DESPERATION

As the 115^th Congress meets for its last few days in the so-called “lame duck” session, representatives of various special interest groups are flying into a flurry of last-minute activity, trying to get their pet pieces of legislation passed before key legislators must give up their seats, or at least their positions of power on important committees, and the bills have to be introduced anew when the new Congress takes over next year.

The lame duck is a strange time when good bills can become law in the final hours, as happened with the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Reauthorization Act of 2006, which led to the conservation-oriented fishery management system that we enjoy today.  It is a time when bad bills, hopefully, will finally die.

And it is a time when strange coalitions can suddenly form, and unlikely agreements are struck, in order to get a few bad bills, bills that are desperately sought by small but politically powerful interest, across the finish line and onto the books, despite their lack of merit.

In the world of fisheries legislation, we're now seeing that sort of last-minute push to get S. 1520, the Senate version of the Modernizing Recreational Fisheries Management Act of 2017—the so-called “Modern Fish Act”—passed and signed into law.

The aggressive, well-financed public relations campaign, staged by the recreational fishing and boatbuilding industries, to get S. 1520 passed has largely been a flop.  Despite all of the hype published in magazines and on websites catering to anglers and boaters, despite the op-eds written by industry leaders and the contributions made by industry PACs, Congressional support has been less than enthusiastic.  The bill only made it out of committee after being substantially amended, in a way that removed its worst provisions and added some conservation-friendly language. 

Even so, there is a big industry push to get that watered-down version of S. 1520 passed in the lame duck. 

Scott Deal, a major player in the boatbuilding industry, recently published an opinion piece in The Hill, where he noted that

“saltwater anglers annually support 440,000 American jobs, including thousands of manufacturing and supply jobs in non-coastal states, and pump $63.4 billion into the U.S. economy.”

While his comment seems to suggest that the current law must be doing pretty well, if saltwater angling can generate such economic benefits, Deal went on to complain that

“federal fisheries management problems facing anglers have been snowballing for decades.  Those problems are impediments to participating in sportfishing.  How can we engage the next generation of anglers when the federal rules unnecessarily stand in the way?”

It’s hard to understand exactly what problems have been “snowballing for decades,” given that, just a couple of decades ago, United States fish populations were pretty much on the ropes.  The Sustainable Fisheries Act of 1996, which required federal fishery managers to end overfishing and promptly rebuild overfished stocks, was a direct response to a shortage of fish that was doing substantial harm to both commercial and recreational fishermen.

Since that law was passed, 45 once-overfished stocks of fish have been fully rebuilt; only 15% of U.S. fish stocks remain overfished, which is an all-time low.  Thanks to Magnuson-Stevens, and federal fishery managers, saltwater anglers are enjoying a greater abundance of fish than they have seen in many decades. 

It’s hard to consider that a “problem” or an “impediment” to saltwater fishing.

Unfortunately, the old truism that “the more you have, the more you want” seems to apply to some segments of the angling and boatbuilding communities.  As fish stocks increase in abundance, more fish are caught by anglers, more anglers tend to gravitate toward the healthiest and most easily caught populations, and managers have to respond to the increased pressure by imposing more restrictive regulations, something that anglers don’t always understand, given the fact that there seems to be so many fish around.

Thus, people like Deal write about the need for “improved access for America’s anglers,” but use the term “access” in an unusual way:  Not to describe the need for more fishing piers, launching ramps or public shorelines that allow people to physically get to the fish, but instead as a euphemism for permitting some level of overfishing, and delaying the recovery of overfished stocks, so that anglers can bring more fish back to the dock.

In a similar vein, Deal’s question, “How can we engage the next generation of anglers when the federal rules unnecessarily stand in the way?” is uncomfortably reminiscent of a comment made by New Jersey fishing tackle wholesaler Nick Cicero, who complained that

“The law needs to recognize that in its current form, our tradition cannot be passed onto our children without [Magnuson-Stevens] taking away opportunity from the rest of the fishing community.”

It appears that what both Deal and Cicero are looking for are changes to current law that would base recreational harvest limits, at least in part, on the demands of anglers rather than on the biological needs of the fish populations.

Both Deal and Cicero seem to view the Modern Fish Act as that sort of law.  Cicero made his comments at a 2017 Congressional Sportsmen’s Foundation event supporting such legislation, but Deal just recently wrote that

“As Congress works to wrap up its legislative business before the holidays, I hope it will give anglers well-deserved acknowledgement by passing the Modern Fish Act to improve the way America’s fisheries are managed in federal waters.”

What he didn’t say, but undoubtedly knows, is that if the Modern Fish Act can’t make it through the current Congress, which isn’t particularly friendly to any sort of conservation effort, it is going to have a particularly hard time getting anywhere over the next couple of years, after a far more conservation-friendly House of Representatives is seated next January.

Thus, there is a certain desperation in the air, to get the legislation passed this year.

You can hear that desperation in one of the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership’s recent blog posts, which claims that the bill would

“benefit fishing access [and yes, that’s the same “more dead fish” sort of access that Deal was referring to]…while placing a higher priority on the needs of anglers.”

That TRCP blog also makes the assertion that                                  

“coastal economies deserve to see us build upon bipartisan support for [the Modern Fish Act], not head back to the drawing board in January.”

While it would always be a mistake to try to separate economic benefits from conservation issues, because good conservation tends, in the long run, to also end up being good business, it is curious—if also refreshingly honest—for the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership to couch its argument for the Modern Fish Act in economics, rather than the good of the resource.

But then, short-term economic gains is what the Modern Fish Act is all about.

That’s undoubtedly why its proponents are so desperate to get it passed this year, while economic gains, regardless of their impact on public resources, remains Congress’ top priority.

Because next year, that is all likely to change.

Jeff Angers is the president of the Center for Sportfishing Policy, the industry organization that is coordinating the efforts to get the Modern Fish Act passed before that change can occur.  As he notes in a recent edition of The Fishing Wire,

“The Modern Fish Act has been debated for nearly two years, heard before its respective committees eight times, passed the Senate Commerce Committee and passed the House within a broader Magnuson-Stevens Act reauthorization bill in July.  The recreational fishing community is urging Congress not to leave this progress behind.  We must get the Modern Fish Act across the finish line in the 115^th Congress.”

You can almost hear the desperation as you read those words.  For despite all of the debate and committee hearings, held in a favorable political environment, the Modern Fish Act is not yet law.

Angers, and the rest of the Center’s active members, know that they “must” get their bill passed “in the 115^th Congress,” because once the 116^th takes control that bill, at least in its current form, is undoubtedly toast.

That knowledge explains their desperation.

It also explains why, for the good of our fisheries, S. 1520 should not be passed this year.

GIVING BACK

I’ve been a recreational shark fisherman since the late 1970s. Over that time I and the folks who fish with me have caught a lot of sharks. We’ve caught blue sharks and sandbars, common threshers and duskies, shortfin makos and tigers. We’ve caught bizarre-looking hammerheads, and we’ve had whites that weighed more than a ton and, in at least one case, weighed more than the boat we were fishing from, pass close alongside.

We’ve cashed our share of tournament checks, and eaten our share of shark steaks.

Even so, though I’ve been a part of the fishery for more than forty years, I still look forward to the next trip. I still get excited when something unseen swims into the chum slick, picks up a bait and makes a reel scream.

Yet I got a special thrill when I received a text message a few weeks ago, which simply said “Our thresher shark was pinging around Montauk! And one of the sandbars we tagged too.”

It had been sent by a graduate student, a PhD candidate at Stony Brook University, who I had been helping catch sharks for his research, and for the research of some of his colleagues. I had given up a lot of my personal offshore fishing time, and most of the good weather windows, to help them out with their work. Getting that text made me feel far, far better than just catching another fish could have done.

It’s been said that anglers go through various stages over the course of their fishing lives, and maybe that explains why.

In the first stage, anglers just want to catch a fish. The kind of fish, or its size, doesn’t matter.

Once that’s out of the way, the next goal is usually to catch a lot of fish, and then to catch big ones.

Plenty of anglers stall at that point, and remain content to fill coolers, perhaps win a contest or two, and star in an occasional photo hung on some tackle shop’s wall. But others continue their evolution, and seek to catch more challenging species, or intentionally handicap themselves in order to catch the same species of fish in more challenging ways. Depending on where you are, you’ll find a lot of such folks chasing striped bass, permit or steelhead.

But there is one final stop on the anglers’ road, and that comes when a fisherman stops worrying about his or her own catch, and turns to helping others, whether those “others” are fishermen or the fish themselves.

When I found sharks for the researchers this season, something that I’ve managed to do on every trip we’ve taken so far, the fisherman in me still took an atavistic pride in the fact that we caught lots of fish, and that some were satisfyingly large. But I found more reason for pride in the fact that I could use skills that I’ve developed over many years to help researchers better assure that the fish I enjoyed in the past will still be around well into the future, when other anglers can enjoy them long after I’m gone.

 And I’m proud to be able to help a new generation of fisheries scientists advance their careers, so that they can expand our knowledge of shark biology, which will, in turn, hopefully lead to sharks being better managed than they are today.

The satisfaction I gain from that is far greater than anything I have ever gained from putting a fish on a tournament scale, or putting shark steaks in the broiler. Although, in their time, such things were fine, too.

Opportunities to give back to the resource are available to anglers on most of the coast.

Here in New York, for example, striped bass anglers can participate in a cooperative anglers’ program, in which they maintain logbooks recording details about their catches, and take scale samples from all striped bass caught. Such information helps New York meet its recreational data gathering obligations to the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission, and so contributes to better management of the species.

Offshore, there are a number of cooperative tagging programs that allow anglers to contribute to the scientific knowledge of various highly migratory species. One of oldest of those is the National Marine Fisheries Service’s Cooperative Shark Tagging Program, which dates back to 1962. I’ve been participating in that one since I first fished offshore. I participate in the Southeast Fisheries Science Center’s cooperative tuna and billfish tagging program, too. No matter where an offshore angler fishes, there is probably a local tagging program that could use his or her help.

Those who like to work with people as well as fish can also find ways to give back to the resource. Working with various conservation groups, including the Marine Fish Conservation Network, is certainly one way.

And sometimes, anglers discover that there is no existing organization willing to take on a local threat; in such cases, dedicated recreational fishermen can band together and enter the fight on their own.

Down in Florida, a few years ago, a group of anglers and local fishing guides formed Save the Tarpon to end what they believed was an abuse of the tarpon fishery in Boca Grande Pass. They ultimately defeated well-financed industry opponents and convinced the Florida Fish and Wildlife Commission to ban tarpon snagging around Boca Grande.

More recently, Florida anglers and charter boat captains created Captains for Clean Water. They’re striving to change current water policies that divert billions of gallons of nutrient-laden waters from Lake Okeechobee into two coastal rivers, causing devastating algae blooms. Their goal is to restore the natural course of such waters through the Everglades and into Florida Bay, which is losing its biological diversity due to a lack of fresh water inflow. The outcome of their battle will, in large part, determine the health of south Florida’s fisheries for a generation or more.

It is an extremely important fight. But to me, the best example of giving back was the late Bob Pond’s fight to restore the striped bass.

Pond designed the famous Atom line of fishing lures, and founded the Atom Manufacturing Company that built them, soon after the end of the Second World War. The plugs were a commercial success; for decades, they were among the “must-have” lures on the striper coast, and Pond earned a good dollar from his business. When the striped bass stock began to collapse in the 1970s, Pond didn’t stand by and do nothing. Nor did he, unlike so many others in the industry, try to milk as much as he could from the fishery for as long as it lasted, without a thought for the future.

Instead, he reinvested his earnings in the striped bass resource, taking money out of his own pocket to finance research into the decline. He set about marshalling anglers, scientists, legislators and fishery managers into a force that would ultimately help to restore the striped bass to health.

I had the privilege of meeting Pond during that time, when he stopped by a tackle shop where I worked during the summers of my college years. He gave me my first introduction to the world of fishery management, and enlisted me into the legion of anglers all along the coast who, thanks to him, became advocates for effective striped bass conservation.

Bob Pond’s advocacy for the striped bass came at a significant financial cost. He dedicated more time to the health of the striper than he did to his business, believing that was the right thing to do. As his grandson, Paul Trost, observed, “He felt that since he was helping get the fish out of the water [by making and selling lures], he should be helping to put [the fish] back in. He was adamant about protecting the [striper] species.”

That’s what “giving back” is about.

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This essay first appeared in “From the Waterfront,” the blog of the Marine Fish Conservation Network, which can be found at http://conservefish.org/blog/

WHAT THE MIDTERMS MIGHT MEAN FOR MAGNUSON-STEVENS

The long-awaited midterm elections are over.  Although final results are not in as I write this, it’s certain that the Democrats have taken control of the House, and that the Republicans have increased their control in the Senate.

The big question now is how that will impact federal fisheries management.

The immediate reaction might be that the shifting control of the House will be a good thing, and in the longer term, that’s probably true.  In the short term, though, it may goad those who want to weaken the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation Act, or at least to carve loopholes into the law to protect their particular fisheries, into a spurt of desperate activity, before their champions in the House lose their control of key committees, and much of their legislative clout.

The desperation is most likely to manifest itself in the actions of the various industry and anglers’ rights groups that are pushing the so-called “Modern Fish Act.”

It appears that those in the commercial fishing sector that are trying to weaken Magnuson-Stevens are resigning themselves to the fact that H.R. 200, the conservation-hostile Strengthening Fishing Communities and Increasing Flexibility in Fisheries Management Act, is not going to be taken up by the Senate this year.  Undercurrent News, a news service for the commercial fishing community, noted that

“the lame duck session between now and the end of the year is the bill’s best shot.  It needs a Senate companion, something something that was hoped to come from Senator Dan Sullivan, another Alaskan Republican, though his office has not said anything about the measure for some time…

“But did we mention that time is short?  Now that the 2018 election is over, Congress will likely resume in a week and work about 20-25 days before ending on or around December 20.  They’ll likely prioritize ahead of any fishing-related legislation the funding of the government after Dec. 7, passing a new farm bill and handling pending appointments.

“One Republican House staffer that talked to Undercurrent was skeptical.

“’The Senate has been on the fence on introducing their own version for the past year and a half,’ the staffer said, just days before the election.  ‘I don’t imagine they have a whole lot of appetite in moving HR 200 at this point in the year.’”

While that is probably true, Magnuson-Stevens supporters shouldn’t let down their guard.  Although it isn’t likely that an H.R. 200-like bill would be able to garner the needed 60 votes in the Senate, particularly in the limited time left in the lame-duck session, “unlikely” is very different from “impossible.”  Even the “Trojan Horse” scenario, in which H.R. 200 is conferenced with the Senate version of the Modern Fish Act, is now much less of a threat due to the limited time left in the session.  Again, “much less of a threat” isn’t “no threat at all,” but the odds are strongly against it happening.

On the other hand, don’t be surprised if the pressure to pass S. 1520, the Senate version of the Modern Fish Act, ramps up in the Senate, even if there is no longer much of a chance to successfully conference it with H.R. 200. 

Given the money, effort and prestige that the Center for Sportfishing Policy, as well as its constituent groups such as the American Sportfishing Association, National Marine Manufacturers Association and Coastal Conservation Association have expended in their efforts to get the Modern Fish Act passed, such organizations will be badly embarrassed if, despite having majority-party support in both houses of Congress for the past two years, they come up empty at the end of the session.  In such event, they would probably have to do quite a bit of explaining to disgruntled members who were encouraged to expend their own resources in support of the failed effort.

S. 1520, as it exists today, is a very different bill compared to the legislation originally introduced in 2017, thanks to bipartisan negotiations that occurred during the committee mark-up process.  It would not be at all surprising to see the bill modified even more, so that it becomes little more than symbolic legislation that will allow its proponents to be able to pass it in the House, as well as the Senate, and claim a victory—provided that identical legislation can be introduced and passed in the House—rather than exit the battle in abject defeat.

But even if that happens, don’t expect the fight over Magnuson-Stevens reauthorization to be over; it will certainly resume in the next session of Congress.  The good news is that, if it does the battle will be fought on ground that is substantially more favorable to conservation interests than the field on which it was fought over the past two years.

Then, the new majority party in the House will make a big difference.

Congressman Rob Bishop (R-Utah), who probably never saw a conservation law that he didn’t want to weaken or repeal (which still didn’t stop the Center for Sportfishing Policy from naming him “Conservationist of the Year” in 2016, something that speaks volumes about its views on conservation issues), will no longer chair the House Committee on Natural Resources.  Also, Rep. Don Young (R-Alaska) will not be the primary sponsor of whatever Magnuson-Stevens reauthorization bill is ultimately voted out of that committee.

While that doesn’t mean that the legislation called the “Strengthening Fishing Communities and Increasing Flexibility in Fisheries Management Act” is completely dead—that bill has more lives than a B-movie monster, and has been haunting the halls of Congress since former Congressman Doc Hastings (R-Washington) introduced it in 2014—it does mean that any such bill, if introduced, is going to be a minority effort that will likely lead an appropriately zombie-like existence, languishing in whatever twilight world serves as home to bills that are introduced, but never make it out of committee.

Speculation in the fishing industry is that Rajul Grijalva (D-Arizona) will take over the chair of the Natural Resources Committee.  Rep. Grijalva, who is currently the Ranking Member on the Natural Resources Committee, has a good record on fisheries issues, and believes that both parties in Congress should work together to craft a reauthorization bill, rather than trying to try to force a bill through the House on a party-line vote.

Many in the industry also believe that the House Magnuson-Stevens reauthorization bill will be written by Rep. Jared Huffman (D-California), who is currently the Ranking Member on the Natural Resources Subcommittee on Water, Power and Oceans.  Rep. Huffman has already presented a discussion draft of a Magnuson-Stevens reauthorization bill to the current session of Congress, which provides a clear and conservation-oriented blueprint for the future of federal fisheries law.  It is likely that he will introduce something similar in the next session of Congress.

However, there will be obstacles to any new effort to produce a Magnuson-Stevens reauthorization bill.

One will be the simple fact that Magnuson-Stevens is already a very good law.  While those seeking to weaken protections for federal fish stocks were eager to see the law changed, those who want to assure the long-term health of U.S. fish populations need do nothing right now; the current law is already working well.  Thus, in the House, there is no assurance that a majority reauthorization bill will be introduced quickly, once the new session begins.

Another obstacle will be the increase in majority seats in the Senate.

It is likely that if an H.R. 200-like bill was introduced in the Seanate, such bill would be dead on arrival, unable to win the 9 minority votes it would need to avoid a filibuster.  At the same time, a more conservation-oriented bill, which one might expect from the Senate, would have had little chance to pass in the House.  That situation may now be reversed, with hard-liners in the Senate majority, emboldened by wins in the midterms, possibly trying to add H.R. 200-like amendments to any Senate bill that ultimately emerges, which would be completely unacceptable in the House.

That sets the scene for a compromise bill, the sort of bipartisan compromise that has been a highlight of Magnuson-Stevens legislation for more than forty years.

Hopefully, there will be adults in both chambers of Congress who will be willing to sit down and talk, in good faith, with each other.

Maybe that won’t happen, and there will be stalemate.

But even stalemate would be OK.  Magnuson-Stevens remains a good law.  Given the events of the past couple of years, keeping it intact and unchanged would, in itself, be a win.

ELECTIONS HAVE CONSEQUENCES--FOR OUR FISHERIES

Just in case the stories on every news outlet, the robo-calls and the countless pieces of glossy junk mail haven’t tipped you off already, I’ll note that there is an election on Tuesday, when a host of local, state and federal officeholders will be seeking your help to keep or begin jobs in government service.

Naturally, as in any competition, there will be winners and losers.  Those titles don’t just apply to the candidates themselves, but to various constituent groups who will be impacted by each race’s outcome, and also to our public lands, waters and living natural resources which, depending on how things work out, will end up being either beneficiaries or victims of the electoral process.

There is little doubt that fish and other marine resources are seriously impacted by election results.  

The 2016 election, for example, opened the door to a new Secretary of Commerce who, for the first time since the Atlantic Coastal Fisheries Cooperative Management Act was passed in 1993, overrode an Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission’s finding of state noncompliance, and allowed the State of New Jersey to adopt summer flounder regulations that, in the unanimous view of the other affected states and their fisheries scientists, did not adequately restrain recreational harvest.

That decision has weakened the authority of the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission, and made it less willing to enforce controversial conservation measures, particularly in the case of Atlantic menhaden.

The same Secretary of Commerce decided to reopen the 2017 private-boat recreational red snapper fishery in the Gulf of Mexico, even though he knew that such action would “necessarily” result in overfishing, based on a belief that the action would

“benefit the long term recovery of the red snapper stock while maximizing the economic benefits from recreational fishing in the Gulf region.”

The Secretary of Commerce was willing to take such action even though, as Commerce Department emails reveal, he knew it was illegal, because he thought that provisions of the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act would prevent any court from ruling on the action until the extended season was nearly over.  While, as a practical matter, that was true with respect to the 2017 season, the action still led to litigation, and a negotiated settlement in which the Commerce Department agreed not to take such illegal action with respect to the red snapper fishery again.

That's the kind of settlement that government agencies make when they know that their only alternative is to lose the case outright.

On the other side of the country, in Bristol Bay, Alaska, the world’s largest native salmon run is threatened because Scott Pruitt, the now-disgraced former Adminsitrator of the Environmental Protection Agency,  held a perfunctory meeting with the chief executive officer of a mining company, at which he agreed to reverse the previous administration’s decision to block the so-called “Pebble Mine,” which threatens to permanently degrade the greater Bristol Bay ecosystem, including the rivers in which such salmon spawn.

Should that mine be built, one of the world's last, great runs of anadromous fish will probably fall victim to a polluted slurry of mine tailings and chemically-fouled water.

And in Washington, D.C., President Trump, whose presidency is unquestionably the biggest consequence of the 2016 election, issued an Executive Order that effectively recast the National Ocean Policy from one the emphasized interjurisdictional cooperation, conservation and the long-term stewardship of marine resources to one that subordinates those concepts to expedite fossil fuels extraction and other vecles of short-term economic gain.

Such a shift can only bode ill for fish stocks.

But it’s not only decisions at the top of the ballot that impact fish stocks.  Lower races can also have a real effect on fisheries policy.

Here in New York, the 2016 reelection of Congressman Lee Zeldin (R) allowed him to continue his ongoing assault on the striped bass stock.  As a result, there is the very real possibility that, for the first time since 1990, striped bass fishing may be allowed not only in the so-called Block Island Transit Zone, which includes the federal waters between Block Island and the mainland, but in all federal waters.  The result of such opening could only be a substantial increase in striped bass mortality, at a time when the striped bass population is already in questionable health.

Taking a broader view, the current makeup of the House of Representatives resulted in passage of H.R. 200, the so-called Strengthening Fishing Communities and Increasing Flexibility in Fisheries Management Act, on what was largely a party-line vote.  Rep. Zeldin was one of the 222 congressmen voting for that bill, as was my own congressman, Rep. Peter King (R-New York). 

I mention Rep. King’s name not to emphasize his vote on that particular bill, which was consistent with his record of hostility to conservation measures (he has an underwhelming score of 16 out of 100 on the League of Conservation Voters Scorecard) but to point out an additional bit of absurdity as it relates to constituent service. 

When you send Rep. King an email through his website, with respect to a particular issue, you’re asked “Would you like a response?”  I responded “Yes” when I sent the futile email asking him to oppose H.R. 200.  But the response I got wasn’t what I expected.  Instead of the usual “I’ll take your opinions into consideration when I vote on this issue” boilerplate, or maybe something a little more tailored and personal, I got a three-line email with the primary message

“I receive over a thousand phone calls, letters and e-mails every day.  While I make it a point to read every contact that comes through my office, I cannot always respond to each one but I will certainly do my best.”

In other words, “I asked if you wanted a response, and my response is that you’re not going to get one, but have a nice day.”

That’s the kind of answer you get from someone who is arrogantly certain that he will be reelected, regardless of how he treats the voting public.  A good argument could be made that folks who provide such answers are folks who have been in office too long.

 

There are more than a few of them out there...

And it’s not only federal elections that matter.

Consider the Atlantic menhaden.

It’s the only fish in the Commonwealth of Virginia that’s managed solely by the state legislature, and not by the Virginia Marine Resources Commission.  That’s important, because Virginia lands about 80% of all menhaden harvested on the East Coast, and 70% of Virginia’s catch is attributable to a single company, Omega Protein, which “reduces” such fish into various industrial products.

When the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission reduced the amount of menhaden that could be caught by Omega (or other companies’ so-called “reduction” vessels, although no other such companies currently exist on the East Coast) in Chesapeake Bay, Omega was vehemently opposed to such lowered “Bay cap.”  Although Virginia’s governor, and so the Marine Resources Commission,  was amenable to the lowered cap, the legislature, which has received about $400,000 in Omega donations over the past decade, failed to pass a bill authorizing the cut, although some legislators did think that it was the right thing to do.

It’s not hard to imagine that changing some of the pro-Omega voices in the next election might do the menhaden some good.

Unfortunately, Virginia’s legislators aren’t up for election this year, but those in a number of other states are, and anglers would be well-advised to hold their state-level representatives accountable for their actions on fisheries issues.

This year, because the quality of our air and water, the health of our natural resources and our very ability to access wild places will be very much affected by the outcome of the 2018 vote, one active group of sportsmen, the Backcountry Hunters & Anglers (excuse me for putting in a plug here, but they’re a good and dedicated group of people; I’ve been a member for a few years, and am extremely happy with what I see) initiated a “Vote Public Lands & Waters” campaign.  As they explain

“With public lands issues taking center stage in numerous races around the country, the votes of sportsmen and women represent an increasingly powerful voice.  Your vote is the single most powerful way to make sure your voice is heard—in Washington, D.C. and state legislatures across the country.  Like you, our members are hungry for information about the values of those who are seeking our votes.  And as for the candidates themselves?  We’re putting them on notice:  We hunt, and we fish, and we Vote Public Lands and Waters.”

That’s a good message.

Although I’m speaking here only for myself, and not on behalf of any organization, I have to observe as I write this that our bays, oceans and estuaries are public waters, too.

Thus, I suggest that anglers take a good look at the ballot, and choose candidates likely to keep our public waters, including our public salt waters, clean, accessible and filled with life.

Because elections have consequences, for you and for our fisheries, too.

It would be nice if the consequences of the 2018 vote were good ones.

CONSERVATION IS GOOD BUSINESS FOR THE ANGLING INDUSTRY

Back in 1990, I almost bought a tackle shop.

It was one of the more successful shops on the South Shore of Long Island, that catered to well-heeled blue-water anglers as well as to anglers who never left the bay.  There was little doubt that the shop could produce a six-figure income, which was not a small thing three decades ago, and things got serious enough that my accountant and theirs sat down for a talk.

By then, I was already sick of the suit-and-tie, commute-into-Manhattan lifestyle, tired of corporate politics and slimy salesmen who were always seeking to increase their commissions by trying to convince me to let them break the law—and complaining to the higher-ups every time I said “no.”  

So the idea of buying a shop a few miles from home, and within a hundred yards of the bay, was a very tempting thing.

But that was 1990, when the fluke (summer flounder)population was near its all-time low, and black sea bass were also scarce.  In the bay, winter flounder and blackfish were showing signs of distress.  On the plus side, striped bass were struggling back from their earlier collapse, but bluefish were declining, and weakfish weren’t doing well.  Offshore, the canyon tuna fishery was showing its first signs of wear.

The bottom line was that, looking reluctantly but dispassionately at what was going on, I didn’t see much room for growth.  More than anything else, a successful fishing business requires fish, and the trajectory of most of the stocks, offshore and inshore, didn’t look like anything I wanted to stake my future on.

I gritted my teeth and climbed back onto the trains.

Other people made a different decision, purchasing shops or for-hire boats.  Some went out of business, others held on long enough to get bailed out by fisheries managers who successfully rebuilt the striped bass stock and by a Congress that passed the Sustainable Fisheries Act of 1996, which led to a number of recreationally-important stocks returning to a very fishable abundance.

But the bottom line was that the 1990s saw the end of the lassiez faire angling industry.  Fish stocks had fallen too low for federal legislators to ignore.  With the passage of the Sustainable Fisheries Act, which set strict standards for federal fisheries managers, and the Atlantic Coastal Fisheries Cooperative Management Act, which empowered the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission to impose its fishery management plans on East Coast states, regulations became a fact of life for anyone hoping to make a living from recreational fishing.

Thus, the recreational fishing industry joined a host of other businesses, ranging from banks and insurance companies to dry cleaners and the corner gas station, that need to consider regulatory risk when making their business plans.

But unlike other businesses, the fishing industry has not yet come to terms with their regulatory reality. 

Twenty-five years after the Atlantic Coastal Fisheries Cooperative Management Act became law, and eighteen years after a federal appellate court decided Natural Resources Defense Council v. Daley, and set the minimum standards for federal fishery management actions, the recreational fishing industry is still striking out against the regulatory process, instead of taking the time to figure out how to successfully cooperate with regulators in order to thrive within it.  

We see that on the state level, when industry members still rail against scientifically-mandated size limits, bag limits and seasons, and we see it on the federal level when industry leaders stage an all-out public relations campaign in an effort to escape the mandates of the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act.

Such knee-jerk opposition to legally-mandated regulations has, thus far, blinded the industry to the benefit of well-crafted regulations, and of the need—and the opportunity—to plan ahead, using available information to predict what future regulations will look like, and to understand how business models will need to change to adapt to both the changing abundance of various fish species and the likely regulatory response.

Instead of looking forward, in an effort to adapt their businesses to future conditions, most of the angling industry is still looking backwards, and lamenting the fact that time always moves on.  

A little over a year and a half ago, in the spring of 2017, I was attending a NMFS event held in New Jersey, where the regional administrator and some agency staff reached out to the local angling community.  A lot of different issues were discussed, but one thing that stood out was a representative of the New Jersey for-hire community, who complained about today’s relatively restrictive regulations, and harped on the fact that, back in the 1970s (or maybe it was 1960s), unlike today, low-income folks could go out on a party boat and bring home enough fish to completely offset the price of their trip.

Maybe they could, although my father and I fished on party boats quite a bit back then, and for every time we could “pay for our trip” with the number of fish we brought home, there was at least one other time when that didn’t hold true. Memories of the “good old days” are often very selective…

But whatever happened back then, those days are gone.  

Physicists tell us that time only moves forward.  You can’t unbreak an egg.  The ‘70s will never come our way again.  

Instead of lamenting about how things have changed in the past 40 years, the fishing industry should be thinking about how their businesses will have to change in order to thrive in 2025—and 2050.         

An illustration from here in New York shows how that kind of future-oriented thinking never seems to work out. 

As early as 2014, there were signs that summer flounder were experiencing multiple years of below-average recruitment.  That was a clear sign that legal-sized fluke were going to be a lot less abundant, with the decline beginning that year (it takes about 4 years for a summer flounder to reach the 18-inch minimum size, and the poor recruitment began in 2010) and becoming more noticeable as each year wore on.  The poor recruitment also made it more likely that regulations would grow more restrictive as the biomass shrunk, so folks who owned for-hire boats and tackle shops that relied on the fluke fishery, looking at the recruitment numbers, should have anticipated both problems, and begun making alternative plans.

That’s how it works in other industries.  If interest rates rise, pushing mortgage payments up, construction companies, and those who supply the housing industry, start to tighten their belts and prepare for hard times.

In the fishing industry, it’s different.  

When, in 2016, the Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council decided that it had to reduce summer flounder harvest by 30 percent to prevent the stock from becoming overfished, the industry reacted almost as if they were caught by surprise.  At the January meeting of New York’s Marine Resource Advisory Council, one charter boat captain reportedly complained that

“he (and others) cannot run their business on the hopes of an evolving process—they are being regulated out of the fishery.  We need to see change NOW!”

An angler present at the meeting argued that spawning stock biomass had been increasing despite the supposedly poor recruitment, completely missing the fact that because spawning stock biomass is calculated in pounds (or metric tons) the increasing size of older fish in the population can keep SSB high for a few years, at the same time that poor recruitment is guaranteeing a sharp drop in SSB later on in the future.

At the same time that summer flounder recruitment was waning, 2011 saw a very strong black sea bass year class, which offered anglers, and the angling industry, a viable alternative species to fish for when summer flounder were scarce.  

Given that the poor summer flounder recruitment extended through at least 2016, meaning that fluke would be in increasingly short supply through at least 2019, it would have been logical for industry members to try to make the black sea bass supply last until fluke were again abundant.

But that didn’t happen either.  Instead, the industry members remained fixated on killing as many black sea bass as possible.  A summary of comments made by members of the Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council’s Summer Flounder, Scup and Black Sea Bass Advisory Panel in 2016 notes that

“Many advisors called for increased quotas for the commercial and recreational black sea bass fisheries.”

Thus, they were willing to take the risk that there could come a time when neither summer flounder nor black sea bass would be available in numbers sufficient to support a thriving recreational fishery, if the tradeoff was a bigger short-term kill.

That’s a strange approach from anyone trying to develop a sustainable business model. 

And it’s very different from the approach taken by other industries, which take great pains to assure that if any commodity (and, from an industry viewpoint, fish are very much commodities) is likely to become scarce, businesses who depend on such commodity take great pains to assure that they will be able to get what they need in the future.  

Thus, when oil prices are expected to rise, airlines might go out in the market today, and purchase contracts that guarantee that they’ll be able to buy enough fuel a year or more in the future.

True, it’s impossible to purchase a contract that guarantees that you will be able to catch fluke, or striped bass, or perhaps red snapper, three or four years in the future, but in the end, that’s what conservation is all about.

It’s about making a small down payment today—in the form of reduced current landings—to better assure that when you need fish in the future, they will be there.

So if the angling industry plans to be a significant economic presence ten, twenty or even fifty years from now, it should stop focusing on anglers bringing home coolers packed with fish caught during the current season, and instead focus on what it needs to do to better assure that there will be enough fish in  the water to pique anglers’ interest at least that far into the future.

Because if the industry doesn’t take care to plan for the future, the chances that, at some point, it won’t have a future are dismayingly high.