SPECKLED TROUT: LOUISIANA MAKES ONE MORE TRY TO ELEVATE SCIENCE OVER POLITICS

 

There are folks out there—and some big organizations, too—who will try to tell you that state fisheries management programs are far better than those at the federal level.  Louisiana's continuing inability to manage its speckled trout resource demonstrates why that’s not true.

Years ago, when I sat on the Executive Board of the Coastal Conservation Association, one of that organization’s key principles was that fisheries management ought to be performed at the lowest political level possible—in this case, at the state rather than the federal level.  The reason for that is a simple one:  It’s a lot easier to affect political decisions at the state level than it is to affect the federal regulatory and legislative process.

To reduce things to their most basic, and most practical, terms, it’s a lot easier to find someone who knows a state elected or appointed official well enough to approach them about an impending decision than it is to find the same sort of contact that can move the needle in Washington.  And political contributions and related lobbying efforts can have a greater impact on the state level, too.  A thousand bucks goes a lot farther in Baton Rouge than it does on Capitol Hill (note that when I was active within CCA, our Washington lobbyist was very careful to note, when encouraging political donations, that such donations do not buy votes, but merely “access,” which he tried to explain was a much different thing).

That principal was freely acknowledged by David Cresson, Executive Director of Coastal Conservation Association Louisiana, when he spoke before a local Lions Club chapter on June 22, 2023:

“Many of our fish in the Gulf are managed by the federal government, and the federal government—without fail—does a pathetic job of managing fish.  I wish we could get more of the management of those species into state management because, at least at the state level, we have more immediate access to that level; we can go to people like [Senator] Robert Mills and [Representative] Wayne McMahen, and they can help us start making a difference.  Where, at the federal level, even though we’ve got great congressmen and women, the wheels of government in Washington D.C. grind extremely slowly.  [emphasis added]”

Which takes us all back to the problem of speckled trout—more properly called “spotted seatrout—in the so-called “Sportsman’s Paradise.”

The problem itself is simple:  There aren’t enough speckled trout swimming in Louisiana’s waters, most of those that are there are small, and barely old enough to spawn for the first time. 

That problem isn’t particularly new.  I started writing about it five years ago, when Louisiana’s speckled trout stock had already shrunk to a little above half of its biological target (which target is 18% of the spawning potential of an unfished stock), and fishing guides were already complaining that they were seeing nothing but small fish, because as soon as a speckled trout grew above the legal size limit, someone caught it and took it home.

And Louisiana’s current regulations which, with some local exceptions, allow anglers to take home 25 fish per day, so long as they are at least 12 inches long, assure that plenty of fish, once caught, never see the water again.

Since I first started looking at the issue, things have only gotten worse.  The state’s fisheries managers know it, and have stated that

“overfishing and other factors have caused the stock to have become almost completely comprised of smaller, younger fish.  While there are still some older and larger trout out there, nearly 95 percent of today’s stock is comprised of one and two-year old fish.  While it is true that larger fish are more likely to be female (and have more eggs per individual), these smaller fish make up the vast majority of spawning stock biomass (reproductive potential).  Given this imbalance, there is concern that a major collapse could occur in the event of a poor recruitment year (e.g. major freeze).  By decreasing the current creel limit and raising the minimum size, it is hoped that more of these young fish will be allowed to spawn and help the stock recover while rebuilding the older age classes of females.”

But down in Louisiana, decreasing the current creel limit and raising the maximum size are things far easier said than done.  That’s precisely why some folks are so enamored of state-level fisheries management.

The professionals did the best that they could.

They came up with scientifically-defensible ways to rebuild the stock, and then they took those alternatives out to public comment, ultimately selecting the one that seemed to have the greatest public support.  Eventually, they settled on a combination of rules that would have dropped the creel limit to 15 speckled trout—still, by far, the most liberal bag limit on the coast—and raised the size limit to 13 ½ inches.  

About 10 months ago, the Louisiana Wildlife and Fisheries Commission voted to approve the new regulations, which were generally supported by the state’s anglers.

Louisiana’s fisheries managers had done their job, and it was now time for the politicians, at the urging of two influential special interest groups, the Louisiana Charter Boat Association and the Louisiana chapter of the Coastal Conservation Association, to undo it.

The Louisiana Charter Boat Association, effectively confirming the findings of Louisiana’s fisheries scientists, argued that it was difficult to find speckled trout more than 12 inches long.  But instead of focusing on how such an attenuated size structure might be bad for the resource, their sole concern was that the 13 ½-inch size limit would be bad for business.  They were thus opposed to the rule.

The Coastal Conservation Association continued that organization’s usual practice of the past decade or so, supporting conservation—just so long as it was somebody else, and not the recreational fishing sector, that was doing the conserving.

So it supported the most meaningless aspect of the newly proposed regulations, the decreased bag limit, 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.”

However, it opposed the increase in the minimum size, and then made the remarkable (and, to this long-time striped bass fisherman, demonstrably false) statement that

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

while blaming just about everything but recreational fishing for the speckled trout’s decline.

The two organizations’ faith in the superiority in state management was borne out after a committee of the Louisiana state legislature, tasked with the job of reviewing and passing judgment on proposed fisheries regulations, overrode the scientists and professional fishery managers in favor of the folks who wanted to keep on killing small speckled trout, and vetoed the proposed, more restrictive regulations.

Now, it appears that the state’s fisheries managers are going to give it another try. 

The Louisiana Wildlife and Fisheries commission, in a 4-2 vote, agreed to a new set of proposed regulations, which would reduce the bag limit to 15 fish, just as the recently-killed regulations would have done, but would only increase the size limit to 13 inches, rather than the previously proposed 13 ½,plus add a 20-inch maximum size, with the proviso that two trout of greater length could be retained each day.  The newly proposed rules would, if adopted, decrease landings by an estimated 19.1%, and hopefully rebuild the speckled trout stock within about 6 years.

Patrick Banks, Assistant Secretary of the Louisiana Department of Fish and Wildlife, said of the new proposal.

“It’s not quite the amount of conservation we recommended, but it was very, very close.”

The new proposal will be put out for public comment and, when the comment period ends, again referred to the legislative committee for an up-or-down vote.

Will the committee approve the proposed rules this time, instead of vetoing them just as they vetoed the previous proposal?

The odds are probably stacked against the proposed rule.

While the Louisiana Charter Boat Association does not appear to have made a statement specifically addressing the proposed new size limit, Coastal Conservation Association Louisiana’s policy seems clear.  It states on its website that

“Moving to a 13 or 13.5-inch minimum size seems drastic and unnecessary.  Such a change could damage the female population, and will certainly have tremendous negative impacts on many businesses who depend on recreational anglers, like charter operators, marinas, bait shops, lodges and others.

“The Wildlife and Fisheries Commission should adopt a 15 fish daily bag limit and 12-inch minimum size limit…  [emphasis added]”

It thus seems likely that CCA Louisiana will again take advantage of its “immediate access” to state legislators, and ask that they again override the scientists and professional fisheries managers, kill the proposed, science-based regulations, and uphold CCA’s treasured principle of politically driven fisheries management.

After all, that’s what state-based management is for.

 

ANOTHER STUDY REVEALS THE FAILURES OF HATCHERIES

 

During the latter half of the 19^th Century, as many as 16 million salmon and steelhead (sea-run rainbow trout) returned to the Columbia River each year.  Today, less than one-tenth of that number return.

The decline is largely due to overfishing and the 14 dams that have been built across the river, denying the salmon adequate access to their spawning grounds.  Twelve distinct “runs” of salmon and steelhead have been listed as either “threatened” or “endangered” under the federal Endangered Species Act. 

Recovering such threatened and endangered runs would require managers to restore runs of wild, naturally spawning fish.  Unfortunately, for well over a century, state, federal, and tribal managers have instead focused on creating an artificial abundance of steelhead and salmon through intensive hatchery propagation.  The best available evidence suggests that the hatcheries have neither significantly increased the number of wild fish nor increased abundance of artificially propagated salmon to targeted levels.

By the late 1800s, the salmon runs were already badly depleted by overfishing.  Spencer Baird, the first Commissioner of Fish and Fisheries for the United States Fish Commission, argued at the time that such hatchery production would

“maintain the present numbers indefinitely, and even…increase them,”

but things didn’t work out that way.  

By the late 1920s, the federal Department of Fisheries had determined that the early hatcheries were doing nothing to conserve Pacific salmon, and generally abandoned salmon rearing as a cost-saving measure during the Great Depression.  However, the construction of dams on the Columbia River, and the obstacles that they created for returning salmon, breathed new life into the hatchery program.

The mindset at the time was that the economic “progress” represented by dams outweighed any damage that they might do to the salmon runs.  An article published by Oregon Public Broadcasting quoted a 1947 memo from President Harry Truman’s Secretary of the Interior, which read, in part,

“The overall benefits to the Pacific Northwest from a thorough-going development of the Snake and Columbia are such that the present salmon run must be sacrificed.  Efforts should be directed toward ameliorating the impact of this development upon the injured interests and not toward a vain attempt to hold still the hands of the clock.  [emphasis added]”

In other words, the government would try to offset the harm the dams caused the salmon with salmon hatcheries—even though prior experience gave them good reason to think that such effort would fail.

And, in fact, the effort did fail, whether “failure” is measured by an increase in naturally spawned fish, or in a significant increase in the hatchery-raised salmon and steelhead populations.

A recent paper, titled “Return(s) on investment:  Restoration spending in the Columbia River Basin and increased abundance of salmon and steelhead,” published in the journal Plos One on July 28, 2023, makes the case that despite the $9 billion spent on hatcheries and other efforts to restore anadromous fish in the Columbia River Basin over the past 30 years, there is no convincing evidence that such spending has increased the numbers of wild salmon and steelhead in the region.

Instead, the study notes that

“Hatchery production…negatively impacted wild stocks through a variety of mechanisms including competition for habitat, food supply, genetic effects and disease, predation by hatchery fish on wild fish, and other adverse effects.’

The study also notes that biological opinions (BiOps) required by the Endangered Species Act, to document the state of the listed stocks and set forth the mitigation measures intended to promote their recovery, have regularly fallen afoul of the law.

“Beginning in 1992, NMFS has issued a sequence of BiOps for EDA-listed fish in the [Columbia River Basin], nearly all of which have been found to be noncompliant with the ESA.  Since 2000, all or parts of multiple BiOps and their supplements have been rejected by the courts, including finding the 2014 Supplementary BiOp to be arbitrary and capricious. The assemblage of these federal recovery programs has repeatedly been rejected by the US courts as failing to be in compliance with the requirements of the ESA, mainly for failing to identify or document specific mitigation measures and plans that were reasonably specific or reasonably certain to occur.”

 In the context of rebuilding wild salmon and steelhead stocks, the $9 billion spent over the past 40 years was effectively cash dropped down a rathole.

The hatcheries aren’t even doing a good job of keeping man-made fish in the rivers.  Managers hoped to see 5 million fish returning to the Columbia River each year, beginning no later than 2025, but the actual returns are falling far short of that target, averaging about 1.5 million per year.

The Oregon Public Broadcasting piece, referenced earlier, observed that, for the years 2014 through 2018, the last years for which complete information is available, the survival rate for hatchery-raised salmon was near all-time lows.  It quotes Aaron Penney, a long-time manager of the Nez Perce tribe’s Idaho hatchery, as saying

“It’s not self-sustaining.  We don’t have the numbers”

of salmon returning to the river.

The same article notes that many hatcheries are not achieving target production levels, and that some are “scrambling” for salmon that can be used as brood stock.  It also notes that

“At the largest cluster of federally subsidized hatcheries on the Columbia, the government spends between $250 and $650 for every salmon that returns to the river.  [emphasis added]”

That’s a lot to spend on a single, man-made fish.  From an purely economic perspective, it would probably make more sense, and cost less money, to simply make direct payments to those businesses that depend on the salmon and steelhead runs, and shut the hatcheries down.

But the failure of the Columbia River hatcheries is important and notable not just because of the salmon’s declining prospects—something that we’ve known about for a while—but because of a recent trend that has become apparent elsewhere on the coast, which sees various members of the recreational fishing industry, and various representatives of “anglers’ rights” groups, advocating for hatcheries—what they euphemistically call “stock enhancement”—as a solution to fishery management issues.  State fishery managers are becoming increasingly amenable to such approach.

Texas was one of the states that pioneered the concept of saltwater hatcheries.  It freely admits that

“Stock enhancement…serves as a tool used by [Texas Parks and Wildlife Department] to manage the marine fishery along the Texas coast to ensure that harvest levels are sustained and stocks are replenished.  [emphasis added]”

And that, of course, is the problem with hatcheries, whether used in salt water or anywhere else.

The proper use of hatcheries is to address what we might consider the real “basket cases” of fisheries management, species such as Apache trout, or Lahontan cutthroats, or any other stock that has fallen on such dire times that it can’t be safely rebuilt in the wild.  In such cases, when even a complete cessation of harvest is not enough to assure rebuilding, it is entirely appropriate to avoid extinction by establishing a captive, hatchery population, and use that hatchery population to reintroduce a species into its former home waters in the course of nursing the species back to health.

But that’s not how hatcheries are usually used.  Instead of being used to avoid a species’ extinction, they’re most often used to escape human responsibility.  In the case of Pacific salmon, hatcheries were first used as a way to perpetuate overfishing, and avoid responsible fisheries management.  Later, they became an illusory solution to the destruction of salmon habitat, and spawning runs, by dams built to enrich agriculture and other commercial interests which stood to profit from the altered rivers’ flows.

In Texas, hatcheries provide an alternative to responsible recreational fishery management; by pumping enough man-made fish into the state’s barrier lagoons, the state has found a way to allow its anglers to continually harvest fish at levels that could not be sustained by a natural population.

In neither case, nor in other instances where hatchery fish are introduced into the marine environment, is the intent to increase the size of the naturally spawned population.  Instead, the goal is to allow human activity—whether that activity is commercial or recreational fishing, irrigation or, as is the case in Florida, unbridled and irresponsible development—to proceed at a greater pace than the natural world can sustain.

The nation’s coastal fisheries deserve better.  They deserve healthy, natural populations of native fish, managed in a way that is sustainable in the long term, free to migrate to their spawning grounds, free of the impacts of agriculture, extractive activities, or runaway real estate development.

To the extent that hatcheries provide a band-aid that merely covers over irresponsible use of our lands and waters, they deserve freedom from hatcheries, too.

 

 

 

NEW YORK, NMFS CONTEMPLATE NEW SHARK REGULATIONS

 

Sharks have been in the Earth’s oceans for something like 400 million years, well before animals—or even trees—stood on those oceans’ shores.  Yet such a long and vital history doesn’t mean that sharks’ future is necessarily bright.  Faced with the challenges of the so-called Anthropocene Epoch, sharks can’t necessarily navigate every new challenge on their own; sometimes, fisheries managers need to give the ancient predators a hand.

Right now, two management actions, one initiated by the State of New York, one by the National Marine Fisheries Service, are winding toward the end of their public comment periods.  Both actions deserve the input and support of sportsmen interested in maintaining the integrity of marine ecosystems.

The New York action is the simplest of the two.  It is aimed at controlling a particular problem:  The targeting of “prohibited” species of shark, which are either overfished or otherwise at risk, by anglers fishing from shore, who often mishandle their catch and severely impair the sharks’ chances of survival.

While many different species of sharks regularly swim in New York’s waters, anglers fishing from shore are most likely to encounter one of three species:  Sandbar (also called “brown”) sharks, sand tiger sharks, or dusky sharks.  State and federal regulators consider all three to be at risk, and so have listed them among the “prohibited” species that may not be landed by fishermen.

The prohibition on landings makes sense.  All three species are slow to mature, and do not reproduce quickly, making them vulnerable to fishing activity. 

Sandbars and duskies are overfished, and have rebuilding plans in place.  Sandbar sharks are near the beginning of a rebuilding plan that probably won’t see the stock fully restored until 2070, which is 47 years from now.  As long as that may seem, it’s a quick recovery compared to the dusky, which has a tentative rebuilding date of 2107, although when you get out that far, dates amount to little more than a guess.   

Sand tigers have not been subject to a formal stock assessment.  However, scientists believe that the sand tiger population in the Northwest Atlantic have declined by 30 to 49% over the past 74 years (the span of three generations); because females in the region do not mature until nine or ten years old, and then only give birth to two pups every other year, any recovery to their previous levels will take a very long time.

The fact that shore-based anglers frequently mishandle the sharks that they catch, removing them from the water, sitting on top of them, bending their heads back to show off their teeth, and dragging them by their tails (which can do permanent harm due to the fish’s cartilaginous and easily damaged skeletal structure) only increases the stress on already-stressed species.

Having said that, even if New York anglers handled their shore-caught sharks with care, they shouldn’t be fishing for them in the first place.  New York regulations clearly state that

“It shall be unlawful for any recreational angler to take, or to possess on the waters of the marine and coastal district, [any prohibited shark].”

The phrase “to take, or to possess” is critical.  Some anglers argue that targeting prohibited shark species is legal, so long as any fish caught is quickly released, but such interpretation is legally incorrect, as the New York State Environmental Conservation Law’s definition of “take” reads as follows:

“’Taking’ and ‘take’ include pursuing, shooting, hunting, killing, capturing, trapping, snaring and netting fish, wildlife, game, shellfish, crustacea and protected insects, and all lesser acts such as disturbing, harrying or worrying, or placing, setting, drawing or using any net or other device commonly used to take any such animal…  [emphasis added]”

Thus, the mere act of casting a bait off a New York beach, with the hope that a prohibited sand tiger, sandbar, or dusky might find it, would be an illegal “taking” of a prohibited shark.

Anglers might argue that, because there is a chance, no matter how small, that a non-prohibited shark species, such as a blacktip or spinner or sharpnose, might pick up a bait, shark fishing from shore is not illegal.  In order to avoid such dubious defenses, the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation drafted a set of proposed regulations designed to prohibit conduct likely to lead to the capture of and/or someone causing harm to prohibited sharks, regardless of the angler’s intent.

Such proposed regulations would prohibit anglers from using large hooks (setting a maximum inside hook width of 7/8” for J-hooks and 1 1/8” for circle hooks), restricting the length of wire leaders to no more than a foot, requiring all baits to be cast from shore, and not deployed by drone, kayak, paddleboard or similar device, and prohibiting chumming from shore with fish or fish parts within 600 feet of the tideline.  Such proposed regulations would also prohibit shark fishing with artificial lures, require shark fishermen to carry bolt cutters or wire snippers to facilitate quick release, and require anglers to keep sharks in water deep enough to cover their gills, and not bring them ashore.  To reinforce the latter requirement, anglers would also have to release sharks as quickly as possible, and not engage in conduct detrimental to the shark’s survival.

In other words, sitting on sharks, bending their spines at unnatural angles, and dragging them around by their tails would all be unlawful under the proposed rules.

I have been a participant in the northeastern shark fishery for over 40 years.  Although I’ve always fished from a boat, I’m very familiar with the shark species mix, and with how sharks behave and might be injured after being caught by anglers.  In my view, the proposed regulations will benefit prohibited shark species, and should be adopted.

Anyone wishing to comment on the measures can email such comments to christopher.scott@dec.ny.gov, or snail mail them to Chris Scott, DEC Division of Marine Resources, 123 Kings Park Blvd., Kings Park, NY  11754.  The comment period closes on August 14; all comments must be in the DEC’s hands on or before that date.

Unlike New York, the National Marine Fisheries Service is not yet proposing specific regulations to govern the federal shark fishery.  Instead, it has issued what is known as a “scoping document” to seek stakeholder input on a number of shark-related issues.  Such input will help guide the National Marine Fisheries Service when, once the scoping process is concluded, it sits down to draft a set of proposed regulations.

The scoping document is seeking input on a number of different issues. 

With respect to technical management questions, it is asking for comment on whether, and how, various species of coastal sharks should be fitted into an Acceptable Biological Catch Control Rule structure, which would group species together based on the quality of the data available, and whether such fish were subject to a rebuilding plan.  The comments made on this issue could easily impact the level of risk that fishery managers accept when setting annual catch limits for various shark species, and might well result in managers accepting more risk, in the case of some species, than they do today.

Different stakeholders will probably have very different opinions on such issues, but having spent over four decades in the recreational shark fishery, and having seen the decline of a number of species, and an apparent decline in others, I believe that managers should remain committed to conservative management.  

Knowing and having observed how sharks’ relatively low reproduction rates mean that any mistake in setting management measures will probably take many years to correct, I don’t believe that it would be wise to introduce additional risk into shark management.

The Scoping Document also asks whether a newly-discovered species of shark, the Carolina hammerhead (identical to the scalloped hammerhead except for the number of vertebrae), should be added to the management plan, and seeking comment on how many years of catch data should be considered when setting the Acceptable Biological Catch. 

Then there is the question of how stocks should be grouped for management purposes.  This issue can best be explained by quoting from the Scoping Document, which states,

“In general, having species that are caught on the same gear at the same time grouped together can simplify management.  However, having species groups together also means management may not have the flexibility needed to react to the needs of specific species.  Not grouping any species together can mean complex regulations, especially if there are different management measures for each of the currently 46 shark stocks being managed.”

There are different ways to address this issue.  NMFS could either maintain its current species management groups, or it could distinguish, on a coastwide or regional basis, between species with stock assessments and those which have not been assessed.  It could also group shark species into complexes that are caught in about the same place at about the same time.

Each has its pros and cons, but it would seem that the key is to assure that, regardless of the approach taken, NMFS still has the ability to determine when a specific stock is suffering from overfishing or has become overfished, and act to correct such problems, whether such correction takes the form of single-species management measures or imposes greater restrictions on an entire management group.

The Scoping Document also addresses specific recreational and commercial issues, such as whether commercial quotas should be established, and stocks assessed, on a coastwide or regional basis, whether the current method of setting commercial quotas should be adjusted, and whether some or all of the recreational size and bag limits should be changed.

In all, the Scoping Document represents a substantial commitment by NMFS to consider changes in how the commercial and recreational shark fisheries are managed.  Stakeholders engaged in either fishery would do well to provide some input that might help managers reach a good result.

Comments are due by August 18, and must be submitted online through the Federal e-Rulemaking Portal.  When using the Portal, be sure to refer Scoping Document-related comments to NOAA-NMFS-2023-0010.

 

 

STRIPED BASS MANAGEMENT BOARD AMENDS, BUT DOES NOT RELEASE, DRAFT ADDENDUM II

 

Last Tuesday afternoon, in the course of a long and, at times, annoyingly tedious meeting, the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission’s Atlantic Striped Bass Management Board made significant changes to the draft Addendum II to Amendment 7 to the Atlantic Striped Bass Interstate Fishery Management Plan, but decided not to release the amended draft for public comment.  Instead, the Management Board will delay such release until after its October meeting, by which time it should have received additional data from the ASMFC’s Atlantic Striped Bass Technical Committee.

While the Management Board's decision to delay release pending the receipt of additional data is not unreasonable, the delay means that final approval of Addendum II will not take place before January 2024, and that any new management measures contained in the addendum will not be adopted by the states until sometime next spring.  Because some states’ commercial striped bass fishing seasons begin on January 1^st, the deferred approval could impact the efficacy of the addendum’s commercial management measures, but since the Management Board also extended last May’s emergency action for another year, the delay will have little impact on the recreational bass fishery.

While the decision to delay release of the draft addendum was disappointing, as were some of the options added to the document, the Management Board also made amendments that, if adopted in the final version, will significantly improve Addendum II.

One thing that characterized both the emergency measures adopted by the Management Board at its May meeting and the original draft of Addendum II was the burden it placed on participants in the ocean recreational fishery.  Toni Kearns, the ASMFC’s Fisheries Policy Director, noted in response to a question that while the emergency action should achieve an 11% overall reduction in fishing mortality, it reduced mortality in the ocean recreational fishery by 14%, compared to a mere 2% reduction in the recreational fishery in the Chesapeake Bay, which primarily targets small fish that never reach the emergency action’s 31-inch maximum size.

And, of course, the emergency action didn’t impact the commercial striped bass fishery at all.

If some of the actions taken at Tuesday’s meeting are adopted in the final version of Addendum II, they would lead to both commercial and recreational fishermen, in both the ocean and the Chesapeake Bay, sharing the burden a little more equitably.

In last Thursday’s post, I noted that

“Draft Addendum II…includes what is probably an overly-complicated matrix of both size and bag limits for recreational fisheries in the ocean and in the Chesapeake Bay.”

Many members of the Management Board seemed to agree, so much of the discussion that occurred at Tuesday’s meeting focused on simplifying those options.  Dr. Michael Armstrong, a Massachusetts fishery manager, spearheaded the simplification process.

He began with the Chesapeake Bay. 

The original draft of Addendum II included nine separate options for the Bay’s recreational fishery, each including a different combination of size limits, bag limits, and seasons.  His original motion sought to

“amend Chesapeake Bay Recreational Options B and D [which would make no change to the current fishing seasons or bag limits, and either maintain the current minimum size (Option B) or adopt a Bay-wide 20-inch minimum (Option D)] to include maximum size limit options ranging from 23” to 26” in 1” increments and remove all other options.”

The motion led to a discussion in which one Management Board member expressed concerns that a 23-inch maximum size would lead to a narrow slot that might contribute to release mortality, since summer water temperatures in the bay were so warm that the release mortality rate at such time was well above the 9% rate generally accepted by striped bass managers.  

David Sikorski, the Legislative Proxy from Maryland, said that he preferred a 19-inch minimum size, which struck a balance between fish availability and fishing mortality.  He thus favored the inclusion of Option H, which would establish such a minimum throughout the Bay, while setting a 1-fish bag limit and maintaining current seasons.

In the end, Mr. Sikorski moved to amend the original motion, so that it specifically eliminated all Options other than A [status quo], B, D, and H.  Michael Luisi, Maryland’s fishery manager, stated that he could support such motion if it was further amended to allow a mode split that let for-hire boats kill two fish per person instead of one.  The amendment was adopted unanimously, then became the main motion, which was adopted by consent.

Dr. Armstrong later extended his simplification agenda to the ocean recreational fishery, moving that all options be removed other than Option A, status quo, and Option B, the 28- to 31-inch slot created by the emergency action.  His motion eliminated any closed seasons, which he deemed not appropriate for striped bass management.  He also spoke against the slot limits proposed in Options C and D, noting that Option C’s 28- to 32-inch slot did not produce a large enough reduction, while stating that this was not the time to adopt Option D’s 30- to 33-inch slot, which would make the same 2015 year class protected by the emergency action more vulnerable to harvest.

His motion was seconded by Cheri Patterson, New Hampshire’s fishery manager, and received the support of Doug Grout, that state’s Governor’s Appointee, who noted that short closed seasons, such as those proposed in the draft addendum, were generally ineffective management measures, as the available data is inadequate to accurately predict the impact of closures shorter than one of the two-month “waves” employed by the Marine Recreational Information Program.

In the end, Dr. Armstrong’s motion passed on a vote of 8 in favor, 6 opposed, 1 abstention, and 1 “null vote,” which occurs when a state delegation cannot come to a majority decision.

Not everyone was happy with that result, for there are many Management Board members who still can’t grasp the concept of a recreational fishery where catch-and-release prevails.  Such Board members seem to cling to the archaic notion that catch-and-kill represents the highest and best use of the resource, and that mortality resulting from a bass being caught once, and immediately killed, is somehow preferable to that resulting from a bass being caught an average of eleven times (if the generally-accepted 9% mortality rate is applied), and only removed from the public domain after multiple people have had the opportunity to enjoy the social and economic benefits generated by each individual fish.

Thus, early in Tuesday’s meeting, Adam Nowalsky, the Legislative Proxy from New Jersey, complained that, while draft Addendum II talked about reducing the overall levels of “removals,” which include all aspects of fishing mortality, the emergency action only sought to reduce harvest, while not limiting the catch-and-release fishery, even though release mortality exceeded harvest mortality in five of the past six years.  He claimed that the people who harvest fish are demographically distinct from those who engage in catch-and-release, and argued that the failure to discuss the impact of harvest restrictions in Addendum II was

“a glaring omission from the social and economic analysis.”

Ms. Kearns tried to explain that fishery managers lack the tools to control catch-and-release fishing, as its not possible to quantify the number of trips that would encounter bass even if targeting the species was prohibited.

Such explanation didn’t satisfy Nowalsky, who later argued that the Management Board couldn’t say that they were acting to help the striped bass resource if they didn’t try to rein in the catch-and-release fishery, but instead concentrated on limiting harvest, an argument which ignores the fact that, so long as overall mortality is reduced to a sustainable level, the source of such mortality does not matter to the resource at all.

Later on in the meeting, Sgt. Jeff Mercer of the Rhode Island Division of Law Enforcement, who chairs the ASMFC’s Law Enforcement Committee, tried to explain how difficult it is to enforce a no-targeting closure, but Nowalsky seemed unwilling to consider his professional opinion.

The other traditional proponents of the catch-and-kill fishery supported Nowalsky’s comments, with Maryland’s Luisi saying that

“I feel pretty strongly that no-targeting closures are appropriate in this fishery,”

and describing how he drove across the Chesapeake Bay Bridge during the second day of Maryland’s no-targeting closure, and saw few fishermen on the water.  However, Mr. Sikorski quickly explained that the reason Luisi saw so few anglers had little to do with the no-targeting closure; instead, striped bass had grown so scarce in the Chesapeake Bay that angling effort was focused on the sole concentration of fish, located in Baltimore Harbor, and there was little reason for anglers to fish elsewhere.

Later on, when Mr. Grout asked whether anyone was ever convicted of violating a no-targeting closure, Luisi admitted that he had no information on enforcement, and said,

“Tickets are being written, but how many are being prosecuted, I’m not sure,”

a tacit admission that few prosecutors will be able to prove, beyond a reasonable doubt, that the angler who claimed to be fishing for white perch or bluefish was actually intending to target striped bass.

Maryland’s Governor’s Appointee, Robert T. Brown, Sr., also supported a no-targeting closure, making comments such as

“Dead discards are why we’re here today,”

and

“We came here today to talk about dead discards.”

 

While such Management Board members managed to include an option into the draft addendum that would consider replacing recreational harvest closures with no-targeting closures, Dr. Armstrong’s motion to remove all reference to seasons from the recreational measures negated its effect, and left the opponents of catch-and-release more than a little unhappy.

Thanks to Dr. Armstrong’s motions, the draft addendum’s recreational provisions were significantly improved.  Unfortunately, there was one motion that ran counter to the theme of restoring the striped bass resource, and of sharing the burden of striped bass rebuilding among all the various stakeholder groups.  That motion was made by the Rhode Island fishery manager, Dr. Jason McNamee, who added options that would give anglers fishing from for-hire vessels special privileges that were not enjoyed by other recreational fishermen.

Dr. McNamee justified his motion by calling the for-hire fleet

“a unique and different segment of our fisheries,”

that was neither commercial nor recreational, and argued that

“Given the business model of the fishery, I’m genuinely concerned”

with the future of the for-hire fishery if it is not given such special privileges.

The questions that no one asked at Tuesday’s meeting, but which will certainly be asked during any public comment period, include why a sector of the fishery which accounts for well under 2% of all directed striped bass trips, and yet already lands nearly 12% of the recreational striped bass harvest, ought to have its share of the harvest increased; why, in the third decade of the 21^st Century, managers should assume that a business model adopted in the mid-20^th Century should remain unchanged, and be given special consideration, despite significantly altered demographic, regulatory, and resource environments; and what public policy consideration might justify subsidizing businesses with an award of additional publicly-owned resources, if that business couldn’t otherwise survive if made to comply with the rules and regulations imposed on all other stakeholders, which are deemed necessary for the future health and sustainability of that resource?

Nonetheless, the motion was adopted on a vote of 11 in favor, 3 opposed, and 2 abstentions.

With those issues out of the way, the recreational section of the draft addendum was completed.

Dr. Davis began the debate on commercial measures by making a

“Motion to remove Option B1 (No Quota Adjustment) and Option C2 ([Fishery Management Plan] Standard as Starting Point) from Section 3.2.1 (Options for Implementing a Commercial Maximum Size Limit) from Draft Addendum II.  Task the [Plan Development Team] with conducting spawning potential analysis to determine quota reductions associated with each Option in Option Sets D (Ocean Commercial Maximum Size Limits) and E (Chesapeake Bay Commercial Maximum Size Limits).  Add a new Option Set to Section 3.2.1 containing the following options for reductions to commercial quotas:

“Option A:  Status Quo.  All commercial fisheries maintain 2017 size limits (or Addendum VI approved [conservation equivalency] plans) and Amendment 7  quotas (and Amendment 7 approved [conservation equivalency] adjusted quotas).

“Option B:  Commercial Quota Reductions:  Quotas for all commercial fisheries will be reduced by 14.5% from 2022 commercial quotas (including quotas adjusted through approved Addendum VI [conservation equivalency]).”

Option B of the motion represents a significant change that would, if adopted, place roughly equivalent conservation burdens on the commercial and ocean recreational fisheries.  That represents a big difference from the original draft amendment, which assumed that the commercial fishery would experience no reduction at all, and would impose a 16.1% reduction on the recreational fishery to make up for commercially generated fishing mortality remaining status quo.

While such commercial quota reduction might seem equitable, it’s not surprising that the commercial representatives on the Management Board didn’t like it. Maryland’s Robert T. Brown, building on his earlier comments, complained that

“We are not the ones who have the high dead discards,”

while Craig Pugh, the Legislative Proxy from Delaware, argued that Addendum II was only supposed to consider a maximum commercial size, and not quota reductions.  He complained that Delaware commercial fishermen were only allowed 1,200 pounds of striped bass each year, and asked the rhetorical question,

“Am I an actual commercial fisherman, or am I reduced to a hobby?”

At the same time, he claimed that his Delaware fixed gill net fishery produces

“Hardly any dead discards,”

a claim that was effectively disputed by John Clark, Delaware’s fishery manager, who asked that fixed gill nets be given an exemption from any maximum size limit that might be imposed, because a lot of the fish caught in them are dead when the nets are pulled, and a significant portion of those fish would be over the maximum commercial size contemplated in the draft addendum.  Ultimately, the Management Board agreed to such an exemption, in exchange for a maximum mesh size, for all gill nets, whether fixed or floating, and with that amendment, Dr. Davis’s motion was approved.

Unfortunately, because the amended language of the draft addendum would require that commercial quotas be adjusted to account for any commercial maximum size limit, the Board also agreed that the level of each state’s quota cuts ought to be spelled out in the document before it is released for public comment.  It will take a while to complete such calculations, making it impractical to send the draft addendum out to public hearing in time to get comments that can be reviewed by the Management Board ahead of its October meeting.

For that reason, the release of the draft addendum will be delayed.

Hopefully, the delay won’t be too long.  As Dr. Armstrong noted, the Management Board needs to get something in place soon, because

“We’re not at a big problem yet, but it’s coming.”

Although Dr. Armstrong said no more than that, those of us who fished for striped bass back in the 1970s and early ‘80s understand all too well just what that “big problem” might be.

STRIPED BASS: WILL ADDENDUM II BE STALLED

 

Anglers promoting striped bass conservation were pleased last May, after the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission’s Atlantic StripedBass Management Board, in a unanimous vote, agreed to initiate a new addendumto the striped bass management plan, which would reduce fishing mortality to itstarget level in the 2024 season.

It was nice to see all of the Management Board members agree on the need to conserve and rebuild the striped bass stock, even if New Jersey later dissented and cast the sole vote against emergency measures intended to reduce fishing mortality in 2023.

However, it now appears that at least some Management Board members are no longer committed to the rebuilding effort, and want to delay sending a draft Addendum II to Amendment 7 to the Atlantic Striped Bass Interstate Management Plan out for public comment.

The plan was flying under the radar, but when you write a blog like this one, when you have contacts all along the striper coast, and when you know and have worked with other conservation advocates not only on the East Coast, but on every coast in the nation, not too much escapes your attention.  Thus, I recently became aware of the plot to undermine striped bass rebuilding, thanks to friends who have long fished the waters of Chesapeake Bay.

The American Saltwater Guides Association learned of the plot before I did.  Friday, it published a blog post titled “This Is Low.  Even for Maryland:  Striper Update.”  Which gives you a pretty good idea of where the cabal originated.  In that post, ASGA noted,

“With information gathered over the last couple of days, we’ve come to the realization that a new dance from the mid-Atlantic is in the process of being choreographed.  The playbook for Maryland, New Jersey, and Delaware for the meeting on August 1^st can be summarized in a single statement:  ‘Kick the can down the road…

“…their plan for the August meeting is to wait for the stock assessment update in 2024 to make changes and buy themselves another year to protect special interests over the resource.”

The information provided to me merely mentioned “several states,” without naming New Jersey or Delaware—Maryland, on the other hand, was clearly implicated as the ringleader of the effort—but there is a reason that I have previously referred to all three states as the “Axis of Evil” with respect to striped bass conservation, and I would expect both Delaware and New Jersey to take advantage of any opportunity to undercut more restrictive management measures.

In the end, it doesn’t matter which states are involved.  Stalling Addendum II would place the striped bass stock at additional risk, and do a real disservice to striped bass fishermen, who expect the Management Board to maintain the striped bass stock at sustainable levels, and to rebuild the stock should abundance fall too far.  The fact that the stock has become overfished once again is already a serious stain on the Board’s reputation.

And things can easily become much, much worse.

People who look at the current abundance of bass may be fooled into thinking that all is well.  However, few young fish have been recruiting into the population.  Generally, we focus on the Maryland young-of-the-year numbers, which have been poor since 2019; in fact, the average juvenile abundance index for the years 2019-2022 is the lowest four-year average in the entire 65-year history of the Maryland survey.  We won’t know for certain what the 2023 spawn looked like until October, but low water last spring suggests that the numbers won’t be good.  Maryland’s fishery managers have also been unusually tight-lipped about the results of their early surveys this year, which some read as an ominous omen. 

It’s hard not to compare the unusually warm and snowless winter of 2022-2023 with the similar winter of 2011-2012, which led to the lowest Maryland juvenile abundance index in history, so it’s probably safe to predict that this year’s JAI will not be good.

That’s bad enough, but the recently released Review of the Interstate Fishery Management Plan for Atlantic Striped Bass (Morone saxatilis) 2022 Fishing Year also reports that

“New Jersey’s JAI (Delaware River) was below its trigger level (1.07) in 2021 and 2022 with values of 0.67 and 0.77, respectively.  A 2020 JAI value for New Jersey is not available due to COVID-19 restrictions.  Virginia’s JAI was above its trigger level (8.22) in 2020 with a value of 13.89, but fell below the trigger level in 2021 and 2022 with values of 6.3 and 7.95, respectively.”

In all cases, the “trigger level” was the 25^th percentile of the juvenile abundance time series, so seeing so many different spawning areas producing juvenile abundance indexes that low does not bode well for the future.

Thus, we’re looking at a striped bass stock with at least a four—and probably a five—year hole in its age structure, based on what we know today.  Those missing year classes are going to have a big impact on both the fishery and on the spawning stock as the fish begin to mature around 2026 or 2027.

And there is no way to know whether 2024 will bring better spawning success, or just more of the same.

Under such circumstances, it would be nothing less than an extreme dereliction of the Management Board’s duty to stakeholders and to the striped bass if it deferred action on Addendum II.

Yet, beyond that, it’s particularly disturbing that it is Maryland which seems to be driving any effort to delay further management action.

Maryland is, after all, the steward of the most important striped bass spawning area on the East Coast.  As such, it owes a duty to stakeholders and to the resource to responsibly exercise its stewardship, and do its best to assure that the striped bass stock is rebuilt and maintained at a level that is sustainable in the long term.

To date, Maryland has failed in its stewardship duties.

Its modern failures began in 2014, after a benchmark stock assessment found that fishing mortality had risen too high, and female spawning stock biomass had fallen too low.  Although such assessment did not find the stock to be overfished or experiencing overfishing, it did indicate that additional management measures were needed to reduce fishing mortality and rebuild the stock, and to comply with the provisions of the then-current management plan.

The ASMFC’s Atlantic Striped Bass Technical Committee eventually determined that fishing mortality would have to be cut by 25% in order to reduce such mortality to the target level, but when such cuts were debated at the October 2014 meeting of the Management Board, Maryland argued against the Technical Committee’s advice.  It first tried to have the reduction phased in over three years, even though the management plan clearly required that

“If the Management Board determines that the fishing mortality target is exceeded in two consecutive years and the female spawning stock biomass falls below the target within either of those years, the Management Board must adjust the striped bass management program to reduce the fishing mortality rate to a level that is at or below the target within one year.  [emphasis added]”

The majority of the Management Board was responsible enough to reject that effort, but it was willing to agree to a compromise that allowed the Chesapeake Bay jurisdictions to only reduce their fishing mortality rate by 20.5%.

Yet even after receiving that concession, Maryland failed to hold up its end of the deal. 

Addendum IV to Amendment 6 to the Atlantic Striped Bass Interstate Fishery Management Plan required the 20.5% reduction be made, compared to 2013 fishing mortality levels.  In 2013, Maryland’s recreational fishermen landed an estimated 1,185,123 striped bass.  To achieve a 20.5% reduction, and comply with the clear mandate of Addendum IV, Maryland was obligated to craft regulations that would reduce such landings to just 942,173 fish beginning in 2015, and continuing throughout the life of Addendum VI.

That didn’t happen. 

Instead, Maryland anglers landed 1,111,502 bass in 2015, 1,545,586 bass in 2016, 1,091,614 bass in 2017, and 993,304 bass in 2018.  When Maryland’s recreational landings finally fell below the Addendum IV target in 2019, such drop was due to decline in striped bass abundance, and not to any effort on Maryland’s part.

The state’s fishery managers could, perhaps, be forgiven for the overage in 2015, as crafting new regulations can be almost as much art as science; unpredictable factors such as weather, the availability of other species, and angler activity, all of which can affect striped bass landings, are nearly impossible to predict in advance.  What was unforgivable was Maryland’s refusal to take any action in subsequent years, along with its refusal to accept any accountability for its failure to constrain recreational landings.

Instead, at the October 2016 Management Board meeting, Maryland fisheries manager, Michael Luisi, aggressively defended the state’s performance, saying

“When we see numbers, an increase in harvest of 58.4 percent in the Chesapeake Bay, it kind of leads I think, board members to believe that Maryland and Virginia, Potomac River [Fisheries Commission] may not have contributed to the successful management.  I stress the word success.  Now, I do understand that success in my mind is understood through an evaluation of fishing mortality…

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

His point was that overall 2015 fishing mortality was successfully constrained below the fishing mortality target.  That such successful reduction was due solely to the coastal states reducing their landings by more than the required 25%--in fact, by enough to achieve the required reduction even given Maryland’s overages—seemed irrelevant to the Maryland manager.  Maryland could continue to ignore its required reduction, so long as there were other states around to take up the slack.

According to his logic, people shouldn’t complain that Maryland increased its landings, rather than achieving the required 20.5% increase, because even if its management response was inadequate, if the state had done nothing, its recreational landings would have been even higher.

So shut up and leave the heavy lifting to the folks on the coast.

Ignore the fact that the fish being killed down in Maryland were, for the most part, not yet mature, and would never enter what was an already declining spawning stock.

More than that, the fishing mortality rate in 2015 was 0.16, a statistically indistinguishable 0.02 below the 0.18 target, so Luisi suggested that not only should the Management Board ignore Maryland’s recreational overage, but it should also consider a new addendum that would increase fishing mortality (and increase Maryland’s recreational landings even more) because

“if we were to move from 0.16 to 0.18, it would be a small tick, maybe a 5 to 8 percent liberalization, in terms of numbers.  Maybe that’s what it would be.  I don’t have the number to refer to in front of me.  But what I’m thinking about and what I’m looking at, is the fact that perhaps just that very small change could be something that saves a few of the fishermen in my state.

“A half inch in minimum size could mean a lot to our fleets, our charterboat and recreational fleet; more so the charterboat community.  I’ve been thinking about this and thinking about what we could do as a next step…”

What he was thinking about was, again, increasing Maryland’s kill of what were, for the most part, immature fish.  Fortunately, the majority of the Management Board thought differently.

A few years later, the 2018 benchmark stock assessment revealed that the striped bass stock was both overfished and experiencing overfishing. 

Again, action was required.

Again, Maryland demurred.

At the February 2019 Management Board meeting, Luisi questioned the assessment’s findings that the stock was in trouble, questioning whether the addition of revised recreational catch and landings numbers should be relied on to reach such conclusions—even though the panel of disinterested international experts who had already peer reviewed the assessment had expressed no such concerns.

The February meeting also saw the emergence of what would become one of Luisi’s favorite themes:  That instead of rebuilding the striped bass stock, the Management Board should revise the reference points used to evaluate its health—in other words, move the goal posts instead of the ball—to allow a higher level of harvest.

That theme continued into the April 2019 meeting, when Luisi argued that

“We’ve had some concerns over the reference points for quite some time.  In our mind they’re a bit too high.  I think they provide for an unrealistic expectation to the public that we’re going to be able to achieve that level. 

“You know, currently the threshold reference point is 91,000 metric tons and 125 percent of that puts us at the target value, and when you look at the estimates of spawning stock biomass that came out of the benchmark.  We have never achieved the target in all of that time as we’re evaluating that. [a statement that was proven to be untrue in the 2022 stock assessment update]”

Of course, Luisi failed to note that the Management Board had also never constrained fishing mortality to the target rate for any extended period, which is a prerequisite for achieving the target biomass.  Of course, if you’re fixated on killing more fish, that’s an understandable omission. 

So long as the goal posts get moved…

Maryland made one more attempt to make that happen in the runup to the new Amendment 7 to the Interstate Fishery Management Plan for Atlantic Striped Bass.  Once again, Luisi tried to shift the reference points in order to permit a bigger kill.  However, public sentiment overwhelmingly opposed doing so, with well over 95% of the public comments supporting the existing reference points.  Still, when other Management Board members suggested leaving the reference point issue out of the draft Amendment, Luisi tried one last time, arguing

“I have been in this field now for 20 years, and I do find that sometimes there is a lack of what the consequence is, to what is being recommended.  It is hard when you start an amendment, and you have as many elements in that amendment that are being suggested, to understand how they all incorporate together, and how they all bind together for managers to make those decisions at the end.

“I guess what I’m saying is, I would prefer at this time, based on the comment, that we understand a little bit more about the consequences to commercial and recreational and charterboat fishing, based on the issues being discussed before we start to peel away the different alternatives.  I know that it is a little more taxing on staff.  There is a little more work that has to be done, and I know we have a timeline that we’re trying to get things done, like in the next year, or maybe a little bit more than a year.

“It’s just my comment, Mr. Chairman, and I’ll leave it there.  I feel like there is still some development that needs to happen under some of these alternatives, so that the stakeholders can understand the consequences of their comments…”

It was, in one way, a very arrogant position to take, assuming as it does that stakeholders who support greater striped bass abundance didn’t understand that such abundance would require more restrictive regulations and lower striped bass landings, when the language of the comments made it clear that they understood such things quite well.  

On the other hand, Luisi’s comments reflected something not to far removed from severe confirmation bias, as he just couldn’t understand that stakeholders could take an informed stance that valued the long-term health of the stock far more than regulations that would allow them to kill a few extra fish.  Maryland, as personified in Luisi’s comments, loves their dead bass so much that it seems its representatives just couldn’t comprehend how the vast majority of the stakeholders who commented valued live striped bass even more.

However, most of the rest of the Management Board understood the stakeholders’ sentiments very well, and made it clear that Amendment 7 would leave the management goalposts exactly where they were before.

In that context, it makes perfect sense that Maryland would try to stall Addendum II, and maintain its current landings levels through at least 2024.

But maybe there’s something else that really doesn’t make sense.

Right now, commercial fishermen in the Chesapeake Bay, including those governed by Maryland, Virginia, and the Potomac River Fisheries Commission, are granted a 2,588,603 pound striped bass quota, which is divided among the three jurisdictions.  Maybe that’s fine when the striped bass stock is hovering somewhere around its target level, and recruitment remains close to its long-term average.

But both Maryland and Virginia allow their commercial fishermen to kill bass just 18 inches long, when the fish are still immature.  

While that, too, might be fine when the stock is healthy and recruitment is strong, removing over 2 ½ million pounds of fish from the Bay at a time when recruitment is chronically low seems to border on the irresponsible; if managers are to rebuild the striped bass stock, and maintain it at sustainable levels, the entire East Coast might be better served if Chesapeake bass were allowed to enter the spawning stock before a significant percentage of a small year class is removed from the population; in the alternative, if killing small fish remains legal, it would probably benefit the bass and the entire striper coast if the quota was substantially reduced during periods of exceptionally low recruitment.

Yet, if the information that I’ve received is true (and, given the source, I have to believe that it is) Maryland seems ready to defend its landings, and seek ways to maintain its kill for at least one more year, the public and the striped bass be damned.

We can only hope that it loses the fight once again.