CATCH-AND-RELEASE IN THE 21ST CENTURY

Anglers have long recognized the virtue of releasing some or all of their catch.  In 1939, the late Lee Wulff, a noted writer, angler, and conservationist, observed that

“The fish you release is a gift to another angler and remember, it may have been someone’s similar gift to you.”

I was reminded of that yesterday, when a bulky brown envelope appeared in my mail.  I knew what it was without even looking at the return address:  A message from the National Marine Fisheries Service’s Cooperative Shark Tagging Program, notifying me that one of the sharks that I released had been recaptured.

I had just tagged some shortfin mako and sandbar sharks a couple of weeks earlier, and assumed that one of them had probably been quickly recaught.  But when I opened the package, it turned out that my gift to another offshore angler had been far nicer than I had originally thought.  A mako that I had tagged exactly four years ago, on August 15, 2017, when it weighed 50 pounds or so and was only a little over four feet long (fork length), was recaptured last June, when it had quadrupled in weight and reached an overall length of more than seven feet.

Although the other angler estimated the fish’s weight at 250 pounds, that was probably a little high—a seven-foot mako should typically weigh around 200—the length estimate was roughly what one would expect for a fish that was a little over 4 feet long when released, and was then at large for nearly 4 years.

I can only hope that the fact that both length and weight were estimated means that the angler did not kill the shark, but instead regifted it to another fisherman somewhere down the line.

More and more recreational shark fishermen are doing so, in part because the tournament craze and the desire to hang big fish on a scale has cooled down from its frenzied peak in the late 1900s, and in part, at least in the case of shortfin makos, because the fish’s steadily declining abundance has led to increasingly restrictive size limits.  

I haven’t killed a shark in over 20 years, and haven’t killed a mako since the late 1990s, but even if I had wanted to bring a fish home on that day in 2017, the 52-incher that I released four years ago didn’t quite measure up to the minimum size.

And by the time it was caught again last June, the minimum size for female makos had been increased to 83 inches; since the fish was estimated to measure 87 inches overall length when recaptured, its fork length probably again fell an inch or two short of the minimum size.

Thus, I hope that it’s still swimming around out there somewhere, so it can mature and, hopefully, help rebuild the stock, so that another angler might, perhaps, encounter it, and so that it can contribute to our knowledge of the species, thanks to an acoustic tag that was implanted by Stony Brook University researchers before it was released four years ago.

Many benefits accrue from catch and release fisheries.  Unfortunately, catch and release, at least in salt water, is increasingly coming under attack, in part because its popularity is seen as a threat to traditional catch-and-kill fishing, and in part because some anglers who appear to embrace catch-and-release angling do so in a thoughtless manner that causes many fish to die after they’re returned to the water.

The notion that catch-and-release anglers somehow cause harm to catch-and-kill fishermen has become a particularly prominent issue in the striped bass fishery, after the most recent benchmark stock assessment determined that 48% of all striped bass fishing mortality in 2017, the assessment’s terminal year, was attributable to recreational release mortality.

Since that assessment was released, we saw members of the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission’s Atlantic Striped Bass Management Board call recreational release mortality

“the single most important issue [facing striped bass managers] at this time,”

and opinine that

“addressing [that issue] (or reducing discards) is the most important action that can be taken going forward.”

A report issued by one striped bass work group convened by the Management Board noted that

“Many [work group] members pointed to the fact that recreational discards accounted for just under 50% of the fishing mortality as basis for the critical need to address this issue.  Others noted that, particularly in states with primarily catch and release fisheries, the [Management] Board is running out of ways to control removals in the fishery.”

That last comment strays quite far from the truth. as recreational striped bass landings remain robust, accounting for 42% of striped bass mortality in 2017.  Fishery managers still have the option of placing greater restrictions on such landings in order to offset whatever release mortality occurs.  In states which host “primarily catch and release fisheries,” such restrictions would seem to be a logical way to control removals, and very much in line with what has been done in other marine catch-and-release sport fisheries, including Florida tarpon, Florida snook, and Atlantic billfish, among others.

A chart provided to the Management Board at its August meeting illustrated the fact that high levels of catch-and-release are nothing new in the striped bass fishery.  Since the late 1980s, anglers have, on average, released about 90% of their catch.  Even though only 9% of those fish are expected to die after release, 9% of millions of bass turns out to be a very large number.  Yet high release rates, and the related release mortality, has been a characteristic of the fishery for a very long time.

Still, some members of the Management Board, mainly those who lived most of their lives in the past century rather than this one, and are still trying to cling to the management paradigms of their younger years, view catch-and-kill as the highest and best use of striped bass.  Perhaps the most strident of those is Tom Fote, the Governor’s Appointee from New Jersey, who raged at the May Management Board meeting that

“We can’t bury our heads in the sand over this issue.  We need to look at, how do we basically stop those huge numbers of fish being killed, which denies the public fish to take home to eat, because we’re catch and releasing them, and killing so many fish…”

Two months earlier, at another Management Board meeting called to address new regulations requiring the use of circle hooks when fishing for striped bass with bait, Fote opposed a requirement that anglers who catch striped bass on bait while using traditional J-hooks release such fish.  The proposed release requirement was meant to discourage anglers from trying to circumvent the circle hook rules by catching striped bass while supposedly targeting other species, but Fote would have none of that, saying

“I’ve got the Governor’s Surf Fishing Tournament coming up on May 23^rd.  Summer flounder season will be open at that time from the surf also.  I help people fishing in [sic] squid to catch summer flounder, particularly if they want to eat it.

“If they accidentally catch a striped bass, of the probably 600 kids that I have fishing, because it’s a family tournament.  I will have to make them release the fish, and I don’t want to really do that…a lot of kids catch their first striped bass as an incidental catch.”

It was a strange sort of argument.  After all, a lot of kids’ first striped bass are under the minimum size limit, but Fote hopefully wouldn’t argue that kids shouldn’t have to release short stripers.  Deputy Chief Kurt Blanchard, representing the ASMFC’s Law Enforcement Committee, made the perfect riposte to Fote's comment, saying

“There is no way that we would have the ability to enforce incidental take at that point…

“To allow for that one-time effort that we may have an incidental catch, [is] to throw everything else out the window…

“The other discussion about first time takes and things like that.  I really think that this is, I spoke to this on the [Law Enforcement] Committee.  I really think that this is our opportunity to talk to young folks, and others that may be new to the fisheries, to talk about what conservation means, and take the opportunity to highlight why you’re returning that fish, caught incidentally, back to the resource, and what the means for the future of the stock.  [emphasis added]”

It was an eloquent statement that did nothing to change Fote’s mind; educating children, and older folks, about conservation seemed, to him, a frivolous effort compared with the serious business of killing striped bass.  Thus, just a few minutes later, he tried a different tack, attempting to don the mantle of advocate for the tackle shops, saying

“one of the things that concerns me, where we didn’t put this in the Amendment [sic], a lot of people supported the circle hook thinking it wasn’t going to eliminate incidental catch.  I think of tackle store owners that basically cater to the surf fishermen, basically went ahead and started stocking circle hooks.

“But they also continued buying the mullet rigs.  Unless you’re a surf fisherman, you don’t know what I’m talking about.  A mullet rig is basically what you fish mullet [as bait] with.  It’s a split hook, you know it’s a two-prong hook that you put the mullet through, and you put this two-hook on.  You catch bluefish, you catch kingfish, you catch whatever is in the surf, but it does catch striped bass.

“You basically want to keep a fish, and it might be bluefish, striped bass.  It does away with the mullet rigs.  This is a big expense for tackle stores, because they basically stock up mullets for probably a year, so they have it in the spring, because they catch it in the fall.  Now they have the hooks all set, means thousands of them in each tackle store, and they are basically going to stop selling those rigs.”

It was a stretch, even for Fote, who apparently couldn’t conceive of someone fishing mullet--on a mullet rig--for bluefish and kingfish, and maybe for summer flounder and weakfish as well, and just releasing any striped bass that they caught.  But he managed to deliver his lines with a straight face, although they weren’t particularly convincing; only New Jersey voted to oppose the mandatory release of striped bass caught on J-hooks, although the North Carolina delegation couldn’t reach a decision and cast a null vote.

That doesn’t mean that other Management Board members don’t remain very concerned about release mortality, and the unfortunate truth is that some striped bass anglers are handing them ammunition to support their efforts to restrict the catch-and-release fishery.

Sadly, many such anglers don’t realize that they are doing harm. 

More than three decades ago, a new catchphrase entered the angling lexicon.  It was “CPR,” which stands for “catch, photograph, release.”  As explained in a 1989 article in Virginia’s Morning Call,

“It’s called CPR.  Not the life-saving cardiopulmonary resuscitation but a different form of life-saving—giving a fish a chance to swim free while, at the same time, taking it home on film.

“This form of CPR—catch, photograph and release—will hopefully catch on across the country.”

CPR didn’t originate in the striped bass fishery, but it quickly took root there.  A 2014 post on the blog Delaware Surf Fishing noted that

“CPR…Catch Photo, and Release [is a] grass roots [movement] to inspire anglers to only take what you need or release what you can to promote the rebuilding of the stocks.

“…let’s face it most people just want a picture of themselves of them [sic] holding that monster fish they just caught.  Keeping that large of a fish is not always a desirable thing for many anglers.”

It’s a nice idea, and most of the anglers have good intentions, but the unfortunate truth is that cameras kill.

Big striped bass are already stressed when an angler finally brings them to the boat or the beach.  There are ways that the stress can be minimized; anglers can employ single-hooked lures and tackle stout enough to beat the fish quickly, and can refrain from fishing when high water temperature and low salinity and/or dissolved oxygen create conditions that make a released fish less likely to survive.  But even under the best of conditions, such bass will be suffering from lactic acid buildup, and will be vulnerable to bad handling practices.

Under such circumstances, the worst thing that an angler can do is grab the bass by the jaw (or, even worse, by the gill plate), hold it vertically and stand there smiling while someone looks for, eventually finds, and finally starts using a camera (although yes, we’ve all done that a time or two in our lives).  Taking a bass out of the water at all lowers its chance of survival; keeping it out of the water for an extended photo session makes survival even less likely.

Thus, we see the organization Keep Fish Wet remind us that

“The Striped Bass Fishery Is in Our Hands,”

and advise,

“Whether you fish from a center console, the beach, a rocky shoreline, a skiff, or a downtown piece of city concrete, these principles will help to make sure that your catch is released safely.

·         Minimize Air Exposure.  10 seconds or less is best.

·         Eliminate Contact with Dry Surfaces.  Wet your hands before touching fish and avoid bringing them into boats.

·         Reduce Handling Time.  Release fish quickly and only revive fish that cannot swim on their own.”

It’s all good advice and, if practiced regularly, will go a long way to both reduce release mortality and take away arguments from those who want to limit catch-and-release in order to promote catch-and-kill.

Of course, there are some recreational fisheries that are essentially irredeemable, fisheries where catch-and-release is only a screen for glaringly excessive levels of fishing mortality.  In that respect, the mid-Atlantic’s surf fishery for protected shark species is particularly heinous.

It came about innocently enough; surf fishermen along much of the coast suffer from the summer doldrums; the decline of striped bass, bluefish, and weakfish populations have made what was always a relatively slow time even worse.  Thus, it’s understandable that, when anglers learned that they could catch big sharks and rays from they beach, many began to do so.

The problem is that, especially in the upper mid-Atlantic and southern New England, just about all of the sharks that such anglers catch are either sandbar sharks, sand tigers, or dusky sharks, fish deemed “prohibited species” that must be immediately released when caught and, in some states, aren’t even legal to target.  While responsible anglers try to release such sharks without causing appreciable harm, the surf zone is a stressful place; either the anglers have to wade out to release the sharks, and risk being injured by the fish, or they must drag the shark into the wash and even onto the sand, an effort that is inevitably harmful to the shark, damaging its spinal column (if the fish is dragged by the tail), forcing the weight of the entire fish to press down upon its internal organs (remember that sharks have no supporting skeletal structure), and taking its gills up out of the water.

The sharks’ survival is far from assured.

And that’s even before we consider the Bozo Factor.

There’s something about sharks that brings out the worst in people, and makes them want to sit on their backs, bend back their spines, make stupid gestures and say stupid things while their friends take videos of the fish’s teeth.  

In one of the more outrageous recent episodes, a couple of Bubbas from West Virginia crawled out of their cave and went down to Florida, where they caught a protected sand tiger shark and proceeded to open a beer can using the living shark’s teeth.  Like most fish-abusing idiots, they quickly posted their antics on social media, trying to impress…someone.

Their excuse was that

“It was just a bit of fun.”

Such behavior doesn’t do much for the public image of anglers, and does even less for the health of the fish.

It also provides those who would restrict catch-and-release angling, in order to promote catch-and-kill, ready-made arguments that help them make their point.

If sportfishing is to survive well into the 21^st Century, as human populations increase, the climate shifts, and fish populations come under more stress, catch-and-release angling is going to have to play an ever-larger role.

But if catch-and-release angling is going to remain a viable option in the public’s eye, anglers are going to have to take responsibility to assure that it’s done right, minimizing the stress on the fish, maximizing the chances of released fish’s survival, while also maximizing the likelihood that angling, itself, will survive.

As Gifford Pinchot, first head of the U.S. Forest Service, observed more than eighty years ago,

“We love the search for fish and the finding, the tense eagerness before the strike and the tenser excitement afterward; the long hard fight, searching the heart, testing the body and soul; and the supreme moment when the glorious creature, fresh risen from the depths of the sea, floats to your hand and then, the hook removed, sinks with a gently motion back from whence it came, to live and fight another day.”

Intentionally killing a fish is a poor anticlimax to such an experience; unintentionally killing, when such killing could be avoided, is both a tragedy and a disgrace.

 

 

 

 

 

BLUEFISH: WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE?

Last Monday, the Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council, along with the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission’s Bluefish Management Board, met to establish bluefish specifications for the 2022 and 2023 fishing years.

Bluefish management has experienced a number of recent changes.  Perhaps most notable was the adoption of the Bluefish Reallocation and Rebuilding Amendment, which was adopted by both the Council and Management Board last June, and forwarded to the National Marine Fisheries Service for implementation.  The new amendment, which NMFS is expected to approve, is intended to rebuild the bluefish stock within 7 years.  It also increased the recreational bluefish allocation from 83% to 86% of overall landings, and made a number of other, technical changes to the bluefish management process.

The Rebuilding Amendment will be reflected in the 2022 and 2023 specifications.

The specifications will also reflect the results of a new operational stock assessment, released earlier this year, which essentially confirmed the findings of the 2019 operational assessment:  The bluefish stock is overfished, but is not currently subject to overfishing.  However, while there is no question that the stock is overfished, the spawning stock biomass is estimated to be only about 5% below the biomass threshold, which suggests that rebuilding it back to target within 7 years should be doable—so long as managers stick to the science, and don’t seek every opportunity to increase short-term landings at the expense of long-term abundance.

They already did that in 2019 when, instead of following established practice and basing predicted 2020 landings on average landings in the three preceding years, instead based them only on landings in 2018, which were the lowest in a time series extending back 35 years.  

While that prevented 2020 regulations from being made more restrictive than the current 3-fish bag limit (5 on for-hire vessels), it also allowed anglers to exceed their 2020 catch limit.  Thus, the recreational sector found itself snagged on the second prong of a classic “you can pay me now or you can pay me later” dilemma; since bluefish are currently overfished, anglers’ 2020 overharvest must be deducted, on a pound-for-pound basis, from the 2022 recreational catch limit.

The recreational sector will be required to pay back 3.65 million pounds of bluefish in 2022.  Fortunately for anglers, the real-world impact of that payback won’t be severe; the combination of a slightly increased recreational allocation and a slightly increased bluefish population means that even after the payback is made, the recreational harvest limit will be 13.89 million pounds, and slightly above the actual 2020 landings.

Thus, if 2021 landings are similar to 2020 landings during the first 8 (or possibly 10, depending on when data for September and October becomes available) months of this year, it is very likely that recreational regulations will remain unchanged next season.

Right now, it looks as if the recreational harvest limit will then make a big jump, to 22.14 million pounds, in 2023; such an increase, if it occurs, will undoubtedly lead to increased bag limits.  However, anglers who want to take home more bluefish probably shouldn’t be buying new chest freezers just yet.

That’s because the Council and Management Board decided to carry 2020 regulations over into 2021; assuming both angler effort and bluefish availability also remain constant, that means that anglers will probably overfish again this season, and thus will have to pay back another 4 million or so pounds of bluefish in 2023.  That would knock the recreational harvest limit back to something around 18 million pounds, which is still a significant increase, and should still lead to higher bag limits, although such limits won’t be as high as they would be if overfishing doesn't occur in 2021.

So, based on what happened last Monday, are bluefish back on the path to renewed abundance and a rebuilt stock?

Maybe.

But maybe not.  Because there are many things playing out in the background that could impact the stock, for good or ill.  Just about all of them can be categorized as some form of either scientific or management uncertainty.

Although the 2015 benchmark stock assessment passed peer review, there were a number of issues that raised significant concerns.  After that assessment was released, the Mid-Atlantic Council’s Scientific and Statistical Committee stated that the most significant sources of scientific uncertainty related to the calculation of the overfishing limit and acceptable biological catch were,

“In order of importance:

·         Uncertainty in the stock recruitment relationship adds to uncertainty in appropriate reference points.

·         The uncertainty in MRIP sampling overall, which is the most influential data in the assessment.  Questions have been raised about the uncertainty in the historical MRFSS/MRIP estimates in general, and are particularly relevant here given the highly episodic nature of Bluefish catches in the recreational fisheries coast wide.

·         Approximately 60% of the population biomass is in the aggregated 6+ age group for which there is relatively little information.

·         The extent to which the MRIP index and MRIP catch are partially redundant in the assessment needs to be determined.

·         Commercial discards are assumed to be insignificant, which may not be the case.”

Six years have passed since the benchmark assessment was completed, and many of those issues remain outstanding; most were at least mentioned at last Monday’s meeting,

Other issues also give reason for pause. 

One is the apparent decline in bluefish catch per trip in the recreational fishery.

A bluefish trip is defined, for determining that value, as a trip that either targets bluefish, or on which a bluefish is caught.  Over the long term, anglers caught an average of 1.5 bluefish on each bluefish trip; in 2020, that number fell to about 1.0.  That would suggest lower abundance, leading to anglers encountering fewer bluefish, and provides cause for concern that the stock may be in even worse shape than the operational assessment suggests.

On the other hand, because a “bluefish trip” includes trips on which bluefish are caught, it could also reflect fewer anglers fishing in places and ways that are likely to yield bluefish bycatch, perhaps as a result of a decline in the abundance of striped bass, summer flounder, or other species.

Another, bigger issue is the difficulty biologists have in quantifying the magnitude of dead discards in the recreational fishery.

The bluefish fishery is somewhat unique, as it is one of the few major recreational fisheries that is not generally governed by a size limit (although some states, mainly in the South, have chosen to adopt one), and there is a big late summer/early fall fishery for young of the year “snapper” blues along much of the coast.  In addition, larger bluefish, particularly those feeding on menhaden, tend to have oilier, more strongly-flavored flesh than do smaller individuals that typically feed on sand eels, spearing, or similar “whitebait.”

As a result, the size of bluefish retained by anglers is strongly skewed to the smaller sizes; in 2019, the last year for which landings data was unaffected by COVID, just over 50% of the bluefish kept by anglers were between 11 and 14 inches long; another 23% of the fish kept fell into the 4- to 10-inch range.  Bluefish measuring 18 inches or more comprised only about 7.25% of the recreational harvest.

The big unknown is whether the bluefish that anglers release are the same size as the ones that they keep.  There is evidence that they may, in fact, be larger.  The 2015 stock assessment noted that

“Although they recruit to the fishery before they are fully mature, larger, older fish are considered unpalatable, reducing demand for those sizes in the commercial market and encouraging the release of those size classes in the recreational fishery.  [emphasis added]”

The assessment relied on information from four different sources, the American Littoral Society fish tagging program, and volunteer angler reporting programs in Connecticut, Rhode Island, and New Jersey, coming to the conclusion that

“The average size of the recreationally released bluefish is larger than the average size of retained fish, an uncommon pattern most likely due to bluefish’s unpalatability at larger sizes.  [emphasis added]”

Anyone who has participated in the recreational bluefish fishery, and has spent any time talking with bluefish anglers, recognizes the truth of that statement.

Yet when the Mid-Atlantic Council and Management Board addressed the discard issue in 2019, they came to a very different result.  If they used the Northeast Fisheries Science Center’s calculation of bluefish that died after release, they would have had to deduct 9.9 million pounds of dead discards from the recreational catch limit, leaving a recreational harvest limit of just 3.62 million pounds, which would have been a huge drop from the 2019 harvest limit of 11.62 million pounds, and would have required extremely restrictive management measures to adequately constrain recreational harvest.

But they found a way around such a big cut in landings, because there were some problems with the Science Center’s estimate of dead discards.  The data it was based on were limited to northeastern states, and didn’t necessarily reflect what went on further south; in addition, the data itself were relatively sparse, as relatively few anglers took part in any of the four programs from which it was derived.  NMFS’ Greater Atlantic Regional Fisheries Office did not use the Science Center data, and instead just assumed that the size of the bluefish released was the same as the bluefish retained, an assumption that was almost certainly false.

Still, if the Council and Management Board adopted the GARFO assumption, rather than the Science Center’s data, they would only be required to deduct 4.03 million pounds for dead discards, which would allow them to set a recreational harvest limit of 9.48 million pounds, a limit more than 250% of the limit that resulted from the Science Center’s data.  Following their well-established principle that “the best available science is whatever lets us kill the most fish,” recreational representatives on both the Council and Management Board strongly supported the adoption of the GARFO assumption, which has been used to calculate the recreational harvest limit ever since.

The difference between the GARFO assumption and the Science Center data continues to inject substantial uncertainty into bluefish management; in 2019, GARFO assumed that recreational release mortality was a mere 4.88 million pounds, compared to the Science Center's calculation of 15.41 million pounds.  In 2020, GARFO assumed release mortality to be slightly less, 4.19 million pounds while, probably due to COVID-limited data, the Science Center did not calculate such removals.

To get some idea of how the Science Center’s approach could impact recreational landings, assume that the Science Center’s 2020 calculation would have the same relationship to the GARFO assumption as it had in 2019, when such calculated mortality was about 3.16 times as large as GARFO assumption.  Multiplying the assumed 4.19 million pounds of dead discards by such amount would yield calculated dead discards of about 13.23 million pounds.  If you subtracted that amount, plus the payback for the 2020 overage, from the 2021 recreational catch limit, the 2021 recreational harvest limit would be 0.66 million pounds.

Instead of seeing its harvest limit increase, as is currently the case, there probably would have been no recreational bluefish landings permitted in 2022.

So how dead discards are calculated makes a very big difference.  If the GARFO assumptions are wrong, and the Science Center calculations reflect reality, anglers will inadvertently overharvest by about 9 million pounds next year.  While such overharvest would have no immediate regulatory impact, because it is currently authorized by the Council and Management Board, it certainly won’t help the already overfished stock to rebuild by its 2028 deadline.

It might not allow it to rebuild at all.

Thus, it would make sense to build some provision for management uncertainty into the 2022 specifications, but that’s not going to happen.

The Bluefish Monitoring Committee is aware of the issue, and intends to investigate ways to quantify the uncertainty and perhaps account for it in future specifications.  But it chose not to build any sort of buffer into its 2021 calculations.

The Monitoring Committee argued that, because it doesn’t know how to quantify the uncertainty, any buffer that it might propose would be arbitrary, and not based on solid scientific calculations.  That position was supported by Dr. Paul Rago of the Northeast Fisheries Science Center, who noted that it isn’t currently possible to scientifically determine the magnitude of the management uncertainty.

That is undoubtedly true.

At the same time, while we should all want management parameters to be calculated in a statistically rigorous manner, with a defensible point estimate, surrounded by a confidence interval, that can survive peer review, sometimes that’s just not possible.

And when you get right down to it, failing to create a buffer for management uncertainty—that is, proceeding as if the magnitude of such uncertainty is zero—is at least as arbitrary as creating a recreational harvest target that is ten or twenty percent below the recreational harvest limit.

Setting the level of management uncertainty isn't foregoing any action; it is affirmatively selecting zero as the most appropriate value.

And, arguably, setting the level of management uncertainty at zero, when the Monitoring Committee acknowledges that such uncertainty exists, if at a yet-unquantified level, is more arbitrary than establishing a buffer at some roughly estimated value, because the value of zero is known to be fals, while some other buffer might, at least, come somewhat closer to the real level of management uncertainty.

Right now, it is extremely likely that, because of management uncertainty, the current specifications will lead to higher than contemplated fishing mortality.  Just how much higher is anyone’s guess.

Fortunately, that situation may only last for a couple of years. 

A benchmark, or “research track,” bluefish stock assessment is scheduled for 2022.  Such assessment will allow scientists to consider new population models, or perhaps revise the one currently used.  It will also offer the opportunity for them to look into sources of uncertainty, including things such as the true level of recreational discard mortality, new ways to accurately survey older and larger fish, and perhaps even a way to survey the number of bluefish found farther offshore, and determine whether they are a part of a permanent offshore population, or merely transit between inshore and offshore waters over the course of the year.

Right now, it’s impossible to predict whether the new stock assessment will find bluefish to be in better or worse shape than currently believed.

Perhaps recreational discard mortality really is close to the GARFO assumption, and the stock is well on the road to recovery.  Perhaps it is closer to the Science Center calculation, and management measures must be made far more restrictive in response.  Perhaps, when all’s said and done, managers still won’t be sure of its magnitude.

In the same way, new surveys may show that there are plenty of bluefish offshore, and that the stock is not overfished.  They may also show that the number of bluefish age 6 and older is far less than previously thought, and that the stock is in real peril.

Again, we won’t know until the assessment is done.  And it’s possible that we won’t even know then, because given the amount of uncertainty biologists are dealing with, it’s always possible, if unlikely, that the new assessment won’t pass peer review.

So where do we, and the bluefish, go from here?

In the short term, into a rebuilding program that may, or may not, rebuild the stock within seven years.  It’s success will depend, in part, on the bluefish—will recruitment, for example, be robust enough to support rebuilding—and in part on the Council and Management Board, which must make hard decisions needed to rebuild the stock, and not the easy ones that might maximize landings for a short while, but lead to decreased future abundance.

Right now, there are reasons to be optimistic, and reasons to be concerned.

And most of all, there are reasons to keep watching the process, to make sure that no one allows itn to go astray.

 

 

CONSERVATION EQUIVALENCY DOESN'T WORK FOR STRIPED BASS

The Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission has long been invested in the concept of conservation equivalency.  Back in 2016, it approved an updated Conservation Equivalency:  Policy and Technical Guidance Document, which states

“Conservation equivalency allows states/jurisdictions (hereafter states) flexibility to develop alternative regulations that address specific state or regional differences while still achieving the goals and objectives of Interstate Fishery Management Plans (FMPs).  Allowing states to tailor their management programs in this way avoids the difficult task of developing one-size-fits-all management measures while still achieving equivalent conservation benefits to the resource.”

It sounds good on paper.  But in practice, conservation equivalency has had very mixed results.

Conservation equivalency’s greatest success is undoubtedly represented by Addendum XI to the Summer Flounder, Scup, and Black Sea Bass Fishery Management Plan, which was adopted in 2004 and brought real stability to the recreational scup fishery.  Prior to Addendum XI, all states between Massachusetts and North Carolina were governed by the same set of regulations, even though scup are primarily a northern species, and just four states—Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, and New York—were responsible for about 97% of all recreational landings.

That was clearly unfair to the states south of New York, which didn’t need to be bound by such restrictive regulations.  There were also problems with data from the Marine Recreational Fishing Statistics Survey, which was then used to estimate anglers’ effort, catch, and landings, and saw such estimates oscillate wildly from year to year.

In response to those issues, the ASMFC’s Summer Flounder, Scup, and Black Sea Bass Management Board adopted Addendum XI, which created a single northern region containing Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, and New York, gave those states a single regional recreational quota, and pooled their catch, landings, and effort data; Addendum XI also required such states to adopt regulations that included the same bag limit, size limit, and season length.  States farther south, which accounted for a very small share of the overall landings, were allowed to fish under more liberal, default regulations.

By taking such action, the Summer Flounder, Scup, and Black Sea Bass Management Board improved the accuracy of the recreational data for the four northeastern states, for the old MRFSS data, like that produced by the current Marine Recreational Information Program, becomes more accurate when the number of anglers surveyed increases.

The result was what is undoubtedly the ASMFC’s most stable and successful recreational management plan; while scup limits have changed in response to the changing size of the scup population, they have avoided the sort of annual amendments, and sometimes seemingly irrational changes, that have often plagued the summer flounder and black sea bass fisheries over the past couple of decades.

For a while, it looked like the Summer Flounder, Scup, and Black Sea Bass Management Board was going to score another win with Addendum XXV to the Summer Flounder, Scup, and Black Sea Bass Fishery Management Plan, which established a regional framework for summer flounder management, most significantly placing New Jersey, New York, and Connecticut into a single region with a single bag limit, size limit, and season length, and so ended a big regulatory disparity, and constantly shifting regulations, in that tri-state area.

Addendum XXV stabilized the tri-state fishery and worked very well for a few years, but in 2016, by adopting Addendum XXVII to the Summer Flounder, Scup, and Black Sea Bass Management Plan, the Summer Flounder, Scup, and Black Sea Bass Management Board allowed New Jersey to weasel out of the tri-state region, and become a region of its own, solely because of New Jersey's claimed need to adopt a smaller size limit for anglers in Delaware Bay.

Addendum XXVII set the table for New Jersey to go further in 2017, refuse to conform to the New York/Connecticut regulations for its fishery outside of Delaware Bay, and appeal its case to the new Secretary of Commerce, Wilbur Ross; since then New Jersey Governor Chris Christie had been an early ally of the incoming Trump Administration, New Jersey’s decision to go out of compliance with the ASMFC’s management plan was quickly blessed by the Commerce Department, which didn’t even bother consulting with the Northeast Fisheries Science Center or NMFS’ administrator of the Greater Atlantic Regional Fisheries Office before making what was, at its heart, an arbitrary political decision that again introduced chaos into the summer flounder management program.

At least Addendum XXV worked for a few years, and would have kept on working if only New Jersey had decided to act in good faith.

But bad faith and conservation equivalency often go hand in hand; a lack of good faith is part of the reason that conservation equivalency has never worked, and will never work, in the striped bass fishery.  And striped bass biology makes acting in bad faith particularly easy.

To understand why that is so, first consider summer flounder.  Like any fish, it experiences highs and lows in recruitment.  Average recruitment is about 53 million fish per year, although over the past decade recruitment has ranged as low as 35 million fish and as high as 61 million fish or, to look at it another way, recruitment in any given year has been between 34% below average to 15% above average.  

That’s a relatively narrow range, particularly given that in adjacent years, the difference in recruitment is typically smaller.  Thus, managers can base the upcoming year’s regulations on the previous year’s landings and have reasonable confidence that, while no two years will be exactly the same, conditions will probably be similar enough that the regulations will come reasonably close to the mark.

That’s not the case with striped bass, which can see recruitment swing wildly from year to year.  If we look at the Maryland juvenile abundance index for striped bass, which is the oldest and probably the most reliable indicator of future striped bass abundance, over the past 10 years, we can see how this plays out.

The long-term average for the Maryland JAI is 11.6.  But over the last decade, we saw that index swing from 34.58, or 198% above average, to 0.89, or more than 94% below average, between 2011 and 2020.  Moreover, the decadal high occurred in 2011, and was immediately followed by the decadal low (which was also the lowest annual value ever returned in the 60-plus year history of the Maryland JAI) in 2012.

Given that the effectiveness of regulations is highly dependent on the availability of fish, and so the number of bass recruiting into the fishery, each year, and on the number of angler trips made in pursuit of those fish (with increased abundance normally leading to sharply increased angling effort), it’s pretty clear that basing future conservation equivalent regulations on past effort and landings patterns, in a fishery with such irregular recruitment, quickly becomes a fool’s errand.

Or, it becomes an opportunity for those who, understanding the system’s serious flaws, choose to use those flaws to game the system and escape some of the burden of striped bass conservation.

Consider the recent history of Maryland’s regulations.

Addendum IV to Amendment 6 to the Atlantic Striped Bass Interstate Fishery Management Plan, adopted in 2014, required Chesapeake Bay states to achieve a 20.5% reduction in striped bass fishing mortality compared to 2012.  The reductions were originally to be based on fishing mortality in 2013, as was the case with the coastal states, but the Chesapeake jurisdictions requested, and the Atlantic Striped Bass Management Board agreed, that 2012 be used for the Bay.

In 2012, Maryland anglers were allowed to keep 18-inch striped bass, and data from the National Marine Fisheries Service shows that most of the bass landed by Maryland anglers that year were between 19 and 21 inches long, meaning that they came from the very weak 2008 (Maryland JAI=3.20) and well below-average 2009 (Maryland JAI=7.87) year classes.

Thus, on paper, the conservation-equivalent regulations for Maryland, based on 2012 recreational fishing mortality, didn’t have to be particularly restrictive in order to achieve the required 20.5% reduction.  A two-inch increase in the size limit, accompanied by a narrow 36 to 40-inch no-kill slot during the spring “trophy” season, appeared to be sufficient to get the job done.

However, what was happening on the water was very different from what was happening on paper.  Everyone recognized that the 2011 year class (Maryland JAI=34.58) was very large (one of the stated goals of Addendum IV was to conserve the 2011 year class in hopes of rebuilding the spawning stock), yet in constructing its supposedly conservation equivalent regulations, Maryland did not make allowances for either the influx of fish or the increased angling effort that such influx would inspire.

Thus, in 2015, the first year that the Addendum IV regulations were in effect, the number of directed striped bass trips in Maryland’s portion of Chesapeake Bay jumped from about 536,000 to nearly 845,000, a 58% increase, and striped bass fishing mortality in Maryland’s part of the bay rose by 54%, instead of being reduced by Amendment IV’s required 20.5%.

At the October 2016 Atlantic Striped Bass Management Board meeting, Maryland was unrepentant about its overage, with fishery manager Michael Luisi stating

“I wanted to thank the Technical Committee for making sure to stress the point that the emergence of the 2011 year class was kind of a game changer.  We were at the point when we were implementing these new measures, where we were seeing just an enormous biomass growth in the Bay, to the point where it was exploitable.  I have no doubt in my mind, as I know the Technical Committee evaluated whether or not harvest reductions happened, by increasing our minimum size.  I just want to read, just to strengthen the comment on the last bullet that’s on the screen right there.

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

Looking at that statement, which essentially says that “No, Maryland didn’t make its agreed-upon reduction, but you should be happy because we would have caught even more fish should are regulations have remained status quo,” it’s easy to suspect that Maryland didn’t adopt its supposedly conservation equivalent regulations in good faith, but did so as a convenient fiction, which made it appear that the state at least tried to comply with Addendum IV, when it knew all along that it was setting up Maryland anglers for wholesale harvest of the “exploitable” 2011 year class as soon as they reached the 20-inch minimum size.

The sad truth is that such behavior, which gives a wink and a nod to the language of a management document, while adopting regulations that are extremely likely to fail, is not in any way discouraged by the Atlantic Striped Bass Management Board.  Maryland faced no sanctions whatsoever for failing to meet the 20.5% reduction required by Amendment IV. 

Instead, it was rewarded, not only because its anglers were allowed to continue to land excessive numbers of striped bass through 2019, but also because, when Addendum VI to Amendment 6 to the Atlantic Striped Bass Interstate Fishery Management Plan:  18% Reduction in Removals & Circle Hook Measures went into effect at the beginning of 2020, Maryland’s required 18% reduction was calculated on its actual catch in 2017, nearly 1,100,000 striped bass, and not on the approximately 572,000 fish that its anglers would have landed in that year, had Maryland lived up to its obligations under Addendum IV.

The benefits of artfully composed conservation equivalent proposals thus continue to pay dividends that extend through time, to the detriment of states that try to play by the rules and adopt coastwide regulations, rather than seek undue advantage for themselves. 

Given that truth, it’s not surprising that in the recent round of public comments on the proposed Amendment 7 to the striped bass management plan, stakeholders roundly criticized the use of conservation equivalency to manage striped bass, saying things such as

“While we are not unconditionally opposed to the notion of conservation equivalency…we also believe that CE can be abused by individual states in a way that jeopardizes the effectiveness of coastwide conservation efforts,”

“Unfortunately, poorly planned conservation equivalency proposals have all too often resulted in less than intended conservation benefit with few consequences for the managers who developed them…The parsing of coastwide data into state- and Wave-specific datasets results in greater risk and uncertainty of achieving conservation goals with little to no accountability possible,”

and

“The fact that…state conservation equivalency provisions have repeatedly been used in ways that appear counter to what is needed to assess and achieve coast-wide fishing mortality and biomass goals [has been]…eroding stakeholder confidence in the ability of the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission to accomplish the intended long-term objectives for striped bass.”

Others, using less formal language, referred to conservation equivalent regulations as “loopholes,” “a way for the states to escape the accountability of conservation minded management plans,” and an approach which has “failed miserably.”

It’s very clear that conservation equivalency isn’t popular with the striped bass-fishing public, who may not understand the calculations used to create conservation equivalent proposals, but do understand, through long observation, that conservation equivalency has rarely, if ever, worked out well in the striped bass.

Instead, the public sees states—and Maryland is only one of them—use conservation equivalency as a means to shirk part of their conservation burden, and shift it onto the shoulders of other states who might, with luck, take up the slack that the supposedly equivalent regulations create.

The Atlantic Striped Bass Management Board will be considering the issue of conservation equivalency when it meets to discuss the proposed Amendment 7 in October.  It is too much to hope that they choose to eliminate conservation equivalency completely, perhaps replacing it with separate sets of management measures for coastal and spawning areas that would remove much or all of the need for conservation equivalent proposals.

But there is still reason to hope that if conservation equivalency is not eliminated, its use carries a price that will make it unattractive to states except under the most compelling circumstances.

The striped bass’ life history, and particular its widely varying recruitment, makes it a poor candidate for conservation equivalent measures.  Add in the bad faith demonstrated by a handful of Management Board members, and it is clear why conservation equivalency doesn’t work for striped bass at all.

 

 

MANAGEMENT BOARD STILL WRESTLING WITH STRIPED BASS RELEASE MORTALITY

Last Tuesday, the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission’s Atlantic Striped Bass Management Board held it’s August meeting.  The agenda was crowded, but one of the more important items was a request for guidance for the Plan Development Team that is preparing the Draft Amendment 7 to the striped bass rebuilding plan.

The Plan Development Team has spent the last couple of months trying to develop options to address the items that will be addressed in the Draft Amendment 7:  Management triggers, recreational release mortality, conservation equivalency, and protecting the 2015 year class as it recruits into the spawning stock.

While the PDT had no problem developing options that addressed many of the open issues, in some cases, it wasn’t clear what direction the Management Board wanted to take, or exactly what the Management Board was hoping to accomplish in Amendment 7.  That was particularly true in case of recreational release mortality; the Management Board expressed a desire to reduce it, but wasn’t very clear about the extent of such reduction, how it should be accomplished, or even about why recreational release mortality was being singled out as a particular problem.

It’s not unreasonable for the Management Board to be concerned about recreational release mortality, as it is the largest single source of striped bass fishing mortality, accounting for 48% of all such fishing mortality in 2017.  Thus, reasonable efforts to reduce such mortality, such as the circle hook requirement that went into effect last year, make a good deal of sense.

On the other hand, efforts to address release mortality can go a little too far, particularly when they begin to single out recreational release mortality from other forms of fishing mortality.  After all, from a biological perspective, a dead fish is a dead fish; whether a bass dies after being released, suffocates on ice in some angler’s cooler, is killed in a gill net, or is dumped overboard dead after running afoul of a squid trawl, the effect on the spawning stock is the same.

In the end, what matters is keeping overall fishing mortality constrained to or below the target level, not how such mortality was produced.

And that’s what make’s the PDT’s job, and the job of the Management Board, especially difficult.  They’re trying to find the right answer to a question based on a false premise, for to rebuild the overfished striped bass stock, managers don’t need to reduce recreational release mortality, they need to reduce fishing mortality, and release mortality is only one part of that.  By placing  particular focus on recreational release mortality, the Management Board is unnecessarily creating confusion, without doing much to help the striped bass.

That came through loud and clear at last Tuesday’s meeting.

Consider the PDT’s most basic question:  How much of a reduction in release mortality does the Management Board want to make?

Yet no one on the Management Board could come up with an answer.

There were suggestions that, instead of shooting for a specific percent reduction, perhaps measures could be designed that would achieve a cut in release mortality that fell within some specified range.  But that’s as far as anything got.  No one even suggested—and so the Management Board could never agree on—what that range ought to be.

Thus, the PDT was condemned to throw darts in the dark, tasked with trying to develop options that would reduce recreational release mortality, but given no direction as to what those options ought to achieve.

The PDT told the Management Board that there were a lot of things that it could do.  It could develop options that would prohibit certain gear and/or practices, such as outlawing the use of treble hooks, or gaffs, or trolling with wire line, although there was no way to know what level of reduction that would achieve.  It could also develop options to implement closed seasons although, once again, it needed some guidance on how closed seasons would work.

Everyone was pretty much agreed that seasons would have to be imposed at the regional level, because a winter closure would do nothing up in New England, while hitting hard down in Virginia and North Carolina, while a summer closure might close down the fishery during the only months when fish can be caught up in Maine, while having no impact at all in Virginia.

But once again, no one was quite sure what the closure was supposed to accomplish.  Massachusetts fishery manager Michael Armstrong noted that the issue was more complicated that it might appear on its face, asking whether the intent of seasonal closures was to

“get people off of catching fish or get people off of catching fish when [water] temperatures are too high [for successful release]?”

A consensus quickly emerged favoring closures imposed on the state or regional level, although Connecticut’s Dr. Justin Davis questioned the wisdom of state-level closures due to the inherent uncertainty of recreational catch and landings estimates when applied on both the state and wave level, while New Jersey’s Governor’s Appointee, Tom Fote, seemed to express opposition to any closure that might impact New Jersey’s kill, specifically mentioning Raritan Bay (apparently afraid that New Jersey fishermen would no longer be able to target egg-laden females that stage there before ascending the Hudson River to spawn) and complaining that closures favor catch and release fishermen who can continue to fish while catch and kill anglers have no reason to head onto the water.

That comment led into the question of whether any closure ought to ban harvest, or ban targeted catch and release angling, too.

Considering the issue in a vacuum, a no-targeting ban seems to make sense.  After all, just prohibiting harvest during a certain season won’t do a thing to reduce release mortality, which is supposedly the whole point of the exercise.  But when everything is considered, things don’t look quite so clear.

First of all, and this is a critical point, the striped bass fishery is primarily a recreational release fishery.  Yes, there’s a small commercial component, but that’s pretty well managed, and there is a catch and keep fishery, too, but the fact remains that anglers release about 90% of all striped bass that they catch, and they do it largely by choice.  The days when every “keeper” was kept are in the long-dead past, and not very likely to return.

The thing to remember is that striped bass has primarily been a recreational release fishery for a very long time.  The PDT presented a slide at Tuesday’s meeting showing that the high rate of releases goes back to the 1980s, a time when the stock was still collapsed and the first effective rebuilding effort was in its infancy.

There have been some small diversions, both up and down, from the norm, but anglers have been releasing a very high percentage of their striped bass since 1988 or so, and the percentage of released fish is, if anything, increasing in recent years.  But it’s clear from the PDT slide that claims that catch and release is something new, and that people always used to catch bass to take home, has no support in the modern history of the striped bass fishery.

It’s also inevitable with such a high level of releases, much of the fishing mortality is going to be attributable to release mortality; when keeping a bass is relatively low on the list of anglers’ priorities, release mortality will inevitably approach or exceed the mortality attributable to landings.

That’s why the Management Board’s focus on recreational release mortality, rather than overall fishing mortality, makes little sense.  For in attempting to reduce fishing mortality, what the Management Board is actually attempting to do, whether it realizes it or not, is to change the basic nature of the fishery from primarily catch and release to primarily catch and kill.  And that’s difficult if not impossible to do.

Anglers want to catch bass, and they want to release them, and as a number of Management Board members noted last Tuesday, regulations prohibiting anglers from targeting, and not just keeping, striped bass are just about impossible to enforce.  If I’m standing on a rock at Montauk, throwing a plug into the night-darkened surf, can anyone prove beyond a reasonable doubt that I’m not seeking one of the “gorilla” bluefish that will sometimes take a lure between dusk and dawn?

No, a responsible angler won’t knowingly break the law, but that angler will be sorely tested to bend it close to the snapping point if he knows that Maryland charter boats are legally killing two immature bass per man, two trips per day, while he is prohibited from even exercising a bass for a few minutes and then setting it free.

William Hyatt, the Governor’s Appointee from Connecticut, noted that he was opposed to prohibitions on targeting and releasing bass not only because they were unenforceable, but because they would cause fisheries laws to be seen as a joke, and reduce public confidence in the management process.

I don’t think that he’s wrong.

Martin Gary, who represents the Potomac River Fisheries Commission, probably placed no targeting rules in their proper context when he noted that they were unenforceable, but still might be useful in places like the Chesapeake Bay and the Potomac River, where high water temperatures and low salinity can combine to make successful release problematic, and anglers should be willing to

“give the fish a break during this metabolically challenging time.”

What he said made sense, particularly because he recognized that the same seasonal closures were probably not needed up in New England, where warm summer waters are typically not an issue.

Of course, there were others who adamantly supported no-targeting rules, seeing releases, and not overall fishing mortality, as the problem that needed to be solved.  Not surprisingly, they included Michael Luisi and Joseph Cimino, fishery managers from Maryland and New Jersey, respectively, who have always fought for bigger kills for their states, and stretched the boundaries of conservation equivalency, in order to maintain such kills, far beyond their original intent.

And they included Tom “the only good fish is a dead fish” Fote, who continued to complain that if catch and release anglers weren’t impacted by seasonal closures, than catch and kill anglers shouldn’t be impacted either.

In the end, it was the comments of Dr. Justin Davis that made the most sense.  He acknowledged that the striped bass fishery is primarily a catch and release fishery, and that as a result, it will always have a high level of release mortality.  He noted his opposition to no-target regulations, because they weren’t enforceable.  And then he observed

“If we’re not talking about a targeting closure, I’m not sure what we’re doing here…It is not entirely clear to me what we’re trying to accomplish…”

And that was really it in a nutshell.

From the comments made by the PDT, and from the comments made—and not made—by the Management Board, it was evident to anyone listening in on the meeting that, with respect to recreational release mortality, no one really knew what they were doing at the meeting, or what they were trying to accomplish.

Sure, everyone recognizes that reducing recreational release mortality would be a good thing, but everyone should also recognize that in a fishery where catch and release is frequently and voluntarily practiced, significantly reducing release mortality is far easier said than done.

Thus, it is probably time for the Management Board to abandon this exercise in futility, and instead focus on something that it can effectively accomplish:  Reducing recreational landings to the point where, when combined with release mortality, overall fishing mortality remains below target.

That is something that the Management Board and the PDT both know how to do.

 

 

 

 

 

 

SHOULD THE ASMFC REBUILD STRIPED BASS?

Over the past few years, it was pretty clear to anyone who regularly fishes for Atlantic striped bass that the stock was declining badly, even before the latest benchmark stock assessment, released in 2019, confirmed what most serious fishermen already suspected—that the stock was overfished and suffering from overfishing.

 What’s not so clear is whether the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission (ASMFC) intends to rebuild the striped bass resource, and if it does, how long such rebuilding might take.

The ASMFC has a dismal record when it comes to rebuilding overfished stocks. Its “ASMFC Stock Status Overview,” last updated in June 2021, reveals that out of the 23 stocks managed solely by the ASMFC (it manages other stocks jointly with the National Marine Fisheries Service), 11 are currently overfished, and that it has allowed the only overfished stock that it ever successfully rebuilt, Atlantic striped bass, to become overfished once again.

 It’s possible that the ASMFC’s record is even worse, for of the remaining 12 stocks that fall solely under its jurisdiction, the condition of 7—more than half—is “unknown.”

Amendment 6 to the Interstate Fishery Management Plan for Atlantic Striped Bass (Amendment 6) contains provisions, deemed “management triggers,” that require rebuilding. Management Trigger 2 states that “If the Management Board determines that the biomass has fallen below the threshold in any given year, the Board must adjust the striped bass management program to rebuild the biomass to the target level within [no more than 10 years].”

While that trigger addresses what the Management Board must do if the stock becomes overfished, a second trigger, Management Trigger 4, requires action when the stock isn’t yet overfished, but is nonetheless in decline. It says that “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 in 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 [no more than 10 years].”

The ASMFC isn’t governed by the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act (Magnuson-Stevens), which only applies to fisheries prosecuted in federal waters; even so, Management Trigger 2 is similar to Magnuson-Stevens’ requirements for rebuilding overfished stocks, while Management Trigger 4 is actually more prescriptive than the federal law.

 Yet there is a big difference between federal fishery managers and managers at the ASMFC: When federal managers are required to rebuild an overfished stock, they do so, because they know that they will probably end up in court if they fail to act. At the ASMFC, managers know that their actions aren’t subject to judicial review, and that they face no legal consequences for ignoring the rebuilding requirements in a management plan.

 And so they do just that.

In the case of striped bass, they did it twice in less than ten years.

The first time was in 2014, after a previous benchmark stock assessment, released in 2013, revealed that management trigger 4 had been tripped. The clear language of Amendment 6 allowed no room for discretion; it stated that the Atlantic Striped Bass Management Board (Management Board) “must” adopt a 10-year rebuilding plan. Yet both the Management Board and ASMFC staff ignored that injunction, with Michael Waine, then the ASMFC’s Fishery Management Plan Coordinator for Atlantic Striped Bass advising the Management Board that

 

“Management Trigger 2 [sic] in Amendment 6 says that you need to rebuild the [spawning stock biomass] back to its target over a specified timeframe that should not exceed ten years…The board is acting to reduce [fishing mortality]. Through that action we see the projections showing that [spawning stock biomass] will start increasing toward its target, but we’re uncomfortable with projecting out far enough to tell you when it will reach its target because the further on the projections we go the more uncertainty that is involved. Therefore, I think the trend is to get back towards the target, but we can’t tell you exactly how quickly that will happen.”

Of course, as we now know, the stock didn’t rebuild at all. In the absence of a rebuilding plan, instead of the spawning stock biomass “increasing toward its target,” it continued to decline, until the stock became overfished.

Even then, the Management Board failed to heed the plain language of Amendment 6, and did not put a rebuilding plan in place. Instead, it adopted the ineffective Addendum VI to Amendment 6 to the Atlantic Striped Bass Interstate Fishery Management Plan: 18% Reduction in Removals & Circle Hook Measures (Addendum VI), which had only a 42% probability of reducing fishing mortality to the target level.

Despite the unambiguous language of Management Trigger 2, it did not include a 10-year rebuilding plan.

Once that addendum was completed, the Management Board began work on a new Amendment 7 to its striped bass management plan. It decided that the “guiding themes” for such amendment would not be rebuilding the striped bass stock, as might be expected, nor managing such stock for its long-term health and sustainability. Instead, the Management Board envisioned a management plan built around the bureaucratic ideals of management stability, flexibility, and regulatory consistency, themes that would provide formal sanction for any Management Board failures to act in the face of declining abundance and increasing fishing mortality.

Fortunately, stakeholders insisted that the Management Board do better. They submitted over 3,000 individual comments, in which striped bass fishermen from every part of the coast were nearly unanimous in their demands that the striped bass be managed for abundance, not for yield, that the stock be rebuilt within 10 years, and that the current reference points—the levels of spawning stock biomass and fishing mortality used to gauge the health of the population—remain unchanged.

Recognizing that the public had spoken, the Management Board largely acceded to public demands, and agreed not to change the goals and objectives, reference points, or rebuilding timelines that were established in Amendment 6. But they did not agree with the public comments that supported the management triggers. Instead, it directed that changes to such management triggers be considered in the upcoming amendment.

Thus, the Plan Development Team (PDT) was told to develop new options for management triggers that might be included in the first draft of Amendment 7; some Management Board members emphasized the need for those proposals to promote management stability, flexibility, and consistency, despite the public rejection of such themes. Following the instructions that they were given, members of the PDT designed management trigger options that would allow the Management Board to delay remedial actions; instead of management changes being triggered by a single year of overfishing, a two or three or five year average of fishing mortality exceeding the threshold might be required before any effort to reduce landings began.

And when it came to overfishing, the most remarkable proposal of all was made: A PDT member suggested completely removing the trigger that required rebuilding an overfished stock.

That doesn’t mean that Management Trigger 2 will, in the end, be removed from the management plan. Before that could happen, the Management Board would first have to agree to include that suggestion in the initial draft of Amendment 7, which will be sent out for public comments.

Given the public’s overwhelming support for rebuilding the stock, expressed in the last round of comments, it’s hard to believe that a proposal to eliminate Management Trigger 2 would get any support at all. And we can only hope that the Management Board would yield to public sentiment on that issue.

It’s also difficult to reconcile the Management Board’s decision to maintain the 10-year rebuilding timeline with any proposal to eliminate the management trigger that requires rebuilding, for what use is a timeline when rebuilding need never occur?

Still, the fact that the ASMFC would even consider eliminating the requirement to rebuild an overfished striped bass stock is extremely troubling.

 Striped bass, along with the rest of the fish that swim along the Atlantic coast, are natural resources that belong to every citizen of the United States. The ASMFC, as manager of such resources, has a duty to keep those resources healthy and sustainable in the long term. Part of that duty requires fish stocks to be rebuilt when they become depleted.

The ASMFC has not lived up to such obligations, even under current management plans. If it chooses to blatantly abandon its responsibility to rebuild an overfished striped bass population, it will be time for the public to intervene, and compel the ASMFC to get the job done.

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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/