CODDLING THE CROOKS

Some interesting news came out of North Carolina last week.  The governor has signed a bill that will  make it easier for local poachers to get away with violating fisheries laws. 

More particularly, he signed a bill which prohibits North Carolina from entering into a joint enforcement agreement, pursuant to which the North Carolina Marine Patrol would be empowered to enforce federal fisheries laws in North Carolina waters, in return for the Marine Patrol receiving additional funding—perhaps as much as $600,000—from the feds for enhancement of the Marine Patrol’s law enforcement activities.

Such joint enforcement agreements have proven to be beneficial to both state and federal fisheries law enforcement agencies.  As a result, they have become very popular with state officials on every coast—so popular, in fact, that North Carolina is currently the only coastal state in the nation that does not have one in place.

If North Carolina had a joint enforcement agreement with the National Marine Fisheries Service, its Marine Patrol would be able to enter federal waters and enforce NMFS' regulations prohibiting striped bass fishing more than three miles from shore—a chronic problem off North Carolina.  A joint enforcement agreement would also make it easier for North Carolina to combat illegal harvest of tuna, grouper, dolphin, snapper and other species normally found outside of state waters.

Better fisheries enforcement in federal waters, along with more money that North Carolina Marine Patrol agents could use to better enforce laws within state waters, would seem to be a win-win situation that would benefit law-abiding fishermen in both the commercial and recreational sectors.

However, a sizeable majority of North Carolina’s state legislators decided this year that a joint enforcement agreement would not be in the best interests of North Carolina’s commercial fishermen.

Why did they feel that way?  

An excerpt from an article in Lumina News, a newspaper serving coastal North Carolina, which describes why one member of the state’s Marine Fisheries Commission opposes a joint enforcement agreement, is enlightening.

“Joseph Smith represents the commercial and recreational fishing industry on the commission.  He voted against the agreement.

“Smith owns and operates Atlantic Seafood, a wholesale distributor in Hampstead.  He said it has become harder to acquire local seafood despite more demand, which he attributes to increased regulation.

“’People don’t realize it’s not because there aren’t any fish.  There’s certain kinds of fish that they’ve got rules on that you should be able to catch,” Smith said during a June 30 phone interview.

“He is also worried that additional regulations could push the state’s commercial fishermen out of business.

“’Commercial fishermen are a service to the people of North Carolina.  It’s a hard, tough job and it’s a dangerous job.  They’re under-appreciated.  We need to be mindful and supportive of commercial fishermen because we all want North Carolina seafood,’ Smith said.”

The problem with Smith’s comments is that a joint enforcement agreement would not put a single new regulation in place.  So when he argues against the joint enforcement agreement because he believes that regulations make it more difficult to obtain local seafood, and says that “There’s certain kinds of fish that they’ve got rules on that you should be able to catch,” he's not merely opposing proposed new regulations. 

The only logical reason to oppose a joint enforcement agreement, based on Smith’s statements, is because you think that existing regulations are bad for commercial fishermen, you believe that “certain kinds of fish” shouldn’t be subject to such existing rules and you don’t want the state to be able to help NMFS enforce such rules.

Or, to put it another way, you want fishermen to be able to violate federal regulations without having to worry about being caught by North Carolina Marine Patrol agents.  

Poachers could breathe a lot easier knowing that no joint enforcement agreement is in place.

That rationale for opposing the joint enforcement agreement becomes is confirmed by comments made to Lumina News by ex-Marine Fisheries Commission member Bradley Styron, owner of Quality Seafood.

“Styron said the federal plan does not offer flexibility to tailor federal regulations to state needs.

“’That puts us in a quandary…What’s good for North Carolina is not necessarily good for Massachusetts, and what’s good for Rhode Island is not necessarily good for North Carolina,’ he said.”

Even without a joint enforcement agreement, neither North Carolina nor any other state has the power to “tailor federal regulations to state needs.”  The federal regulations are what they are, and must be enforced as written.

However, without a joint enforcement agreement, North Carolina not only hs no power to “tailor” federal regulations, but also has no power to enforce them at all.  So even if the same regulations apply to Massachusetts, North Carolina and Rhode Island fishermen, if North Carolina does not enter into a joint enforcement agreement with the feds, then its marine enforcement personnel, unlike their counterparts in Massachusetts, Rhode Island and every other coastal state, has no power to enforce those regulations, even if they are blatantly violated by a North Carolina fisherman.

And that seems to be just what the North Carolina Legislature, and the state’s governor, intends.

For here in New York, we’ve seen what can happen when the state and federal enforcement folks work together closely.  According to an article in Newsday,

“Long Island fishing ports have been a chief target of federal and state enforcement actions that found illegal fishing and underreporting of hundreds of thousands of pounds of [summer flounder]…

“In briefing documents…regulators reported that the ‘known illegal harvest’ of [summer flounder] exceeds 50 percent of New York’s annual quota allocation.  And ‘the illegal harvest estimate is likely to increase substantially as the investigation in that state continues to unfold,’ noting the 70 subpoenas served in mostly Long Island fishing ports, according to the reports.”

North Carolina’s governor and legislators are making it very clear that they don’t want the same sort of successful enforcement operations to take place down there.

Opponents of the joint enforcement agreement reportedly argued that

“most of the added enforcement was directed towards commercial fishing, fish houses and even transportation of commercial product.”

However, honest commercial fishermen, fish houses and fish transporters never had anything to worry about, because enforcement agents can’t take any action at all against folks who obey the law.

So when North Carolina Senator Bill Cook, one of the leading opponents of the joint enforcement agreement, said

“I think the federal (government) needs to get out of North Carolina…we need to protect our commercial fishing industry.  In 15 or 20 years, federal regulations will run them out of business,”

he wasn’t talking about protecting the honest guys, the commercial fishermen who play by the rules and go out every day trying to make an honest living.

He was taking care of the crooks, the fishermen who already violate federal rules that can’t currently be enforced by the North Carolina Marine Patrol.

He, his allies in the Legislature and the governor in Raleigh are all protecting the status quo, so that lawbreakers can continue to do their illegal business as usual, and the Marine Patrol will continue to be unable to stop them.

STATE MANAGEMENT FAILS SOUTHERN FLOUNDER

Summer flounder management gets a lot of publicity, and has for the last fifteen years, even though the management of that species has been very successful.  But there is another, closely related fish, the southern flounder, which gets far less publicity, although its management hasn’t been very successful at all.

Summer flounder are managed by the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS), acting pursuant to the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act (Magnuson-Stevens), while in federal waters; elsewhere, they are managed by the states, acting jointly through the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission (ASMFC).  Less than thirty years ago, summer flounder abundance was at the lowest level ever recorded, but the population has been rebuilt since then, and remains at healthy levels today.

Southern flounder are managed solely by the individual states where they swim, with no coordination between jurisdictions.  Magnuson-Stevens does not apply.  Thus, there is no mechanism to manage and rebuild southern flounder throughout its range, nor any means to legally assure that needed management measures are taken.  The population has been declining for over a decade, particularly in the waters of North Carolina.

North Carolina dominates the commercial southern flounder fishery.  According to NMFS’ commercial fisheries database, it was responsible for nearly 100% of commercial landings since 2004.  NMFS reports that recreational landings are not as concentrated.  North Carolina traditionally had the largest harvest, but Florida also has significant landings and, in three of the past five years, harvested more southern flounder than any other south Atlantic state.

Decreasing landings have led North  Carolina to consider measures to conserve and rebuild southern flounder in its waters.  In 2010, the state noted that

“North Carolina’s southern flounder stock is listed as depleted, based on the 2009 stock assessment that determined that the stock is still overfished and overfishing is still occurring.  An improvement in the spawning stock biomass and age class expansion occurred since the 2005 fishery management plan was implemented, but further harvest reductions are necessary to rebuild the stock.”

As a result of that assessment, North Carolina announced that

“[m]anagement measures to achieve a sustainable harvest of southern flounder by ending overfishing and rebuilding the spawning stock by 2015 are the most important issues to be addressed in the management plan amendment.”

However, amendments take a long time to put into place.  It is now 2015 and the stock has shown little if any improvement.  North Carolina commissioned a new stock assessment in 2014; however, that assessment failed peer review, largely because such a single-state assessment did not and could not take adequate account of flounder moving between North Carolina’s waters and those of states as far away as Florida.

Had the 2014 stock assessment survived the peer review process, it would have required substantial reductions in southern flounder harvest, and perhaps a complete closure of the fishery.  Even without the assessment to support the action, Dr. Louis Daniels, executive director of the North Carolina Division of Marine Fisheries, tried to move forward, saying

“We know we’ve got a problem.  Immature fish are being caught…The only way to improve spawning success and likelihood of better recruitment, and (expansion) is not to catch as many fish.  The only way to move forward is a reduction in harvest.”

Daniels referred the matter to the state’s Marine Fish Commission, which began preparing a “supplement” to North Carolina’s southern flounder management plan; in August, after receiving substantial public comment, the Commission was supposed to finalize the supplement and begin the rebuilding process.

That was when state politics intervened.

A number of state legislators with commercial fishing constituencies wrote a letter to Donald Van der Vaart, Secretary of the state’s Department of Environment and Natural Resources, which objected to the supplement procedure, arguing that a more detailed, and much more time-consuming, amendment process was required before the harvest reductions, and associated gear restrictions, could be implemented.  Van Der Vaart notified the Commission that he agreed with the legislators, and the southern flounder supplement was removed from the agenda of the Commission’s August meeting.

Of course, the legislators want the Commission to use the amendment process, rather than a supplement, in order to delay harvest cuts.  As the North Carolina Wildlife Federation noted in its comments supporting the supplement

“Because of the length of North Carolina’s regulatory process, we realize that an Amendment to the current Southern Flounder [Fishery Management Plan] could take as long as five years; longer given potential legal tactics by interest groups who oppose the Amendment outcome…”

Every day that fishermen can delay harvest reductions is another day that they can profit from overfishing the stock.  So in state-managed fisheries, where no law such as Magnuson-Stevens prohibits overfishing and sets a hard deadline for rebuilding overfished stocks, fishermen are encouraged to drag out the regulatory process for as long as possible, while enjoying the short-term economic benefits that ensue.

North Carolina is supposed to revisit the southern flounder issue later this month, but given the legislative opposition to meaningful action, and the apparent agency sympathy for the legislators’ position, the outlook for the flounder seems grim.

That would seemingly make southern flounder a good candidate for ASMFC action; after all, fish migrate between various states’ waters, and overfishing in North Carolina would presumably affect the availability of southern flounder elsewhere on the coast.

ASMFC’s South Atlantic State/Federal Management Board (Board) discussed southern flounder at its February meeting, where

“To address abundance and management concerns moving forward, the Board discussed ways to improve the exchange of data and cooperation between the South Atlantic states of Virginia to Florida to improve interstate management and move toward the development of a regional stock assessment.

However, there is no chance that the authority of ASMFC will be used to coerce North Carolina into taking serious management action, as

“The Board did not move forward with initiating a new ASMFC [Fishery Management Plan].”

Perhaps it’s not surprising that no action was taken, given the makeup of the Board.  For Tom Campbell, the executive producer and moderator of the political show NC Spin, reported that after the meeting, one of the legislators most opposed to the supplement to the southern flounder management plan, Representative Bob Steinburg, was

“caught on tape in the hallway saying the public’s opinion on fisheries issues doesn’t matter.  What matters, he asserted, was fairness to the commercial fishing industry.”

The same Representative Steinburg is North Carolina’s legislative appointee to ASMFC, where he serves with the governor’s appointee, W. Douglas Brady, who owned a commercial fishing business for over 25 years.

Other states have similarly interested persons sitting on the Board. 

And that’s pretty typical not just for ASMFC, but for state management generally, as people with economic interests in various fisheries, unconstrained by the stock rebuilding mandates of Magnuson-Stevens, control the management process.

Which may be why ASMFC hasn’t rebuilt even one stock in at least 20 years, while the states manage fish…like southern flounder.

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NOTE:  "State Management Fails Southern Flounder" first appeared in "From the Waterfront", the blog of the Marine Fish Conservation Network, which may be found at http://conservefish.org/blog/. 

KILLING BECAUSE YOU CAN

When I was a boy, nobody thought too much about killing fish.

If you caught a “keeper”—and back then, except for sub-16-inch striped bass, everything was—you kept it, cleaned it and tossed it into the freezer, and maybe you ate it or maybe you threw it out, freezer-burned,  when the icebox was cleaned in the spring.

We fished in the shallows back then, with occasional “deep sea” trips for cod.  But when my family traveled to coastal ports, we stood on the docks with the rest of the folks to watch the big fish—the bluefin, the sharks and, rarely, a marlin—hauled out of the boats and put up on the scales, after which they were trucked off to landfills or dumped back out at sea the following day (there was no market for bluefin back then).

As for “trash fish,” well, those you just killed as a sort of revenge for them taking your hook in the first place.  

Cunners—we called them “bergalls”—were bounced off the transom and fed to the gulls, because they were viewed as too bony for eating.  Out on the cod boats, the mates would break the backs of any dogfish that the fares might catch, and toss them back over the side crippled and unable to swim.  With ocean pout, you stomped on the spine right behind the head to be sure that never bothered anyone’s hunk of clam again…

Just writing those words makes me feel some revulsion, but back in the ‘60s, that’s how it was, and it took a long while to even think about change.

Quite honestly, I’m not sure how the change started.  Maybe the collapse of striped bass stocks in the late ‘70s started some folks thinking about curbing their kill.  It certainly had that effect on many who fished for stripers, although twenty years later plenty of bluefish were still being wasted back at the dock when the question “who wants a fish?” went unanswered.

Change came more quickly in the bays than it did offshore; when I started tournament fishing back in the ‘80s, there was always a dumpster or a parked garbage truck to accept entrants’ unwanted sharks and marlin.  At many tournaments today, the dumpster still stands, despite many anglers’ efforts to end such disgrace.  It tends to persist most stubbornly in big-money venues, where the sight of dead fish is thought to attract tourists, and a scale is thought to be needed to determine who wins cash awards—calcutta included—can handily break seven figures.

Even today, the idea of not killing fish is meeting resistance.  The New York Times reported that, when a new all-release shark tournament started up out in Montauk a few years ago

“It [was] enough to make some of the old fishermen here wonder what is happening to the world.  They lament that their friends are letting the environmentalists get to them, and predict that a shark contest without a winning carcass on the dock will not be viewed as a shark contest at all by the hundreds who still come for them.

“’People want to see sharks,’ Jack Passie, the captain of the charter boat Windy, which ties off at the Star Island Yacht Club, declared emphatically.”

The old-timers out at Montauk, and at some other ports, still feel that way.  It’s all about dead fish to them.  But among most folks, attitudes are changing.

A successful charter boat captain whom I speak with quite often, who operates out of one of the busiest recreational fishing ports on the coast, tells me that he sees a big split between generations.  The younger anglers are mostly out for a good time.  They want to catch fish, and hope for some good ones, but aren’t Hell-bent on killing all that they can.  On the other hand, those of my generation are much more likely to go out with the goal of filling the box.

I mention this now because it’s striped bass season, a time when salt-water anglers flood to the coast.  Some will have years of experience.  Others will be fairly new to the sport.  But all will know that the fall offers their best chance for fast action. 

Over the course of the season, a number of anglers, by accident or by design, are going to be in the right places at the right times, and catch more than their share of stripers.

The question is what happens next.

Will they take one fish for dinner and, over the course of the season, let the rest go?  Or will keepers be kept, like in the old days, whether they are eaten or not?

Much will depend on the angler and, on the for-hire boats, on the mates and the man at the wheel.

A lot of for-hire captains encourage customers to “limit out,” doing their best to convince them that keeping fish is their right and something that they ought to do.  And, let’s admit it, a part of us enjoys coming back into port and tossing fish on the dock, to the admiring cries of the tourists; the hunter deep in our souls still measures his worth by the meat brought back for the tribe.

Prior to this year, that was a big problem as anglers killed two fish apiece.  More than a few came back to the dock with a pair of big fish—30s and 40s, with the occasional 50-pounder thrown in—posed proudly for photos of their kill, and then realized that they not only had no use for the meat, but didn’t even have the coolers to take it home in good shape.

The new one-fish bag limit should help with that, but there will still be plenty of times when folks overdo and, over the course of a few trips, a few weeks or the rest of the season, kill more fish than they know what to do with, and end up wasting a part of their catch.

There are some don’t think that’s wrong.  I have argued with anglers, as recently as last summer, who believe that killing fish is their right, and it shouldn’t matter to me, or anyone else, whether they eat it, give it away or bury it in their back yard, so long as they don’t break the law.

I disagree.

Striped bass, and all fish for that matter, are a public resource, and that resource is diminished by each fish removed.

If folks take them to eat them, that’s fine.  It’s what the resource is for.

But people shouldn’t kill fish just because they can.  It’s certainly legal, but like killing a deer just for its antlers, it’s morally and ethically wrong.

ASMFC GETS DEFENSIVE ABOUT STRIPED BASS MANAGEMENT

I was looking through the August/September edition of Fisheries Focus, the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission’s bimonthly newsletter, when I came across a piece written by Robert Beal, ASMFC’s Executive Director.

I’ve known Robert Beal for quite a few years, in the way that anyone who does fisheries advocacy knows folks at the Commission.  He’s always tried to do the right thing for the fish he’s entrusted to manage, and his column usually highlights some new effort or management action.

But this time, his subject and tone caught me fully off-guard.  It could only be described as defensive.

He started right off talking about eating striped bass, and how

“For many recreational anglers, professional chefs and amateur cooks alike, Atlantic striped bass is the East Coast’s most sought after fish.  It is just as likely to be spotted at your neighborhood fish market as on the menu of the region’s top restaurants.”

And maybe that’s true or maybe it isn’t, but it seemed kind of strange when he started to criticize those “professional chefs” for deciding not to serve stripers, writing

“Recently, Atlantic striped bass management has come under criticism from a group of “celebrity” chefs.  Some have even gone so far as pledging not to serve wild Atlantic striped bass in their restaurants…

“As you may know, the United States imports up to 90% of its seafood every year.  By buying and eating locally caught seafood like Atlantic striped bass, you are choosing a sustainable, environmentally responsible product that supports American fishermen and fishing communities…It is important to know where your seafood comes from, and with Atlantic striped bass, you can be confident that it is harvested responsibly.”

That’s just weird on a number of levels.  

First, ASMFC’s job, and by extension its Executive Director’s job, is to manage, conserve and rebuild Atlantic coast fish stocks, not to promote the harvest, sale and consumption of any particular species.  

We never heard equivalent criticism of folks who opposed management measures that scientists told us were needed (with respect to southern New England lobster, perhaps, or American shad, northern shrimp or maybe tautog), but the guns came out firing when some chefs suggested precaution.

Perhaps if ASMFC spent more time worrying about restoring fish stocks, instead of killing, cooking and eating them, they might have restored a few more of those stocks since ’95, instead of, well, none…

And exactly what did the chefs do to earn ASMFC’s attention and wrath?

Well, it was pretty admirable, as described in a story in Forbes.

“Kerry Heffernan, the former executive chef of Eleven Madison Park and Southgate, and the current impresario of the new Manhattan restaurant, Grand Banks, is obsessed with fishing for striped bass.  But like countless recreational anglers up and down the East Coast, he’s noticed, with growing despondency, that fishing for stripers has grown worse and worse over the last few years.  His personal tipping point came, he says, during the 2014 iteration of the Manhattan Cup, a New York City inshore catch-and-release fishing tournament…’I caught a puny eighteen-inch striper and it won the tournament in the fly fishing division,' he says.  'Even the guys fishing with artificials had pitiful results.' He decided then that something had to be done…

“Heffernan decided to embark on a new campaign, something called #SaveOurStripers.  Leveraging his many years in the restaurant business…Heffernan cajoled nine of his fellow celebrity chefs to join him in making a pledge to take striped bass off of the menus in their respective restaurants…

“The SaveOurStripers campaign is, at once, both simple and powerful.  Taking stripers off the menu is a relatively easy task, but the implications of such a move are much grander.  Chefs, in general, have more visibility and power than ever before.  They have become celebrities and cultural tastemakers.  The campaign sends a strong message that they will no longer participate in the overharvest of fish…”

And when you look at it that way—which is the right way, I think—what the chefs did seems like something noble, and hardly worthy of criticism.

So what, exactly, is going on?

When you read Robert Beal’s column again, and combine it with the fact that ASMFC felt a need to announce on Twitter that

“Our Executive Director responds to criticisms of striped bass management,”

you might start to believe that ASMFC was feeling a bit defensive.  And you usually don’t get defensive unless you have a least a suspicion—or maybe a fear—that your critics might have a point.

After all, ASMFC says that

“Since the Atlantic states orchestrated the historic comeback of Atlantic striped bass beginning in 1984…”

(Which we must note, was three decades ago; it’s probably past time that the Commission stopped looking back at the past, when it once recovered a stock, and started looking, instead, to the future.)  

“…sustainable management has always been goal number one.”

That sounds good, but doesn’t clearly jibe with reality.  

Addendum IV to Amendment 6 ofthe Interstate Management Plan for Atlantic Striped Bass, adopted by the Commission late last October, adopted harvest cuts on the coast that were so small that they only had a 50% chance of reducing fishing mortality to the target level—and the reductions taken in Chesapeake Bay couldn’t even achieve that.  

A 50-50 chance of success—at best—truly sets a very low standard.  If you sustainability is your primary goal, you might not want a management plan that’s as likely to fail as succeed.

In federal fisheries management, a 50% chance of success is the absolute minimum allowed; anything else is patently illegal.  Federal plans frequently have 60%, 65% or even higher likelihoods of success in an effort to assure sustainability.  But at the Commission, a mere 50% of failure seems to be viewed as something to laud…

It should also be noted that Amendment 6 to the Interstate Fishery Management Plan for Atlantic Striped Bass contains management triggers which require action when any such trigger is tripped. 

One of those triggers was tripped when fishing mortality exceeded the target for two consecutive years, and spawning stock biomass dropped below target for at least one.  It was that trigger that ultimately led to last October’s harvest reduction.

However, there is another trigger, which reads

“If the Management Board determines that the female spawning stock biomass falls below the target for two consecutive years and the fishing mortality rate exceeds the target for either of those years, the Management Board must adjust the striped bass management program to rebuild the biomass to a level that is at or above the target within [ten years] [emphasis added]”

But “must” apparently means something different to ASMFC than it does to the rest of us, because this trigger was also tripped, but no action to rebuild the stock to target within the ten year deadline was even discussed.

If sustainable management was really “goal number one,” you might think that rebuilding stocks mattered.  Again, under the federal system, it is required, but at ASMFC…

Other claims made by ASMFC are equally subject to question.  

For example, there’s that tired old assurance that

“Atlantic striped bass are not overfished and are not experiencing overfishing.”

Today, that may not be true.

It was true, back in 2013, when the benchmark stock assessment and the Update of the Striped Bass Stock Assessment using Final 2012 Data were issued.  But the Update also noted that

“If the current fully-recruited [fishing mortality] (0.200) is maintained during 2013-2017, the probability of being below the [spawning stock biomass] reference point increases to 0.86 by 2015…If the current fully-recruited [fishing mortality] increases to F_threshold (0.219) and is maintained during 2013-2017, the probability of being below the [spawning stock biomass] reference point reaches 0.93 by 2015…If the fully-recruited [fishing mortality] decreases to the current F_target (0.180) and is maintained during 2013-2017, the probability of being below the [spawning stock biomass] reference point reaches 0.77 by 2015…”

We don’t know exactly what the fishing mortality was in 2013 and 2014, but we do know that it probably wasn’t reduced to 0.180 until the new harvest cuts went into effect on January 1 of this year.  Based on the stock assessment Update, at best, there is more than a 77% chance that the stock will be overfished—if it isn’t already—at some point this year. 

In fact, since National Marine Fisheries data shows that recreational harvest in 2013 and 2014 was 24 million and 23.5 million pounds, respectively, considerably higher than the 19.5 million pounds landed in 2012, and since the biomass was still declining during those years, fishing mortality was very probably above 2012’s 0.200, which would push the likelihood of the stock being overfished this year into 90%-plus territory.

Thus, if ASMFC was being perfectly forthright, it would not make the claim that “Atlantic striped bass are not overfished and are not experiencing overfishing.”  Instead, it would have admitted that

“The stock was not overfished, and was not experiencing overfishing, on December 31, 2012.  However, based on the best available science, it is much more likely than not that it is overfished today.”

We should get a little more clarity on that at the November ASMFC meeting, when the Striped Bass Technical Committee provides a report on the state of the fishery as of the end of 2014.  But even that won’t necessarily tell us whether the stock is overfished now.

Finally, we should also take issue with ASMFC’s claim that

“to reduce the downward trend and ensure the fishery remains sustainable, ASMFC initiated coastwide reductions in Atlantic striped bass harvest with the goal of harvest with a goal of protecting the strong 2011 year class and increasing [spawning stock biomass]…”

While that was certainly a stated intent in Addendum IV to Amendment 6 of the Interstate Fishery Management Plan for Atlantic Striped Bass, once again, the reality didn’t live up to the addendum’s aspirations. 

Addendum IV was intended to reduce striped bass harvest by 25%, and on the coast, it did just that.  However, in Chesapeake Bay, the required reduction is just 20.5%.  And Chesapeake Bay is the only place where the 2011 year class can be harvested before the fish get to be 28 inches long, a size that most won’t attain until 2017.

And why did ASMFC allow Chesapeake Bay to take a lower reduction?

Why, so they could kill more of the 2011s, of course.

As Rob O’Reilly, representing the State of Virginia, noted quite clearly at the October 2014 Management Board meeting when arguing against a one-year, 25% reduction for the Chesapeake Bay jurisdictions

“The principal reason for wanting to go to three years [to reduce fishing mortality to the target level, instead of the one year mandated by the management plan] is that we do have small fish in the bay…

“These small fish include what Tom O’Connell mentioned that in 2015 45 percent of the 2011 year class will be under 20 inches.  The small fish are not only part and parcel of commercial fisheries, but also of recreational fisheries.  There are certainly areas in Virginia where all they see are small fish…”

Virginia and the other Chesapeake jurisdictions didn’t get to phase in the 25% harvest reduction over the course of three years.  However, they didn’t get a 25% harvest reduction, either, but instead a smaller 20.5% cut.  

That smaller cut will allow them to kill more of what Rob O’Reilly described as “small fish”—the very members of the 2011 year class that ASMFC claims it is protecting.

So once more ASMFC’s story doesn’t ring true.  

Given so many holes in so many of their positions, it’s not surprising that ASMFC is sounding pretty defensive when it comes to striped bass.

On the other hand, Kerry Heffernan and the chefs aren’t defensive at all.  Having right on their side is an adequate shield.

PLAYING COD

Last year, we learned to our dismay that the Gulf of Maine cod stock was in even worse condition than previously believed, and had fallen to just 3 or 4 percent of the target level.

Fishermen, predictably, opposed measures needed to stop the collapse and rebuild the population.

Last week, we learned that the Georges Bank stock is probably in even worse shape, with the population at just 1 to 3 percent of the abundance target. 

Those numbers have yet to pass the peer review process, so there is always the chance that they will not be accepted.  They also came out late in the week, and fishermen haven’t yet had time to react.  However, assuming that the data holds up to scientific review, we can be pretty sure that New England fishermen will be gearing up for a fight that puts past management battles to shame.

For this could be the year when their decades of intransigent battle against needed harvest reductions finally puts them out of business.

They can deny their role in the cod’s final collapse.  They can blame the politicians, they can blame the conservation community and they can blame the ocean for getting warmer.  But there is one thing that, as businessmen, they can’t deny:

If they want to have a codfishing industry, they have to have codfish to sell.

And right now, the fish just don’t seem to be there.  

According to the draft 2015 Assessment Update Report, the total biomass of the Georges Bank stock is, at best, 5,853 metric tons.  When all of the likely errors in the calculation are considered, that biomass estimate is reduced by about two-thirds, to a mere 1,906 metric tons.

To put that number in context, National Marine Fisheries Service data show that Atlantic cod landings peaked in 1980, when fishermen landed over 53,000 metric tons of cod.  NMFS recreational landings data doesn’t include information for 1980, but in 1981, recreational landings were estimated at over 8,000 metric tons, so it’s probably safe to assume that they were about the same in 1980. 

That’s more than 61,000 metric tons of cod landed in just one year--ten times the best-case estimate for the entire Georges Bank stock, and more than 30 times current size of the stock under the worst-case, and more likely, scenario. 

Yes, a lot of those 1980 fish came from the Gulf of Maine, not Georges Bank, but even so, no one is going to catch many fish when the Georges Bank biomass is less than 2,000 metric tons.

Yet, fishermen still try.  They don’t have much desire to cut back their efforts.  In 2014, the total landings from the Georges Bank stock alone were estimated to be slightly in excess of 2,000 metric tons—very possibly more than the total biomass that remains in the ocean.

Furthermore, last June the New England Fishery Management Council voted to reopen about 5,000 square miles of Georges Bank to commercial cod fishing.  Industry spokesmen hailed the decision, saying things such as

“We think that this should have a positive impact on the future of the fishing industry, protecting valuable habitat while allowing for reasonable fishing opportunities.”

However, those areas were closed in the first place because they were seen as critical habitat, and in particular spawning habitat, for the cod.  A few fishermen on the Council understand their worth.  Reacting to the vote to reopen formerly closed areas, Council member Dave Preble, from Rhode Island, said

“This council has purposely ignored the science and produced an amendment that is indefensible.  If you want to have big fish, you have to feed and protect the small fish.”

The conservation community was even more emphatic about keeping the areas closed.  Gib Brogan, ho works on New England fisheries issues for Oceana, declared that

“The council put short-term profits ahead of the needs of depleted ground fish,”

while Peter Shelley of the Conservation Law Foundation said

“The council wrote off the future of critical fish habitat areas that needed additional, not future, protections.”

Now NMFS, and its regional administrator, John Bullard, hold the future of the Georges Bank cod fishery, and the Georges Bank cod stock itself, in its hands.

There is no more time to kick the can down the road, no room for a “compromise” that will keep fisheries open while the cod stock continues downhill.  With stock abundance, at best, just 3 percent of target, whatever margin of error that once may have existed is gone. 

The current level of fishing mortality, whether caused by fish landed or by dead discards, is far too high.  At best, it is nearly three times the overfishing threshold; accounting for all likely error, cod were removed from the stock at nearly ten times the permissible level.

Managers must finally accept the unpalatable truth that at current levels, it is probably not possible to allow any directed cod fishery and still reduce fishing mortality to just one-tenth of what it was in 2014.  

The tougher question for managers to decide—because it is so likely that the answer will be no—is whether it will be possible to allow ground-tending gear targeting other species in the Georges Bank region, and still keep fishing mortality for Georges Bank cod below the threshold.

Bycatch is real, and with the cod stock so badly overfished, it’s easy to imagine trawlers targeting haddock, redfish or flounder accidentally killing and dumping far too many cod.  

If NMFS is to fulfill its legal responsibility to prevent overfishing the Georges Bank stock, and have any hope of beginning that stock’s recovery, it may find itself not only rejecting the New England Council’s advice to open closed areas, but closing additional areas as well.

NMFS must realize that doing so could be the final nail in the coffin for much of the New England groundfishing fleet.  At the same time, failing to do so might well be the final nail in the coffin of Georges Bank cod.

NMFS may have to make the decision of whether the fleet, or the cod stock, is going to die.

If the time for that decision does come, NMFS should be guided by a simple reality.  If the fleet ultimately destroys the last of the Georges Bank cod, the fleet’s demise won’t trail the fish’s by very much time.

On the other hand, if the fleet must be sacrificed to protect the cod stock, there is a chance that with time and the stock’s recovery, both could thrive again.

IGNORING THE IGNORANT

The Desiderata was written in 1927, but didn’t become part of popular culture until 1971, when a reading of the prose poem was recorded and widely played on Top 40 radio shows.  One of its hints for living a well-lived life is to

“listen to others, even the dull and ignorant; they too have their story.”

But having been involved in fisheries management issues for three decades and more, I’ll take issue with that sugestion.  If we listened to the “dull and ignorant” comments made on fisheries issues, we’d be in real trouble, and have little time left for the truth.

I was reminded of that about a week ago.

A couple of times each month, I write something for the Marine Fish Conservation Network’s blog, “From the Waterfront.”  Last week, my subject was lobsters, the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission’s complete failure to follow scientific advice, and the resultant collapse of the southern New England lobster stock.

In the fisheries world, any mention of science will bring out the ignorant.  In droves.

So when the Network put my blog up on Facebook, I was hardly surprised to see someone respond

“This tactic is typical for the extreme environmental industry as a whole.  NO COMPROMISE is their mantra.  They want draconian laws and absolute power to inject policy over science.  The [Magnuson Stevens Act] has extreme issues with science requirements and it has become more and more obvious in recent years.  There is [sic] ZERO requirements for the “Science” used in fishery management under the MSA to be 1) Reliable, 2) Current, 3) Complete 4) Actual Non Computer Modeled Data.  I have sat thru many meeting with these paid mobsters trying to shut down fisheries just because it “Feels right”, despite science being proven wrong on the issue.  They also have managed to close healthy fisheries, despite known problems with the data, and once closed and the faulty science exposed…its all but impossible to reopen the fisheries under the current deficiencies in the MSA.  The MSA also ignores the life cycles in of various fish stocks in favor of an unscientific rigid and arbitrary rebuilding timeline.  When fishermen really concerned with the health of the stocks suggested making reliable science based data a MANDATE in the MSA…it was these very same extreme eNGOs that balked the loudest against such!... “

Apologies for the length of the quote, but I wanted to convey its full flavor. 

Now, to be fair, it’s not clear whether the writer was merely dull and ignorant, a condition that can be cured, in large part, by an extended exposure to knowledge, or whether he was instead dull and stupid, which would suggest a more innate and chronic condition.  But whichever it was, the passage was pretty typical of the rants that flood fisheries managers’ offices every time they try to do the right thing.

As the comment's writer got everything wrong, it might be interesting to start at the top and take a good look at just how far off-base and unreasonable opponents of Magnuson-Stevens can be.

Let’s start with his first premise, that conservationists (typically described as “extreme environmentalists” or, in this case, “the extreme environmental industry” for greater effect) are unwilling to compromise on fisheries issues. 

We’re talking about a collapsing lobster stock, and advice from numerous scientists who all thought that something between a 50% reduction in landings and a complete closure of the fishery was needed to provide any chance that such stock might recover.

In such circumstances, what would a compromise look like?  

Would it be a small reduction in harvest, something like the 10% that the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission ultimately imposed, an insignificant reduction that would still allow the stock to collapse, but just do so more slowly?  Or perhaps an agreement to shut down the fishery, but only after the last lobster was gone?

Then he tells us that the same conservationists seek the “absolute power to insert policy over science.” In the context of lobster, that’s pretty ironic, since every bit of the science called for an immediate reduction in harvest, but was trumped by a policy of keeping the fishery open for socio-economic reasons.

But maybe that’s because the writer doesn’t really understand what “science” is, or how it works. 

The law requires that fisheries decisions be based upon

“the best scientific information available.”

It doesn’t set standards for just how good “the best” has to be.  That is good, for knowledge is always evolving, and there is more information available for some species than there is for others.  

When the question arises in fisheries cases, courts rely on the decision in Building Industry Association of Superior California v. Norton, an Endangered Species Act matter where the court noted that an agency need only base its actions on

“the ‘best scientific…data available,’ not the best scientific data possible.”

That’s a reasonable standard, for if completely current, absolutely complete and error-free data, developed without the use of computer models, was required before regulations could be adopted—which seems to be what the comment’s writer is suggesting—no regulation would ever exist.

Which may be just what that writer intends.

For his objections only seem to apply to cases where managers reduce the fishermen’s kill.  He talks about fisheries being “shut down…despite [the] science being proven wrong,” and whines that “They also have managed to close healthy fisheries, despite known problems with the data.”

 But he never seems to express a worry that fisheries may be opened, or harvest increased, even if the best data available is neither current nor complete, and may have been generated by computer models. “Bad science” is apparently OK for that…

The same theme is repeated when he talks about “making reliable science-based data a MANDATE in the MSA.”  

Ignoring, for a minute, the fact that National Standard 2, already a part of Magnuson-Stevens, effectively does just that, I can only assume that he’s talking about the Fisheries Science Improvement Act of 2011, a bill that, if it had passed, would have made

“the catch limit mechanism for all fisheries inapplicable to any stock of fish…for which a peer reviewed stock survey and stock assessment have not been performed during the five-year period before enactment of [that Act] and for which the Secretary [of Commerce] determines overfishing is not occurring.

In other words, it would be OK for the Secretary of Commerce to determine that a stock is not being overfished, based on an old stock assessment, or to maintain a fishery for such stock even without an annual catch limit.  But if the National Marine Fisheries Service established a catch limit based on older data, or found that overfishing was occurring and restricted the harvest, well, then it was asking for trouble…

Apparently, the comment’s writer would set an impossibly high bar for managers attempting to conserve a species, but would require no data at all to justify fishermen’s kills.

When you think about it, that’s both ignorant and dumb.

And that’s why, when it comes to fisheries matters, the Desiderata got it wrong.  The stories of the dull and ignorant are not worth hearing, although they are too often told.

Data provides the only story worth hearing, along with the scientists who urge greater precaution when that data is slim.

For if we do that, yet err, the worst thing we’ll end up with is more fish than we planned for.

But if we take the advice scribed in ignorant comments, we could end up with no fish at all.