TIME, CHANGE, AND GREEN WATER

 

There are a lot of things that might strike a person on their first trip offshore.

The vastness of the ocean, once the land falls away, can be breathtaking for some, and a little disconcerting for others. 

 There is the color and texture of the water--the bright track of the rising sun, the shadow of cloud, the patch of ripples on an otherwise calm ocean where water wells up from the bottom.

And there is the life.  Wilson’s storm petrels seemingly walking on the surface of the sea.  Dolphin racing alongside the boat, sporting in the bow wave.  Maybe a leatherback turtle, or a basking shark or, ever more often, a breaching humpback whale.

For me, the most striking thing on my first trip offshore was the water’s clarity.

I grew up on the shores of Long Island Sound, in the age where even secondary sewage treatment was never a given in come neighboring towns.  Fed on a rich soup of nutrients from sewage plant outfalls, and fertilizers flowing from the manicured lawns of shoreside estates, the Sound I knew as a boy was rich with phytoplankton; even as a six-year-old standing in knee-deep water at the town beach, there was no guarantee that I would still see my toes.

I started fishing on party boats in my sixth year.  Some of the trips were in Cape Cod Bay, in search of its namesake finfish; it’s possible that other trips were in the ocean, but if they were, they were in the plankton-rich sea off Provincetown, Massachusetts which, although clearer than Long Island Sound, still hid any fish that weren’t just beneath the surface.

My first unquestionably pelagic trip took place in May 1968, when my father allowed me to join him and two of his friends on a cod trip to Cox’s Ledge, off Rhode Island.  Back then, boats were slow, and it probably took our wallowing party boat two and a half hours to make the 20-something mile trip.  I remember sitting on the doorframe of the cabin—the boat didn’t have any outside seats, and the cabin was filled with the smells of cigarettes and early morning beers—watching waves roll in from an empty horizon, telling myself that seasickness was only a state of mind (and successfully defeating the queasiness brought on by the long, oily swells that were a new challenge for my inner ear to overcome).

It didn’t take long, once we reached the grounds, for someone to hook up with a fish, and I remember staring down into the ocean, watching the cod come up toward the surface, first as a barely-seen greenish-blue glow many feet down, then slowly taking on shape and form and finally color as it was brought within reach of the waiting gaff.  For as long as I cod fished from party boats, I was always fascinated by watching fish materialize out of the depths.

After I began fishing offshore for sharks, billfish, and tuna, I began to be even more conscious of clear blue water.  Marlin pretty well insisted on it, as did most of the tunas, although bluefin would, if the bait was there, often come into the murk.  It didn’t matter so much for sharks, but even so, we always noted the color as we ran offshore; our wake was almost always a clear, pale blue before we reached our destination.

Just like on the cod boats, staring into the deep remained a fascination.  We could see our close-in bait, set 30 or so feet below the chum can, flashing in the sun, and often spotted a sleek blue shape cruising somewhere above or below it, letting us to place the bait right in front of the fish. 

On one occasion, fishing south of Shinnecock near the Coimbra wreck, we noticed a strange fish about two and a half feet long, cruising around in our chum slick.  We couldn’t figure out what it was, until it finally came up to the can, and we realized it was an unusually large remora.  Speculating about what might be large enough to host such an animal, we were looking over the side as a light bluish patch began to appear below the boat.  It’s shape—it seemed sort of roundish—confused us, and led to speculation that it might be a turtle, or perhaps a sunfish (Mola mola), but neither of those felt quite…right.  We were caught a little off guard when, a little closer to the surface, the image resolved itself to be a white shark, which we eventually estimated to be about 13 feet long, coming straight up, just like the notorious shark on the book cover did fifty years ago.  Maybe four feet below the surface, the shark switched to a horizontal plane, made one fast pass through our slick, and disappeared.

Seeing down through the clear water brought us many similar sights, although none that were quite as dramatic.  But as the years passed, it slowly seemed that the clear water was receding.  White marlin and yellowfin tuna were no longer coming too close to shore.  Often, when we were fishing for sharks, we couldn’t see a hooked fish even when we already had the other end of a 15-foot leader in hand.

Yes, we sometimes had clear-water days, but they were ever less frequent, and the water was never quite as blue as it had been three decades ago.  Often, we’d even find green water out past the 30 fathom line, where it once, almost always, ran clear.

But the change had come slowly.  The first green-water year we remember was 1985, when the chlorophyll remained thick all the way out to Hudson Canyon.  But that was an oddity.  With the dawn of the new century, it felt like green water was becoming ever more common.  Yet, because change was slow, we always had to ask ourselves whether it was really there, or just misperception.

Apparently, our perception was true.

A paper, titled “Global climate-change trends detected in indicators of ocean ecology,” was published on July 12 in the journal Nature.  It reported that

“Ocean colour satellites, which measure the amount of light radiating from the ocean and atmosphere from Earth’s surface, have been collecting global measurements for decades.  A great deal of research has focused on long-term trends in ocean-colour data, particularly in chlorophyll a (Chl) and primary productivity over large regions.”

The referenced satellites are the same ones used by providers of the ocean color and temperatures charts that offshore fishermen use to find water most likely to find pelagic fish, and are not unfamiliar to anglers. 

The paper went on to note,

“the MODIS sensor aboard the Aqua satellite (hereafter, MODIS-Aqua) has far surpassed its originally planned mission duration of 6 years, having just completed 20 full years collecting high-quality global ocean-colour data.  The key variable provided by MODIS-Aqua (and any ocean-colour sensor) is R_rs, which is the ratio of water-leaving radiance to downward irradiance incident on the ocean surface…Similarly to Chl, R_rs is an indicator of the state of the surface-ocean microbial ecosystem…Again similarly to Chl, trends in R_rs…do reflect changes in surface-ocean ecology…as Rrs does encode combined information about surface ecosystems and dissolved and particulate organic matter, any trend in R_rs reveals notable changes in the components of surface-ocean ecology and biogeochemistry with optical signatures.  Furthermore, any change in R_rs corresponds to changes in the light environment itself, which will affect phytoplankton and thus ultimately lead to ecosystem changes.”

In discussing the study’s findings, the paper noted that

“To investigate possible trends in ocean colour, we performed…an autocorrelation-corrected multivariate regression on the first 20 years of MODIS-Aqua ocean R_rs data, spanning July 2002-June 2022.  We find significant trends…in 56% of the ocean, primarily equatorward of 40^o.”

The waters where we fish offshore of Long Island just happen to be right around that 40^o boundary.  Thus, our observations of greener water are most likely correct.  However, if an angler just began fishing for sharks, billfish, and/or tuna around the year 2000, that fisherman would never have known the crystal blue water that we commonly fished in during the 1980s and ‘90s, and would believe that today’s chlorophyll-tainted ocean represented the long-term state of the sea.

It's a twist on the so-called “Shifting Baseline Syndrome” first described by biologist Daniel Pauly, who noted that

“each generation of fisheries scientists accepts as a baseline the stock size and species composition that occurred at the beginning of their careers and uses this to evaluate changes.  When the next generation starts its career, the stocks have further declined, but it is the stocks at that time that serve as a new baseline.  The result obviously is a gradual shift of the baseline, a gradual accommodation of the creeping disappearance of resource species, and inappropriate reference points.”

Although Dr. Pauly referred to “fisheries scientists,” his comments hold equally true for fishermen.  A fisherman judges the health of fish stocks by comparing them to the state of stocks when that person began fishing.  If there are more fish around than there were when an angler began his or her fishing career, than they’re likely to say things like, “There are more [name a species] around than ever before,” when, by long-term historical standards, fishing is actually mediocre. 

Similarly, anglers who never experienced a stock collapse are more likely to panic when a fish population declines, and call for draconian measures when, in fact, fish remain reasonably abundant and are only in need of modest additional protections.

Thus, whether talking about fish populations or ecological conditions, both scientists and fishermen need to maintain a broad temporal perspective.  That old guy talking about how good fishing used to be may not be merely romanticizing the past, but is instead providing a very important point of reference.

I was thinking about that again the other day, as I was speaking with a young scientist who was collecting samples and data from sharks caught aboard my boat.  We were talking about her doctoral dissertation, which is going to address the historical abundance of a number of different fish species, when she observed that a lot of fisheries tanked at the same time, quite a few decades ago.  Her comment struck me, because her findings, like the recent study on ocean color changes, precisely matched my memory of the patterns of abundance in many northeastern fisheries.

The difference was that I was there, experiencing the declines, while she came to the same conclusions that I did second-hand, by analyzing a wide array of available data.  The virtue of that hard data, of course, is that it validated my memories, sharply reducing the chances that they are merely the result of a selective memory.  I hope to have a chance to read the completed work once it is done.

Unfortunately, a lot of people won’t get a chance to read it, and wouldn’t even if they could.  They will go on believing that their lives encompass the entire relevant history of our fisheries, that they have known the best times and maybe the worst, and that a depleted fishery very possibly represents the best that such fishery can ever be.

Whether we hear them talking about striped bass, red snapper, summer flounder or, maybe, even cod as “the best fishing that has ever been,” we need to understand their limited frame of reference.

For we can make things better.  We can rebuild depleted stocks.

But before we can do so, we first need to admit that, when viewed in a historical context, a problem really does exist.

 

LOUISIANA REGULATORS STRIVE TO REBUILD INSHORE STOCKS

 

All is not well in the bayous and marshes of Louisiana.  Two of the state’s iconic saltwater fishes, red drum and speckled trout (more properly, spotted seatrout), are in serious decline.  Louisiana’s state fisheries biologists, working with the Louisiana Wildlife and Fisheries Commission, are trying hard to turn things around.

Unfortunately, while responsible members of the angling community are giving them solid support, they are running into strong political headwinds generated by some self-interested charter boat captains and, ironically, by some who claim to support “coastal conservation.”

Years ago, when Louisiana’s fish stocks seemed to be under stress, it was easy for the state’s anglers to point their fingers at commercial fishermen, and blame them for the declines in fish abundance.  Louisiana outlawed the commercial red drum fishery in 1988.  In 1995, at the behest of recreational fishermen led by the Louisiana chapter of the Gulf Coast Conservation Association [now known as Coastal Conservation Association Louisiana], the state banned the use of gill nets in its coastal waters.

Commercial fishermen naturally objected to such measures.  Water Log, a publication issued by the Mississippi-Alabama Sea Grant Consortium, reported that

“Many commercial fishing groups argue that any harm to Louisiana’s marine finfish resources is coming from recreational fishermen.  They claim that recreational fishermen land four times as many speckled trout every year.  Besides, they say, the number of commercial fishermen has plummeted, while each year the state sells record numbers of sport licenses.  Manny Fernandez, a New Orleans attorney representing the commercial fishermen, said…’[t]his is not about conservation.  It’s about politics and greed.’”

The Water Log article went on to conclude, in part, that

“The gillnet question boils down to an issue of allocation.  According to Ron Lukens of the Gulf States Marine Fisheries Commission (GSMFC), the issue is not purely one of science.  It also involves the question of who gets the fish.  The parties in this debate have all used the facts and data to their advantage, and it is often hard to tell which arguments are credible.  Dealing with a mobile resource such as fish makes it even more difficult.  Politics and economics have played a significant role in the gillnet debate.

“Conservation should play an important role in dealing with natural resources.  Commercial fishermen should not decimate fish stocks for short term profit.  They ought to also address harm to endangered species and wasteful bycatch.  Fisheries management policies should ensure sustainable stocks.  If fish stocks are truly in danger, they need protection from all sorts of harvest, from gillnets to hook and line fishing…  [emphasis added]”

Nearly three decades ago, the Louisiana angling community declared victory after achieving a gill net ban.  But what they didn’t realize, and probably didn’t even consider, is that with red drum harvest limited to recreational fishermen, and with the gillnet ban reducing commercial speckled trout landings to a statistically insignificant level, responsibility for the health of both species now falls squarely on anglers’ shoulders. 

Recreational fishermen can no longer blame overfishing on the commercial sector.

Given the currently depressed state of Louisiana’s red drum and speckled trout stocks, that puts the state's anglers, most particularly those who advocated for “gamefish status” for red drum and for the gillnet ban, in an uncomfortable place.  

They now need to take responsibility for both stocks’ declines.

But there’s a funny thing about people, and anglers are no exception:  While they’re very willing to claim rights and privileges—say, to be the only sector allowed to harvest red drum, or forcing commercial fishermen to catch their speckled trout with what amounts to recreational gear—they are far, far less eager to accept any sort of responsibility for the health of fish stocks.

After all, it’s very easy to conserve someone else’s fish, and hold the commercial fishery responsible for conserving and rebuilding fish stocks.  But when there is no longer any commercial fishery to blame, some anglers and angling organizations can suddenly get very prickly about having restrictions placed on themselves.

The speckled trout issue was a case in point, one that I have written about it before.  The stock had been badly overfished for a few years, so Louisiana regulators began the process of changing the state’s 12-inch minimum size, as well as its astoundingly liberal 25-fish bag limit.

In doing so, the state didn’t act rashly.  Instead, it first considered the science and conducted extensive stakeholder polling, which revealed that

“a majority of [surveyed anglers] indicated that they were moderately to extremely concerned for the spotted seatrout stock,”

and would, for the most part, support a 15-fish bag limit and 13 ½-inch minimum size.  That was probably not unexpected, as the 15-fish bag was far more trout than Louisiana anglers were keeping on a typical trip; one angler who testified at a Wildlife and Fisheries Commission hearing noted that

“The average guy catches two to five fish”

when he goes out.

Thus, most of the harvest reductions achieved would come from the increase in the minimum size.

But two influential organizations, the Louisiana Charter Boat Association and Coastal Conservation Association Louisiana—yes, the same organization that, in the guise of the Gulf Coast Conservation Association, was so passionate about protecting speckled trout that it campaigned for the gillnet ban—railed against the size limit increase.  The charter boat association argued that, in many places, it was difficult to find speckled trout more than 12 inches long, unintentionally providing testimony confirming a badly overfished stock and the need for a larger size limit.  

CCA Louisiana, on the other hand, effectively acknowledged that the 15-fish bag limit would do little to rebuild the seatrout stock, but supported it anyway, saying

“Although Louisiana anglers harvest less than 2 trout per trip on average (according to [Louisiana’s Department of Wildlife and Fisheries]), we see a reduction from 25 fish to 15 fish as a reasonable move, in the spirit of conservation.”

Apparently, supporting “the spirit of conservation” was OK, but meaningful regulations that might increase seatrout abundance were not, as the organization adamantly opposed to increasing the minimum size.  CCA Louisiana was quick to trot out its favorite canard that

“Recreational anglers have always been the primary stewards of our marine resources,”

while aggressively trying to avoid any of the burdens of stewardship.  Instead, the organization made the remarkable assertion that

“Based on our experience, changes in recreational regulations have rarely, if ever, resulted in a direct fishery recovery.”

Immediately after claiming that

“we believe that recreational anglers should lead by example, in the spirit of marine stewardship,”

CCA Louisiana argued that changes in recreational regulations would not remedy the speckled trout’s problems, and came up with a list of solutions, other than regulating anglers, that the state should pursue.

In the end, most likely influenced by CCA Louisiana and its fellow travelers, committees of the Louisiana legislature vetoed the proposed regulations, allowing politics to trump science once again and forcing state fishery managers to go back to the drawing board to craft a politically viable way to effectively rebuild and manage the speckled trout stock.

Now, a new debate over red drum has begun, and could well follow the same discouraging path.

Red drum are managed a little differently from many other fisheries.  In the case of most fisheries, managers tend to establish biomass and fishing mortality reference points, which are essentially boundaries used to gauge the health of a stock.  

It's a logical approach for most situations, but red drum aren’t managed that way.  Instead, because of both their life history, which sees small fish remain in coastal waters while adults spend significant time offshore, and most angler’s aversion to the larger drum's coarse flesh, red drum are managed for “escapement,” the percentage of fish that grow past the maximum size limit and “escape” into the adult population.

Louisiana regulators try to maintain a minimum escapement rate of 30%, but the current rate is far lower, only about 20%.  Overall red drum abundance has also declined significantly over the past decade or so.  Thus, tightened regulations are in order.

Louisiana’s current rules allow an angler to retain five red drum per day, which must fall within a slot limit of 16 to 27 inches, although one larger fish may fall outside such slot.  In response to the current decline in both escapement and the spawning potential of the stock, Louisiana fisheries managers suggested a 35% reduction in landings, which would achieve that desired escapement rate but, because the spawning potential of the stock has fallen so low, would probably not restore the spawning potential of the red drum stock until 30 years after the reduction was implemented. 

When you push rebuilding out that far, so much uncertainty clouds the calculation that it becomes little more than an informed guess.

CCA Louisiana recognizes that there is a problem facing the red drum stock, writing on its website that

“redfish in Louisiana are experiencing overfishing.  The SPR (spawning potential ratio) has been declining since 2005 and is at its lowest level since the mid ‘80s.  Escapement (fish joining the spawning stock) and recruitment (juveniles entering the fishery) are also in significant decline.  Recreational harvest levels are at their lowest since the days of the gill nets.”

Yet, despite acknowledging that the red drum stock has been depleted, the organization supports only minimal changes to current management.  It is calling for nothing more than eliminating anglers’ ability to keep one over-slot drum per day. 

Such action would do nothing to address low escapement, as drum more than 27 inches long are already deemed to have “escaped” into the spawning stock.  It might make a minor contribution to increasing the SPR.  However, anglers would still be able to take home five 16- to 27-inch red drum each day.

It’s not clear whether merely eliminating the over-slot fish would have achieved the 35% reduction initially proposed by managers, or whether it was just one more effort to demonstrate “the spirit of conservation” while doing little to impact recreational landings.  After all, big redfish weren’t considered particularly good eating until New Orleans chef Paul Prudhomme came up with his “blackened redfish” recipe in 1980, and sufficiently disguised the fish’s taste with an array of charred spices to make it a popular dish, so giving up a single large drum wouldn’t be much of a sacrifice for most recreational fishermen.

Still, the point of the management action was to rebuild red drum, and there were better and faster ways to do it.  By increasing the harvest reduction to 50%, the SPR could be restored to a sustainable level in just 16 years—a little more than half the time of the state’s original proposal.  Such a reduction could be achieved by narrowing the slot limit to 18 to 24 inches, eliminating the over-slot fish, reducing the angler’s bag limit to 3 and prohibiting the guide/captain/boat crew from keeping any red drum at all.

That would be a pretty big change, and maybe more than the Louisiana Wildlife and Fisheries Commission thought it could achieve on its own.  But this time, unlike the case with speckled trout, the Commission and the red drum had allies, in the form of Louisiana fishing guides who had recently affiliated themselves with theAmerican Saltwater Guides Association, an organization with the mission of

“Promoting sustainable business through marine conservation.”

The association, although only a few years old, has already made its mark on East Coast fisheries management, having helped convince fishery managers to take the actions needed to rebuild striped bass.  The red drum issue marked its first foray into Gulf of Mexico issues.

Thus, when the Louisiana Wildlife and Fisheries Commission met on July 6^th, there were plenty of guides in the room, who showed up to support effective red drum management.  It was the first public meeting for many, and few had ever spoken at such a meeting before.  But when their time came, they told the Commission that they didn’t want to wait nearly three decades to see the red drum stock rebuilt, and they called for meaningful management measures that could get the job done in about half that time.

Their comments made sense to the fishery managers, and in less time than expected, the Commission voted, four to two, to pursue the 50% reduction.  It was a big win for the guides and the red drum, and a big change in Louisiana’s status quo.

The Commission has since adopted a Notice of Intent to take the actions needed to achieve the 50% reduction.  The Commission has also opened a public comment period, which will run until October 5^th.  Once all comments are considered, and any appropriate changes made, the final proposal will, as was the case with the proposed speckled trout regulations, be sent to the Legislative Oversight Committee for its review.

At that point, politics could trump science once again; there is no guarantee that the proposed red drum regulations won’t founder on the same political shoals that wrecked the speckled trout rules.  The “spirit” of conservation, so loved by those who support conservation in theory, but oppose it in practice, might still overcome the real world application of effective, conservative management measures.

But this time, there is a difference.

Unlike the speckled trout, the red drum will not be on its own.  There will be an organized cadre of guides who recognize how important conservation is to their businesses and to the future of the red drum fishery.  Having spoken once on July 6^th, they will be even more willing to speak again, and to stand up against those who hold themselves out as conservationists, but somehow always end up opposing conservative management, if it might restrict the recreational kill.

It's too early to tell how it will all play out, for the “anglers’ rights” folks are deeply entrenched and well-funded; they understand why political contributions are made.

At the same time, given the passion and commitment of the guides who showed up last Thursday, they, and the red drum, may well prevail.

 

 

 

BASELESS CRITICISM MASKS MAGNUSON-STEVENS' SUCCESS

 

Bashing the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act, and the resultant federal fishery management process, has become a cottage industry for some spokesmen for both the recreational and commercial fishing industries.

In this blog, I tend to focus on the recreational whining, largely because I’m a recreational fisherman, but also because I find it personally offensive, and feel as if I’m being stained by some of others’ selfishness and aggressive ignorance merely because I’m a part of the recreational community.  Thus, when I read an op-ed piece written by the representative of a once-respectable angling group, who is trying to stir up fishermen’s sentiments against a recreational fishing permit likely to produce much-needed data in a difficult-to-manage fishery, I feel obliged to criticize the effort.

And I can only laugh when I see John DePersenaire, now in charge of government affairs for the Viking Yacht Company, complain that

“For far too long, the absence of robust data has led NMFS to default to a precautionary approach which negatively impacted impacting [sic] stock assessments, recreational catch estimates, and even marine mammal conservation efforts,”

given that DePersenaire once confessed to, and was found guilty of, taking nearly $30,000 from NMFS as a fishery observer, and then never (alright, he went out once out of sixty supposed trips) actually doing what he was paid for.  Instead, he faked the observer reports, going as far as to include coffee and blood stains to make them look real.

I suppose that might give him special insight into the quality of NMFS data, but it still seems just a little bit much to hear him criticizing the robustness of data that he, at one time, actively helped to corrupt.

But complaining about NMFS, Magnuson-Stevens, and data quality certainly isn’t limited to the recreational sector.  Recently, we’re seeing the same thing coming from the commercial side of the room.

Up in New England, a commercial fisherman named Jerry Leeman has founded a group called the New England Fishermen Stewardship Association,

“because federal regulators are grossly mismanaging our fisheries and pose a lethal threat to fishermen and the oceans.”

It appears that he, too, is a critic of federal fisheries data, since he has observed that

“The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is convinced the fish stocks in New England are declining, and they’re regulating fishermen into oblivion as a result.

“There’s no evidence that they’re right.  NOAA doesn’t have any reliable evidence at all.  The agency has not completed a full survey of New England fish stocks in four years.  The government’s recent attempts to jump start the process are foundering.”

To claim that there is “no evidence” that at least some New England fish stocks are declining may be one of the most blatant misstatements that I’ve ever heard.  I don’t know what kind of records, maybe in the form of party or charter boat log books, might document the summer cod fishery off Rhode Island prior to the early 1980s, but having been a participant in it from the late 1960s until its waning days in the early 1980s, I can assure Mr. Leeman that it has declined to near irrelevance since then.

How irrelevant?

The fishery was already headed downhill by the time semi-reliable recreational landings estimates began in 1981, but Rhode Island anglers landed about 328,000 cod in 1981, 608,000 in 1982, and 579,000 in 1983, compared to roughly 9,700 landed in 2020, 9,100 landed in 2021, and a little under 3,000 landed in 2022.  

Hard to argue that’s not evidence of a New England groundfish decline.

At least the cod are doing better then winter flounder,  In 1984, recreational fishermen here in New York took over 14 million flounder home.  This year, their tally was around 500.  And if New York isn’t quite New England, we can look back on the flounder fishery in Quincy Bay, Massachusetts.  Back in the ‘70s, anglers would charter buses to take them up to Quincy, where they’d buy flats of sandworms (12 dozen to a flat) and need all that bait to fill coolers with flounder. 

Today, they’re happy to catch an 8-flounder limit.  Massachusetts’ recreational winter flounder landings fell from over 16.5 million in 1981 to just under 110,000 last year.  That’s a decline of more than 99%.

So yes, there’s anecdotal evidence of a decline in many New England fisheries, which is amply supported by reams of fishery data.  However, Mr. Leeman makes light of the information available to New England fishery managers, instead trying to play a game of “gotcha” by picking out small issues and trying to grow them into a major indictment of the management system.

He complains that samples aren’t taken at night, and that all sample stations haven’t been covered in recent years, then argues that

“owing to shoddy tactics, reduced trawls, and diminished coverage, it seems inevitable that [the research vessel] Bigelow will produce a small and inaccurate data set,”

without even attempting to provide an analysis demonstrating that the results of the trawl survey are statistically invalid.  He then falls back on the timeworn argument that

“It’s worth noting that we fishermen cover far more water than does NOAA.  We fish hundreds of miles of marine habitat each voyage.  Thus, we have the best sense of the stocks.”

Mr. Leeman conveniently ignores that those “hundreds of miles of marine habitat” are places where fishermen believe that fish are most likely to be, and do not include the many more miles of marine habitat where fish used to be, but no longer exist in economically exploitable quantities, at least on a regular basis.  Certainly, by fishing only where the fish happen to be, fishermen can give the impression—perhaps even convincing themselves—that fish stocks are abundant, but it is the statistically valid, random surveys that provide the more accurate picture of stock health.

Still, Mr. Leeman at least tried to back up his arguments with concrete examples.  Such efforts were never made in an editorial that appeared in the Boca Raton [FL] Review.  Titled “NOAA’s Catch Quotas Rest on Shaky Grounds of Inaccurate Data,” the piece makes the same broad allegations made by Mr. Leeman, claiming that

“it has come to light that [NOAA’s] catch quotas may be built upon a foundation of inaccurate data.  This revelation raises serious concerns about the effectiveness and fairness of NOAA’s fisheries management practices, and the impact it has on both the industry and the environment…

“A closer look reveals that NOAA relies heavily on outdated and incomplete information, often leading to flawed estimations of fish populations and catch limits.  Such inaccuracies can have far-reaching consequences, including overfishing, depletion of fish stocks, and ecological imbalances that can harm entire marine ecosystems.

“…Fishermen and fishing communities bear the brunt of NOAA’s flawed quotas as they face unnecessary restrictions and economic hardships due to arbitrary limitations…”

The editorial goes on like that for quite a while, but never cites even a single, concrete example to support its arguments.

Which may be because there are none to find.

The simple if, in some quarters, unpopular reality is that Magnuson-Stevens, and the federal fishery management system, works, and works well.  That was illustrated once more in two bits of research conducted by Dr. Eyal Frank, an assistant professor at the University of Chicago, and Dr. Kimberly Oremus, an assistant professor at the University of Delaware’s School of Marine Science and Policy. 

One study investigated the commonly heard claim that Magnuson-Stevens creates an overly restrictive fisheries management regime which, while largely effective in ending and preventing overfishing, also leads to the “underfishing” of abundant and widely available fish stocks.  In a paper titled “Underfished or unwanted?,” which appeared in the May 11, 2023 issue of Science, the researchers revealed that most such allegedly “underfished” species were, in fact, being intentionally ignored by commercial fishermen because there is not enough demand for them to make fishing profitable.  Magnuson-Stevens played a role in only a small number of the 88 species examined, and only four of those accounted for most of the economic value of “underfishing”.

Thus, the notion that Magnuson-Stevens promotes underfishing has, in most cases, been fully debunked.

The other study was intended to investigate two other, seemingly contradictory, criticisms of federal fisheries law.  One is that it does not do enough to rebuild overfished stocks; the other is that it is largely ineffective, and that fish stocks would naturally rebuild on their own.

Both appear to be untrue.

The researchers looked at comparable stocks in United States waters, where Magnuson-Stevens applied, and in European waters, where no similar statute was in force.  They found that the fish in United States waters were, on average, 52.2% larger than comparable species found off Europe. 

Taking another tack, the researchers compared fish stocks that were depleted prior to 1996, when the mandatory stock rebuilding provisions were added to Magnuson-Stevens, to stocks that were depleted after that date.  They found that without a mandatory rebuilding policy, stocks continued to decline by about 45%, but that once a rebuilding policy was put in place, stock size typically doubled in five to ten years.

Finally, the study found that mandatory rebuilding requirements brought long-term benefits to not only to the fish, but to the fishermen who catch them.

While the first few years of a rebuilding plan led to declines in both landings and revenues, they recovered to or above pre-rebuilding levels within ten years, with catch levels being nearly 52% higher than the catch of equivalent species in European waters.

That’s a pretty good track record for fishery managers who, if their critics are to be believed, rely on bad data—at least, when they rely on any data at all.

It would almost suggest that it is the critics, and not federal fisheries managers, who are proceeding on flawed assumptions.

 

 

 

 

 

BUT THEY'LL STILL BLAME THE SHARK

 

A number of years ago, I was hunting mule deer in Wyoming’s Shoshone National Forest.  It was the last day of my hunt.  Over the past few days, I had passed up a number of small bucks that would have been fine for meat, but as fond as I am of venison, I didn’t travel all the way to Wyoming just to pick up a little food; I was hoping to also find a deer with a classic, wide set of antlers that I’d want to hang on the wall.

Time was getting short.

My guide and I found ourselves overlooking a big mountain meadow, about 9,000 feet above sea level.  Golden, frost-killed grass nodded in the breeze.  Toward one end of the meadow, a long clump of pines offered a fine place for deer to bed down during the day.  I was going to set up about 100 yards downwind of the trees, while my guide looped around, letting his scent flow through the pines before he entered the trees and hopefully pushed any deer in my direction.

Things didn’t work out that way.

Half a dozen ravens popped out above the trees, circling and calling, before settling back into the topmost branches.  We couldn’t know what caused the commotion, but given where we were, there was a fair chance that a bear might have chased the ravens off something—maybe the gut pile from a previous hunter’s kill, maybe some other sort of carrion, maybe a deer or elk that the bear killed on its own—and it’s always a very bad idea to give such a bear any reason to think that you were planning to steal its lunch.

We went looking for deer somewhere else, and I went home without taking a shot.

But that’s just the way things go in grizzly country.

Before we even began hunting the high timber that the big bears called home, my guide warned me that if I did shoot a deer, we had to gut it and pack it out fast.  The bears had learned that a shot meant food.  They learned that if, instead of running away from a gunshot, they followed the noise to its source, they’d be rewarded with a fresh, tasty pile of offal that the hunter left behind.

Then some enterprising bears figured out that if they ran towards the shot fast enough, they wouldn’t have to settle for some second-hand guts; the whole deer or elk could be theirs. 

That didn’t make hunters too happy, but this was, after all, grizzly country, and the bears set the rules.  Hunters who didn’t follow those rules could end up in potentially fatal contests, where casualties, and fatalities, might fall on either side of the human/bear line.

But you don’t need to be in the Wyoming wilds to see quadrupeds setting the rules.  When I was a boy, our family included a fox terrier that used to follow me around.  Like any child, I’d give the dog biscuits and sneak him bits of meat from my dinner plate, and like any child, I’d sometimes offer food that, at the last minute, I’d snatch away.

When my parents saw me engaging in such behavior, they’d tell me pretty quickly, “Stop teasing the dog; he’s going to bite you,” their delivery making it abundantly clear that if I got bitten, it wouldn't be the fox terrier’s fault.

All that makes sense, and probably ought to apply across the range of human relations with other species.  Yet one doesn’t have to read much of the latest news on sharks and shark behavior, which see people invading the shark’s territory and doing dumb things, to realize that in such cases, the shark is inevitably blamed for the outcome.

One of the more outrageous examples began with a headline that read

“Shark Bites Man’s Hand In Florida, Tries To Drag Him Away.”

The article goes on to explain that

“A fisherman, who was washing his hands off the side of a boat in Florida’s Everglades National Park, was bitten by a shark.  After the incident, the man reported the shark attack to the officials of the National Park Service…

“After releasing a snook [the angler] washed his hands in the water and was immediately bit [sic] by a large bull shark.  There was no chum or blood in the water, and the sharks were unprovoked…”

The headline, combined with the rest of the article and accompanying video, provides the distinct impression that an innocent angler was attacked by a predator that viewed him—species Homo sapiens—as a likely meal.

But when you read a little further, and try to look at things from the shark’s perspective, a very different picture emerges.

Up until the time of the bite, the angler and his companions were having a good day of fishing.  They were catching and releasing quite a few fish, and the commotion that the fish made while being fought by anglers naturally attracted sharks which, like any predator, seek injured or otherwise struggling prey that is relatively easy to chase down and kill.

One article noted that the angler and his companion already lost a few struggling fish to sharks earlier in the outing.

So the scene is set.  Struggling, splashing fish have attracted sharks to the angler’s boat.  He has just released a snook, and decides to wash his hands in the water, presumably to rid them of slime and some of the fishy stink.  One of his companions warns him to keep his hands in the boat, but the angler responds

“Ah, two seconds won’t do anything,”

and, as the video shows, begins vigorously splash them in the stained water of the bay.

A shark—which, in the video, looks more like a lemon than a bull, and was not really all that large—that has already been attracted to the struggles of the now-released snook notices the commotion next to the boat.  Although the angler’s companion claimed that “There was no chum or blood in the water, and the sharks were unprovoked,” nothing could be further from the truth.  No less an authority on shark fishing than the late Capt. Frank Mundus, who pioneered the sport off the New York coast, hailed the “vertical chum line,” which is what he called the struggles of small fish intentionally caught by shark-seeking anglers, because they attracted sharks to the boat.

The struggles of the recently-caught snook proved to be all the chum that the shark in question needed, and certainly provoked the much-ballyhooed bite.  The shark sensed more splashing, noted something flashing amid the splashing water, and took a nip, expecting to get a mouthful of fish.  Feeling resistance, it pulled away, and suddenly something that probably weighed more than the shark did crashed down on top of it.  Instead of continuing its efforts to feed, the shark then tood off, sensing that it had truly bitten off more than it could chew.

The papers called it a “shark attack,” but given the facts surronding the event, it was more like what sometimes happens when someone teases a dog.

Yet news outlets halfway across the world reported on the “attack,” sensationalizing what, in the end, was merely the consequence of the angler’s poor judgment.

And then there are spearfishermen, who find themselves occasionally getting bitten when returning to the surface with a fish.  While sharks usually focus on the fish itself, and a spearfisherman willing to sacrifice their catch to a superior predator usually won’t be further molested (at least on that dive), sometimes the shark bites the swimmer, particularly if that swimmer tries to keep the speared fish for themselves. 

Here, we’re dealing with the bear/hunter analogy.  The spearfisherman enters the shark’s territory, tries to make away with some of the shark’s usual prey, and sometimes gets chewed for their trouble.  Once again, it’s not that the shark is doing anything wrong—it’s merely playing its role, removing injured fish from the ecosystem—but the folks with the spears don’t see things that way.

Once more, the shark is cast as a villain.

That sort of thinking may have reached its peak in the current fuss about “shark depredation,” in which the finned predators feed on what, to them, are injured, weakened, and struggling fish moving through the water column.  The problem is that those fish are attached to anglers’ lines, and those anglers get upset when a shark helps itself to what would otherwise be the fishermen’s catch.

You end up with people who invade the sharks’ habitat, remove fish that the sharks eat, and then complain when the sharks insist on eating the fish struggling at the ends of those folks’ lines, because those fish  acting distressed and are easy to catch.

Like any angler, I’ve lost fish to sharks, and admit that it can be annoying.  At the same time, it was a shark that opened my eyes to the world of offshore fishing back when I was just 13 years old, fishing on a party boat for cod maybe 20 miles southeast of Pt. Judith, Rhode Island, when a big blue shark—at least it looked very big to me then—surged along the transom of the boat, body half out of the water, to snatch the head half of a big, already depredated cod off an anglers’ line and, snapping that line like cheap string, disappeared into the depths of the sea.

The wild beauty and feral strength of that fish burned an image into my mind and set me on a path that, more than half a century later, I still follow with unabated passion.  To damn the shark for being itself seems, to me, inconceivable.

However, a lot of fishermen don’t agree, viewing sharks as nuisances that steal fish that, such fishermen somehow believe, already “belong” to the anglers.  Thus, not long ago, Congressman Rob Wittman (R-VA) has introduced something that he calls the “Supporting the Health of Aquatic systems through Research, Knowledge and Enhanced Dialogue Act.”  The so-called “SHARKED Act,” which has so far been cosponsored by representatives Darren Soto (D-FL), Garret Graves (R-LA), and Marc Veasey (D-TX), supposedly will

“start to address the increasing challenge of shark depredation, which occurs when a shark eats or damages a hooked fish before an angler can reel in his catch,”

and

“would establish a task force comprised of fishery managers and shark experts responsible for improving coordination and communication across the fisheries management community on shark depredation and identifying research priorities and funding opportunities.”

In an attempt to justify his bill, Rep. Witmann said,

“As a lifelong fisherman, I’ve experienced firsthand the impacts of shark depredation and have witnessed its effect on our marine ecosystem.  I introduced the SHARKED Act to improve the environment of our marine life and sportfishing conditions for anglers while protecting sharks from unsafe conditions and food sources.  The SHARKED Act will also serve as the first major step in addressing shark depredation nationwide.  I’m proud to have my colleagues on both sides of the aisle join me in this important effort and lead the way for restoring our marine ecosystem and improving fishing experiences for anglers.”

Let’s take a look at that comment, sentence by sentence, and understand why—and I apologize for being crude—it is such a pile of unalloyed bullshit.

OK, Rep. Witmann is a fisherman, and has had sharks steal some of his fish; as I noted above, that’s pretty much a shared experience for all of us, so that much is true.  But when he talks about shark depredation and “its effect on our marine ecosystem,” he’s talking complete nonsense.  Sharks eat fish, and they have certain nutritional needs that they must meet in order to successfully reproduce and perform the other acts necessary for survival.  Every fish eaten by a shark is removed from the ecosystem, and contributes to satisfying that shark’s nutritional needs.  Whether that fish is swimming free just before it was eaten, or was struggling on an angler’s line, the “effect on our marine ecosystem” is exactly the same. 

Rep. Witmann then claims that his bill will, at the same time, “improve the environment for our marine life and sportfishing conditions for anglers while protecting sharks from unsafe conditions and food sources.”  It’s hard to even begin to understand what such doubletalk means.  

After all, sharks are “marine life,” and have been for something like the last 420 years.  In the days before the primordial swamps rotted and were eventually transformed into the oil that’s refined into the gasoline that powers the two or three or maybe four oversized outboard engines hanging on the back of fishermen’s center consoles, there were already dsharks swimming in ancient seas.  So if Rep. Witmann is honest about wanting to improve the environment for marine life, that means he must improve the environment for sharks, too.

But then he talks about “improving sportfishing conditions for anglers,” which in the context of a shark depredation bill, can only mean fewer sharks in places where anglers fish, and it’s hard to imagine accomplishing that without reducing the number of sharks in the sea—something that seems contrary to that “improve the environment” talk—unless Rep. Witmann is planning to exclude sharks from his definition of “marine life,” and “improve the environment” for everything else by reducing shark numbers, something like the way wildlife managers tried to “improve the environment” for mule deer on the Kaibab Plateau back in the early 20^th Century by removing the predators there.  And we all know how that didn’t work out.

The language about “protecting sharks from unsafe conditions and food sources” just adds to the contradictions inherent in Rep. Witmann’s comment.  While one might argue that all three of the stated goals—improving the marine environment, improving sportfishing conditions, and protecting sharks—might be achieved by requiring anglers to cease fishing and move some minimum distance after experiencing a depredation event, somehow I don’t think that’s what the Congressman has in mind.

Yet the apparent dichotomy of “restoring our marine ecosystem and improving fishing experiences for anglers” appears in the last sentence as well.  

Sharks are an inherent part of marine ecosystems and, as noted above, have been for over 400 million years.  Yet some shark species reportedly responsible for depredation remain overfished, including dusky and sandbar sharks, along with the scalloped hammerhead.  In order to “restore our marine ecosystem,” the populations of such species must be rebuilt, although doing so would necessarily increase shark numbers, and thus increase the rate of shark depredation, something that would hardly “improve fishing experiences for anglers.”

Once again, it appears that Rep. Witmann is talking out of both sides of his mouth, and seeking irreconcilable goals.

Nonetheless, shark depredation is real.  The problem is that policymakers seem insistent on blaming the sharks for doing what hundreds of millions of years of evolution have designed them to do—chase down and eat injured or clearly distressed fish, which today are often on anglers lines—while not addressing the actions of anglers who, by fishing the same spots, perhaps chumming the same waters, and continuing to fish once sharks appear on the scene, are training the sharks to associate boats with food, just as Wyoming’s bears are learning to associate gunshots with venison.

But while bears generally get a pass, and hunters must yield unless lives are threatened, sharks are held to a different, and much harsher standard.  Logically, it makes little sense.

Perhaps it’s all about fur and brown eyes.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

WHAT ATLANTIC HALIBUT CAN TEACH US ABOUT STRIPED BASS MANAGEMENT

 

We can learn a lot about managing today’s fisheries by looking back at how yesterday’s fisheries died.

The first thing we need to understand is that no one—at any time—set out to kill off a fishery.  Instead, fishermen merely plied their trade, trying to support themselves and their families by doing what they did every day—going out, catching fish, and bringing them back to the dock, usually to sell, but also for their own consumption. 

Those fishermen were out on the water every day, and certainly noticed changes in their fisheries.  Maybe the biggest fish that they caught were no longer as large as they once were.  Maybe the fish were arriving a little later in the year, and leaving a little sooner.  Maybe they were having to travel farther to find fish consistently, as some of the traditional close-to-home spots became only spotty producers.

But they shrugged off those changes, telling themselves that fish come and fish go, and did what they needed to do to keep putting fish on the dock.  The one thing that they didn’t do, and probably never considered, was intentionally reducing their landings to preserve declining fish stocks.  They were fishermen, after all.  Their job was to catch fish, bring them back to the dock, and turn them into money that would keep their families housed, clothed, and fed.

But in the long run, reducing landings was the most important thing that they could have done.

Along the northeastern coast, Atlantic halibut were probably the first fish to suffer severe overfishing.  Halibut had little to no commercial value prior to the 1830s, but as domestic markets for the fish opened up, the fishery became profitable.  In an article titled “What Appeared Limitless Plenty:  The Rise and Fall of the Nineteenth-Century Atlantic Halibut Fishery,” originally published in the January 2008 issue of Environmental History, author Glenn M. Grasso described what happened then.

“Like concentric circles moving away from Massachusetts’ North Shore, successive localized depletions progressed into the regional depletion of Atlantic halibut.  Fishermen in Massachusetts Bay, the area that had sustained fishing pressure longest, first observed the decline.  From the earliest colonial records, halibut were plentiful close to the shore, and two centuries later, Goode still claimed halibut were ‘very abundant’ in Massachusetts Bay, especially ‘before 1830, [when] those who wished to catch halibut had no difficulty in finding an abundant supply within a few miles of shore.”  However, the fish, Goode reported, ‘were gradually exterminated in the bay.’  When inshore halibut became scarce, the industry concentrated its efforts on the substantial halibut stocks on the offshore banks, especially Georges Bank, during the 1840s, 1850s, and 1860s.  This camouflaged the degree of resource degradation: it was easy to ignore halibut’s decline in coastal waters because the bulk of the industry now focused on the plentiful stocks offshore.  In less than a generation, intense commercial demand and unrelenting fishing pressure destroyed the Massachusetts Bay inshore fishery by the 1850s.’

“Fishermen sought halibut close to shore whenever possible and coastal areas continued to suffer fishing pressure…The crumbling Massachusetts Bay fishery and the viable Gulf of St. Lawrence fishery illustrate how, depending on geography, dearth and plenty could exist simultaneously.  However, inshore fishing still targeted both breeders and brood, and the lessons of the Massachusetts Bay fishery were not learned by those fishing in the Gulf of St. Lawrence…

“Although the industry’s solution to inshore decline was to head offshore, the plentiful halibut found on Georges Bank throughout the 1850s were disappearing by the late 1860s.  The Civil War created greater demand and pushed up prices, which in turn led to increased pursuit of halibut…Once the premier halibut fishing ground, Georges Bank was fished out by 1870.  Trawling, wartime demand, and consumer taste resulted in the halibut’s depletion in a locale once crowded with fish.”

Then, as is too often the case today, fishermen focused solely on the money to be made by putting dead halibut on the dock, and ignored warning signs that the fishery was in deep decline.  Even when they acknowledged that the halibut stock was not doing well, fishermen in the 1800s, just like fishermen today, made excuses and took no responsibility for the stock becoming depleted.

“Nature, rather than overfishing, was blamed for the halibut’s disappearance.  Contemporary commentators for popular audiences saw migration: ‘The seaward movement of the Halibut has been noted by American fishermen,’  National Geographic magazine retrospectively reported in 1923.  ‘When the taking of halibut first began, it was most abundant on Georges Bank.  Later, it gradually disappeared from the banks and went farther out to sea…”

Today, Grasso tells us,

“Halibut remain in the northwest Atlantic today, both near-shore and further out to sea.  However, it is clear that by the early twenty-first century, stocks are mere shadows of their original populations, even though no precise numerical baseline exists for early halibut stocks.  The virtual eradication of Atlantic halibut came in part because nineteenth-century fishermen failed to develop a cogent institutional memory.  Halibut fishermen in the 1920s and 1930s looked at smaller fish, taken in lesser quantities, yet still believed that they were landing good fares…”

Such time-limited outlooks, which have since been dubbed “the shifting baselines syndrome,” still plague many, perhaps most, of our fisheries.  However, the greatest lesson that striped bass managers, as well as striped bass fishermen, should take away from the Atlantic halibut debacle isn’t the shifting baselines, but the fishermen’s laser focus on putting fish on the dock, as they ignored signs that the halibut were in serious trouble.

That’s because the striped bass fishery is seeing similar attitiudes today, although they are being expressed by the for-hire fleet, and not the commercial sector.

Like Atlantic halibut around 1840, striped bass are still reasonably abundant, with some year classes of fish abundant enough to be deemed “plentiful.”  Today’s fishermen have a gauge of stock health that wasn’t available in the mid-1800s—detailed stock assessments built on the best available scientific information, which are subject to peer review by recognized, disinterested experts before being released and used for management work.

The problem is that fishermen too often ignore them.

The current stock assessment, completed in 2018, told us that, as of the end of 2017, striped bass were both overfished and subject to overfishing.  An update to that assessment, released in October 2022, revealed that the overfishing problem has been resolved, but that the stock remains overfished, although it is rebuilding slowly.  A report appended to the update provided the unsettling news that, because recreational striped bass landings doubled in 2022, the overfished stock is unlikely to fully rebuild by 2029 if management measures remained unchanged.

In addition, data released by the State of Maryland shows that recruitment in the Maryland section of the Chesapeake Bay—the most important spawning area for the coastal striped bass stock—was far below average for the years 2019-2022, creating another obstacle to rebuilding.

So both fishermen and fishery managers know—or, at least ought to know—that the striped bass stock is facing serious problems, and that fishing mortality must be reduced to restore the stock to health. 

Acting on such knowledge, fishery managers at the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission, at the Commission’s May meeting, adopted emergency management measures intended to reduce recreational landings by placing a 31-inch maximum size on any striped bass retained by anglers, thus reducing what had been a 28- to 35-inch slot limit to 28 to 31 inches.

Despite such knowledge, the emergency measures have been strenuously opposed by most members of the for-hire fleet, who view the narrow slot limit as a threat to their income.  Like the halibut fishermen of the mid-1800s, they see the striped bass as nothing more than a fish to be killed and transformed into money, regardless of the state of the stock.  An on-line petition recently crafted by the Montauk Boatmen and Captains Association, although specific to that organization, sets out a position that is more-or-less the same for all of the objecting for-hires.

The petition quickly informs the reader that striped bass are important to the for-hire fishery, noting that

“one of Montauk’s most popular fisheries is striped bass.  In fact, more than 75% of our charter boat fleet focuses the bulk of their season on striped bass fishing…Striped bass fishing is truly the ‘bread and butter’ for most of our for-hire fleet.”

In fact, as I observed in an post that appeared in this blog about a month ago, striped bass are the most important recreational species in New England and the mid-Atlantic region.  If the regional spawning stocks suffered a serious setback, and became “mere shadows of their original populations,” as is the case with Atlantic halibut, many for-hire business, including those fishing out of Montauk, would probably not survive.

Logically, such dependence should cause the for-hire fleet to advocate for the sort of striped bass management that would ensure the long-term health of the stock.  For-hire operators ought to realize that if the striped bass stock collapses, their businesses won’t be far behind.  They ought to be celebrating the emergency measures as a first step on the road to rebuilding the stock.

But, as I noted before, that’s not the case.  Despite the very clear science supporting the emergency action, the Montauk petition deems such action to be “drastic, unreasonable, and unnecessary,” as well as “preposterous,” although it never even tries to explain how or why the science underlying such action is wrong.

Instead, the entire thrust of the Montauk Boatmen’s petition was one that nineteenth century halibut fishermen would have readily understood:  We’re fishermen, and we make our living catching, and keeping, striped bass.  We don’t like the emergency action because it might cut into our incomes.

The petition claims,

“The emergency action will have a direct adverse impact on our for-hire fleet.  Our customers expect to take fish home after paying a charter or party boat fare.  With the rising prices of fuel, bait, tackle and insurance, our captains have had no choice but to raise their rates.  From our customers’ perspectives, the increase in rates is oftentimes offset by the ability to put fish in their coolers to bring home to their families.  Particularly in light of rising costs for basic groceries, this trade-off is essential.  If our customers are unable to bring fish home, they will be less inclined to book a fishing trip.  This, in turn, also hurts our local businesses, including hotels, restaurants and shops, all of which rely on Montauk’s visitors to thrive.”

Let’s begin by acknowledging that, yes, a lot of folks who book Montauk charters look forward to bringing a few fish home.  And many of those folks enjoy eating striped bass, and might be disappointed if they couldn’t put a bass in the fish box.  So yes, the emergency action might cause fewer folks to book charters although, on the other hand, nothing stops a boat from targeting abundant scup or black sea bass, tossing a bunch of them in customers’ coolers and then, the grocery bill having been addressed, targeting striped bass as well.

In fact, many boats offer exactly that sort of multi-species trip to their customers, although whether they fish for bass first or later often depends on the stage of the tide.

We should also acknowledge that the average striped bass spawned in 2015, which made up most of the fish in the old 28- to 35-inch slot, measures 31.6 inches long this year, which is right in the middle of the former slot limit.  Since most of the 2015s will measure either above or below that mark, perhaps by a few inches, rather than being exactly 31.6 inches long, there is still close to a 50% chance that any 2015 caught will still fall within the narrower 28- to 31-inch slot; the odds of bringing a legal bass home from Montauk remains very good.

But for the purpose of argument, let’s assume that some customers will be discouraged from booking trips by the new emergency measures.  At that point, we need to think about comparative evils, something that the Montauk Boatmen completely failed to do.

If they, like the nineteenth century Atlantic halibut fishermen, ignore the signs of a declining stock, and convince managers to allow them to fish at 2022 levels, it is nearly inevitable that, in a few years, the effects of poor recruitment in Maryland will make themselves felt.  In 2026, fairly large numbers of bass from the very small 2019 year class will exceed 28 inches, and begin to enter the slot.  Even if the slot remained at 28 to 35 inches, that will sharply reduce the number of bass that anglers might take home.

In 2027, the 2019s will be the same size as the 2015s are today, and will dominate the slot.  Except, because the 2019 year class is so very small, “dominate” somehow feels like the wrong word; the slot will hold very few fish.  And because the 2020, 2021, and 2022 year classes (and probably the 2023, although we won’t know that for sure until October) are also very small, there will be no relief on the horizon.

By 2029, the rebuilding deadline that the ASMFC is trying to meet, the striped bass age structure is going to be very lopsided, with few bass between 26 and 36 inches available to anglers.  That lack of fish will render arguments about the top end of the slot moot; whether the maximum size is 31 or 35 inches, there won’t be many fish in the slot to catch, much less to take home.

So here’s where the lesser of two evils comes in.

Are the for-hire boats—at least those which plan to be in business five years from now—better off if the ASMFC places real restrictions on landings, perhaps coupling a 28- to 31-inch slot with no-harvest seasons, so that the stock continues to rebuild, and leaves enough bass in the water for anglers to catch, even if they can’t take them home?

Or are they better off if managers heed their petition, return management measures to 2022 levels, and allow the spawning stock to decline, so that by 2029, there are few 28- to 35-inch slot fish in the ocean?   In that case, if an angler caught a bass between 31 and 35 inches, they could still take it home, but because slot-sized fish would be so scarce, the odds of catching a bass of that size would be substantially reduced.

Folks who were around in the early 1980s would remember what that’s like, although few of the people who fished back then bothered to target striped bass; in 1982, fewer than 2% of all saltwater fishing trips taken in New York focused on the species, as there were so few bass around.  Given that, if striped bass abundance fell back to 1982 levels—or even stayed a bit above—those Montauk charter boats who fish for bass 75% of the time might end up spending most of their time at the dock.

Of course, that’s all five or six years in the future, and if the Atlantic halibut’s story teaches us anything, it’s that fishermen rarely look that far ahead.  Their job, at least as they see it, is to catch fish NOW, and worry about the future on some later day.

And by the time that they finally get around to worrying, it’s far to late for that worrying to do any good.