provision establishes a process for a regional fishery management council, or the Secretary of Commerce, to determine whether a stock has expanded into the jurisdiction of another council, and also to determine how such expansion ought to influence the management process.  Hopefully, such provision might finally offer a solution to the continuing problem of quotas, fixed decades ago when fish were distributed far differently along the coast, that are now held by fishermen located hundreds of miles from the fish, while fishermen who have fish minutes from their docks can’t participate in that abundance, because they have little or no quota at all.

It’s difficult to see any solution to that problem so long as regional fishery management councils continue to side with existing quota holders, instead of embracing change.  For that reason, I’m a little disappointed that the version of the bill that was finally introduced did not call for the creation of a “shifting stocks task force,” composed of people who do not sit on the councils, charged with establishing objective standards for reallocation, and empowered to address the situation existing in any fishery cited in a petition filed by any member of the public.

That sort of task force might have finally forced the resolution of existing quota problems, yet even without it, the bill would take us to a better place than we were in before.

Title II deals with strengthening fishing communities.  It’s where issues such as fisheries disaster relief, supporting working waterfronts, and aid with seafood marketing is housed.  They’re important issues, but not directly tied to conservation, so I’ll leave them for others to describe.

Title III is referenced “Strengthening public process and transparency,” which makes its purpose pretty clear.  Although not directly addressing conservation issues, it would create an environment where good public policy, including conservation measures, could more easily thrive. 

One way it would do that is to make some meaningful changes on the federal fishery management councils, increasing tribal representation on the Pacific and North Pacific fishery management councils, and providing for a voting seat for a New England Fishery Management Council liaison on the Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council and a voting seat for a Mid-Atlantic liaison on the New England Council.  The latter two liaison seats are intended to protect the interests of fisheries that cross jurisdictional borders, and are just one more example of how the Sustaining America’s Fisheries for the Future Act is addressing issues caused by shifting stocks driven by climate change.

For all regional fishery management councils, the bill would require roll call votes on all non-procedural matters, so every member’s voting history would be a matter of public record.  Councils are directed to try to hold meetings in person, but to also make remote meeting and voting available.  The bill would also shore up conflict of interests standards somewhat, get a greater diversity of stakeholders, including members of the academic and environmental communities, into council seats, and expand protections against sexual harassment and assault.  One notable provision would require at least one seat on each council to be filled by individuals who have no financial interest in the fisheries being managed.

Title IV addresses one of the hottest issues in fishery management, and particularly in recreational fishery management, modernizing fishery science and data.  It encourages the expansion and improvement of electronic technologies used in fishery management, along with uniform standards for such technologies.  Title IV also includes language that would require the Secretary of Commerce to provide a detailed report on the stock assessment process, including the methods used, the assessments completed and not completed during the previous year, a schedule of planned assessments, a description of data needs, and a description of the technologies that are and could be employed to collect needed information.  Recognizing that cooperative research may provide the means to fill some research needs, Title IV creates a comprehensive framework for authorizing and funding such research, and also authorizes a Northeast Regional Pilot Research Trawl Survey and Study to complement current studies conducted in the region by the National Marine Fisheries Service.

Recreational data concerns are included in Title IV as well.  One of the bill’s provisions would provide, in part, that

“If recreational catch data for a stock of fish come from more than one survey program, such as Federal and non-Federal sources, including from States or Marine Fisheries Commissions, the Secretary shall implement measures, which may include the use of calibration methods, as needed for the timely integration of such data to ensure consistent methods and approaches are used for monitoring of catch against the relevant annual catch limits and for other fishery science and management purposes.”

Such language, should the bill become law, should go a long way to avoid the sort of debacle that recently occurred at the Gulf of Mexico Fishery Management Council where recreational fishermen, trying to avoid the consequences of their excess red snapper landings, deferred the needed data calibration process for two more years, and thus exposed the rebuilding red snapper stock to additional, and unnecessary, risk.  Another provision would initiate a long-term data improvement process, in which data needs, and the ways that managers might fulfill them, would be subject to periodic and ongoing review.

Finally, Title V would address traditional fishery and habitat conservation concerns.  The essential fish habitat section of Magnuson-Stevens, which is in many ways the current law’s most toothless provision, would be generally bolstered, while provisions dealing with habitat areas of particular concern would be significantly strengthened.  Language would also be added to strengthen provisions designed to eliminate or minimize bycatch in federal fisheries. 

Title V would strengthen the language that requires managers to end overfishing.  It would also add new criteria for determining when a fishery management plan is failing, and must either be amended in order to achieve rebuilding by the specified rebuilding date or, in the alternative, declared a failure and replaced with a new plan.  

In what might be one of the shortest but most significant provisions in the entire bill, the legislation provides that, in the event that a fishery management plan fails to rebuild a stock by the required time, any subsequent rebuilding plan must have at least a 75% probability of success, instead of the 50% probability established as a minimum standard in Natural Resources Defense Council v. Daley two decades ago.  Should such standard ever become law, it is possible that shattered stocks such as Georges Banks or Gulf of Maine cod, or Southern New England/Mid-Atlantic winter flounder, might finally have a fighting chance to rebuild.

And because healthy stocks of larger fish depend upon having healthy stocks of forage to feed on, the bill would create new protections for forage fish stocks, to assure that they will be able to fill their role in the food web.

As long as it was, the above review only hit the high points of the Sustaining America’s Fisheries for the Future Act, and concentrated on those provisions directly related to the conservation of fish stocks.

Capitol Hill is a strange place, particular over the past few years, and it is impossible to predict whether the law will find passage before the 117^th Congress ends about 17 months from now, or what it will look like if it does.  For the bill still has a long way to go, past committee hearings, staff negotiations, floor votes, and—if everything happens as we hope—the President’s desk.  A lot can happen, and a lot of changes can be made, over that time.

But right now, we’re in a win-win situation.  If the bill fails to achieve passage, U.S. fisheries will still be governed by the best fisheries management law in the world.  And if the bill is finally is signed into law, we’ll still be governed by Magnuson-Stevens, but the best fisheries management law in the would will be even better than it had been before.