LOUISIANA PROPOSES INNOVATIVE NEW MENHADEN RULES

 

About one month ago, a purse seine boat, surprised and frightened by the size of its menhaden catch, cut its net loose, thereby dumping close to 900,000 dead fish less than a mile off the Louisiana coast.  The incident created quite a stink, both literally and figuratively, as the rotting mass of baitfish commanded the attention of everyone in the immediate vicinity.

Recreational fishermen, various conservation groups, and some charter boat captains were dismayed by the waste.  Menhaden are one of the key forage species along the Gulf and Atlantic coasts, and many people are concerned that the menhaden fishery, which removes somewhere between 600 and 900 million pounds of menhaden from Louisiana waters each year, is removing baitfish needed to sustain healthy stocks of speckled trout (spotted seatrout), red drum, and other species.

Louisiana state fisheries managers appear unconcerned.  They note that the entire fishery removes only about 2% of the Gulf’s menhaden population; killing 900,000 fish, which amounts to less than one-tenth of one percent of annual landings, has a trivial impact on the menhaden stock.  In the words of Jason Adriance, who works for the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries,

“A couple million extra is insignificant.”

Of course, the menhaden nets don’t only kill, and sometimes waste, menhaden.  It’s fairly typical for the fish that feed on menhaden to shadow the schools, even when they’re not actively feeding, occasionally taking a cripple that might happen by, and sometimes exploding into a more active feeding mode.  When the purse seines surround a big menhaden school, it’s not unusual for the nets to surround and kill some of the predators, too.  And because the seines are very large and hang deep in the water, so that they can be effective when fished well offshore, they often reach all the way to the bottom when fished in the shallow nearshore sea, scraping up various unwanted animals whether or not such critters were paying attention to the menhaden passing overhead.

Thus, the Louisiana news site nola.com reported that

“Anglers spotted a large amount of bycatch, including redfish, floating belly-up among the menhaden.  Photos of the dead fish began making the rounds with recreational fishing groups this week.”

Omega Protein Corporation, a United States subsidiary of the Canadian conglomerate Cooke Seafood and the intended processor of the menhaden that were spilled, has expressed little remorse over the incident.  Again quoting nola.com,

“The menhaden fishing boat was a victim of its own success, said Omega spokesman Ben Landry.

“’We’ve been experiencing some really, really big schools down in southwest Louisiana,’ he said.  ‘The captain thought he brought back 500,000 pounds.  Turns out it was a lot more than that.’

“The net was so overloaded that a larger ‘mothership’ could not safely get the fish aboard.  The captain ordered the net cut free just before it ripped open and drifted away.

“’He knew he’d lose the net because it had gotten too heavy,’ Landry said.  ‘’Then the weight of the fish ripped the net.’

“Having to cut a net is rare, but large net tears happen two to three times a year, Landry said.”

So the menhaden boat didn’t just leave 900,000 rotting menhaden floating around in its wake.  It also left behind a 1,500-foot net, to work whatever mischief an abandoned net of that size can do when allowed to drift around coastal waters on its own.

But then, the menhaden processors were never good corporate citizens.  As nola.com reports,

“Plaquemines health officials and environmental groups have been raising alarms about Daybrook Fisheries processing plant in Empire for decades.  The plant’s own safety manager filed a lawsuit in March alleging that the plant willfully spews large amounts of fish waste into the Mississippi River and other nearby waterways, and has resisted taking basic precautions to avoid spills.

“Omega’s Abbeville plant has been the source of odor complaints from towns more than 20 miles away.  Among the environmental violations was a $1 million fine in 2017 for twice dumping large volumes of polluted water into the Vermillion River.

“In 2019, Omega agreed to pay $1 to resolve allegations that the company obtained a government loan by falsely certifying compliance with clean water laws…”

Massive fish kills, torn and lost nets, the bycatch and waste of valued food and sport fish, and water quality issues are nothing new nor unusual for the menhaden purse seine fleet.  As I reported earlier this year, the same thing has been going on in the Virginia portion of the Chesapeake Bay.  If you live, boat, swim, or fish in waters that host one of the large-scale menhaden fisheries, you get used to seeing that sort of thing, even if you never really become inured to it.

However, what’s happening in Louisiana right now is something new.  The Commonwealth of Virginia has long tolerated and actively supported the industrial menhaden fishery, and whatever abuses it might heap upon the state’s waters and the citizens who seek to enjoy them.  Louisiana seems to be far less compliant.  While the state still doesn’t believe that the menhaden harvest is causing harm to local ecosystems, it seems to have a very strong aversion to the waste of marine resources and the abandonment of fishing gear in public waters.

Thus, Louisiana’s Department of Wildlife and Fisheries announced that it has

“adopted a Notice of Intent (NOI) to prohibit the waste of fishery resources and abandonment of menhaden purse seine gear during fishing operations

“The proposed rule would:

>  Prohibit abandoning menhaden purse seine gear during the course of fishing operations or while on the water and establish a 48-hour window to remove all gear before it is considered abandoned.

>  Establishes marking requirement for gear that is released to facilitate retrieval and warn of navigational hazards by the released gear.

>  Would require notification to LDWF within 2 hours of any release of menhaden.

>  Requires that all reasonable attempts be made to retrieve menhaden and bycatch from the environment in the event of a release.

>  Defines that a violation of these rules shall be considered a waste of a fishery resource subject to civil fine and restitution and abandonment of gear shall be considered a commercial littering violation.”

Comments will be accepted on the proposed regulations through January 5, 2023.

It’s far too early to tell whether such proposed regulation will be adopted and, if it is adopted, what form the final regulation will take.  However, the Louisiana proposal is notable on a number of counts.

First, it represents the first attempt, in any state, to address the problem of menhaden spills in coastal waters.  Up until now, such spills, even when caused by the intentional actions of vessel crew, have been treated as if they were unavoidable acts of God, and not the result of human actions and human error.  For the first time, in any state, Louisiana would hold the menhaden fleet accountable for the spills and resultant problems that they cause.

The Louisiana proposal also recognizes the spills for what they are—the avoidable waste of a public resource.  Hopefully, the concept of waste of a fishery resource will extend beyond merely the menhaden, to the food fish and gamefish that are killed as bycatch in the menhaden fishery.

Finally, and perhaps most significantly in the long term, should the proposed regulations become law, a violation would not only subject the fishermen to civil fines, but also a payment of restitution, to compensate the people of Louisiana for their loss of the benefits provided by the wasted menhaden and, again, hopefully also the loss of fish killed as bycatch in the menhaden nets.

In recent years, much of the criticism leveled at the industrial menhaden fishery has focused on its removal of important forage fish from the ecosystem, and the supposed impact such removal has on marine predators.  Unfortunately, we still lack clear and unambiguous scientific studies which demonstrate that the menhaden fishery is doing real and measurable harm to coastal ecosystems.

The Louisiana proposal shifts the debate from the hypothetical ecosystem harm caused by the menhaden fishery to the very real waste of living marine resources attributable to menhaden spills, the potential hazards associated with abandoned nets, and redressing the harm that flows from such actions.

In charting its new course, Louisiana is showing other states the path that they ought to travel, if the industrial menhaden fishery is ever to be held accountable for its excesses, and properly brought under fishery managers’ control.

 

 

 

 

NMFS SEEKS ANGLER INPUT ON RECREATIONAL FISHING POLICY

 

Most anglers probably don’t realize that the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) has a policy that addresses recreational fisheries management (Recreational Policy). Most anglers have probably never even considered the issue.

 

Yet it’s an issue that deserves some thought for, as the introduction to the Recreational Policy notes, “The purpose of this policy is to provide guidance for Agency consideration in its deliberations pertaining to the development and maintenance of enduring and sustainable high quality saltwater recreational fisheries. This policy identifies goals and guiding principles to be integrated into NMFS’ planning, budgeting, decision-making, and activities, and includes examples of implementation concepts and strategies supported by NMFS.”

The existing Recreational Policy, which was adopted in 2015, is an outgrowth of discussions held at the 2014 National Saltwater Recreational Fishing Summit, an event jointly sponsored by NMFS and the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission. Those discussions, in turn, were informed by a document titled “A Vision for Managing America’s Saltwater Recreational Fisheries” (Vision Statement), which was created by a panel assembled by a coalition of sportfishing industry and “anglers’ rights” organizations, and issued under the aegis of the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership a month before the 2014 Summit began.

 

The Vision Statement’s very first recommendation was that NMFS adopt a recreational fishing policy, so it wasn’t surprising that NMFS did so just one year after the 2014 Summit was held.

The Recreational Policy is built “around six overarching themes: 1) Support ecosystem conservation and management, 2) Promote public access to quality recreational fishing opportunities, 3) Coordinate with state and federal management entities, 4) Advance innovative solutions to evolving science, management, and environmental challenges, 5) Provide scientifically sound and trusted social, cultural, economic, and ecological information, and 6) Communicate and engage with the recreational fishing public.

While those broad themes generally coincide with the concerns of the recreational fishing public, many of the details were clearly driven by the coalition of recreational fishing organizations, centered on or around the Gulf of Mexico, that created the Vision Statement and engaged in an intense lobbying effort that urged NMFS to include the Vision Statement’s priorities in its new Recreational Policy.

 

Now, NMFS is reaching out to saltwater anglers and to the larger recreational fishing community, asking them to suggest needed changes to the Recreational Policy. As the agency explains, “Developed with extensive public input, the 2015 Policy reflects the priorities of the day…NOAA recognizes the need to adapt with a changing climate and the evolving needs of recreational fisheries and anglers. With the perspectives shared during the 2022 National Saltwater Recreational Fisheries Summit, NOAA Fisheries requests your input on revising the Policy…”

 

Given the conversations that took place at the 2022 National Saltwater Recreational Fisheries Summit, that’s a welcome invitation, and one that saltwater anglers ought to take advantage of.

The 2022 Summit may have been, in terms of diverse angler input, the most impressive summit yet. While the 2014 Summit was largely orchestrated by a handful of organizations seeking to promote the Vision Statement’s priorities, and the 2018 National Saltwater Recreational Fishing Summit, although far more freewheeling, still saw the same organizations try to control the debate, the 2022 Summit was the first in which the voices of a broad array of anglers, representing every corner of the coast and largely unaffiliated with the big national advocacy groups, achieved something like parity with those of the Gulf-centered industry organizations.

And those anglers had some interesting things to say, which suggested that the Recreational Policy was, indeed, in need of revision. While the 2014 Summit was all about promoting the Vision Statement, and the 2018 Summit saw, as the resulting report noted, “participants [discuss] the key obstacles impeding increased opportunity and stability in recreational fisheries,” the 2022 Summit, with its theme “Recreational Fisheries in a Time of Change,” was focused on the future, and anglers thoughts of what such future should be.

NMFS has released the “National Saltwater Recreational Fisheries Summit Report 2022,” which describes the topics addressed and the themes that emerged. It describes a few “cross-cutting themes” that anglers returned to throughout the two days of the 2022 Summit. In describing such themes, the report observed that

 

There is broad recognition that climate change is affecting traditional angling opportunities, and in order to effectively adapt, more attention is needed to understand and regularly incorporate human dimension considerations into decision making. This ranges from assessing the intrinsic values of fishing to better understand [optimum yield], to considering cultural practices associated with non-commercial fisheries in the Pacific Islands…

Throughout the sessions, there were calls for more precise and timely fishery-dependent and independent data that accurately represent the fishery. These are not new requests; however, some of the solutions offered represent a shift in thinking away from a heavy reliance on fishery-independent data, and towards new and more diverse data streams…However, the path to collecting and incorporating new data streams, including mechanisms to assure their scientific validity, may require shifts in federal and state management, and partnerships with stakeholders.

…Finally, participants voiced support for recent recommendations from the 2021 National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM) review of the Marine Recreational Information Program (MRIP), and the role of regional MRIP implementation teams in addressing those recommendations.

Management flexibility was viewed as a double-edged sword by various stakeholders in the recreational fishing community, where some were optimistic about its potential, and others expressed apprehension. There was traction around the desire of anglers to maintain fishing opportunities (i.e., the experience) over catching certain amounts of target species…

…Particularly during this time of increased offshore development in wind energy and aquaculture, the recreational fishing community is being asked and urged to be more involved in scoping, review, mitigation, and compensation processes. This is in addition to specific state and regional fisheries meetings, and broader regional or coastwide conversations around climate change/scenario planning and [Fishery Ecosystem Plans]. Stakeholders are participating in these forums, but questions remain around how to deepen the reach to the angling community, and how to increase the diversity of those around the table…

None of those issues is adequately addressed in the current Recreational Policy.

The most notable omission from the existing Recreational Policy is the lack of any consideration of what the 2022 Report calls “the intrinsic value of fishing,” and “maintain[ing] fishing opportunities…over catching certain amounts of target species.” Instead, the Recreational Policy emphasizes harvest, focusing on things such as artificial reefs that aggregate fish into easily exploitable concentrations, “aquaculture tools and technologies” (i.e., hatcheries that lessen the need for sustainable management of wild fish stocks), allocating fish to the recreational sector, “longer fishing seasons,” and “increased allowable catch levels.”

A revision to the Recreational Policy that recognizes the purely recreational aspects of angling, and the value of an abundance of fish in the ocean, apart from any harvest considerations, seems to be badly needed.

The quality of recreational data has been among anglers’ perennial concerns. While the Recreational Policy includes aspirational language about “improving fisheries science and management,” “developing and supporting cutting-edge scientific tools,” and “collecting recreational catch and effort…data that support transparent and participatory management and conservation of saltwater recreational fisheries,” it never addresses the need to use available data appropriately, with regard for its inherent limitations.

The precision of Marine Recreational Information Program data is highly dependent on the number of anglers surveyed; when the data reflect angler activity in a limited geographical area or over only a short period of time, such precision is badly degraded. Yet fishery managers continue to craft management measures based on a single state’s data, often further narrowed by sector or two-month wave, even thought the scientific validity of such data is questionable.

 

Amending the Recreational Policy to discourage the use of such unreliable data would lead to more effective regulations that bolster anglers’ faith in the management process, and better align with the recommendations made by the National Academies.

Finally, the Recreational Policy should be changed to provide for far greater outreach, which encourages a more diverse set of anglers to engage in the management process. While such policy already talks about “empowering” anglers to engage with fishery managers, such engagement is not actively encouraged, nor does it typically occur. Instead, a small group of affiliated organizations purport to speak for the entire angling community, and too often promote management measures that promote their short-term concerns instead of anglers’ long-term interests.

Fortunately, NMFS is now giving anglers an opportunity to speak for themselves, by providing them the opportunity to suggest revisions to the Recreational Policy.

From now through December 31, 2022, anglers may submit their comments on the Recreational Policy through the NMFS website. The agency has also scheduled three webinars, during which comments will be accepted; although two such webinars have already occurred, a third will be held on November 22, 2022, from 6:00 to 7:00 p.m. Eastern time. NMFS will also be making a number of live presentations, usually in conjunction with regional fishery management council meetings, between now and December 1, 2022.

Thus, anglers will have ample opportunity to provide NMFS with comments that reflect their concerns and to help amend the Recreational Policy to better address recreational fishermen’s wants and needs.

It’s an opportunity that shouldn’t be missed.

-----

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/

 

AMENDMENTS TO MSA REAUTHORIZATION BILL PUT SHARKS IN THE CROSSHAIRS

 

Last Thursday, the House Natural Resources Committee completed its markup of H.R. 4690, the Sustaining America’s Fisheries for the Future Act, and sent it along for consideration by the full House of Representatives.  H.R. 4690, which represents the first meaningful effort to reauthorize the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act since 2006, is a good bill, and legislation that’s very much needed, both to plug some existing holes in current law and to shape Magnuson-Stevens into a law better suited to meet future challenges.

Hopefully, the House will approve the bill later this fall, it will find similar success in the Senate, and be signed into law before the 117^th Congress comes to an end.

Still, the version of H.R. 4690 that emerged from Committee is not quite as good as the version that existed before.  The political process, when it is working well, is a process of discussion and compromise, where everyone’s concerns receive due consideration, and not the sort of dysfunctional, winner-take-all dogfight that it has too often been in recent years.

In that regard, the good news is that the version of H.R. 4690 that was voted out of Committee included amendments that arose out of exactly the sort of discussion and compromise that should underlie the legislative process.  The bad news is that some of those amendments, offered by Rep. Garret Graves (R-LA), who frequently caters to some of the more conservation-hostile elements of the recreational fishing community, could easily undermine shark conservation and management in the northwest Atlantic Ocean and Gulf of Mexico.

One such amendment reads

“Within 1 year of the enactment of this section, the Secretary shall enter into an agreement for an independent analysis to be done on shark populations in the Gulf of Mexico and Atlantic coasts and before starting the survey, develop a plan to integrate the results of this study into the Secretary’s own data sets and fishery management measures.  [emphasis added]”

Another would create a funding and research priority for

“Projects to better understand shark depredation, what causes increases in the behavior, and how to best address the behavior.”

Read in a vacuum, those amendments might seem relatively benign.  However, read in the context of the hostility exhibited by saltwater anglers in the southeastern United States toward coastal shark populations, they suggest a real and growing threat to effective shark conservation, and to efforts to rebuild overfished shark populations to sustainable levels.

Consider how predators feed.

Any predator, whether it lives above or beneath the sea, must find a way to capture and subdue its prey.  Prey may be taken by pursuit or by ambush, but in either case, it’s always better for the predator if such prey is injured or otherwise handicapped, so that it can be more easily caught and devoured.

Taking that proposition into the marine environment, I learned when I was still very young that if I cast a treble hook into a school of bunker (more properly, “Atlantic menhaden”) and jerked that hoottk through the packed aggregation of fish quickly enough to foul hook one in the side, there was a very good chance that a bluefish would attack that bunker and cut it in half before I could reel it back to the boat. The menhaden school might have been fifty or more yards in diameter; many covered a few acres, and contained untold thousands of fish, but despite such rich abundance, the bluefish would choose to ignore all of the healthy and free-swimming bunker and choose to attack my hooked and struggling menhaden instead.

That fact is well-known to anglers.  “Snag-and-drop,” a technique that sees anglers foul hook menhaden, then allow the hooked fish to struggle within and below the school, has been practiced for many, many years.  It was arguably the most popular way to catch big striped bass up until the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission mandated the use of circle hooks when bait fishing for bass, beginning in the 2020 season; it is so productive that, despite its prohibition, many unprincipled anglers continue to fish that way today.

And we’re not only talking about fish eating menhaden.  When I fish on wrecks south of Long Island, I have had days when the bluefish made it nearly impossible to bring a black sea bass or scup to the surface; every one that was hooked was attacked and partially eaten on the way back to the boat.

In the fish-eat-fish world of the ocean, that’s just the way things work.  I’ve had blue marlin attack hooked dolphin.  Bluefish will attack not only scup and black sea bass, but just about any hooked fish if it’s smaller than them; I’ve seen cod, weakfish, flounder, and even striped bass fall victim to their jaws.  In the South, barracuda will frequently savage smaller fish as they struggle against an angler’s line; in the Pacific, both lingcod and halibut will latch onto hooked rockfish.

All of those things are pretty well accepted as the price that one pays for fishing in the sea.

But when it comes to sharks, for some reason, things are different.  Perhaps because anglers can’t, or at least choose not to, eat them, their depredation earns them the label of nuisance, and anglers call for their numbers to be reduced.

That is a particular issue in the southeast, where sharks are picking off anglers’ hooked snapper and grouper, and both fishermen and charter boat operators are beginning to complain that there are too many sharks in the ocean.

Such claims are clearly groundless.  Dusky sharks, for example, have been badly depleted, primarily by the longline fleet; the stock won’t be rebuilt any time soon.  The National Marine Fisheries Service has advised that

“The updated projections estimated that the target rebuilding years range from 2084-2204, with a median of 2107.”

In other words, if we’re really lucky, and everything goes right, there’s a chance of rebuilding the stock in 62 years, by which time most of the people reading this will probably be dead, and a child born today would, if current rules still applied, be eligible to receive Social Security.  If things don’t go so well, we’re looking at more than 180 years before the stock rebuilds, which makes it clear just how much damage was caused by the overfishing of the past few decades.  Even if we accept the 85-year median rebuilding time as the most likely outcome, NMFS warns that

“In order to achieve rebuilding by 2107 with a 50% probability, the final models project that [the fishing mortality rate] on the stock would have to be reduced by 20-85% (median=35%) from 2015 levels.”

That’s a pretty substantial cut to achieve in a fishery where mortality is almost entirely attributable to bycatch, and not to a directed fishery.  And it strongly suggests that there aren’t too many dusky sharks around.

Sandbar sharks, which are closely related to duskies, are faring a little better.  Scientists believe that they may be fully recovered by 2071, in only about 50 years.  So there probably aren’t an excess of sandbars out there either.

Another fairly close relative, the bull shark, may be faring a little better.  A study published in 2013 suggests that bull sharks off the coast of Texas may be experiencing an increase in abundance, which is probably attributed to a gill net ban in Louisiana, since such nets will no longer be ensnaring and killing the bull sharks as bycatch.  But even if that is true, it’s important to note that the increased number of fish represents a return to more normal levels of abundance after the Louisiana gill nets were outlawed, and not some unexpected spike in the population.

With respect to lemon sharks, another common southeastern species, a study that came out last year

“suggested that Lemon Shark stock abundance has been relatively stable since the mid-1990s, with some estimates of prior depletion.” 

So lemon shark populations, far from increasing, are holding steady at levels that are probably lower than they once were.

But that’s not what we’re hearing from a lot of southeastern fishermen.  They believe that there are already too many sharks in the ocean, and that numbers need to be reduced, to keep them from stealing too many hooked fish.  One charter boat captain, who helped to organize a tournament specifically designed to kill sharks, particularly bull sharks, and remove them from the ecosystem tried to justify such event by saying,

“What we’re doing brings [shark overabundance] to the fore.  There is a small imbalance in our shark population and we would like our federal government to conduct a stock assessment.”

Another charter boat captain, also a tournament organizer, complained,

“Any boat that comes out and parks on the local reef immediately has 10 or 12 sharks under your boat every second or every time you go out there to fish.”

He, too, believes that the shark population should be whittled down.

Put in that context, the motivation behind Rep. Graves’ amendments to H.R. 4690 becomes clear.  Once again, he is attempting to assuage the recreational fishing community, and play to some of their baser motivations, in this case to kill off marine competitors for snapper, grouper, and other recreationally important fish, regardless of the impact on the marine ecosystem.  

To such fishermen, the shark that picks off a fish hooked by an angler is no longer merely a marine predator doing what comes naturally, feeding on crippled prey, but a malevolent pest that must be removed.  Echoes of now-discredited terrestrial efforts to kill off wolves, foxes, coyotes, hawks, etc. in order to reduce competition for game animals prized by human hunters cannot be ignored.

NMFS has already found that a number of shark species, including sandbars and duskies, are overfished and in need of rebuilding.  But that finding, as accurate as it may be, is not the answer that fishermen want to believe, so Rep. Graves’ amendment calls for “an independent analysis” of shark populations conducted by someone—who and how they are chosen remains unclear—who Rep. Graves and the fishermen undoubtedly hope will come up with a different conclusion.

When and if they do, the real kicker in the amendment comes in:  NMFS will not only be required “to integrate the results of this study into the Secretary [of Commerce]’s own data sets and fishery management measures,” regardless of the quality of the study and the information on which it is based, but NMFS must also figure out how to achieve such integration “before starting the survey.”  

Thus, the results of the so-called “independent survey” must be used to manage shark stocks regardless of the quality of the science and regardless of whether federal fishery managers believe the results of such survey are useful for shark management.  And they must figure out how to do such things before they even know how such survey is conducted and what it will say.

Because, after all, the purpose of the amendment is not to find the true answers to fisheries issues, but rather to find the answer that the fishermen Rep. Graves opts to support are looking for.

Of course, the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act also requires that

“Conservation and management measures shall be based upon the best scientific information available,”

so Rep. Graves’ amendment seems to set up an potentially irreconcilable conflict:  The law demands that, if the results of the “independent study” do not represent the best scientific information available, they should not be used for conservation and management of the shark fishery, yet if the amendment becomes law, the law will also require that the results of such independent survey be used for conservation and management, even if the scientific information provided by such survey is suspect.

Given such conflicting provisions, it would seem that if such amendment becomes law, at least one lawsuit will be inevitable.

Rep. Graves’ other shark-related amendment doesn’t create the same sort of legal issue, but it does create some confusion.  It would make a study of shark depredation a priority for NMFS research and funding.  That wouldn’t be particularly remarkable, if a NMFS study of shark depredation wasn’t already going on.

A year ago, NMFS awarded a $195,000 grant to Florida Atlantic University’s Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institute and to Mississippi State University to study shark depredation in the South Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico regions, respectively.  There seems to be little need to prioritize research and funding for such topic, when the funding has already occurred, and the study is already going on.

Once again, one has to wonder whether prioritizing new research on the same subject is intended to provide some sort of insurance that, if the current study doesn’t come to the conclusions that Rep. Graves and the fishermen want, another study already in the wings might do so.

When someone starts funding studies, already knowing what they want those studies to conclude, there is a serious problem.

Such problem should not be seen as H.R. 4690’s fatal flaw.  Even with those amendments in place, H.R. 4690 ought to be passed.  It will improve fishery management too much to be allowed to die.

At the same time, if the Rep. Graves’ two shark amendments could be removed on the House floor, those concerned with good conservation and management certainly wouldn’t complain.

 

 

 

 

 

MARINE RECREATIONAL FISHERIES: WE NEED TO UTTER THE "A" WORD

 

Recreational fishery management has its own language with some terms, like “optimum yield” and “fishing mortality target,” unique to the management arena, while other words are taken from everyday speech, although they might be repurposed a bit. 

If we began sorting those terms alphabetically, it wouldn’t be long before we got to “allocation,” which is pretty important to everyone, because it’s all about which sector—commercial or recreational, with the for-hire fleet sometimes considered as well—gets to kill the largest proportion of the fish.

Allocation discussions that involve recreational fishing are usually very intense, but just about all of them can be broken down into the same simple terms:  The commercial fishing sector is awarded some proportion of the landings of a particular species, and the recreational fishing sector wants to take some or all of those landings for itself (on rare occasions, it works the other way, with commercial fishermen seeking a larger share of the pie, but that does not happen often and such efforts are generally very short-lived).

Typically, the angling folks might be seeking to make a popular recreational species, such as striped bass, a “gamefish,” and preclude all commercial harvest.  They’ll argue that recreational fishing yields greater economic benefits (which is probably true); that there are so many recreational fishermen that they could easily kill the entire annual catch limit themselves (which is hardly a recommendation); and that people who either won’t or can’t catch their own dinner aren’t entitled to wild fish, but should be happy purchasing whatever the fish farms turn out. 

Other recreational advocates aren’t looking to take the whole hog; they’re willing to leave the snout and the ears and maybe the trotters for the commercial folks, so long as they get all of the hams and the ribs and the bacon.  

People who take that sort of stand make the same economic arguments as the “gamefish” proponents, but often spin them around the proposition that because the recreational sector is growing, and generating more effort, the allocation should be shifted to accommodate the greater demand.  (It's interesting to imagine what their response would be if the National Marine Fisheries Service embraced the mirror image of that argument:  What if NMFS announced, let's say, that because the commercial summer flounder fishery is a limited entry fishery, there are quite a few commercial fishermen that would like to participate but can’t get a permit, so the agency was going to issue some additional commercial permits to meet the demand, and compensate by increasing the commercial quota at the expense of the recreational sector?  Does anyone believe that the same "the sector is growing" argument that is used by various recreational organizations would go unchallenged if it was used against them?)

The Gulf red snapper fishery has seen some of the most blatant examples of that sort of thinking, with Brad Gentner, a fisheries economist who has been associated with anglers’ rights groups such as the Coastal Conservation Association and Center for Sportfishing Policy, testifying before a committee of the United States Senate that

“As fish populations increase, so does recreational effort and catch and, as fish populations decrease, effort and catch decrease as well.  Abundance drives effort.  Effort drives spending and value for small businesses.  Which should be a good thing, but at the moment that value is not only being ignored, it is being squandered.

“During rebuilding, effort increases as the stock increases.  Because the stock is increasing, catch per unit of effort also increases, meaning it takes less effort to catch the same weight of fish as the stock grows.  In fisheries with inadequate recreational allocations, this can induce a downward spiral of ever tightening regulation in the face of rebounding stocks when the recreational sector is managed like a commercial fishery.  The original allocation of red snapper is widely accepted to be totally flawed…This flawed and unfair allocation has created this downward spiral that has all but crushed the recreational red snapper fishery and the businesses supported by recreational red snapper fishing, while the stock continues to grow rapidly…” 

The sense of entitlement reflected in such comments is striking.  Nonetheless, spokesmen for the recreational sector love to speak about allocation—so long as they’re the ones getting the fish.

And before someone perusing our hypothetical list of recreational fishery management terms even got to “allocation,” they would have come to the word “access,” another term popular with the anglers' rights folks.

For most of my life on and around the water, “access” meant having a place to fish.  If a town closed a waterfront park after sunset, you lost “access” to striped bass fishing during the most productive hours of the night.  If a state or county park closed a long stretch of beach to motorized vehicles, you might lose “access” to an inlet or other productive fishing spot located miles from the nearest parking lot, because getting there on your own two legs, while wearing a set of waders and carrying all of the requisite gear (not to mention getting any fish you chose to retain back to a distant parking lot while they’re still in fit condition to eat) was a practical near-impossibility.

Thus, for most of my life, fighting for “access” was a good and noble thing, because it meant nothing less than fighting for your ability to reach fishable water.

But “access” is one of those words that has become repurposed in recent times.  The big recreational organizations understand that they’re not going to get too far if they announce that their goal is to permanently remove more fish from the ocean; that just doesn’t have the sort of benevolent ring that politicians will rush to support.  So they instead use the word “access” as a euphemism for “dead fish.”

Thus, in a March 2020 press release, we see the Center for Sportfishing Policy complain that

“Over the last decade, anglers have been baffled by NOAA Fisheries’ decision to radically limit public access to red snapper despite the plentiful number of fish they are encountering on the water…

“’Effectively eliminating the South Atlantic red snapper season is a prime example of federal fisheries management failure,’ said Jeff Angers, president of the Center for Sportfishing Policy.  ‘Unlike a buffet line, anglers cannot choose which fish to reel up from the deep, and when they have to throw red snapper back, many fish inevitably die…’  [emphasis added]”

Elsewhere in their announcement, the Center for Sportfishing Policy admits that recreational fishermen released over 3 million red snapper off Florida’s east coast, so it seems that, contrary to the Center’s allegations, anglers must have pretty good access to the fish—they have no problem getting out on the water and catching them.  

What federal fishery managers have limited is not access, but anglers’ ability to toss the snapper they have successfully accessed into their coolers and take them home; the agency was forced to make the difficult choice between requiring anglers to release most of the snapper they caught while targeting other species, knowing that a significant percentage of those snapper would die after release, or allowing anglers to take more red snapper home while also killing a significant percentage of the snapper that are caught and released while targeting other species.

Thus, the issue presented isn’t the one cited by the Center—preventing anglers’ access to the resource—but rather, preventing anglers from retaining their catch.  A more forthright spokesman might have referenced “NOAA Fisheries’ decision prohibiting anglers from killing their catch and removing it from the spawning stock,” but such a statement wouldn’t play well on the afternoon news, and might provide non-anglers with too clear an understanding of what was really going on.

So, “access” was used.

But while the organized recreational fishing community might be very willing to demand bigger allocations and more of what they refer to as “access,” there’s one more A-word out there, and it’s one that they try to avoid:  Accountability.

The Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act very clearly states that all fishery management plans must

“establish a mechanism for specifying annual catch limits in the plan (including a multiyear plan), implementing regulations, or annual specifications, at a level such that overfishing does not occur in the fishery, including measures to ensure accountability.  [emphasis added]”

Regional fishery management councils have typically done a very good job of holding the commercial sector accountable for its overages; in most cases, when the commercial catch limit is exceeded, fishermen are expected to pay back the overage in the next season.

Of course, the data on commercial fishery landings is generally far better than recreational fishery data.  Commercial landings are generally recorded in something close to real time, and verified by weigh-out records at the dealers which purchase the fish.  

Recreational fishery data is generated by the Marine Recreational Information Program, and always includes some level of uncertainty, known as the Percent Standard Error (PSE).  In the case of infrequently encountered species, or of data maintained at the state, wave, and/or sector level, instead of coastwide, the PSE can be dismayingly high—high enough that, if recreational fishermen were required to pay back overages every time that MRIP data suggested that the recreational harvest limit to be exceeded, anglers could find their annual limits reduced even in years when, once the PSE was taken into account, they might have actually underfished the harvest limit by an appreciable amount.

Managers classify the issues created by the PSE in the category of “management uncertainty,” which is pretty much what it sounds like.  But while scientific uncertainty must be considered by the regional fishery management councils’ scientific and statistical committees each year when they set the acceptable biological catch for each managed stock, management uncertainty is often ignored, even though NMFS’ published guidelines state that it should be considered when setting annual catch limits. 

Because regional fishery management councils frequently fail to consider management uncertainty, recreational fishermen have chronically exceeded the recreational harvest limit for some stocks.  Such recreational overages became so severe in the Gulf of Mexico recreational red snapper fishery that a federal district court ordered NMFS to impose some sort of accountability measures on the recreational sector, which ultimately took the form of an annual catch target that implemented the NMFS guidelines, and created a harvest buffer that took management uncertainty into account.

In most other fisheries, however, the courts were not involved, and buffers were not imposed.  

The recreational black sea bass fishery, managed by the Mid-Atlantic Fishery Council and the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission, may be the worst offender.  Anglers exceeded their recreational harvest limit in eight out of the eleven years between 2010 and 2020, sometimes by a very large margin, and faced only minimal accountability for such overages.  In some years, recreational management measures were made more restrictive, but almost never restrictive enough to constrain harvest to the recreational limit.  In other years, the overages were just ignored, and management measures left at the status quo.

At one advisory panel meeting, held about a year ago, a commercial black sea bass fisherman from Maryland argued that

“Somebody needs to hold these people accountable…To keep rewarding these people and giving them more fish is never going to solve the problem.”

But such words went unheeded.  In June of this year, at a joint meeting of the Mid-Atlantic Council and ASMFC, managers voted to adopt a so-called “harvest control rule” that effectively rewarded black sea bass anglers for their past transgressions,  limiting the severity of any recreational harvest reductions in the event that anglers exceeded their harvest limit again.

Despite the clear language in Magnuson-Stevens, holding anglers accountable for taking too many fish is, unless a stock has been declared to be overfished and/or is subject to a rebuilding plan, just not something that managers seem willing to do, no matter how quick they might be to impose accountability measures on the commercial sector.

The regional fishery management councils are not alone in their aversion to angler accountability.

In August 2021, the ASMFC’s Atlantic Striped Bass Management Board considered including a measure in Amendment 7 to the Interstate Fishery Management Plan for Atlantic Striped Bass that would have held states accountable if their conservation equivalent regulations—regulations that did not match the coastwide regulations adopted by the Management Board, but supposedly achieved the same quantified level of conservation—didn’t actually achieve the needed reductions in fishing mortality.

Although the concept received significant support from the striped bass angling community, which believed that the conservation equivalency process was being gamed by certain states in order to win a lesser reduction in harvest than that required in the management plan, state fishery managers generally opposed the concept of recreational accountability, and it was removed from further consideration in the amendment development process.

State fishery managers generally avoid recreational accountability with the same fervor that a vampire avoids holy water, garlic, and sharp wooden stakes, and that aversion isn’t likely to end any time soon.

But some people are starting to get tired of it.

Most recently, commercial fishermen in the Gulf of Mexico have gone to court to oppose a reallocation of red grouper quota, based on revised estimates of recreational landings during the base years, that awards more fish to the recreational sector, arguing in part that the higher recreational quota would harm not only the commercial sector, but the grouper themselves, because anglers frequently exceed their catch limit and are not held accountable when overages occur.

But fishermen suing over lost allocation is nothing new.

What is new is that members of the Gulf for-hire fleet, which share the recreational allocation and so would supposedly benefit if the recreational share of landings increased, recently filed a friend of the court brief suppoorting the commercial fleet, and arguing that private boat recreational overages, and the lack of recreational accountability, would end up hurting their businesses more than they might benefit from a bigger recreational quota.

As Capt. Scott Hickman of Galveston, Texas explained,

“We’ve been down this road before.  You set a precedent for taking quota from an accountable sector and dropping it into a black hole,”

such “black hole” being, of course, the private boat recreational fishery, where landings data is uncertain and even regular overages can occur with relative impunity.

When part of the recreational sector chooses to give up some of its potential landings by siding with the commercial fishery, because the rest of the sector is so irresponsible, and so lacking in accountability, that it is might cause real long-term harm to the stock, it’s time to stop and figure out just went wrong—and what needs to be done to set things right.

Holding recreational fishermen accountable for their excesses would be a good place to start.

 

MARINE FISHERIES MANAGEMENT: YOU'RE DEFINED BY WHAT YOU OPPOSE

 

A week ago, I wrote about the pending mark-up of H.R. 4690, Rep. Jared Huffman’s Sustaining America’s Fisheries for the Future Act.  

The bill represents the first meaningful effort to reauthorize the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act in the past 16 years, and would effect some meaningful and needed changes in the primary law governing fisheries management in the federal waters of the United States.  While some critical comments and proposed amendments were expected, the best guess of most of the folks whom I know was that the markup probably wouldn’t take more than about three hours.

That best guess turned out to be fairly bad.  By the time the smoke cleared last Wednesday afternoon, the mark-up was not yet complete—the final vote is scheduled for next Thursday—and the opposition to the bill was far more aggressive than most people had predicted.

The debate over the bill split down the usual partisan divides, with one side of the aisle emphasizing healthy ecosystems and sustainable fish stocks, while the other was more concerned with short-term economic impacts and protecting the immediate interests of various fishing-related industries.  

It was exacerbated by strong industry opposition to H.R. 4690 that was voiced in two letters, one signed by forty commercial fishing organizations of various sizes and geographic scope, the other by four large trade associations, including the National Fisheries Institute, the National Council of Chain Restaurants, the National Restaurant Association, and the National Retail Federation.

What was interesting about the two sign-on letters isn’t the arguments that they made in opposition to the bill.  Those were the same old songs that we hear sung whenever more restrictive management measures are proposed:  H.R. 4690 would

“throw the U.S. fishing and seafood sector into chaos,”

and

“be catastrophic for sustainable domestic food production and the millions of Americans who rely on U.S. fisheries for jobs and income, economic security, and affordable protein.”

In addition, if the trade associations are to be believed, H.R. 4690

“would harm American seafood consumers by constraining supply, raising consumer prices, and exacerbating the supply chain uncertainty that continues to undermine the food industry.”

So far, nothing said was particularly noteworthy.  Where things get interesting is when the trade groups begin singling out the portions of H.R. 4690 that they find particularly offensive.

“We are particularly concerned by H.R. 4690’s proposed new requirements relating to forage fish protection, essential fish habitat conservation, and bycatch avoidance.  In each case, the existing responsibility of fishery managers to balance complex competing interests would be curtailed.  Working under rigid new strictures, fishery managers—or judges responding to the claims of plaintiffs—would shut down or severely restrict some of our nation’s largest commercial fisheries to satisfy narrow legislative mandates and for reasons unrelated to marine ecosystem health.  [emphasis added]”

Let that sink in for just a few seconds.  The fishing industry opposes H.R. 4690 because it 1) extends more comprehensive protection to the small forage fish that all of the larger fish, along with birds and marine mammals, feed on, 2) would better conserve essential fish habitat, and 3) seeks to minimize the incidental catch, and associated dead discards, of non-target, non-salable fish and other components of the target species’ ecosystem.  

And then they justify such opposition by arguing that such measures are unrelated to ecosystem health.

It's hardly a persuasive argument.  Even more telling are the comments about “balance[ing] complex competing interests” and “severely restrict[ing] some of our nation’s largest commercial fisheries” for, although it remained unsaid, some of “our nation’s largest commercial fisheries” are also the fisheries that place the greatest pressure on forage fish stocks, do the most damage to essential fish habitat, and cause some of the most serious bycatch issues.

The largest commercial fishery in the country is for walleye pollock, a creature trawled in vast numbers from the cool waters of the northern Pacific Ocean.  You might not recognize the name, but if you’ve eaten a Fillet o’ Fish® sandwich, or some of the processed surimi that is often marketed as “imitation crab legs” in supermarket delis—or passed off as the real thing in cheap buffets—you’re not unfamiliar with the fish itself. 

Over the past five years, annual walleye pollock landings have averaged a little over 3.3 billion pounds per year; even if the ex vessel price was a little under 12 cents per pound in 2021, it remains a very valuable fishery.

It is also a very controversial one, as the walleye pollock fishery generates substantial bycatch, which includes a bycatch of some very valuable, and some very stressed, species.  The industry tries to downplay the amount of incidental catch that is killed, arguing that

“more than 98 percent of the catch in the [Bering Sea Aleutian Islands] Alaska pollock fishery has been pollock.”

But even if bycatch in the fishery is less than 2%, 2% of 3.3 billion pounds is a very big number—66,000,000 pounds, to be more precise—and removing 66 million pounds of various unwanted fish from the marine ecosystem each year can hardly be said to be “unrelated to ecosystem health.”

Representative Mary Peltola (D-AK), who was recently elected to fill the uncompleted term of the late Rep. Don Young, certainly doesn’t believe that such annual removals are harmless.  She is quoted in Alaska Public Media as saying,

“After 30 years of industrial fishing in the Bering Sea, where they are tossing out metric tons of juvenile crab, halibut, and salmon, it catches up with us.  And then we get to the point where people who depend on hundreds of salmon to feed their families every year are not able to even catch single digit numbers of salmon.”

Rep. Peltola is seeking to have two seats on the North Pacific Fishery Management Council, which governs fishing in federal waters off Alaska, reserved for representatives from the Alaska Native tribes, who are familiar with the subsistence fisheries for salmon and other species that have sustained the tribes for millennia.  As Alaska Public Media reports,

“Without those seats at the table, she argues, the fisheries management council will always be more receptive to the large trawl fleet.  They catch salmon by accident.  Peltola said this bycatch is one reason the fish don’t return to the rivers like they used to.”

It’s a problem that has led to bizarre juxtapositions of who is currently legally allowed to catch the salmon.

For more than a decade, the National Marine Fisheries Service has been conducting genetic surveys of the salmon caught as bycatch in the pollock fishery, to determine which local stocks are being affected.  In 2019, about 40% of the chinook salmon bycatch came from fish returning to coastal western Alaska; fewer than 1% of those fish were from middle and upper Yukon River runs; 23% of the chum salmon bycatch were fish returning to the Eastern Gulf of Alaska and the Pacific Northwest, while 16% were returning to coastal western Alaska.

The level of bycatch is substantial.  In 2020, the pollock fleet was responsible for an incidental kill of 32,294 chinook salmon, and 320,478 chums.

In 2021, the composition of the fish killed changed.  More than half—52%--were chinook salmon returning to coastal western Alaska.  Breaking that into individual fish, the pollock fleet killed 16,796 salmon that would have otherwise returned to western Alaska rivers; 1,399 of those salmon were on their way to the middle or upper Yukon River.  Each year, the pollock fleet is permitted to kill up to 60,000 chinook salmon as bycatch, with 47,500 incidentally killed salmon deemed the “performance standard.”

And how many chinook salmon were fishermen on the Yukon River, who depend on the fish for personal sustenance and for badly-needed revenues, permitted to harvest in the directed salmon fishery?

None.  None at all.  As one erstwhile salmon gillnetter noted,

“I don’t care what the percentage of bycatch is.  If the number of Yukon salmon is 45,000 salmon caught as bycatch, that was 45,000 more than anyone on the Yukon was allowed to harvest.”

H.R. 4690 would help to correct such inequities, by requiring fishery managers to “minimize” bycatch, a change from current law, which only requires that bycatch be minimized “to the extent practicable.”  The industrial fleet doesn’t want to see the “to the extent practicable” language removed, because it provides a loophole that allows the regional fishery management councils to give an official wink and a nod to bycatch prone fisheries, without actually requiring significant change in how they operate.

Then there are H.R. 4690’s enhanced protections for forage fish, which would amend the definition of “optimum” yield to include the language

“in the case of a forage fish, [optimum yield] is reduced [from maximum sustainable yield]…to provide for the diet needs of fish species and other marine wildlife, including marine mammals and birds, for which forage fish is a significant dietary component.”

The problem is that forage fish tend to support high volume/low value fisheries.  The fishery for menhaden, the second largest commercial fishery in the United States, is a case in point.  Last year, that fishery landed slightly over 1.2 billion pounds of menhaden, that generated ex vessel income of a little more than $266 million—just under 22 cents per pound.  In doing so, it removed a substantial quantity of forage that might otherwise support everything from bluefish to bald eagles to humpback whales.

While the menhaden fishery is deemed to be sustainable, such designation does not consider the possibility of local depletion of the menhaden resource, which some individuals and organizations perceive as an issue.  Nor does it consider the impacts of any such local depletion not only on the regional abundance of predators that depend on the menhaden, but on businesses, particularly fishing and tourism businesses, that depend on the presence of predators to thrive.

Yet the fishing industry rails against forage fish protections.

It also seems to rail against provisions in H.R. 4690 that would bolster procedures intended to promote the conservation of essential fish habitat.  That seems to be a counterproductive position, as the fish on which the fishing industry depends rely, in turn, on spawning, nursery, feeding, and other habitats that support such fish throughout all of the phases of their life.  And the plain fact is that some fishing activities degrade such essential habitat.

Damage isn’t only done by large-scale operations. 

We recently saw the South Atlantic Fishery Management Council entertain a proposal to open a section of the Oculina Bank, a region of unique corals off the East Coast of Florida that provides spawning and nursery habitat for a number of important snapper and grouper species, to rock shrimp trawls, which would have threatened the reef-building corals.  Fortunately, the National Marine Fisheries Service quashed the proposal.

It is generally recognized that mobile, bottom-tending gear such as trawls, dredges, and some gill nets can alter, and so degrade, bottom habitats.  Studies have also indicated that, if the use of such devices is prohibited, such bottom habitats may at least partially recover.  Thus, mandated protections for essential fish habitat can, in the long term, benefit both commercial and recreational fisheries.

Yet many in the commercial fishing industry oppose H.R. 4690’s essential fish habitat proposals, making the incredible argument that they are “unrelated to marine ecosystem health.”

In truth, most of the arguments made against H.R. 4690 are at least somewhat incredible.  Others are somewhat reprehensible, trying to camouflage industry efforts to avoid further regulation by taking shelter behind the real problems that face lower-income people and arguing that

“legislators should be keenly aware of the relationship between food supply disruptions and the prices paid by consumers for groceries and restaurant meals.  Food costs in the United States have increased by 11.4 percent in the last year alone, the highest rate of food inflation since 1979.  This inflation is highly regressive, disproportionately harming lower-income families and in some cases limiting the seafood choices that they would otherwise enjoy.”

If they had opted to be forthright, they would have admitted that most wild-caught seafood is already priced too high for the lower-income consumer, and is at best a luxury, special-occasion food.  To put things in perspective, Wal-Mart, hardly a high-end outlet, sells wild Pacific pink salmon at 44.9 cents per ounce ($7.18 per pound), an unknown variety of flounder at $6.98/pound, tuna at $12.88/pound, and Pacific cod at $9.44/pound, compared to whole tilapia at 27.6 cents/ounce ($4.42/pound) and tilapia fillet at $6.98/pound.

If a lower-income individual was looking for affordable protein, wild-caught fish would not be the most price-effective choice.  

H.R. 4690 would have no effect on tilapia farms.

When fishing industry members argue against H.R. 4690’s provisions that would minimize bycatch, extend a little more protection to forage fish, and improve the conservation of essential fish habitat by arguing that such matters are “unrelated to ecosystem health,” the first thing that tells us is that they aren’t very committed to the truth, for each of those issues directly impacts the quality of coastal ecosystems.

When they try to promote their own economic interests by hiding behind the household issues of lower-income people, it tells us that they are willing to compromise principle in order to protect profits.

When they oppose H.R. 4690’s provisions on bycatch, forage fish, and essential fish habitat, it tells us that they would rather degrade the marine environment in the long term, in order to maintain short-term economic benefits, and that they lack the foresight to understand that, by impairing the long-term sustainability of marine ecosystems, they are also willing to put the long-term survival of their own businesses at risk.

But in the end, it also tells us that they are only human, and that is why H.R. 4690 is so badly needed, for it is human nature to focus on the short term, regardless of long-term consequences.

The United States’ fishery management system, based on regional fishery management councils peopled largely by individuals with a vested interest, usually a financial interest, in the fisheries that they manage, shouldn’t work, because people are unlikely to support management measures that reduce current profits.

And, for its first two decades, the federal fishery management system didn’t work, because the regional councils refused to take the necessary steps to end overfishing and rebuild overfished stocks.  

That’s when Congress stepped in.

It passed the Sustainable Fisheries Act of 1996, which for the first time created clear, legally enforceable standards that compelled the regional fishery management councils to end overfishing, rebuild overfished stocks, and base management measures on the best available science.  With that law in place, fish stocks began to recover.

The Sustainable Fisheries Act was good, but it wasn’t good enough.  While it required the regional fishery management councils to take certain actions to end overfishing and rebuild depleted stocks, it still allowed a lot of management discretion.  Neither fishermen nor the regional councils had any accountability when management measures that looked good on paper didn’t prevent annual quotas from being exceeded.  

Thus, in 2006, Congress passed the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Reauthorization Act, which sought to plug the gaps left by the Sustainable Fisheries Act a decade ago.

Still, there was room for improvement, particularly in the areas of bycatch, forage fish management, and protecting essential fish habitat, areas where the regional fishery management councils generally remained unable or unwilling to take needed action.  So Congress is preparing to intervene once again, place additional sideboards on the regional councils' discretion, and give such councils a push in the direction that they need to go.

That’s what the Sustaining America’s Fisheries for the Future Act does.

Contrary to industry claims, H.R. 4690 doesn’t curtail the regional fishery management councils’ responsibility for such critical issues.  Instead, it will compel the councils to take responsibility for those important matters, rather than ignoring them and sidestepping the controversy that additional restrictions on bycatch, forage fish fisheries, and impacts on essential fish habitat would inevitably ignite.

And for that reason alone, H.R. 4690 should become law.