FALSE ALBACORE: ANGLING INDUSTRY RESEARCH DONE RIGHT

 

There isn’t enough money available for fisheries research, and there probably never will be.  There are just too many stocks of fish, and too many other budget priorities.

The National Marine Fisheries Service currently manages 460 fish stocks in the Atlantic, Pacific, Caribbean, and Gulf of Mexico, and those are only the stocks that are typically found in federal waters more than three miles from shore.  Other important recreational and commercial fish species, including striped bass, menhaden, weakfish, red drum, and spotted seatrout, have no federal fishery management plans, and are managed solely by the states, which sometimes act independently and sometimes coordinate their actions through bodies such as the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission.

Then there are the species that support fisheries but are not managed at all, species such as Atlantic bonito, northern and southern kingfish, jack crevalle, and little tunny, the latter better known as “false albacore.”

Whether or not to manage a stock is largely a practical decision based on the species’ perceived value.  The Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act states that one of the duties of each regional fishery management council is

“for each fishery under its authority that requires conservation and management, prepare and submit to the Secretary [of Commerce] a fishery management plan and amendments to each such plan that are necessary from time to time…  [internal formatting omitted]”

Magnuson-Stevens goes on to explain that

“The term ‘conservation and management’ refers to all the rules, regulations, conditions, methods, and other measures which are required to rebuild, restore, or maintain, and which are useful in rebuilding, restoring, or maintaining, any fishery resource and the marine environment; and which are designed to assure that a supply of food and other products may be taken, and that recreational benefits may be obtained, on a continuing basis; irreversible or long-term adverse effects on fishery resources and the marine environment are avoided; and there will be a multiplicity of options available with respect to future uses of these resources.  [internal formatting omitted]”

But that definition doesn’t shed much light on how a regional fishery management council can, as a practical matter, determine whether a stock “requires conservation and management,” and is thus  in need of a management plan.

Another section of Magnuson-Stevens provides something close to an answer, saying

“If a Council determines that additional information would be beneficial for developing, implementing, or revising a fishery management plan or for determining whether a fishery is in need of management, the Council may request that the Secretary implement an information collection program for the fishery which would provide the types of information specified by the Council.  The Secretary can undertake such an information collection program if he determines that the need is justified…”

Still, species that might require conservation and management can easily go ignored, because the budget for research is limited.  Research funding typically goes to species that support large and economically important commercial and/or recreational fisheries—and, ideally, species that support both important commercial and important recreational fisheries. 

NMFS is generally willing to fund research, including regular stock assessments, for Atlantic cod, red snapper, summer flounder and the like, which have large and often vocal commercial and recreational constituencies.

But when it comes to the species that aren’t valued as food and don’t have high commercial and recreational landings, the likelihood of federal funding for research is low, and a sort of Catch-22 exists:  There is no fishery management plan because no one knows whether the species requires conservation and management, no one knows whether the species requires conservation and management because there is not enough information to make such determination, and there is no way to obtain the needed information because there is no money available to gather information on a stock that doesn';t generate a large economic return.

That’s where cooperative management comes into play, when individuals and organizations with an interest in a particular fish stock team up with government or private sector scientists to develop needed management information.  The individuals and organization provide funding, logistical support, and/or labor, while the scientists provide technical facilities and expertise.

Unfortunately, when such arrangements are made, the research is often agenda-driven. 

Thus, in the upper mid-Atlantic, we saw a group that called itself the “Save the Summer Flounder Fishery Fund,” which stated that

“We seek to safeguard and improve fishing access to summer flounder, for those who enjoy it and to ensure the survival of those who depend on it, through scientific and legislative means,”

support research that, the organization hoped, would reach conclusions beneficial to the recreational fishing industry, as opposed to research that might primarily benefit the summer flounder themselves.

More recently, in the Gulf of Mexico, a coalition of industry-associated organizations convinced federal legislators to provide funding for a project that has come to be called “The Great Red Snapper Count.”  While that project did uncover new scientific information, concluding that the Gulf red snapper population was three times as large as previously believed, primarily because most of the fish were widely scattered over low-profile bottom, instead of sitting on the reefs, rockpiles, and wrecks where everyone fished for them, the underlying purpose of the study was to convince regulators to adopt more liberal red snapper regulations that would lead to a larger red snapper harvest. 

That became obvious immediately after the preliminary results of the Count were released, when the Texas chapter of the Coastal Conservation Association immediately attacked federal red snapper managers, braying that

“This week, the public and Congress finally heard why nothing seemed to add up in federal management of Gulf red snapper.  It turns out that NOAA just doesn’t count snapper very well…

“NOAA has had decades to get red snapper right.  In the end, the states, Congress and independent marine science institutions had to step in and clean up their mess.  After decades of enduring the chaos of a fishery managed on so much wrong, we finally have a chance to start over and manage it right.”

Managing red snapper “right” meaning that managers should increase the recreational kill to a level far larger than the biologists on the Gulf of Mexico Fishery Management Council’s Scientific and Statistical Committee recommend.

That’s why recent news about a collaborative research project between the American Saltwater Guides Association and the New England Aquarium was so refreshing. 

Last June, the Guides Association announced that it was teaming up with the Anderson Cabot Center for Ocean Life at the New England Aquarium.  Some of the association's guides would work with scientists from the Aquarium to implant acoustic tags in false albacore caught off southeastern Massachusetts, with the work primarily underwritten by the wind energy company Orsted and sunglass manufacturer Costa del Mar.

False albacore are a logical research subject for the Guides Association, as the species is very important to the association’s members.  Particularly now, with striped bass and bluefish stocks overfished, false albacore are a primary target of fly and light tackle anglers fishing anywhere between Massachusetts and North Carolina; even as far south as Florida, where a number of species vie for the light tackle fisherman’s attention, they remain important to guides and their customers.

Yet, as the association explains on its website,

“Despite their popularity, we know almost nothing about false albacore biology and movements, likely due in large part to their lack of commercial value.  For example, are the fish anglers target off southern New England a separate sub-population from the fish found off North Carolina and Florida, or do they all represent a single well-mixed group?  Do schools of fish ‘set up shop’ in a general area for weeks at a time or are they always on the move?  Better understanding the degree of population connectivity is especially urgent given emerging potential threats to this species—for example, a fishery in south Florida to supply the bait market and the rapid expansion of offshore wind energy projects in the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic.

“An additional unknown when it comes to albies is the impact of recreational fishing on the species.  According to NOAA Fisheries, over the past decade, anglers along the Atlantic coast have caught and released between one and two million false albacore annually.  However, no research has been conducted to estimate the percentage of fish that survive after release or inform what steps anglers can take to maximize the chance of survival.”

The paragraph quoted immediately above highlights what is truly unique about the Guides Association’s false albacore study.  While other angling groups support research that might lead to a smaller summer flounder size limit or a larger red snapper bag, the Guides Association willingly initiated a research project that could potentially cast their members, and their members' clients, in a bad light.

That sort of altruism is far too rare among today’s recreational fishing organizations.

And, as things turned out, preliminary data suggests that the angling community has nothing to fear or to hide when it comes to false albacore.

When the acoustic tagging program was announced, it was met with some degree of skepticism.  Some fishermen believed that false albacore didn’t take handling well, and that many—perhaps most—died shortly after being released.  Others believed that, due to the species’ fast metabolism and high oxygen requirements, false albacore would not be amenable to tag implantation, and that few would survive the process.

But the preliminary data strongly suggests that the skeptics were wrong.  The tagged fish, once released, lit up the acoustic receiver arrays off Massachusetts, with 57 of the 63 albacore tagged being repeatedly detected.  That translates to a release mortality rate of just 9.5%, similar to the mortality rate for striped bass and summer flounder, and well below the release mortality rate for bluefish, black sea bass, and scup.

It was a good start, and both the Guides Association and the scientists working with them are looking forward to future data dumps, to see what new information the tags will provide.

Are the false albacore caught off Massachusetts the same fish that show up off New York and New Jersey?  How far do the Massachusetts fish migrate?  Do they make it as far south as North Carolina, or perhaps even Florida?  Or, after leaving Massachusetts, do they fall off the grid, perhaps moving far offshore to find warmer water and escape autumn’s chill.  Once they leave Massachusetts, will the fish demonstrate site fidelity, and return to Nantucket Sound next year?  Or are the migrations haphazard, with fish summering off Martha’s Vineyard one year, and off Block Island or Montauk the next?

And if the false albacore do return to their waters around their tagging site, how many of the tagged fish will be among them, and how many will have fallen victim to fishing mortality and natural predation?  Will the acoustic tagging data allow the scientists to determine anything about stock structure and/or stock health?

The answers to those questions, and perhaps to other questions that the Guides Association may never even have thought to ask, lie in the future.

For now, it is enough that the Guides Association has facilitated research into a species that, despite its importance to the recreational fishery, remains data poor and largely an enigma to the fisheries management community.  Perhaps, with the investment of additional money and time, the information developed by the Guides Association and its partners will lead to an initial fishery management plan for false albacore, meaningful management measures, and a false albacore stock capable of generating recreational opportunities and economic benefits long into the future.

For conserving and managing the false albacore resource, regardless of what form the conservation and management measures must take, is what the Guides Association false albacore project is all about.

 

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DISCLOSURE STATEMENT:  I have a professional relationship with the American Saltwater Guides Association, and also have a number of friends among its leadership.  Notwithstanding such relationships, I personally share and endorse the Association’s goals with respect to false albacore and many other species, and believe that I would be reporting on its conservation activities whether or not such relationships existed.

 

SOME GOOD NEWS FOR GULF RED SNAPPER

 

One week ago, the National Marine Fisheries Service issued regulations that should help end the chronic recreational overharvest of red snapper in the Gulf of Mexico.

The regulations address one of the biggest problems currently facing the red snapper stock:  The different methodologies used by NMFS and by the five Gulf Coast states to calculate annual private-boat recreational red snapper landings, which result in each data collection program coming up with different estimates of the red snapper catch.

NMFS depends on the Marine Recreational Information Program,often referred to by the acronym “MRIP,” which was adopted a few years ago to replace the badly flawed Marine Recreational Fishing Statistics Survey.  MRIP got generally good marks when it wasreviewed by a National Academy of Sciences panel a few years ago, but it hasone major flaw—collecting, analyzing, and reviewing MRIP data takes a longtime.  Preliminary data for each two-month “wave” isn’t available until about 45 days after the wave has ended, so preliminary data for Wave 3, May and June, isn’t available until about August 15^th, data for Wave 4, July and August, isn’t available until October 15^th, etc.

Final data for each fishing year doesn’t come out until mid-April.

That sort of delay makes the use of MRIP somewhat problematic when setting annual catch limits for the next fishing year.  When a fishery requires in-season quota management, which shuts down the season once recreational catch approaches the annual catch limit rather than setting a fixed closing date, the delays associated with MRIP data render such data all but useless.

That has proven to be the case in the private-boat recreational red snapper fishery in the Gulf of Mexico.

In an effort to improve the situation, NMFS has worked with the states to develop state-specific programs that supplement MRIP and provide more timely and, perhaps, more precise estimates of recreational fishing mortality.  

Some of those programs, such as Alabama’s Snapper Check and Mississippi’s Tales n’ Scales, are designed as a census intended to capture data from every private-boat red snapper angler each time they go fishing.  Others, including  Louisiana’s LACreel and Florida’s Gulf Reef Fish Survey, are surveys.  All four state programs have been certified by NMFS as appropriate adjuncts to MRIP.  Texas also tries to estimate its anglers’ red snapper landings, but uses an archaic, uncertified program of dubious precision that is not MRIP-certified.

NMFS bears the overall responsibility for managing red snapper in the Gulf of Mexico.  Pursuant to such authority, the Gulf of Mexico Fishery Management Council has adopted Amendment 50 A-F to the Fishery Management Plan for the Reef Fish Resources of the Gulf of Mexico,  which provides the five Gulf Coast states with a limited ability to set private-boat red snapper regulations for both state waters and the federal waters of each state’s shores, provided that such regulations constrain recreational catch to or below the recreational red snapper allocation assigned to each state by NMFS.

That’s where things begin to get tricky, because of the different surveys used to estimate recreational red snapper harvest.

NMFS uses MRIP to set the state allocations, and MRIP-based landings estimates are used in the stock assessments that determine the health of the Gulf’s red snapper stock.  But the five Gulf Coast states use their own data collection systems to determine when their anglers are approaching the state red snapper allocation, and the season needs to be closed.

That’s not a problem in Louisiana and Florida, where the state surveys generally concur with MRIP.  It also isn’t a problem in Texas, where NMFS has basically thrown up its hands and stopped trying to find any accord between MRIP and Texas’ aged recreational data program, and just blindly accepts the Texas numbers.  But there is a real issue when it comes to Mississippi’s and Alabama’s estimates, because such estimates are much lower than those generated by MRIP.  As a result, Mississippi’s and Alabama’s private-boat recreational red snapper seasons run far longer than they would if MRIP data was used.

The result is a substantial overharvest of such states’ annual allocations.  To get recreational landings under control, NMFS must make the state data compatible with MRIP.  As explained by NMFS,

“The Federal Marine Recreational Information Program (MRIP) based catch limits for Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana are not directly comparable to the landings estimates generated by each of those states, and the state estimates are not directly comparable to each other.  In other words, each state is estimating landings in a different ‘currency.’  Therefore, [NMFS] worked with the Gulf States to develop calibration ratios so that each state’s catch limit could be converted from the Federal ‘currency’ to the currency in which each state monitors landings.”

The regulations recently issued by NMFS adopt calibration factors for each state, which are intended to constrain each state’s landings to their NMFS-assigned allocations, despite the use of state data to estimate such landings.  

In the case of Florida and Louisiana, calibrating the MRIP-based federal allocations to state landings estimates will allow such states to increase their private-boat recreational red snapper landings by about 6%.  Predictably, neither the anglers in those states nor the various organizations that purport to represent them are complaining about such increases or arguing that they are inappropriate.

But when it comes to Alabama and Mississippi, things are very different.  Both states’ recreational data programs provided catch estimates far lower than those generated by MRIP.  Thus, when Alabama’s MRIP-based 1,145,026 pound allocation is converted into the “currency” used by the state’s Snapper Check program, the allocation is cut in half, to 558,200 pounds.  Something similar happens in Mississippi, where a 154,568 pound allocation based on federal data is converted into a Tails n' Scales-compatible 59,354 pounds.

Unlike fishermen in Florida and Louisiana (and in Texas, where state data is the only data available), anglers in Alabama and Mississippi aren’t happy with the calibration process, and are doing their best to oppose their resulting 2023 quotas.

The result is a cornucopia of hypocrisy, vitriol, and disinformation.

For many years, federal data, now provided by MRIP, has been incorporated into stock assessments, where higher levels of recreational landings and increased recreationakl catch per unit of effort suggest increased red snapper abundance.   Federal data is also used to set state allocations, including the 1,122,662 pounds of red snapper allocated to Alabama’s anglers in 2022.  Anglers were perfectly happy when the higher MRIP estimates were used for such purposes. 

In another Gulf fishery, red grouper, MRIP data was recently used to shift the allocation from 76% commercial/24% recreational to 59.3% commercial/40.7% recreational—a substantial change—and anglers were just fine with that, too.  They even suggested that such data could be used to change the allocation of other Gulf species.

But when it came to estimating the recreational red snapper landings caught by Alabama and Mississippi, the same anglers—along with the organizations which purport to represent them—suddenly decided that MRIP data was no good, and that the lower state estimates of red snapper landings, which allowed anglers to take home more fish, was the right information to use.

Thus, it appeared that "good data", at least in the recreational fishermen’s eyes, was whatever data allowed them to kill more snapper, grouper, or anything else.

Organizations associated with the recreational fishing industry have repeatedly attacked the calibration effort.  They seek to maintain the current level of red snapper landings, and as a part of that process, to convince anglers that the federal data was badly flawed.  

Last summer, a letter signed by the Center for Sportfishing Policy and four member organizations, sent to the Southeast Regional Office, argued against calibration by saying, in part, that

“we are disappointed with the lack of progress by the Gulf MRIP Transition Team in understanding the differences between MRIP and state data collection programs, the apparent inability of the state programs to be used in the ongoing red snapper research track assessment, and in calibrating the state data to an MRIP currency without first having the basic understanding of the vast discrepancies caused by MRIP.  As such, we urge NOAA Fisheries to refrain from requiring any calibration until those differences are understood and a more appropriate calibration methodology is developed, if necessary, while also moving forward with any new harvest level increases across sectors.”

It's a remarkable bit of doubletalk, since (a) the Transition Team does understand the differences between MRIP and state data collection programs; such differences are what calibration is all about, (b) the reason state data can’t be used in the stock assessment is because it isn’t calibrated and thus isn't compatible with MRIP or the data from other Gulf states, (c) it fails to explain why the “vast discrepancies” between MRIP and state data are “caused” by MRIP and not by inconsistencies in the state programs, and finally—and here we get to the heart of the matter—(d) it calls for delaying calibration, but for moving forward with any increases in the harvest level.

It's a clear ploy intended to keep recreational red snapper landings as high as possible for as long as possible.  It's also dismayingly typical of the recreational rhetoric throughout the red snapper debate.

Opposition to calibration isn’t limited to the angling industry and the anglers' rights crowd.  Politicians are always sensitive to public opinion and, given that Mississippi fishermen are unhappy with how the calibration process is working out for them, it's not surprising that Senator Roger Wicker (R-MS) has jumped aboard the no-calibration bandwagon, issuing a press release saying, in part, that

“NOAA’s flawed rule is intended to prevent overfishing by modifying each state’s annual catch limits (ACLs) for red snapper.  This new formula will require calibrating Mississippi’s high quality ‘Tales n’ Scales’ data, which records accurate information for more than 95% of Mississippi’s annual red snapper catch, to the low-quality Federal Marine Recreational Information Program (MRIP) data.

“The new calibration required by the rule will reduce Mississippi’s red snapper quota by 60 percent in 2023, meaning private anglers could reach their yearly quota in as little as three weeks…”

Is the calibration approach chosen by NMFS really that bad?

NMFS doesn’t think so.  In the narrative accompanying its recent regulation, it states,

“The federal surveys have been heavily tested, scrutinized, and reviewed, and NMFS remains committed to continue improving both state and federal survey methods, all of which are subject to sampling and non-sampling errors (measurement, coverage, and non-response).  MRIP uses standardized designs across states, which ensures comparability of estimates.  Conversely, due to the differing designs by the Gulf States, it is not possible to directly compare the estimates derived from the state surveys to each other or to the estimates produced by MRIP…”

As to the claims that the Alabama and Mississippi surveys are “better,” NMFS advises that

“It is difficult to know which surveys provide the best estimates of catch.  Different statistical sampling designs can produce different estimates due to variations in sampling frames and non-sampling error such as coverage error, nonresponse error, and measurement error.  It is not unusual for established surveys to produce very different estimates for the same population parameter.”

In that regard, it may be significant that the three surveys that seek to sample red snapper anglers—MRIP, LACreel, and Florida’s Gulf Reef Fish Survey—tend to yield similar results, while the two that seek to conduct a census of all recreational red snapper fishermen—Tales n’ Scales and Snapper Check—yield results very different from those produced by MRIP, while having very substantial, and not too different, calibration ratios of 0.3840  and 0.4875, respectively.

Such result might well stem, at least in part, from anglers who fail to comply with the Mississippi and Alabama programs.  Only about 70% of Mississippi’s red snapper anglers are believed to comply with the Tales n’ Scales requirements; in the case of Alabama’s Snapper Check, the compliance rate falls to a dismal 30%.  With respect to both programs, it has also been noted that

“The self-reporting of red snapper trips and catch may be susceptible to measurement errors if permit holders are either unaware of the mandatory reporting requirements or aware and choose to deliberately try to promote a given outcome.  The pairing of the mandatory reporting with a dockside sampling survey allows for direct measurements of differences between permit holder reports of landed fish and observations of landed fish made by trained dockside survey interviewers…”

It is possible that Alabama and Mississippi anglers are intentionally providing inaccurate reports in an effort to influence future management measures.  While dockside interviews are intended to capture and account for such bad information, it isn't very difficult for unethical anglers to get around such supposed safeguard, merely by submitting their false reports only after they were certain that no interviewers were on hand.  

Thanks to the new regulations, calibration of the Gulf States’ recreational red snapper data will finally take place in 2023, provided that such regulations aren’t blocked by federal legislation or by litigation.  Either could still occur, although the likelihood of a divided 118^th Congress passing such legislation is not very high, and the probability of a federal court invalidating the regulations probably isn't too much higher.

After being involved with red snapper issues for far too many years, and having known a few of the people who are fighting to keep landings high, I have little doubt that the private boat fleet will continue their fight to over-exploit the red snapper resource.

Still, with the issuance of its most recent regulations, it looks like NMFS may finally be taking action that will address the chronic recreational overharvest of Gulf of Mexico red snapper.  That, in itself, is good news.

 

 

 

 

THE STRANGE APPEAL OF MEDIOCRE FISHERIES MANAGEMENT

 

We were trying to protect the blowfish, and for a few hours, it looked like we would. Then things got derailed by a group of folks who clung to the status quo.

Blowfish, more properly known as “northern puffer,” range along the entire eastern seaboard of the United States, although they’re probably most common between southern New England and North Carolina. Unlike many members of the family Tetraodontidae, or pufferfish, the northern puffer has flesh that lacks tetrodotoxin, the toxin that makes eating other pufferfish, such as the notorious Japanese fugu, a true adventure in dining.

 

Commercial blowfish landings are modest, so most blowfish end up in markets and restaurants close to where the fish were caught; consumers outside coastal New England and the mid-Atlantic states are generally unfamiliar with the species. Nonetheless, the fish are popular where they are sold. Not only is the meat white and firm, but it is practically boneless, with only a flat and easily removed backbone separating two solid pieces of flesh that resemble nothing so much as large chicken nuggets. For that reason, northern puffers are often marketed as “chicken of the sea” or “sea squab.” Their good-tasting meat has also earned then the nickname of “sugar toads” along the shores of the Chesapeake Bay.

 

There is also a small recreational fishery. Some anglers target the species, while others catch them incidentally while fishing for something else. Because puffers are often found deep inside sheltered bays and estuaries, and because they are not fussy about what they’ll eat, they are an ideal fish for shorebound and novice anglers, and are a particular favorite of young fishermen, who enjoy watching them swallow air and puff up into the somewhat bristly ball that gave the species its name.

No state currently regulates either the commercial or the recreational blowfish fishery, a fact that probably contributes to the extreme swings in puffer abundance. They can be very abundant for a few years, and then all but disappear from a waterway for many years before returning in unexpected abundance. When that happens, landings spike as both commercial and recreational fishermen take advantage of the unregulated fishery, only to drive down abundance and cause another drought until an unusually strong year class arises.

The boom-and-bust nature of the northern puffer fishery is revealed in Marine Recreational Information Program data for the past forty years. Such data shows recreational landings of 77,000 northern puffers in 1981, which increased for a couple of years before falling back to 55,000 fish in 1984, then increasing modestly before suddenly spiking to over 2,170,000 fish in 1988 and staying well over 1,000,000 puffers per year until another decline began in 1993. Over the next 16 years, recreational puffer landings swung between 180,00 and 1,070,000 fish per year, remaining somewhere between 200,000 and 600,000 fish for most of that time.

Annual puffer landings began spiking again in 2010, hit a high of 5,100,000 in 2011, and have remained above 1,500,000 fish in all but three of the years since.

Recently, members of New York’s Marine Resources Advisory Council (MRAC) have asked the state’s Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) to consider adopting regulations to protect the northern puffer, in the hopes of eliminating the wild swings between abundance and absence and create a more stable fishery.

The recreational sector, in particular, would benefit from a dependable puffer fishery. Ever since the winter flounder fishery collapsed two decades ago; since larger minimum sizes on summer flounder, scup, and black sea bass, adopted at about the same time, pushed anglers seeking those fish into deeper water; and, more recently, since bluefish became overfished, there has been little for anglers limited to sheltered bays and other protected waters to pursue during most of the summer, when recreational activity is at its peak.

A healthy population of puffers would provide a good-to-eat and easy-to-catch alternative for casual family fishermen who do not want to expend the time and effort needed to successfully hunt striped bass and weakfish, and for anglers who, for whatever reason, must seek their fish from the beach, docks, and piers. An abundance of puffers would also provide a viable target for both party boats and private vessels on those days when the wind blows and makes it unpleasant, and often unsafe, to venture into the ocean to target other species.

Crafting blowfish regulations is a difficult task, as there is little information available to guide fishery managers’ decisions. Still, some things are known. Puffers are a short-lived fish, with few surviving for more than four years. They spawn from late spring through late summer.

About 50% of puffers spawn when they are seven inches long, a length that some reach by the end of their first summer; 100% spawn at a length of eight inches. A seven-inch-long puffer can produce about 80,000 eggs, while an eight-inch puffer can produce nearly twice as many. Few puffers grow to be more than ten inches long.

The DEC conducts regular, fishery-independent surveys in New York’s inshore waters. A substantial majority of the puffers caught in such surveys are less than one year old, suggesting that fishing mortality might be attenuating the age structure of the population. Puffers are slow, and not strong swimmers, so they probably don’t engage in significant migrations; if that is the case, state management can have a meaningful impact on local populations.

MRAC meetings often see heated debates over management measures, but when faced with the information that the DEC provided with respect to northern puffers, those MRAC members who attended the November 2022 meeting seemed to reach a quick consensus, at least with respect to recreational regulations. No one seemed to oppose an 8-inch minimum size, and all seemed to agree on a bag limit that fell somewhere between 10 or 12 fish at the low end to perhaps 25 to 30 fish on the high side.

The DEC agreed to draft a few sets of potential regulations that the MRAC could review early in 2023.

But the consensus reached at the November meeting lasted for less than one day. By the middle of the following morning, at least one member was having second thoughts, concerned that the 8-inch minimum size was too high, and would prevent shorebound anglers from retaining the immature, 4-, 5-, and 6-inch puffers that some currently took home by the pailful.

It’s not completely clear why some MRAC members had such a quick change of heart, although it was rumored that one member of the public, who was observing the November meeting, had telephoned members of the recreational fishing industry later that day and gave them a heads-up about what was said. Such calls led to worry that the eight-inch minimum size might cause some decline in bait and tackle sales.

 

The benefits that might accrue from such a size limit were apparently given far less consideration.

It’s a pattern that we’ve seen far too often, in too many commercial and recreational fisheries. The fishing industry tends to worry that regulations intended to rebuild and manage fish stocks might cause an immediate reduction in the income already accruing from a stressed, or even a depleted, fishery, and thus opposes new management measures, even though such measures, if successful, might lead to far greater long-term benefits for both the fish and the fishing industry.

New York’s winter flounder provide a perfect example, for they, too, once supported an unregulated recreational fishery that has since fallen upon hard times.

When the flounder population began to decline during the late 1980s, the DEC sought to adopt regulations that might halt, and perhaps reverse, the slide. A strict bag limit was proposed. The recreational fishing industry, and in particular the party boat fleet, immediately objected, saying that, while some regulations might be needed, their customers must retain the “perception” that they could have a “big day,” and go home with a pailful of fish.

Such comments led to regulations that were significantly less restrictive than those that DEC biologists had originally recommended. The industry was pleased. Flounder abundance continued to decline.

Eventually, scientists determined that the winter flounder population was badly overfished. In response, the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission adopted very restrictive regulations, that included a 2-fish bag limit, a 12-inch minimum size, and a 60-day season. At a 2009 MRAC meeting, one member suggested shutting the fishery down completely in an effort to increase flounder abundance.

 

A recreational fishing industry representative objected, “noting that the recreational fishing community is in trouble and they needed to have the opportunity to fish. She pleaded that the Council not take the more conservative approach (i.e., harvest moratorium). They need to keep the shops open.”

 

New York didn’t close its winter flounder season, even though very few flounder remained in its waters. While New York anglers landed nearly 14,500,000 winter flounder in 1984, by 2022 estimated landings for the entire state had fallen to a mere 21 fish. Winter flounder don’t “keep the shops open” anymore.

 

Perhaps a changing climate made the flounder’s collapse inevitable; it is possible that no management action, however severe, could have prevented the stock’s demise. But if the angling industry had been willing to accept meaningful management measures thirty or forty years ago, when the flounder began its decline, it is also possible that a smaller but nonetheless viable winter flounder fishery might yet remain.

Given the reaction to proposed blowfish management measures, it seems that the industry is willing to repeat the mistake that it made with winter flounder, not that many years ago.

Northern puffers are a data-poor species. The DEC has no way of knowing whether New York’s puffer population is currently healthy and sustainable, or whether it is badly overfished and on the verge of collapse. When data is so scarce, fishery managers are wise to compensate with an abundance of caution.

Right now, in New York, puffers support a very modest fishery; for the years 2017 through 2021, annual landings averaged about 216,000 fish, well below the 860,000 bluefish, 930,000 black sea bass, or 7,000,000 scup that the state’s anglers took home in 2021. Because most of those blowfish are either caught from shore or from small boats, the economic benefits accruing from the recreational fishery are probably very modest as well. But older anglers, who participated in New York’s fishery during the 1950s and 1960s, say that puffers were far more abundant then than they are today, and could be caught in much greater numbers.

 

It is very possible that, with appropriate management, puffers could be returned to their past abundance, an abundance that could generate far more recreational opportunities, many more good meals, and far greater economic benefits than the fishery does today. But to make that happen, the recreational fishing industry must be willing to invest in the future, by accepting some restrictions on today’s so-so fishery.

It’s possible such investment will never pan out, and that tackle shops might suffer the lost sales of a few packs of bait, a few dozen hooks, and a handful of sinkers, but fail to reap compensatory rewards. The fear of such failure may well underlie the industry’s reluctance to accept regulation; the mediocrity that they know may seem a far better alternative than an uncertain bet on future abundance.

Yet, if our fisheries—not just blowfish, but every fishery that is currently under stress—are ever to reach their full potential, whether that potential is measured in recreational opportunities, food production, or economic benefits, both fishermen and the fishing industry must reject “good enough” and insist that managers take whatever actions are needed to develop fisheries that are healthy and sustainable in the long term.

Some mistakes will be made, and some management efforts will fail. Yet fisheries that are merely “good enough” just—aren’t.

For while mediocrity may seem familiar and safe, it is also unstable. As the winter flounder, as well as the Atlantic cod, the shortfin mako, and a host of other species, have taught us, mediocrity too easily morphs into decline. And that, in the end, is far, far harder to fix.

 

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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/

WHAT ARE FISH FOR?

 

One of my favorite conservation-related quotes was written by pioneer ecologist Aldo Leopold, who noted,

“The last word in ignorance is the man who says of an animal or plant, ‘What good is it?’  If the land mechanism as a whole is good, then every part is good, whether we understand it or not.  If the biota, in the course of aeons, has built something we like but do not understand, then who but a fool would discard seemingly useless parts.  To keep every cog and wheel is the first precaution of intelligent tinkering.”

I was first struck by its relevance to fisheries management two decades ago, when I sat on the Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council.  Spiny dogfish management was a big issue back then, with quotas being cut back in response to an apparent decline in dogfish abundance.  One of the other Council members, who otherwise seemed to be a very bright and perceptive person, made a comment that could be summed up as “Who cares?  They’re not good for anything, and if they disappear, maybe something more useful will take their place.”

It struck me as an amazingly ignorant comment when it was made, particularly given the context.  Here we were, sitting on a panel created for the very purpose of conserving and managing the region’s marine resources and maintaining a healthy marine ecosystem, yet we had members who were not only indifferent to, but mildly supportive of, the possible demise of a significant ecosystem component.

I’ll admit that I curse dogfish as much as the next guy, when they swarm baits meant for cod, bluefish, or fluke, or when they climb all over jigs intended for black sea bass, and then try to wrap around my arm and poke a spine through my skin as I do my best to unhook them without causing any significant harm.  

I don’t particularly like them, but that doesn’t mean that I wish their kind ill.

Yet, as I look back, that sort of live-and-let-live attitude had to be learned.

When I encountered my first spiny dogfish, I was maybe ten years old, fishing for cod on a party boat out of Plymouth, Massachusetts (I’d caught dogfish before, in Long Island Sound, but they were all of the smooth variety, fish with no spines and flat, dull teeth, which usually don’t come in swarms and are far less trouble to handle).  Quite a few were caught by the boat’s anglers that day, and without exception, once they were unhooked by one of the mates, that mate would bend back their snout, break their spine, and toss them back into the water where, their ability to swim lost, they would flip onto their backs and drift into the depths, to eventually die.

At the time, I thought that’s just how things were done.  And now that I think of it, a lot of the smooth dogfish that we caught in the Sound didn’t survive the encounter, either.

It’s just how folks dealt with “trash fish” back then.  If you caught an ocean pout while fishing for cod, you stomped on its back just behind its head, and tossed it back into the sea.  The skate or sea robin that was unfortunate enough to take a bait meant for flounder or fluke was quickly reeled to shore and tossed into the rocks, while the cunner hooked while fishing for blackfish was quickly unhooked, slammed against the boat’s rail, and fed to the gulls.  Windowpane flounder caught off the docks while fishing for smelt were tossed into the local lobsterman’s boat, destined to be bait.

When I went south, I noted that fishermen inevitably cut the tails off stingrays before trying to remove the hook, while the cutlassfish that hit snook baits at night were always left to die on the bridge catwalks.

That was just 1960s thinking, when the term “ecosystem” was not yet in common use and a fish that wasn’t somehow useful for people was considered “trash.”  The irony is that, sixty years later, most of the fish that I mentioned above—the skates and sea robins, the cunners and windowpanes, and even the dogfish—actually provide a good meal, if one knows how to clean and prepare them, but in our ignorance, we left them to rot.  

Because they weren’t “any good.”

Today, most anglers know better, although some skates and sea robins still meet their ends gasping for oxygen between jetty rocks.  But the question of what a fish “is for”—do they exist merely to satisfy human wants and needs (and if so, whose wants and needs)?—still remains.

That question often arises in allocation fights, when advocates from the recreational sector argue that fishing for sport provides the greatest social and economic benefits, and fish should be reserved for that purpose, while those supporting the commercial sector, and sometimes the for-hire fishery as well, maintain that fish should be utilized for food, and not treated like playthings.  Some will even suggest that catch-and-release fishing, a game in which fish and angler participate, but only the angler truly consents to join, is a cruel and somewhat sadistic enterprise.

And, of course, the lines between sport, food, and commercial fishing aren’t all that cut and dried.

I love to cast plugs and bucktails around western Connecticut’s sod banks and boulders, searching for striped bass.  Although I no longer live along those shores, they’re where I grew up and where I learned to fish, and I still enjoy fishing with friends there.  I catch my share of legal-sized fish, but haven’t brought a striped bass home in over 30 years.

On the other hand, when I’m headed offshore, there’s always ice in the fish box.  I might be fishing for sharks, which will all be released, but if a dolphin (the mahi-mahi kind, not the mammal) comes into my chum slick, I’ll do my best to invite it into the boat for dinner.  When I’m trolling, the first tuna to hit (provided that it’s of legal size) comes aboard, while subsequent fish will probably be released.

So don’t ask me to decide whether a yellowfin is a “sport” or a “food” fish; it can be either or both, depending on who catches it, and their inclination at the time.

We see the same sort of thing when we try to draw a sharp line between “recreational” and “commercial” fisheries.  In theory, it’s easy.  As the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act tells us,

“The term ‘commercial fishing’ means fishing in which the fish harvested, either in whole or in part, are intended to enter commerce or enter commerce through sale, barter, or trade,”

while

“The term ‘recreational fishing’ means fishing for sport or pleasure.”

But are the two mutually exclusive?  Years ago, I used to fish in a tournament sponsored by a local club, which encouraged all entrants to donate their fish to the sponsors, who would then sell them, in a live auction, to people watching the weigh-in.  Fish that weren’t sold on the dock were shipped to market, and all proceeds from the sales were donated to a well-respected charity.  The anglers received nothing for their catch.

I got some of the tournament workers upset with me when I refused to donate my fish, because I didn’t hold a commercial tuna permit.  They kept telling me that my permit didn’t matter, because I wasn’t selling the fish directly and, after all, the proceeds were going to charity.  The argument went on for a few years, but in the end, the enforcement folks from the National Marine Fisheries Service learned about the sales, and politely informed the club that, if they continued, there would be legal consequences.

NMFS had no doubt about what commercial fishing was, but there were plenty of folks at the club who disagreed.

Things get even foggier when you think about the anglers who charter a boat and fish for bluefin tuna.  Bluefin less than 73 inches long may not be sold; bluefin over 73 inches may be sent to market, provided that the boat from which they’re caught have a commercial permit.  Many charter boats opt for a commercial endorsement so that they may sell their customers’ catch.

If the first fish landed is less than 73 inches in length, and the customers decide to keep it, the boat is deemed to be fishing recreationally, and no fish caught on that trip may be sold.  If the first fish is over 73 inches and is retained, the boat is deemed to be fishing commercially, and no fish under 73 inches may be kept.  Under such circumstances, are the anglers who chartered the boat, but may or may not receive some of the proceeds from any fish sold, commercial fishermen?

And, from a regulatory standpoint, does being a “commercial fisherman” mean more than just selling an occasional fish?  

In Massachusetts, anyone who opts to pay the commerciallicense fee may sell striped bass; in New York, commercial striped bass permits are only issued to people who can prove that they earn a significant amountof their income from fishing, and even so, no new fishermen are currentlyallowed to enter the commercial bass fishery.  

To the extent that a portion of the annual striped bass landings are set aside and labelled “commercial quota,” should those fish go to those who support themselves and their families, in whole or in part, through fishing, or should so-called “recremercial fishermen,” who hold down good-paying jobs, fish strictly “for sport and pleasure,” but sell a handful of fish each year to cover the cost of gas, bait, and beer, be allowed to compete with professional fishermen for a part of the commercial quota?

Again, we confront the question, what are fish—in this case, fish designated for the commercial sector—really for?

Finally, we get to one of the more difficult philosophical end ethical questions:  What is a particular fish for—that is, what is its highest and best use—not only when human and ecological considerations clash, but when different human needs and uses clash as well?

Consider the alewife.

In parts of eastern Canada, they call the fish “gaspereau.”  An article in Hakai magazine reports that, with the decline of Atlantic herring and mackerel, alewives are drawing more attention as an alternative lobster bait.  But alewives are an important forage fish, both for larger ocean denizens and for creatures such as bald eagles once the gaspereau ascent coastal rivers to spawn.  Alewife runs are often vulnerable to overfishing; many in the eastern United States have all but disappeared, while others are struggling.  Canadian runs, including some that are healthy today, have also been overfished in the past.

Aside for the growing interest in alewives as lobster bait, the fish have long been targeted in a commercial food fishery that sent inexpensive, salted gaspereau to Haiti, where it provides affordable protein in one of the poorest nations in the world.

There is concern that Canadian alewife runs won’t be able to fully support all those uses without going into decline.

That raises the question of what an alewife is for.

Is the highest and best use of an alewife to fulfill its ecosystem role as a forage fish?  To feed desperately poor people in Haiti?  Or to provide bait in a fishery targeting a luxury food that no one must eat to survive, but also supports the fishermen who catch the lobster?

If one takes the hopefully dying view that the worth of a fish, or any other resource, is only gauged by the value that it provides for people, then the ecosystem role is discounted, but the ethical dilemma of using gaspereau to feed the poor, or using them for bait for the lobster which occasionally feed the at least semi-wealthy (while providing support for others who might be less well off) remains.

It’s a completely subjective decision.  I suggest that the right answer is none of the above.

Alewives—and every other fish—are not for anything or anyone.  Like any other form of life on Earth—whether a sumac tree, a box turtle, a blue whale, or a human—fish merely are.  They are among the current survivors of an evolutionary process that has been ongoing for more than 3.5 billion years, and will continue for another billion years into the future.  To assume that they evolved with a purpose, much less the purpose of serving a particularly prolific, tool-making primate that first walked the earth a mere 300,000 years ago, represents folly at best, and at worst a reprehensible arrogance.

Instead of trying to figure out what fish are for, and devaluing those that have no perceptible use, we should be caught up in wonder at their variety, their beauty, and their ubiquity, and thankful that they can satisfy some of our needs, so long as we remain mindful of their needs as well.

 

 

 

 

STRIPED BASS: ASMFC CONSIDERS COMMERCIAL QUOTA TRANSFERS

 

Last week, the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission formally released Draft Addendum I to Amendment 7 to the Atlantic Striped Bass Interstate Fishery Management Plan, along with a schedule of hearings on such draft addendum.

Addendum I addresses a single issue:  Should coastal states be allowed to transfer unused and unneeded commercial striped bass quota to other states that wish to land more fish than they would otherwise be allowed under the management plan?

That question has been around for a long time.  

In October 2014, the ASMFC’s Atlantic Striped Bass Management Board considered such transfers in connection with its approval of Addendum IV to Amendment 6 of the Atlantic Striped Bass Interstate Fishery Management  Plan.  It noted that such transfers were almost universally opposed in the public hearings leading up to the Management Board meeting, and when a vote on the issue was finally taken, Board members opposed quota transfers by a margin of 15 to 1. 

It is probably significant, for the purposes of the current discussion, that Delaware was among the majority of states which voted against quota transfers.

The issue next arose in the Public Information Document for Amendment 7 to the Interstate Fishery Management Plan for Atlantic Striped Bass, released in February 2021, which asked the public to comment on whether such transfers should be considered in the contemplated amendment.  

In her summary of stakeholder comments, Emile Franke, the ASMFC’s Fishery Management Plan Coordinator for Atlantic Striped Bass, noted that

“this issue had fewer comments overall.  The majority of commenters on this issue support updating the commercial quota allocation to a more recent timeframe to better align with current fishery conditions.  A small number of commenters noted this issue should not be addressed in Amendment 7 or that commercial allocation should not be changed at this time.”

Ms. Franke did not directly address the question of quota transfers in her memo to the Management Board, as that point was raised by very few stakeholders.  A review of the written comments received shows that out of more than 3,000 comments, only three appeared to directly address the quota transfer issue.  One, from the Long Island [New York] Commercial Fishermen’s Association supported such transfers.  Two others, from individual anglers, seemed to oppose them.  On the whole, there were few strong sentiments either way.

The Atlantic Striped Bass Advisory Panel exhibited a similar indifference, with one member supporting quota transfers, one member opposing them, and the others voicing no opinion.  When the Management Board considered a motion to include the issue in the Draft Amendment 7 to the Interstate Fishery Management Plan for Atlantic Striped Bass For Public Comment, the motion failed to attract a majority, with six in favor, six opposed, two abstentions, and a null vote.

However, prior to the August 2021 Management Board meeting, Toni Kearns, the ASMFC’s Interstate Fishery Management Program Director, presented a memo that began

“At the May 2021 Board meeting, the motion to include the commercial allocation issue in Draft Amendment 7 failed for lack of a majority.  Many Board members recognized that Delaware has raised this issue for several years now and Delaware asserts their current allocation is not equitable…

“The Board Chair requested staff from the Commission and the State of Delaware prepare options and timelines for how this issue could be addressed moving forward.  In response to the request, Commission staff and Commissioners from the State of Delaware prepared this memorandum for discussion at the August meeting.”

Four different options were presented, including no action, commercial quota transfers, a reallocation of commercial quotas based on various historical factors, and a reallocation based on the contributions of each spawning estuary to the spawning stock.

At the meeting, John Clark, the Administrative Proxy for Delaware, supported the transfer option, saying

“…Tried to keep it very simple, and tried to look for a option [sic]…the first option is for voluntary transfers.  We are not trying to do a full reallocation everywhere, because we now how fraught that process would be.  Just looking to get more in the simplest way possible here.

“We also understand that there might be some concern with just voluntary transfers, because it could end up with more questions of states asking for transfers that they maybe don’t really need, or what have you.  We added some criteria…to at least make sure that transfer would only go to states that had filled their quota the previous year…I’m sure if anybody who has read through it saw that really the only state that would qualify under all three criteria would be Delaware…”

Eventually, Mr. Clark put a motion on the table, to initiate an addendum to the management plan that would permit voluntary transfers of state striped bass quota.  Such motion passed by on a vote of eight in favor, seven opposed.  Thus, work began on what was originally Addendum VII to Amendment 6 to the Interstate Fishery Management Plan for Atlantic Striped Bass and, after Amendment 7 was adopted, was redesignated as Addendum I to that amendment.

Unfortunately, Addendum I has expanded far beyond the original intent of the document, which was to provide a few more fish for the State of Delaware.  It now contemplates transfers among any coastal states, transfers which could lead to a meaningful increase in fishing mortality.

That would be problematic at any time, but becomes a particular issue as managers are attempting to rebuild the overfished striped bass stock.  As noted at the start of this essay, the quota transfer issue is nothing new.  It has been periodically visited by the Management Board, and to date, the Management Board has always decided that such transfers were a bad idea. 

During the debate over transfers at the August 2021 Management Board meeting, someone asked why quota transfers are not allowed in the striped bass fishery, when they are routinely accepted in fisheries for other species.  In response to that question, Robert Beal, the ASMFC’s Executive Director, said that

“my recollection is that they were not allowed while we were, even before my time the Board was trying to rebuild the striped bass stock.  Then once it was rebuilt, the Board sort of felt comfortable with not allowing transfers.  Part of it had to do with where those fish came from.

“If you move fish from North Carolina to Maine, well North Carolina to Massachusetts, that’s probably the farthest commercial quotas.  You know with that impact differentially, where those fish came from and the spawning populations and that sort of thing.  But again, most of it is a holdover from the rebuilding days of the early ‘90s.”

Roy Miller, Delaware’s Governor's Appointee, reinforced Mr. Beal’s recollection, saying

“I just wanted to agree with what Bob said regarding the history of this process.  We were in a rebuilding mode from the 1980s until the mid-1990s.  This is from someone who was there during that time.  It carried over into the restoration of the coastwide stock, and even the Delaware stock in the mid-1990s.  It’s just something that we haven’t dealt with since then, so those transfers when we were in a rebuilding mode, no one wanted to consider transfers.  Once the stock was declared restored, the subject hadn’t come up again until very recently.

Such comments are probably accurate, as far as they go.  But they’re missing one very, very important point:  We are in rebuilding mode once again.  Managers aren’t dealing with a rebuilding stock, but rather with a still overfished stock, which remains at early 1990s abundance levels.  Thus, the same arguments against quota transfers that applied during the earlier rebuilding period are equally valid today.

But that isn’t the only argument against coastwide quota transfers.

Transfer supporters often argue that striped bass are the only ASMFC-managed species that are not subject to quota transfers.  And that seems to be true.

However, striped bass are also one of the few ASMFC-managed species that sees annual landings fall far below the annual quota.  For example, 2021 commercial bluefish landings were 2.38 million pounds, about 86% of the 2.77 million pound quota.  In the same year, commercial summer flounder landings equaled about 82% of the overall quota. 

Striped bass don’t see such a high level of quota utilization.  Between 2012 and 2021, commercial striped bass fishermen caught between 51% and 76% of their annual quotas, with an average utilization rate of just 66.6%. 

That has an impact on the potential efficacy of management measures intended to reduce striped bass fishing mortality.  Because there is no hard-poundage annual catch limit imposed on the recreational striped bass fishery, recreational management measures are designed to reduce fishing mortality from its actual level.  On the other hand, fishing mortality reductions in the commercial fishery are supposedly achieved by reducing quota, not actual commercial landings. 

Thus, in a fishery where landings typically fall more than 30% of quotas, reducing such quotas by 25% (Addendum IV to Amendment 6 to the Atlantic Striped Bass Fishery Management Plan) or by 18% (Addendum VI to Amendment 6 to the Atlantic Striped Bass Fishery Management Plan) is not guaranteed to reduce fishing mortality by as much as a single striped bass.  2015 commercial landings of 4.82 million pounds represented only a 19% reduction from 2014 landings levels, and not the 25% targeted by Addendum IV; landings levels in subsequent years also fell short of the 25% target, yet remained well within the quota.  While the overall fishing mortality reduction of 25% was, in fact, achieved the year after Addendum IV went into effect, such reduction fell largely on the shoulders of coastal recreational fishermen.

The commercial fishery also failed to achieve the full 18% reduction contemplated by Addendum VI.  While it came close in 2020, when its landings of 3.52 million pounds were 17% less than its landings in 2019, 2021 commercial landings of 4.29 million pounds, representing an 18% increase over 2020 landings, largely negated Addendum VI’s efforts to reduce commercial fishing mortality.  Yet, despite such increase, 2021 commercial striped bass landings were only 76% of the commercial quota.

Permitting states that underfished their striped bass quota to transfer unused quotas to other states which are facing possible overages, and so allowing such states to land even greater amounts of fish, could only make it more difficult to maintain fishing mortality at a level that will conserve and rebuild the spawning stock.

Such a situation was contemplated by Charlton Goodwin, then Chair of the Technical Committee, in October 2014, when he told the Management Board,

“Relative to the commercial quota transfer, the technical committee is concerned that at a time when we’re needing to take reductions, if the percent reductions are taken from Amendment 6 quota instead of the 2013 level of harvest, allowing commercial transfers in conjunction with that could have the potential to increase harvest.  [emphasis added]”

Such concerns are equally valid today, when fishing mortality must be kept at or below the F=0.17 target if the stock is to be rebuilt by the 2029 deadline.

Commercial transfers may also undercut current conservation measures by other means.

While the efficacy of so-called “gamefish status,” which limits striped bass harvest to the recreational sector, may well be debated, such prohibitions of commercial harvest probably do result in lower state landings than would have occured if an active commercial fishery existed in "gamefish" states.  However, such gamefish states currently retain their commercial quotas, even though they don’t have commercial fisheries.  Allowing states to transfer such unused quota, perhaps in return for a previous donation of bluefish or menhaden quota, undercuts whatever conservation benefit may result from such “gamefish” provisions.

Certainly, transfers of commercial quota from gamefish states have been contemplated by representatives of the commercial fishing sector, as exemplified by the previously-referenced comment letter submitted by the Long Island Commercial Fishermen’s Association at the start of the Amendment 7 process.  Such letter said, in part, that

“Commercial allocation transfer would be particularly useful to achieve [optimum yield] for those states that, through game fish status or lack of an inshore fishery, would be unable to utilize their quota.”

So there are many reasons to believe that permitting the interstate transfer of striped bass quota is not a good idea, particularly in the face of an overfished stock.  Such reasons are not new, and are not a knee-jerk response to Addendum I, but are rather the result of multiple individuals considering the transfer issue over a period of years.

Unfortunately, Addendum I seems to have some momentum, and the hearings are nearly at hand, with New York holding the first one on the evening of December 7.  In light of that fact, how should concerned stakeholders respond?

First, before stakeholders can do anything, they need to know what Addendum I says.  To quote from the draft,

“Draft Addendum I presents options that would allow for the voluntary transfer of commercial quota in the ocean region between states that have ocean quota.  However, commercial quota that has been reallocated to a state’s recreational fishery (i.e., for a recreational bonus program) is not eligible to be used for commercial quota transfers…

“If quota transfers are permitted, quota would be transferred pound-for-pound from the donor state to the receiving state.  There would be some inherent uncertainty associated with transfers associated with states that harvest different sized striped bass.  State commercial fisheries catch different sized fish due to multiple factors, including variability in striped bass size distribution along the coast and state management programs (different size limits, gears, seasons).  Further, through [conservation equivalency], states have been able to adjust their commercial size limits from the historical standard, which results in changes to their respective commercial quotas…Stated more simply, a pound of striped bass commercial quota is not equal across all states.”

Addendum I then offers five different options for addressing the quotas transfer issue.

Option A is the status quo option, that would continue the prohibition on interstate transfers.  It is the simplest and, for the reasons set forth above, the most desirable of all the options provided.  However, given the time that has been invested in Addendum I, and Delaware’s insistence that some action be taken, the Board will probably favor one of the other four choices.

Option B would allow unrestricted transfer of quota between states.  However, if the striped bass stock is overfished at the time of transfer, a 5% transfer tax would be applied to address all related uncertainties.  Thus, for every 1,000 pounds transferred by the donor state when the stock is overfished, the receiving state would only get 950 pounds; if the stock is not overfished at the time the transfer takes place, even if it is badly depleted and on a downward trajectory, no such tax would be imposed.  Option B is clearly the riskiest and least desirable of the five options.

Option C would allow unrestricted transfer of quota between states, provided that the stock is not overfished.  While Option C is somewhat better than Option B, as it would prohibit transfers under a worst case scenario, it would still allow such transfers when the stock condition is deteriorating and the stock is on the verge of becoming overfished.  For those reasons, Option C is also undesirable.

Option D would give the Management Board broad discretion to allow transfers and set conditions on any such transfers that are allowed.  Transfers would not be permitted without express Board approval, and such approval could place limits on the amount of quota transferred, require the receiving state to show a clear need for the transfer, or establish other criteria that a proposed transfer would need to meet.  If this option was selected, like Option B, it would impose a 5% transfer tax on transfers that take place when the stock is overfished.  Taken as a whole, Option D is probably somewhat better than Option B, as the Management Board would be able to halt, or place conditions on, transfers, but not as good as Option C, as transfers could still take place as an overfished stock is struggling to rebuild.

Option E is much like Option D, in that it would give the Management Board broad discretion to permit or prohibit interstate quota transfers, and would also allow the Board the authority to place conditions on any transfers that do occur.  Option E would also prohibit all transfers during times when the stock is overfished.  Because it would not allow transfers to take place when the stock is overfished, and would also allow the Board to ban or place restrictions on transfers at other times, Option E is probably the best of the bad choices, and although less desirable than Option A, is clearly better than any of Options B, C, or D.

The most sensible comment strategy will probably be to express strong support for Option A, no quota transfers, and then also indicate reluctant support for Option E as an alternative, in the event that Option A is unacceptable to the Management Board.

The ASMFC will be accepting comments on Addendum I through 11:59 p.m. on January 13, 2023.  Comments may be mailed to Emile Franke, Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission, 1050 N. Highland Street, Suite 200 A-N, Arlington, VA  22201, or emailed to comments@asmfc.org, with the subject line “Striped Bass Draft Addendum I.”  Comments may also be made at any of the state hearings listed in the link provided in the first paragraph of this essay.

In May 2021, concerned anglers and other stakeholders successfully convinced the Management Board to take most of the bad proposals out of the Draft Amendment 7, and in May of this year, convinced the Board to adopt a final version of Amendment 7 that improved the striped bass management program.  Addendum I is the final remnant of the Amendment 7 process, a loose end that was intentionally omitted from the amendment, but that must be addressed now.

What was initially conceived as a simple effort to give a few more bass to Delaware’s commercial fishermen, and clearly intended to only impact Delaware’s fishery, has since morphed into a much more far-ranging addendum, with the potential to complicate and degrade the current striped bass recovery, and make it somewhat more difficult to effectively manage striped bass in the future. 

Everyone who came out over the last two years to fight for good striped bass management are urged to come out one more time, oppose the badly-conceived transfer program, and put the last of the draft Amendment 7’s bad ideas behind us.