STRIPED BASS MANAGEMENT: LOOKING TOWARD OCTOBER

 

Anglers who are even remotely tuned in to the science addressing the health of the striped bass stock know that the stock is not doing well.  It has been overfished for more than a decade, there has been a five-year string of poor recruitment in the Maryland portion of the Chesapeake Bay, the single most important spawning ground on the coast, and three-years strings of poor recruitment in both the Delaware River and the Virginia portion of the Chesapeake Bay.

Only the Hudson River has been producing near-average spawns.

At the same time, the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission’s striped bass management plan requires that managers rebuild the stock to its target level by 2029.  The ASMFC’s Atlantic Striped Bass Management Board has taken a few hesitant steps toward such rebuilding, adopting emergency measures for the ocean recreational fishery in May 2023 and then adopting Addendum II to Amendment 7 to the Interstate Fishery Management Plan for Atlantic Striped Bass early this year, but both such actions were interim measures, intended to begin the rebuilding process while managers wait for the results of the latest stock assessment update.

Such update is scheduled to be released this fall, in late September or early October, and will be formally presented to the Management Board at the ASMFC’s annual meeting, which is schedules to run from October 21-24.

That will be an eventful meeting for striped bass.

The stock assessment update will inform the Management Board as to whether current management measures have at least a 50 percent probability of rebuilding the stock by the 2029 deadline, or whether additional management measures will be needed to reach that goal.  If additional measures are needed, ASMFC’s Atlantic Striped Bass Technical Committee will provide the Management Board with possible options that are calculated to reduce striped bass fishing mortality by whatever amount is needed to make rebuilding by the 2029 deadline likely.

By the time the Management Board meets, information on striped bass spawning success in 2024 should also be available.  The Maryland and Virginia juvenile abundance indices are usually released in early October, and the Delaware River JAI, produced by the State of New Jersey, is usually also available by that time. 

The information presented to the Management Board, and how the Board reacts to the information that it receives, will have a long-term impact on the striped bass stock and the striped bass fishery.

Last Tuesday, at its August meeting, members of the Management Board provided some glimpses of how its October meeting might go.

Although no one came out and said it—which would, in any event, have been premature, since scientists are still working on the stock assessment update, and don’t know with certainty what it might reveal—the Management Board discussions seemed to assume that additional management measures are going to be needed if the stock is to rebuild by 2029.  Thus, the discussion largely focused on what such measures might be.

Dr. Katie Drew, representing the Technical Committee, set the tone early when she observed that the

“range of viable recreational options may be limited.”

That’s not necessarily something that everyone wanted to hear, but the plain fact is that, with a 1-fish bag limit and narrow slot size limits in both the ocean and Chesapeake Bay fisheries, reducing the bag limit and/or further narrowing the slot sizes are not realistic alternatives.  

Dr. Drew did also raise the possibility of creating a slot limit that would provide some additional protection for the 2018 year class, although she did not go so far as to suggest what such limit might be.

But it's pretty clear that, if we need additional management measures to achieve timely rebuilding, some sort of closed season is probably the only viable option left.

With that said, the meeting began to take its usual shape, with some Management Board members championing the cause of the striped bass, while others sought to protect various parochial interests.  The question of whether the commercial fishery and recreational fishery ought to make equal contributions to the striped bass’ recovery was one of the first issues raised.

Robert Brown, Maryland’s legislative proxy, was vehemently opposed to the idea, opining that

“We [the commercial fishermen] just took a seven percent reduction…I don’t think it’s justified at this time for the Technical Committee to consider”

additional commercial restrictions.  He failed to note that the recreational sector had accepted a 14 percent reduction, twice the size of that imposed on the commercial fishery, the last time around, and that while the recreational reduction was to actual landings, the seven percent commercial reduction was only to quota; since Chesapeake Bay commercial fishermen only utilized 84 percent of their quota in 2023, not only did the seven percent quota cut not reduce their landings, it would allow such landings to increase modestly in 2024.

John Clark, the Delaware fisheries manager, suggested that, if further reductions in harvest are needed to rebuild the stock,  the recreational and commercial sectors take “proportional” cuts that reflect each sector’s contribution to striped bass fishing mortality. 

On its face, it was a difficult suggestion to parse, as requiring each sector to reduce landings by the same percentage is inherently proportional; that is, if the recreational sector is responsible for 90 percent of the fishing mortality, and the commercial sector responsible for 10 percent—a 9:1 ratio—and, to oversimplify for illustrative purposes only (for we know that the real numbers are different), we assume that the recreational sector kills 9 million pounds of fish and the commercial sector 1 million—also a 9:1 ratio—and each sector is required to take a 10 percent reduction, the recreational cut would be 900,000 pounds while the commercial cut would be 100,000 pounds, again maintaining the 9:1 ratio and in perfect proportion to each sector’s share of the original fishing mortality.

However, based on the 2019 debate over Addendum VI to Amendment 6 to the Interstate Fishery Management Plan for Atlantic Striped Bass, that’s probably not what Clark’s comment intended.  Instead, he is probably championing an approach that would force the recreational sector to bear an unfair share of the conservation burden.  Using the same hypothetical fishing mortality employed in the previous example—9 million pounds recreational, 1 million pounds commercial—and the same required 10 percent reduction, his allegedly "proportional" approach would multiply the 10 percent overall reduction by the commercial sector's 10 percent share of the fishing mortality, to result in a required commercial reduction of just 1 percent, or 10,000 pounds, while the other remainder of the required reduction, 990,000 pounds, would be taken from the recreational sector.  That is a very disproportionate way to impose fishing mortality reductions, but nonetheless seems to be what Clark has in mind.

Such biased comments can be contrasted with those made by two other state fisheries managers, Chris Batsavage of North Carolina and Martin Gary of New York, both of whom clearly had the long-term interests of the striped bass in mind.

Mr. Batsavage first said that he was

“more in favor of equal reductions for the commercial and recreational sectors,”

and was the only Management Board member to acknowledge that previous recreational reductions had come from actual landings, while previous commercial reductions had come from quota, and so did not have the same impact on the respective sectors.  Then he said something that many striped bass anglers have long hoped to hear a Management Board member say, that in adopting additional management measures intended to facilitate rebuilding by 2029, the Board should be

“aiming a little higher”

than a mere 50 percent probability of success, in order to make rebuilding more likely.

That was a good start, and then Mr. Gary took another big step forward, asking Dr. Drew how the stock assessment update would be presented, particularly with respect to the five years of poor recruitment recorded in Maryland (and by implication, the three years of poor recruitment in Virginia and the Delaware River as well).  He seemed very aware that rebuilding by 2029, while important, was not the end of the management process; what happens to the bass stock after that year will probably have an even greater impact on the long-term health of the stock.

Dr. Drew replied that 2023 will be the terminal year of the update, so recruitment through 2022 will be included when the assessment’s calculations are made (we need to note that recruitment is determined by the number of fish that survive to Year 1, and not by the juvenile abundance index; at times, low Year 0 survival has resulted in somewhat disappointing recruitment even though the initial JAI was strong, while very good Year 0 survival has sometimes led to strong recruitment from what might have been deemed a solid, but not exceptional, JAI).  She noted that strong year classes prior to and including 2018 will help the rebuilding process, but also noted that after 2029, the effects of poor recruitment will be felt, and warned,

“The question of what happens after we rebuild is something that the Board should start thinking about.”

She said that the scientists working on the assessment update could stretch out the projections beyond 2029, and then noted,

“What we have in the bank [with respect to recruitment] is not promising.”

That was exactly what concerned Mr. Gary, who was concerned that the public might see spawning stock biomass increase as the rebuilding deadline drew near, but won’t necessarily be aware of what will happen as the five (so far) weak year classes begin to move into the spawning stock, at the same time that the big year classes inevitably decline in abundance.  He urged the Technical Committee to extend the projections in the assessment update to provide at least some of that information.

Dr. Justin Davis, the Connecticut fisheries manager, also supported extending the assessment update’s projections farther into the future.  He asked whether the current slot limit will protect the 2018 year class (the answer is that the greatest number of 2018s should fall into the slot in 2025, but that the 2018s will begin growing out of the slot in 2026 and, in particular,  in 2027).  

Given the state of the stock and the limited number of recreational management measures available, Dr. Davis felt that a no-harvest closure was the “obvious option,” should additional management measures be needed, but emphasized that such closure should allow bass to be targeted in a release fishery, saying that

“I still feel that [no-target closures] are an option of last resort,”

not something that the Management Board should be considering now.

As noted earlier, proponents for various special interests also argued for exceptions to whatever management measures might ultimately be adopted.  The most notable of those was Jason McNamee, the Rhode Island fisheries manager, who continued to support special regulations that favor the for-hire fleet (even though there is little evidence that the tighter slot limit imposed by the Board’s 2023 emergency action did any harm to Rhode Island’s for-hire fleet, as overall Rhode Island for-hire trips increased from about 33,000 in 2021 to a little over 37,500 in 2022 to nearly 44,500 in 2023, when the emergency measures became effective, although trips targeting striped bass did decline, beginning in 2022).

Mr. McNamee also expressed interest in the idea of adopting a moveable slot to protect the 2018 year class, noting that

“Slot limits work best when they’re dynamic.”

So what will happen when the Board meets in October?  

It’s still hard to say.

Addendum II provides that

“If an upcoming stock assessment prior to the rebuilding deadline (currently 2029) indicates the stock is not projected to rebuild by 2029 with a probability greater than or equal to 50%, the Board could respond via Board action where the Board could change management measures by voting to pass a motion at a Board meeting instead of developing an addendum or amendment (and different from the emergency action process).  [emphasis added]”

“Could” is the critical word.

The language was added to Addendum II because, as the rebuilding deadline grows close, any new management measures adopted by the Board would have a very limited time to impact rebuilding.  If the Board chose to adopt measures by a simple vote, bypassing the usual addendum/amendment process, such measures could be in place for the 2025 season, while measures adopted through the addendum process probably wouldn’t be effective until 2026.

But at this week’s meeting, there were signs that at least some Management Board members might be more comfortable with the addendum process.  Maryland fisheries manager Michael Luisi probably expressed such concerns most clearly, saying

“These are complicated issues…In October, if the Board decides to move forward with something, it’s got to be pretty simple.”

He expressed concern that language in Amendment 7 to the Interstate Fishery Management Plan for Atlantic Striped Bass, which prohibits the use of conservation equivalency (the doctrine that allows states to adopt measures different from those approved by the Board, so long as such measures have the same conservation effect) when the stock is overfished, may make it more difficult to adopt new measures at the October meeting.

If too many Management Board members feel the same way, it is very possible that the Board will do nothing but dither in October, and the supposed “interim” measures of Addendum II will be carried forward for another year.

But if enough people on the Management Board want to fulfill their obligation to rebuild the stock by 2029, it can still happen.

In my view, the simplest way to approach the issue would be to adopt a no-harvest season on a regional basis.

Pursuant to that approach, should the stock assessment update reveal that fishing mortality must be reduced by a certain percentage in order to make timely rebuilding likely, each region would be required to close the bass fishery to harvest long enough to achieve the needed reduction (or, better, the Board would take Mr. Batsavage’s advice to “aim a little higher” and impose a reduction somewhat greater than would theoretically be needed to achieve rebuilding, to account for the inevitable management uncertainty).  The exact dates of such closures would be up to the states involved, so long as the reduction was achieved.

Setting the regions will always engender debate, for there are always conflicting reasons why a state should or should not be tied to another state or state for management purposes.  But the Board wouldn’t go far wrong if it began with five regions to start:  Maine/New Hampshire, Massachusetts/Rhode Island/Connecticut, New York/New Jersey, Delaware/Maryland/Virginia, and North Carolina.  Within all such proposed regions, the states have seasons and fisheries that are similar enough to get the job done. 

Yes, New Jersey might complain that its Delaware Bay fishery might be too different from New York’s to work, and New York and/or Connecticut might complain that such split might cause problems in Long Island Sound, while Maryland…  But we’re not looking for perfection here, just for something that can get the job done.

Again, that's only my approach to the problem, and it is very likely that whatever the Board ultimately does, if it does anything, will differ from my proposition to a greater or lesser degree.

I just put my idea out there to show that the Board can easily put together something that works if it wants to.

But what if it doesn’t, and decides to kick the can down the road through another addendum process?

The striped bass stock is not doing well, and it will be under real stress when the weak year classes—so far, 2019 through 2023, although there could be more down the road—take their place in the spawning stock.  If the Management Board fails to do all that it can to rebuild the stock before that happens, and so fails to put the striped bass stock in the best possible position before the poor year classes force an inevitable biomass decline, the Board will have failed in its duty to both the striped bass and to striped bass fishermen, whether recreational or commercial.

Such failure, should it occur, would be a very, very hard thing to forgive.

 

HOW FISHERIES MANAGERS FAIL

 

Children do it instinctively.

When they want to do something, and their father says “No,” they run to their mother and ask for her permission.  Then, if their mother says “OK,” they take that answer back to their father, and try to get him to change his mind.  If he remains adamant, their final tactic is to whine, “But its not FAIRRR.”

Fishermen often do the same thing, trying to arbitrage the decisions of state, federal, and/or regional management bodies in an effort to get what they want, regardless of what the resource might need.

The latest instance of that sort of behavior is occurring right now in North Carolina, and involves that state’s recreational fishing season for southern flounder.

It’s no secret that southern flounder are badly depleted throughout much of their range, and North Carolina’s southern flounder population is no exception to that overall trend.  North Carolina law requires that, when confronted with an overfished stock, state managers must end overfishing within two years, and adopt rebuilding measures that have at least a 50 percent change of fully rebuilding the stock within no more than ten years.

The southern flounder stock was determined to be overfished years ago, so 2028 represents the rebuilding deadline.  In order to rebuild by that time,

“Projections were…carried out to determine the fishing mortality and the associated reduction in catch necessary to end the overfished status and to reach the [spawning stock biomass] target within 10 years (by 2028, assuming management imposed regulations beginning in 2019).  The projections indicate that [a fishing mortality rate] equal to 0.34 and a 52% reduction in total catch is needed to reach the [spawning stock biomass] threshold by 2028 and end the overfished status.  To reach the [spawning stock biomass] target by 2028, [the fishing mortality rate] needs to be lowered to 0.18 and total catch needs to be reduced by 72%.  [internal references omitted]”

72 percent is a big cut in landings, and extremely strict management measures were needed to achieve such goal. 

Prior to the adoption of the most recent management measures (North Carolina Southern Flounder Fishery Management Plan Amendment 3), North Carolina anglers could keep 4 southern flounder per day, with a minimum size of 15 inches (because North Carolina hosts three similar-appearing flounder species, southern, summer, and Gulf flounder, the bag and size limits actually apply to “flounder” of any species, and not just to southern flounder); the season ran for the first two weeks in September.  However, fishery data suggested that the bag limit was almost meaningless, as fully 93 percent of the recreational southern flounder landings occurred on trips when only a single flounder was retained. 

Cutting the bag limit would thus do very little to reduce recreational southern flounder landings, and would not get anglers close to the needed 72 percent reduction (managers also placed severe restrictions on the commercial fishery).

Reducing the length of the fishing season was also potentially problematic.  As noted in Amendment 3,

“Seasonal closures do not enforce a maximum removal level on the fishery and only limit the time when targeted harvest can occur.  Fishing effort can be more concentrated during the open season, potentially altering fishing behaviors from previous years that were used to estimate harvest windows; that is, fishing effort may increase during the open season and lead to higher than predicted removals…seasonal closures alone may not result in the needed increase to [spawning stock biomass] even if maintained long term.”

Thus, to better limit southern flounder landings, North Carolina went to a quota-based management program for both commercial and recreational fisheries, requiring pound-for-pound paybacks in the following year for any sector that exceeded its quota.  That provision immediately led to a problem, because North Carolina anglers quickly exceeded their quota.

In 2022, North Carolina recreational fishermen, using both spears and hook and line, exceeded their quota by an estimated 56,340 pounds.  That took their 2023 quota down from 170,655 pounds to just 114,315 pounds.  But recreational landings and dead discards totaled an estimated 241,609 pounds in 2023, more than double the quota.  As a result, recreational fishermen had to pay back a 127,294 pound overage in 2024, and when that was deducted from the 2024 quota, there weren’t enough fish left to justify opening a recreational season.

That didn’t go over well with many anglers.  Patricia Smith, spokesperson for the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality, admitted that

“We have a lot of angry fishermen,”

who argued that the government over-reacted when it shut down the fishery, said that the data used to determine that the flounder stock is overfished are unreliable, and blamed the commercial fishery for most of the harm done to the stock.

So the anglers did the same thing that any normal eight-year-old would do if one parent said "No"—they went to see if someone else would let them kill a few flounder.

They could do that because North Carolina has a somewhat strange fishery management system, which shares management responsibility for southern flounder between the Marine Fisheries Commission, which has the authority to close seasons by proclamation and is responsible for fisheries in coastal waters, and the Wildlife Resources Commission, which can only change regulations through a formal rulemaking process, and is responsible for what are known as “shared waters”—essentially some estuaries where fresh and salt water mix—as well as inland waters.

After holding public hearings and accepting public comments on closing the 2024 southern flounder season, the Wildlife Resources Commission decided not to support the Marine Resources Commission's closure, but to instead allow a four-day recreational flounder season.

Their reasons for doing so seem a bit iffy, at best, and have little to do with the needs of the flounder.  Instead, they focus only on the fishermen's concerns and concepts of fairness, and leave biology out of the picture.

According to an article on Coastalreview.org,

“Wildlife officials said…that the decision was made after considering public comments, most of which did not support the closure, ‘a lot of good discussion’ during the July 24 Committee meeting, and reviewing the data presented to the Marine Fisheries Commission on the recreational allotment available for a 2024 flounder season.”

(Even with the payback from the 2023 overage, there were still 43,361 pounds of southern flounder available for 2024; such figure was roughly equivalent to the dead discards in 2023, and well below the dead discard number for 2022, so the Marine Fisheries Commission decided to allocate such fish to dead flounder discards in other recreational fisheries in 2024, although with no open flounder season, such discards would probably not reach the 40,000 pound mark this year.)

Coastalreview.org also reported that

“Commissioners determined that the ‘closure of the flounder season for 2024 is an unbalanced allocation issue.  If that data suggested that closing the season was necessary as a conservation issue, the [Marine Fisheries Commission] would also close the commercial season.  The Committee therefore recommended a 4-day season as recommended by staff,’ they said.”

Such logic—if one wished to grace the WRC 's thoiught processes with such a term—completely ignores the fact that there was no “unbalanced allocation” at all; instead, by grossly overfishing their quota in 2023, recreational fishermen effectively took an advance on their 2024 allocation, and the bill for that advance has now come due.  

Commercial fishermen did not overfish to that extent last year, and because commercial landings are reported in near real time, while recreational landings take weeks to tabulate, commercial overages are far easier to avoid.  Thus, the commercial season can remain open when the recreational season is closed.

Still, as things currently stand, the commercial sector is allocated 70 percent of all southern flounder landings, although that allocation is scheduled to change over time to provide a greater share of the landings to anglers.  The Wildlife Resources Commission used that scheduled change—which will not go into effect this year—to offer up another bit of twisted logic that, in their view, justified opening the recreational flounder fishery.  Again, from Coastalreview.org,

“After recalculating 2024 numbers by applying the different allocation scenarios, [Wildlife Resources Inland Fisheries Division Chief Christian] Waters said that a 60% commercial and 40% recreational split ‘would, in theory, give you just under four days.  That’s also based on if that reallocation occurred coast wide,’ Waters said.”

The problem, of course, is that the reallocation didn’t occur coast wide.  In fact, it didn’t occur anywhere, as Amendment 3 kept the 70 percent commercial/30 percent recreational allocation in place for 2024.  But the Wildlife Resources Commission seemingly chose to pretended otherwise, and adopted the open season all the same.

The apparent reason was that, like the indulgent parent who allows their child to eat an ice cream sundae half an hour before dinner, that Commission didn’t want to disappoint and upset anyone.

“Of the 438 [anglers] who responded [to the WRC’s request for comments], 89% did not support the rule [closing the 2024 fishery] for multiple reasons, including concerns about commercial fishing, the current allocation for commercial versus recreational, the data used from Marine Fisheries, and that flounder is a public resource, Waters said.  And ‘there was some general displeasure in general [sic], about just the fact that we were even considering not having a season, and then there was [sic] some that expressed distrust for [the Division of Marine Fisheries] and DMF process.’”

It's probably relevant to note that none of those reasons even tried to address the depleted state of the flounder.

So what North Carolina is left with is a badly overfished southern flounder fishery that must, by law, be rebuilt within the next four years, one agency that is making the hard decisions needed to achieve such rebuilding, and a second agency that is more interested in indulging anglers, and worrying about their self-centered claims of fairness versus the commercial fishery and fishery management generally, rather than in furthering rebuilding efforts.

And this is why fisheries managers can fail:  Because some pay too much attention to fishermen’s short-term concerns, instead of remaining laser-focused on the data, the needs of the resource, and the ultimate management goal of fully rebuilding fisheries that will be sustainable in the long term, and so provide the greatest benefits for everyone concerned.

Public input on how to achieve a particular goal—input on size limits vs bag limits vs seasons, etc.—is an extremely valuable part of the management process.  But when it comes down to basic biology, and issues of catch limits or, as with southern flounder, even whether to open a fishery at all, the professionals should have the last word, for the public, like children, will often seek to indulge their wants now, and never consider the consequences that might ensue if they get what they think they desire.

A NEW THREAT TO FEDERAL FISHERIES DATA

 

I’ve said it before.  MRIP—the Marine Recreational InformationSystem, which is used to estimate recreational fishermen’s effort, catch andlandings—is the program that everyone loves to hate.

The reasons for that are complex. 

A little less than a year ago, the National Marine Fisheries Service revealed that, as part of its ongoing quality control checks of the program, it discovered that MRIP is probably overstating the number of angler trips, and so the level of recreational catch and landings.  That admission has been the focus of a lot of the recent anti-MRIP flak, particularly on the part of the same southern-state-oriented anglers’ rights groups that have been trying to overturn federal red snapper management for the past decade.

But while such groups pounced on the NMFS admission as a convenient way to validate their anti-federal management arguments, the fact is that MRIP was attacked by various angling-industry organizations and their allies in the press from the moment that it was released, in part because it inherited some of the rancor previously and justifiably aimed at its predecessor, the badly flawed Marine Recreational Fishing Statistics Survey—MRFSS acknowledged flaws, after all, provided the impetus for MRIP’s creation. 

Much of the animus aimed at MRIP seems to have the same source as the antipathy that many drivers hold toward radar speed guns and red light cameras—they provide a clear limitation on what people are able to do, and people don’t like to be told “No.”  Drivers know that it’s illegal to speed and to run through red lights, but many want to do it anyway, and don’t want to be held responsible for the results.  Similarly, recreational fishermen know that it’s bad to overfish, but they still want to take some fish home regardless of what the data might say, so when MRIP leads to more restrictive angling regulations, it's reflexively attacked, whether such attacks are justified or not.

I’ve actually participated in meetings where another person at the table completely dismissed landings data by saying “It’s MRIP.  I just don’t believe it,” making no attempt to justify his position beyond those few words.

It doesn’t help that some fisheries managers, and fisheries management organizations, choose to use MRIP data in ways that its designers never intended, and thus base regulations on data too imprecise to be used for management purposes.

The precision of MRIP data generally improves with the number of anglers who are interviewed and their catch recorded.  Thus, MRIP data is good when, for example, managers want to know how many fish of an often-encountered species are caught along the entire coast, or in a large region thereof, over the course of a year.  But when managers try to break annual, coastwide data down into individual states, and then break it down farther into two-month “waves” and/or modes of angling, the precision quickly breaks down.

When New Jersey sets black sea bass regulations that sees the season open on May 17, with a 10-fish bag limit, close on June 20, open again on July 1 with a 1-fish bag limit, then close for a month on September 1 before opening on October 1, again with a 10-fish bag, before going to a 15-fish bag from November 1 through the rest of the year, it is only kidding itself, and everyone else, if it believes that the data is precise enough to support all those changes.  If such regulations, and other state regulations which, although not quite as extreme, still vary from wave to wave, ever manage to constrain recreational black sea bass landings to the landings target, luck rather than calculation would almost certainly be the cause.

Yet the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission, with the blessing of NMFS and the Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council, adopt such regulations every year, then seem astonished when they can’t get recreational landings under control.  Both managers and fishermen both tend to blame MRIP, when it is really the misuse of MRIP that deserves the blame.

However, the most vehement and most consistent opponents of MRIP have not been those in the Mid-Atlantic or New England black sea bass fisheries, but rather the industry-aligned anglers’ rights groups down in the Gulf of Mexico, and more recently in the South Atlantic, who resent the fact the MRIP is keeping them from killing more red snapper.

This year, sportfishing industry groups have convinced Rep. Garret Graves (R-LA), a legislator who has long benefitted from their favors and reciprocated by carrying their water in the House, to introduce a bill intended to gut MRIP.  Titled the “Fisheries Data Modernization and Accuracy Act of 2024,” such legislation directs that

“The Administrator [of NMFS] shall reform the MRIP in effect as of the date of the enactment of this section to meet the unique needs of individual regions and States, taking into consideration the needs of State-level programs related to recreational fishing catch and effort surveys in effect as of the date of the enactment of this section to ensure that such reform does not unnecessarily dilute the effectiveness of such programs.”

While that might sound at least somewhat benign, if one reads the bill, it quickly becomes clear that Graves’ goal is to minimize the use of MRIP data in fisheries management, and to replace it, wherever possible, with state-level data.

That becomes obvious early on, when the bill calls for the creation of a committee within the National Academy of Sciences that is supposed to “meet regularly to discuss issues related to fisheries data collection and management,” that is supposed to “operate independently and without the influence of” the head of NMFS, but which must include representatives of state fish and wildlife agencies among its members.

It’s called stacking the deck…

Similar provisions exist throughout the bill.  One provides that if the percent standard error of any wave of MRIP estimates exceeds 30, or if the state petitions the committee with respect to any recreational fishery managed with open and closed seasons, the head of NMFS must consult with the new committee to either reduce the PSE or, if that is not possible, to “adjust the management of such seasonal fishery.”  

Such provision virtually assures that just about every important recreational species would be included in the provision, as most such species are managed with seasons, while even popular species such as striped bass, summer flounder, and bluefish had at least one wave during 2023 when the PSE exceeded 30, even though the season-wide PSEs for those species were 7.9, 7.5, and 8.3, respectively, all plenty precise enough to support management actions.

After the required consultation, NMFS would have to issue a report that included recommendations

“to adjust the management of such seasonal fishery in a manner that allows continued access…  [emphasis added]”

In other words, adjusting management in a way that allows anglers to continue to kill fish, apparently without regard to whether the stock was overfished or approaching an overfished condition, whether overfishing was taking place, or whether such “continued access” would cause long-term harm to the health of the fishery.

With language like that, it’s not hard to believe that, in 2022, the American Sportfishing Association was one ofthe biggest contributors to Graves’ campaign.

The bill would also allow a state to initiate the consultation process with the proposed committee if the percent standard error of MRIP data for any given year

“is significantly greater or less than the preceding 3-year average PSE for such seasonal fishery, [emphasis added]”

which is fairly bizarre when you think about it, because it means that states would have a right to seek a change in the management process if MRIP was improved and the data became markedly more precise.  Other specified data issues, that cast doubt on the precision of MRIP estimates, could also trigger such a consultation.

But things start getting strange again when Graves’ bill contemplates state data collection programs.  It would allow states, with NMFS’ approval, to develop their own programs, which more or less tracks the current process.  But then it puts NMFS in an impossible position, by requiring the agency to

“establish universal standards regarding the collection of such data,”

which is perfectly reasonable, but further requiring that such standards both

“allow for flexibility in the design of such programs to account for differences in recreational fishing activity between States,”

while also

“facilitat[ing] the collection of comparable data between States within a region for purposes of stock assessment and management.”

It’s an impossible task, for if states have different designs intended to “account for the differences” in such states fisheries, and so employ divergent methodologies, there is no way that the data collected by any state will be comparable to the data collected by others.  

Even though such data may each be reasonably precise, according to the standards of the separate surveys, the data will also be different as a result of the methodologies used, and will not be comparable until run through a process that calibrates each states’ findings and translates them into a common standard that makes comparisons possible.  

That is exactly the issue that caused such consternation in the Gulf of Mexico red snapper fishery, when various states’ catch estimates had to be converted into a “common currency,” and led to some states taking cuts to their annual harvests while others were allowed to land a few extra fish.

But regardless of the quality of the state data collection programs, or of whether they really did provide comparable data, the bill requires that NMFS

“establish such data as the baseline for the calibration of historic estimates of recreational catch,”

and to

“use such data to establish catch limits and monitor landings without calibration to any Federal program, including MRIP,”

even though the NMFS data has a much longer time series, and has no compatibility issues at all, and despite the fact that the state programs would not be required to undergo the same sort of rigorous review, including a National Academy of Sciences review, that MRIP underwent.

If, despite such review, the MRIP’s problem with overstated recreational effort went undiscovered until last year, how many undiscovered flaws might exist within the state programs?  But Graves seems unconcerned with those.  In fact, it provides that

“If a State collects data pursuant to this subsection that is collected pursuant to the MRIP, the Administrator [of NMFS] shall use the data collected by the State in place of the data collected pursuant to the MRIP,”

again without any sort of study or peer review that upholds the superiority of the state data.

The Graves bill goes on, to provide funding to states to develop programs to supplant MRIP, and is in that way compatible with the House budget that would appropriate $30 million to a few southern states for just that purpose, while letting NMFS’ science and research programs—and the rest of the coast--starve.

Looking at Graves’ bill, the first thing that we should admit is that MRIP isn’t perfect.  The supposed overestimation of recreational effort is, if confirmed, a major error that may have compromised stock assessments and the calculation of annual catch limits for both the recreational and the commercial sectors.  But NMFS is constantly working to uncover and address MRIP’s flaws.

There is no guarantee that any state survey will be subject to the same sort of continuing review.

MRIP is the only survey that crosses state boundaries, providing a uniform system of estimating recreational landings.  State surveys, at best, will have to be tweaked to work with one another, leading to the same sort of controversy that emerged in the Gulf red snapper fishery.

Yes, MRIP is flawed.  But at this point we should ask, “Why reinvent the wheel?”

Instead of spending money on state surveys that will presumably replace MRIP, why not spend the same money on MRIP itself?

Does anyone doubt that the $30 million in the House budget, if appropriated to improve MRIP instead of being passed out to a handful of southern state surveys intended to supplant it, could fix whatever problems may be lurking within?

But, of course, that’s not what Graves, and the organizations that back him, want. 

They want to kill more red snapper than the science and prudence allow.  They don’t want “good”—that is, more precise—landings estimates.  They want estimates that will let them take more fish home, regardless of such estimates’ accuracy.

And they see getting rid of MRIP as the best way to make that happen.

 

 

 

HOUSE SEEKS TO SHORTCHANGE FISH, FISHERMEN; THE SENATE DISAGREES

 

Elections always have consequences, and for those who care about the health of the nation’s marine fisheries, and the quality and adequacy of federal fishery management programs, the consequences of the 2022 elections for the House of Representatives have not been good.

The House recently passed an appropriations bill that would reduce the National Marine Fisheries Service’s 2025 budget by 22 percent, compared to 2024.  The cuts would not be evenly spread across the agency’s budget.  Instead, the science and management budget would be reduced by a little over 11 percent and the enforcement budget cut by about 17 percent, while funding for activities deemed more frivolous by the House majority would be reduced far more, with habitat conservation and restoration spending chopped by about 28.5 percent and spending on protected resources (that is, species protected under the Endangered Species Act or Marine Mammals Act) slashed by 55 percent.

The ideology behind the cuts to NMFS’ budget were clearly set out in the House Report on the Commerce, Justice, Science, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, which starts off, in part,

“To reduce the size of the Federal Government and ensure that agencies funded herein are focused on missions that serve the American people without wasting and abusing hard-earned tax dollars, this bill prioritizes funding for critical agencies, including the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, National Science Foundation, Bureau of Prisons and Drug Enforcement Administration, while freezing, reducing, or eliminating funding for non-essential activities…

“To support investments in Federal priorities such as national security, law enforcement in our communities, and administering just detention and correctional systems, the bill right-sizes agencies and programs by scaling back unsustainable spending levels to fiscal year 2022 levels, or lower, and cutting programs that have become agency slush funds and social justice initiatives…”

It continues that way for several more paragraphs, each making it clear that maintaining healthy and sustainable fisheries, restoring degraded fish habitat, and enforcing fisheries laws are not among the priorities of the majority party, and that both recreational and commercial fishermen are not seen as important constituencies by those who prepared either the draft budget or the report.

And, of course, the word “conservation” seldom appears in the report, except as a reference to an already-existing program or statute.

But that doesn’t mean that recreational fishermen are completely left out of the House report or the House allocation process.  In a few instances, where anglers are trying to kill more fish than the current science allows, or seek to undercut the federal fishery management process, the House majority is more than willing to support them.

Hopefully to no one’s surprise, all such efforts focus on the South Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico, where organized anglers have long tried to undermine or completely replace federal management of recreational fisheries; in a similar vein, much of the recreationally-oriented allocations affect the red snapper fishery.  If you fish in New England, the Mid-Atlantic, or anywhere in the Pacific Ocean or Caribbean Sea, the House majority essentially treats you as if you didn’t exist, but the whiners in the Gulf and South Atlantic, who are also politically astute and are willing to pay the asking price to “gain access” to key legislators, are getting their share of attention.

Thus, the same House majority that was more than willing to cut $14 million from law enforcement, and cut another $16 million from habitat restoration and conservation, presumably because such things are not priority issues and so are deemed “non-essential activities,” decided that it was appropriate to spend another $5 million to “validate” the results of the so-called “Great Red Snapper Count” in the Gulf of Mexico, because

“Greater inclusion of fisheries-independent estimates of reef fish like Red Snapper can be used to help both State-based management initiatives as well as objectively resolve discrepancies between Federal management agencies and concerned stakeholders.”

Another $3.5 million was appropriated to survey reef fish off the East Coast of Florida, because

“The Committee recognizes concerns by the State of Florida regarding the incomplete data assessment concerning reef fish located off the waters of Florida’s Atlantic coast, including the Florida Keys.”

But the really big allocation was the $30 million—equal to the cuts to the law enforcement and habitat budgets combined—appropriated

“for NMFS to assist each of the States within the South Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico Fishery Management Councils that wish to develop or improve State recreational harvest collection programs to supplement, or if the State chooses, supplant, the [federal] Marine Recreational Information Program…These efforts shall be a top priority for [NMFS]…  [emphasis added]”

The fact that the House majority is calling what would once have been considered a pork barrel program to benefit anglers in a handful of states “a top priority” while cutting funding from enforcement and habitat restoration budgets probably says all that one needs to know about how much it values marine conservation efforts.

Fortunately, the Senate places a greater value on the nation’s living marine resources, on fisheries science, and on the long-term health of fish stocks.  The Senate appropriators not only agreed to fund NMFS full $1.2 budget, but it added an additional $53 million to the agency’s initial request in order to include some additional conservation funding.

At this point, it is probably important to note that the Senate appropriation was a very bipartisan effort, that was supported by 26 out of the 29 senators who cast a vote on the appropriations bill.  That stands in stark contrast to the ideologically extreme appropriations bill forced through by the House majority.

Thus, it should be expected that the Senate Report on the Departments of Commerce and Justice, Science, and Related Agencies Appropriations Bill, 2025 also stood in stark contrast to its House counterpart. 

Instead of the House majority’s shrill, self-serving rhetoric about reducing the size of government, the alleged misuse of taxpayer dollars, agency slush funds, etc., the bipartisan Senate report recognizes the importance of federal agencies that are, among other things,

“properly managing our Nation’s fisheries, [emphasis added]

and engaging in

“activities critical to our Nation’s well-being, including…fisheries management.”

Such language makes it clear that the Senate appropriators, unlike those of the House majority, do not consider NMFS’ duties to be “non-essential activities.”

In a similar way, the Senate report recognizes the importance of marine conservation, as well as the importance of commercial and recreational fishing activities on every coast of the United States, and not merely in the southeastern states.  Thus, instead of taking the House majority’s approach, and appropriating around $40 million for the Gulf and South Atlantic, and letting fishermen elsewhere starve, the Senate bill includes provisions for fisheries, and protected species, on every coast, including $8.5 million for Atlantic salmon restoration efforts, $80 million for Pacific salmon conservation and management (including $7 million for habitat conservation), $2.5 million for New England groundfish research, $1 million for Atlantic bluefin tuna research, and $5 million for Gulf of Mexico fishery research.

And no, red snapper in the Gulf and South Atlantic weren’t ignored, although such regions weren’t slated to receive the inflated amounts allocated by the House majority.  Instead, the Senate allocated $1 million, rather than the House majority's $5 million, to validate the Great Red Snapper Count, and another $1 million above 2024 funding levels for additional South Atlantic reef fish research. 

With respect to the Marine Recreational Information Program, the Senate report noted that

“The Committee is concerned by reports that the Marine Recreational Information Program [Fishing Effort Survey] may be vastly overstating fishing effort.  While the FES methodology represents a clear improvement from previous methodologies, the Committee supports the cautious approach to using these estimates advocated by the Gulf of Mexico Fishery Management Council and South Atlantic Fishery Management Council Scientific and Statistical Committees.  The Committee encourages NMFS to conduct a thorough analysis of the effect if each estimate on stock status and allocation before they are used for stock management.”

However, what the Senate appropriators did not do was reach into the pork barrel and hand out $30 million to be used to develop state data collection programs for the southeast states—while relegating the remainder of the coastal states, which lie outside of that privileged region, to the continuing use of MRIP.

There are many other differences between the appropriation bills, and each of those differences will, if the bills are passed by their respective houses as currently written, have to be reconciled in a conference in which each house of Congress will be represented.

There will be winners and losers on many issues, and although we can’t be sure what the final appropriations bill will look like, we can expect that it will be neither as small-minded and tight-fisted as the House majority’s version, nor as provident, thoughtful, and generous as the current Senate bill.

Hopefully, it will be workable.

But the key issues will not be resolved when the 2025 appropriation bill becomes law.  Next year, the fight will begin again, and the 2026 appropriations bill may be better or worse, depending on who has the power in both houses of Congress.

This is not, I should note, a pure party-line issue, and I don’t want to suggest that virtue favors only one of the two major parties—fisheries conservation has traditionally been a bipartisan issue, and seems to remain so in the Senate today.

Instead, it is a question of philosophy and ideology:  Are Americans willing to invest in healthy, sustainable fish stocks, that can provide food and recreation well into the future?  Or do they believe that marine resources should be, at best, exploited for short-term gains or, at worst, ignored to meet whatever fate the future may hold, but in any event shouldn't be deemed worthy of the investment needed for proper conservation and management?

Each candidate on the ballot this November will have a different answer to those questions, and with the election barely three months away, it is time for concerned voters to determine just how each candidate views ocean issues, and so determine who should and should not hold elective office.

For as I noted when this essay began, elections have consequences for each of us, and for our fisheries, too.

 

HOW NOT TO MANAGE A FISHERY

 

I still remember a night, maybe 25 years ago, when I was Chairman of the Babylon Tuna Club, and was running a meeting addressing one of the more contentious issues in club history:  Whether the club should adopt minimum sizes for fish entered in its annual and weekend contests, which were higher than the minimums imposed by the state and federal governments.

Just about everyone liked the idea when it was first proposed, but after a couple of years of members having their fish barred from contests because they didn’t meet the new minimums, quite of few folks decided that the club minimums were a bad idea, because they apparently thought that $25 or $50 or $100 that they didn’t win might have made a big change in their lives.

The debate got pretty heated, and a lot of angry and a few just plain dumb things were said, but one of the comments that I’ll never forget went something like “The state has scientists setting the regulations, so we shouldn’t be trying to adopt more restrictive club rules.”

“The state has scientists setting the rules.”

Ahh, if only that were true.

The unfortunate fact is that fisheries regulation is a political process.  While I know, and have known, many state fisheries scientists, know how hard they work, and how much they want to do the right thing, I have also seen all their hard work go for nought when somebody who has the governor’s, or other high-ranking official’s, ear disagrees with the professionals’ assessment and convinces the folks in the Executive Mansion to take things in a different direction.

Almost without exception, that direction was the wrong one, but if the right (or, perhaps, the wrong) person shares a Scotch or two with the ultimate decisionmakers, belongs to the right political party, and/or makes appropriate contributions to the appropriate candidates’ campaigns, all the science in the world won’t change the outcome.

It’s a shame, because the people who should be driving the management process—the people who are formally trained in fisheries science, who have spent years in the field learning their craft, and who have developed the professional expertise to draft and analyze management measures—often have far less impact on management measures than they should.  At the state level they are, after all, answerable to the state’s governor; in just about every state, the head of the Conservation Department, or Environmental Department, or whatever the state chooses to name the management agency, has either known the governor for a long time or has been otherwise active in the governor’s party, and is far more likely to resolve controversial issues based on political, rather than conservation, concerns.

So it’s pretty typical to see the fisheries scientists make the best recommendations that they can, trying to maintain a healthy fish stock while also being aware of the impacts of their decision on the various stakeholders.  The professionals’ regulatory proposals then go through lawyers, which may change some things for strictly legal reasons, before they are kicked upstairs for approval at the agency’s highest levels.

Throughout that process, everyone with an interest in the outcome—anglers’ organizations, commercial fishermen and their organizations, the party boats, the charter boats, the tackle shops, and the rest—pull whatever strings they might pull, use whatever contacts they might have, and call in whatever favors are owed to either support or overrule the professional managers’ decisions, with the opponents hoping to either kill the regulation outright or to change it in ways that will better serve their interests, even if they end up hurting the resource and everyone else in the end.

And when those efforts fail—in this sort of contest, once everyone starts to fight everyone else, someone is bound to fail—the next step is to call for the legislature to come in and pass a bill that will overrule whatever the agency decides, and instead benefit those with the greatest legislative influence, even if the legislation that emerges will cause everyone real harm in the end.

The latest example of that sort of thing is happening now in the House of Representatives, where Rep. Jared Golden (D-ME) teamed up with Rep. Michael Lawlor (R-NY) to introduce an amendment to the Fiscal Year 2025 Commerce, Justice, Science, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, which would supposedly prevent regulators from increasing the minimum size for lobster caught in the Gulf of Maine.

Should that effort succeed, it could well cause long-term harm to both the Gulf of Maine lobster stock and the lobstermen of Maine.

The unavoidable truth is that lobsters are impacted by warming waters, and the Gulf of Maine is warming faster than most oceanic regions on Earth.

Twenty years ago, the Southern New England stock of American lobster began to show signs of distress, as landings dropped sharply.  Such drop was not unexpected given that both abundance and recruitment had been declining in the face of high fishing mortality.  However, fishery managers were slow to respond to the decline, as lobstermen tried to argue around the findings of the 2006 stock assessment.

At an April 2006 meeting of the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission’s American Lobster Advisory Panel, panel members were

“concerned that the stock assessment did not take into account the increases in natural mortality (M) in some areas…[Advisory Panel] members were also concerned that the assessment does not take into account predation of lobsters by striped bass, cod, and dogfish to name a few.”

It was a classic, and all too typical, example of fishermen trying to escape increased regulation by placing “blame” for decreased abundance on naturally occurring factors, while doing their best to ignore the fact that, regardless of the cause of a stock’s decline, current levels of harvest were, nonetheless, unsustainable.  And the fishermen did have substantial success in delaying the management process and assuring that the ASMFC would not adopt measures stringent enough to halt the decline in lobster abundance.

The ASMFC’s American Lobster Technical Committee issued a 2010 report titled Recruitment Failure in The Southern New England Lobster Stock, which stated that

“Since the release of the 2009 Assessment, additional monitoring information has been reviewed which documents that the reproductive potential and abundance of the [Southern New England] stock is continuing to fall lower than the data presented in the latest assessment.  The [American Lobster Technical Committee] contends that the stock is experiencing recruitment failure caused by a combination of environmental drivers and continued fishing mortality…

“The southern New England stock is critically depleted and well below the minimum threshold abundance.  Abundance indices are at or near time series lows, and this condition has persisted.”

The report further stated that,

“Given additional evidence of recruitment failure in [the southern New England stock] and the impediments to stock rebuilding, the Technical Committee now recommends a 5-year moratorium in the [southern New England] stock area…”

Even after an external peer review, conducted by three internationally recognized experts, essentially endorsed the Technical Committee’s advice, neither fishermen nor fisheries managers were willing to take it.  Instead, they subordinated the scientific recommendations to the short-term desires of the lobster fishermen.  The ASMFC’s American Lobster Management Board hemmed and hawed, continually proposing trivial solutions to a very real and serious problem, and never mustered the courage to stand up to hostile stakeholders, and do what was needed to halt the lobster’s decline.  Thus, the ASMFC’s summary of the 2020 American lobster stock assessment notes that

“The abundance threshold is calculated as the average of the three highest abundance years during the low abundance regime.  A stock abundance level below this threshold is considered significantly depleted and in danger of stock collapse.  This was the only reference point recommended for the [southern New England] stock due to its record low abundance and low likelihood of reaching this threshold in the near future.”

Managers’ concessions to the lobster industry, and their failure to take any meaningful action to stem the southern New England stock’s decline has thus put that stock on the path toward collapse.

While all that was going on, Gulf of Maine lobstermen were catching more lobster than ever before, benefitting from an ocean that, while far cooler than that off southern New England, was beginning to warm.

Now, however, there are signs that Gulf of Maine temperatures may be getting a little too high.  The ASMFC notes that

“since 2012, lobster settlement surveys throughout the [Gulf of Maine] have generally been below the time series averages in all areas.  These surveys, which measure trends in the abundance of juvenile lobsters, can be used to track populations and potentially forecast future landings.  Persistent low settlement could foreshadow declines in recruitment and landings.  In the most recent years of the time series, declines in recruitment indices have also been observed.”

That’s how things started in southern New England a couple of decades ago.  But this time the Management Board, apparently having learned the folly of inaction, decided to move quickly, and adopted Addendum XXVII to Amendment 3 to the Interstate Fishery Management Plan for American Lobster.

Addendum XXVII provides, in part, that the minimum size of Gulf of Maine lobster would increase, and the escape vent sizes in lobster traps used in the Gulf of Maine would also increase,

“based on an observed decline in recruit abundance indices of 35% from the reference level (equal to the three-year average from 2016-2018).”

That decline occurred much more quickly than anyone anticipated.  In October 2023, the Technical Committee determined that once 2022 data was included in the index time series, the recruit abundance index would fall by 39%, when compared to the reference level.  The minimum size would have to change much more quickly than anyone expected.

Because the trigger was tripped so soon, the Management Board decided to delay any change in the minimum size to January 1, 2025, but to lobstermen, who questioned the science that triggered the increased minimum size—a spokesman for the Maine Lobstermen’s Association called it “too precautionary”—and worried that smaller Canadian lobster, some caught right on the Maine/Canada border, would reduce their market share, that was still too soon.

Kristan Porter, president of the Maine Lobstermen’s Association, complained that

“I fish in an area called the gray zone in Downeast Maine.  We share the same area as Canada, so if I am going to have to throw lobsters back that they will still be able to keep, then it’s putting us on an uneven playing field with our neighbor.”

In response to such complaints, Rep. Golden introduced his bill (he will be up for election in November, after all), which would

“block federal funding from being used to implement, administer, or enforce ASMFC’s proposed gauge increase.”

It’s the perfect example of an ill-informed fisheries bill.  

First, it ignores the best available science on Gulf of Maine lobster recruitment, without having any countervailing science at all (as demonstrated in southern New England, fishermen’s assurances that the science is wrong can be very wrong).  If Rep. Golden was truly concerned about the science, he could have taken the path of his colleague, Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME), who successfully urged the Senate appropriators to set aside $2 million in funding

“for Gulf of Maine and Georges Bank American lobster research through Maine Sea Grant…with a focus on ‘stock resilience in the face of environmental changes…’”

and so be sure of his facts before taking legislative action that could harm the lobster—and so his constituents—in the long term.

But it’s also unclear how effective Rep. Golden’s bill would be even if it became law, since the ASMFC’s management actions are binding on the states, not the federal government, and Maine would be legally obligated to enforce the terms of Addendum XXVII or risk having its entire lobster fishery shut down as noncompliant, a result that would certainly be worse for the state’s lobstermen than an increase in the minimum size.

But that’s what happens when legislators get involved in what should be science-based fisheries issues. 

Not only don’t they understand the implications of the science but, too often, they misunderstand the implications of their own actions as well.