PUTTING THINGS IN PERSPECTIVE: ENOUGH FISH TO PAY FOR THE TRIP

There are ongoing themes in fishery management, arguments that resurface again and again.  Regardless of the species considered or the management measures being proposed, folks opposed to new regulations will appear at the meetings singing new verses to the same old songs.

Thus, as the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission lumbers toward new striped bass regulations, the band is striking up the old tune “There are Plenty of Fish, They’ve Just Gone Somewhere Else,” while the chorus belts out “They’re all in that big EEZ…”

We should expect that to be followed by lively renditions of “The Scientists Don’t Know How to Find Fish,” “The MRIP is Wrong,” and “We Think Your Science Is Bullcrap,” melodies which have become old standards at fisheries meetings, and are heard more often than the “Electric Slide” and the “Hokey Pokey” were once heard at wedding receptions.

And there is no doubt that we’ll hear one of the most well-known songs of all, the one that declares that regulations hurt business because “Anglers Won’t Fish Unless They Take Home Enough to Pay for the Trip.”

It’s a song that’s usually sung by the for-hire folks, although I’ve heard it reprised by those in the tackle shop business, too.  And on its face, it sounds perfectly reasonable.  After all, if you’re trying to make ends meet, you shouldn’t be spending scarce resources on things that don’t provide essential benefits in return.

But I happened to stop by a grocery store yesterday, and out of curiosity, I wandered by the fish counter.  Frozen fillets of various things, from tilapia to haddock to flounder, were selling for between $4.00 and $5.50 per pound, while fresh flounder—probably fluke—fillet was going for $9.99.  

I started wondering about how that compared to what anglers pay for the fish that they catch for themselves and take home.

Right from the start, we can leave the private-boat anglers out of the picture.  Between the initial cost of their boats, lost investment opportunities on the money spent, maintenance, insurance, repairs, dock space, fuel, etc., in most places, particularly in the northeast, they’ll probably operate at a loss in any realistic scenario.

Charter boat fishermen can fare a little better, depending on what species they target.  So consider a best-case situation, a full-day, mixed-bag inshore trip out of Montauk, at a time when most species of fish are abundant. 

The average price of such trip is about $1,200 for a full day, or $200/person assuming a 6-person charter.  For ease of calculations, no additional expenses will be added for the gas needed to get the anglers from their homes to Montauk, for food, or for possible lodging, although in reality, at least some additional cost would be incurred for such things.

We’ll then assume that each angler had a fairly successful trip, catching a 20-pound striped bass, four summer flounder averaging 5 pounds each (20 pound total), three black sea bass averaging 3 pounds (9 pound total), and fifteen scup with a 1 ½-pound average (22 ½ pound total). 

In terms of food production, would that angler break even, compared to buying an equal amount of fish at the store?

The first thing that we would have to do is break those fish down into edible meat.  A whole striped bass yields about 33% of its weight in skin-on fillets, so a 20-pound striper would provide 6.6 pounds of meat.  Yield from summer flounder is a little better, at 35%; 20 pounds of fluke would produce about 7 pounds of skinless fillets.  Black sea bass, with their big heads, yield about 33% in skinless fillets, meaning that 9 pounds of whole fish would yield 3 pounds of meat; scup yields are about the same, so 22 ½ pounds of whole fish would provide 7 ½ pounds of meat.

That’s 24 pounds of meat overall.  Did the fish caught pay for the trip?

Hard numbers don’t really tell the tale.  A lot of it depends on what retail fish prices are used for comparisons. 

Given that the industry representatives typically argue that people are fishing for food for themselves and their families, it probably makes sense to use a generic comparison, rather than compare the value of fish caught against market prices for each particular species.  Such an approach overvalues the lower-priced scup and undervalues the more expensive striped bass, but arguably evens things out by considering all species together, and best represents the value provided for an angler who is primarily seeking protein, and not entertainment.

The comparison also assumes that the fish are filleted on the boat, which allows direct comparison with market preparations, and not taken home whole, or even alive.

Given those limitations, if the cost of the 24 pounds of charter-caught fillets is compared to the same amount of frozen fish, the charter boat angler comes out on the short end of the economic equation.  If the low end of the frozen fish price range, $4.00 per pound, is used, the 24 pounds of fillets that cost the angler $200 to catch could have been purchased for only $96.  Even at the high end of $5.50 per pound, 24 pounds of frozen fillets would only cost $132, about one-third less than the price paid for the charter boat fare.

On the other hand, the charter boat angler would appear to come out ahead if the comparison was based on fresh fillets.  24 pounds of flounder fillets, at $9.99 per pound, would cost nearly $240, leaving the charter boat angler $40 ahead (again, only if travel and other costs are excluded from the comparison).  But tip the mate on the boat 20% of the fare—which the mate certainly earned after helping out catching and cleaning all of those fish—and the charter boat angler breaks even with folks at the grocery store.

Of course, very, very few people—and very few families—are likely to consume 24 pounds of fillets in only one sitting; most will probably be frozen, making comparisons with the frozen fish prices more appropriate for that portion of the catch.

And, of course, the catch used in the example isn’t typical of every charter boat trip out of Montauk.  It’s possible that anglers might limit out and catch 30, rather than just 15, scup, and in September, anglers would be legally entitled to take 7 black sea bass and 45 scup along with their 1 striped bass and 4 fluke—although the likelihood of limiting out on all four species at that time of year isn’t particularly high.  15 bluefish could, theoretically, also be added to the mix.  So trips that yield far more than 24 pounds of fillets per person are a possibility.

On the other hand, it’s possible to catch a lot fewer fish, too.  

Given the current lowered abundance of striped bass and summer flounder, there are no guarantees that a charter trip, even out of Montauk, will see everyone on board catch their limit of either species—and the bass that are caught might average well under 20 pounds, and the fluke under 5.  While limiting out on black sea bass is pretty much a lock, those fish might well average less than 3 pounds.  Thus, over all, the 24 pounds of fillets per trip probably represents a reasonable daily average.

Having said that, someone concerned about catching enough fish to pay for a trip isn’t all that likely to be part of a Montauk charter.  Instead, such folks would probably board one of the many party boats that sail out of various ports along the coast.  Such boats charge much lower fares than the charter vessels, although they have greater limitations, as well.

For example, a typical party boat sailing from my local port at Captree State Park (NY) might get $49 for a half-day trip targeting fluke and black sea bass.  That’s a much lower price than a charter boat would charge, even considering that the trip only lasts a half-day, but the return in fillets is a lot smaller, too. 

For example, the odds of limiting out on fluke, much less limiting out on fluke averaging five pounds apiece, are extremely low out of Captree.  On many trips, the largest fish on the boat weighs less than 4 pounds, although large ones are caught on occasion.  There, a very fortunate angler might, on occasion, limit out on fish weighing 3 pounds apiece (12 pounds total), and might, if luck was running high, also have caught three 2-pound black sea bass (6 pounds total). 

Using the fillet yield percentages employed in the charter example, that’s 6.2 pounds of meat, worth between $25 and $34 if compared to frozen and $61 if compared to fresh; only the latter comparison would render fish caught by an angler less expensive than fish bought at the store, and a $10 tip to the mate would make all but $2 of that cost advantage disappear.

But limiting out on both fluke and black sea bass at Captree, on a single, half-day trip, would be the exception rather than the rule.  Anglers sailing out of most other Long Island ports would face similar difficulties in filling their coolers, although those targeting scup on the East End and in Long Island Sound, when catching and keeping 45 decent fish isn’t out of the question, would see better returns on their effort.

Industry representatives argue that less restrictive limits would increase the number of fish taken home, and thus make fishing more attractive to many anglers.  But when anglers seldom limit out on summer flounder now, it’s difficult to argue that increasing the bag will significantly increase the landings.  Decreasing the size limit would put more fish in anglers’ buckets—but it would also reduce the average size of fish kept, and so the value of the fillets taken home.

Black sea bass, on the other hand, are abundant enough that a bag limit increase would lead to higher landings.  But with a 3-pound fish yielding only 1 pound of fillets, it would take 15 pounds of black sea bass to break even on a half-day party boat trip—assuming no tip to the mate and no other expenses—if compared to the $9.99/pound price of fresh flounder fillet, and between 27 and 36 pounds of fish to break even based on frozen fish prices.

While such landings are certainly possible in many places, whether they would be sustainable is a very different question.  Right now, the best available science says that current size and bag limits are already as relaxed as they ought to be (although a stock assessment update, scheduled for August, may change that view).

The bottom line is that catching enough fish to fully offset the cost of an inshore fishing trip is possible, but even under a relaxed management measures scenario, would be difficult to accomplish on a regular basis.  To argue that regulations must be set to accommodate the hypothetical “subsistence” angler, who can only justify the cost of a trip by the value of the fish taken home, ignores the reality of today’s fishery, which sees a number of species at depleted levels, and even healthy stocks in need of continuous management.

In the end, recreational fishing is just that—recreation, just like golf, going to a ball game, or taking the family to an amusement park.  It’s something that anglers do because they enjoy it; bringing fish home is just an added bonus, that adds to the appeal of the trip.  Surveys conducted by NMFS demonstrate that catching and keeping fish is not the reason that most anglers go fishing, and that anglers who only seek fish to take home are an exception, and not representative of the overall angling population.

For as most anglers can tell you, if you’re only looking for some fish to eat, it’s usually cheaper to go out and buy them.

REBUILDING FISH STOCKS: IF NOT NOW, WHEN?

Everyone seems to want healthy fisheries—at least in theory.  The problems arise when managers propose concrete ways to rebuild depleted stocks, proposals that inevitably must involve reduced landings, and so reduced incomes for people who work on the water.

At that point, the need for healthy stocks, and the rebuilding required to get there, becomes subject to intense debate, as folks wishing to maintain healthy cash flows begin to begin to publicly question whether healthy fish populations should be managers' top priority.

I was reminded of that once again when I read a few pieces on proposed restrictions on fishing for southern flounder down in North Carolina.

There’s no question that the southern flounder stock is in bad shape.  A draft amendment to North Carolina’s southern flounder management plan notes that a recent stock assessment

“estimated overall declining trends in recruitment and female spawning stock biomass (SSB).  Recruitment has decreased throughout the time-series from approximately 13 million recruits in 1989 to approximately 4 million recruits in 2017.  The model also predicted a decline in SSB beginning in 1989, which corresponds to an increase in [fishing mortality] beginning in 2007 with a time-series high in 2013.

“The model estimated F35% (fishing mortality target) as 0.35 and F25% (fishing mortality threshold) as 0.53.  Estimated fishing mortality in 2017 was 0.91, which is higher than the F threshold of 0.53 and indicates overfishing is occurring…

“[S]ustainability benchmarks were calculated using projected SSB values modeled using estimates of fishing mortality associated with a [spawning potential ratio of] 25% (threshold) and [a spawning potential ratio of] 35% (target)…The ASAP model estimated a value of 5,452 metric tons (approximately 12.0 million pounds) for SSB35% (SSB target) and a value of 3,900 metric tons (approximately 8.6 million pounds) for SSB25% (SSB threshold).  The estimate of SSB in 2017 is 1,031 metric tons (approximately 2.3 million pounds), which is lower than the SSB threshold of 3,900 metric tons and indicates that the stock is overfished…”

So there’s no question at all that the southern flounder is having real problems, and can use some help from fishery managers.  And given that the southern flounder supports both

“one of the largest and most valuable commercial fisheries in North Carolina, accounting for landings of 1.39 million pounds with a dockside value of $5.66 million in 207,”

and a recreational fishery in which

“flounder species have been the most often reported target species in 20 of the last 37 years,”

one would think that fishermen would be very eager to see the stock restored to health.

Certainly, North Carolina fishery managers seem intent on rebuilding the stock.  The proposed amendment to the management plan would end overfishing within two years and, assuming that other states with a southern flounder fishery also do their part, should rebuild the stock by 2028.  

The necessary reductions in fishing mortality will have to be substantial if there is to be a good chance of success.  Thus, according to a June 10 press release,

“The [North Carolina Division of Marine Fisheries] proposes a 62% reduction in southern flounder harvest (compared to 2017) in North Carolina this year and a 72% reduction in harvest beginning in 2020 to be achieved through commercial and recreational season closures.  The division also proposes yardage and time restrictions for gill nets and prohibiting the use of puncturing devices, such as gaffs, in the pound net fishery.”

Given the state of the southern flounder stock, such measures seem appropriate, and should be adopted quickly, as the proposed amendment to the management plan warns that

“delayed implementation will further increase the magnitude of necessary reductions.”

Unfortunately, the reaction to the proposed, and badly needed, management measures have been entirely predictable.  The JDNews of Jacksonville, North Carolina reported that one commercial representative on North Carolina’s Marine Fisheries Commission argued that

“in addition to managing the fishery and natural resources, there is also a ‘human resource’ impact if fishermen see a reduction in their livelihood.  He said he understands the need to preserve the stock but questioned the emergency action of the proposed recommendations, which are following after impacts already felt after Hurricane Florence.”

The Carteret County Marine Fishery Advisory Board echoed those words and added some words of its own in opposition to the needed landings cuts, which they included in a letter to North Carolina’s governor, and to other state officials.

“These proposed restrictions will have devastating impacts to the fishing economies of Carteret County.  The Division of Marine Fisheries…[has] decided to pursue an accelerated timeline…to adopt substantial reductions in commercial and recreational harvest and have chosen fishing reduction goals that are not practicable or reasonable when considering the economic impacts, biology of southern flounder, management history and possibly environmental considerations…

“The proposed measures are problematic in that the estimated reductions in fishing mortality must be obtained from all the southeastern Atlantic states where southern flounder occur.  North Carolina is planning on implementing substantial reductions this fall, while it will be some time before (other) states can implement similar measures or if they even choose to do so.”

Those are the sorts of arguments one hears at just about any fishery meeting when additional restrictions are being discussed: sure, conservation is needed, but not at the expense of anyone’s income.  There is always a hurricane, or a nor’easter, or some other natural event that can be used to justify delay, and there are always the voices that urge taking no action until someone else—another state, or perhaps the federal government—takes action first, because no one ever wants to be the first to act to protect a fish stock, and perhaps thus miss out on the last, big, profitable kill.

And too often, the states listen.  Louis Daniel, the former director of the Division of Marine Fisheries, recently stated that the law governing fisheries management in North Carolina

“has been a monumental failure to replenish our fish stocks, and the reason for that is politics.”

He added that instead of taking the actions needed to restore fish stocks, managers merely

“nibble around the edges,”

adopting half-measures because of political pressure to do so.  To illustrate the problem, he noted that southern flounder that were 5, 6 and 7 years old were once a part of the catch in North Carolina, but that today, because of ineffective fishery management, it’s rare to see a flounder that’s more than 2 years old.

Unfortunately, such problems aren’t restricted to southern flounder, and they’re also not restricted to North Carolina.  They seem to be endemic in fisheries outside of federal jurisdiction, which aren’t governed by the provisions of the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act, that prohibit overfishing and require the prompt rebuilding of overfished stocks.

It’s a particular problem at the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission, which isn’t bound by Magnuson-Stevens.  It has raised its head thereon many occasions, including in 1999, when the southern New England/Mid-Atlantic winter flounder stock was beginning to crash, and ASMFC’s Winter Flounder Management Board decided to back off on its efforts to rebuild the stock, because the New England Fishery Management Council had not yet adopted similar measures (the stock has since collapsed), and more recently in 2017, when political pressure brought by the recreational fishing industry led ASMFC’s Tautog Management Board to override the Technical Committee’s recommendations and allow overfishing to continue in Long Island Sound until 2029 (with only a 50% chance that it will cease at that point).

Most recently, and most importantly, it has cropped up at ASMFC’s Atlantic Striped Bass Management Board, which has a long and unenviable history of avoiding the most difficult management decisions, particularly with regard to rebuilding the stock.

In 2011, even after receiving a stock assessment update warning that the striped bass would become overfished by 2017, the Management Board decided to suspend work on an addendum to the management plan that would have reduced commercial and recreational landings, deferring action largely because the stock wasn’t overfished yet.

In 2014, the Management Board took action to reduce landings to the target level (although it later completely ignored Maryland’s failure to adequately constrain recreational landings, which increased substantially at a time when they were supposed to be reduced by 20.5%), but it failed to comply with clear language in Amendment 6 to the Interstate Fishery Management Plan for Atlantic Striped Bass which called for rebuilding female spawning stock biomass to the biomass target within 10 years, apparently based on advice that there would be significant uncertainty associated with projecting the effects of management measures out that far (although federal fishery managers, required to do so by Magnuson-Stevens, frequently and successfully adopt 10-year rebuilding plans on a regular basis).

And last May, history seemed to repeat itself, as the Management Board, in response to a benchmark stock assessment informing them that the stock is both overfished and subject to overfishing, again moved forward with an addendum that will have a bare coin-toss chance of ending overfishing, but does not expressly meet the management plan’s requirement to rebuild the biomass within the next decade.

There is little reason to believe that such failures and delay accomplishes anything of lasting good.

As Mr. Daniels noted in North Carolina, with respect to such actions,

“Does anybody think that they’re seeing more fish than they did 22 years ago [when North Carolina’s fishery management law was adopted]?”

“Anybody even close to seeing the same amount of fish that you saw 22 years ago?”

“…We haven’t rebuilt—restored—one fish.  Not one.”

“We’ve got a problem, and it’s just going downhill.  We’re not seeing any improvement in these resources.”

Because that’s what delay does, it just makes things worse.

While some folks may make a little more money for a short while, in the end, delay hurts us all.

That’s an important thing to remember, not only in the case of North Carolina’s southern flounder, but in the case of other species, too.

Right now, it’s something to remember as ASMFC looks at striped bass.

SHALL WE LEAVE FISH FOR THE NEXT GENERATION?

Last November, I was up in Connecticut, fishing with an old friend.

We had fished together since the early 1970s, mostly in Long Island Sound and in the ocean south of Long Island, but sometimes as far away as Alaska, the Caribbean and Belize. Over that time, we’ve caught a lot of fish, of many different sorts, but on that day off Connecticut, things were a little slow.

We set out in the dark, well before sunrise, with the hope of finding some decent striped bass somewhere along the rocky shore. Although the fall migration was past its peak, November sees some of the largest bass of the season moving out of New England, headed south toward their wintering grounds off the Virginia/North Carolina line.

We found all the bass we could ask for, but nothing of size. While we caught a lot of fish over the course of the morning, I’m not sure that any weighed more than five pounds; most seemed to be three-year-olds, from the strong year class spawned in the Chesapeake three years before.

Notably, larger fish from the even bigger 2011-year class were nowhere to be found.

It was a little discouraging.

So we switched off to tautog—what we always called “blackfish” in Long Island Sound—dropping green crabs down to assorted rock piles that were historically productive at that time of year.

The first drop yielded a big toadfish, and then nothing more. The second drop produced even less; not even the bergalls (a/k/a “cunners”) that used to swarm in those places turned out to nip at our baits. So we moved a couple of miles, to a piece of hard bottom where we found a few fish.

Most were far too small to keep. Along the way, as we picked at mostly undersized fish, my friend repeated something that he had said more than once in recent years. “If I was a kid, just starting out, I don’t think I’d bother buying a boat. It’s not worth it. There aren’t any fish anymore.”

It’s not the first time that he’s said something like that, but every time, it still jars me. My friend and I were both introduced to fishing by our fathers when we were very young; for both of us, it was probably the defining family activity of our childhoods. When our fathers weren’t working, we fished with them from our families’ boats. Other times, until we were old enough to take the boats out by ourselves, we fished from docks and from shore.

I still recall one summer morning when he was out with his father, and I was out with mine, fishing a stretch of rocky shoreline. It was a calm day, with the sun climbing over the horizon, when without warning, black clouds roiled out of the west, it started to rain, and lightning flashed on the too-near horizon. My friend’s boat shot past where we were fishing, heading for home. We were planning to head in then, too, but a decent-sized striped bass rolled on my lure and made it clear that we weren’t going anywhere for a while, regardless of the approaching storm.

Some time later, our boat caught up with his, deep in the harbor. I held up the bass, lure still stuck in its face, as mute explanation of why it took us so long to arrive.

I’ve got a lot of stories like that, and so does my friend, because when we were young, fishing was a heritage that was handed down to us, and that we always expected to hand down to following generations.

But now, I have to wonder whether there will be much left for us to pass down, and whether those who follow us will have anything at all to pass on to their successors.

When we were young, fishing was easy to do. There were a lot of fish, and a lot of places to catch them. Over the course of the year, there were probably less than three months when we didn’t fish, mostly because the harbors were covered with ice.

Once the ice went out in March, we caught winter flounder and tomcod from docks in the harbor. By April Fool’s Day, that fishing was going strong, and the first schools of river herring—first alewives, and bluebacks later on—swarmed in silver hordes so determined to spawn that, when the tide was out, they swam on their sides through trickles of water, trying desperately to get to fresh water.

We watched the herring, wondering at their seemingly endless multitude.

By the second week in May, we caught blackfish from shore at the town beach and eels from the local docks. Two weeks later, we caught striped bass from our fathers’ boats and sometimes from shore; by the time I was in junior high, bluefish chased menhaden into the harbors, and we could catch them from shore, too. When the big bluefish weren’t around, summer vacation was mostly about catching eels and the occasional flounder until the young-of-the-year “snapper” bluefish showed up. At that point, just about every child older than five years old—and more than a few who were younger—lined up along just about every piece of land that bordered the water, some with their parents, the older ones alone, in pursuit of the small, but avidly feeding fish.

After we went back to school in September, the year sort of unraveled itself.

The snapper disappeared first, then the big bluefish, but blackfish again bunched up in the shallows, where a kid with a pint of fiddler crabs, who knew how to cast, could easily catch a dozen or two near the top of a rising tide. As days grew shorter and colder, flounder and tomcod grew more abundant, and were joined by rainbow smelt returning to the estuaries prior to their early-spring spawn.

Finally, the days grew so cold that our hands froze numb, so numb that we could sometimes slip a hook right through our bait and into a finger, and not realize it until we went to swing the hook back in the water, and found that it wouldn’t go. 

Shortly after that, ice would cover the harbor, and our season would end.

It was a wonderful time, and a wonderful way, to grow up.

But for today’s kids, things aren’t like that anymore.

The smelt were the first to go. I caught my last one in the fall of ’68, the same year that I entered ninth grade. The tomcod didn’t last too much longer. Whether warming water did them in, or too many dams blocked their way to crucial spawning grounds, is difficult to say. Either way, they disappeared.

River herring went next, the big runs gradually thinning out until, by 1980 or so, only a few fish still entered the harbors. 

After that, blackfish grew ever scarcer, as an increasing demand for live fish sold, often illegally, in urban markets, coupled with an ineffective interstate management plan, caused abundance to sharply decline. Winter flounder made it into the 21st Century—barely—but since then, the southern New England stock has completely collapsed.

Striped bass collapsed in the late 1970s, but the stock was rebuilt two decades later. Now, the stock is overfished once again, but the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission seems to be in no hurry to rebuild it this time. 

Bluefish, too, appear to be growing scarce, although we’ll figure that out for certain when the stock assessment is updated in August.

There are some bright spots amid the gloom. Summer flounder didn’t become a regular catch in the western Sound until 1970 or so, but the stock remains in fairly good shape. And scup and black sea bass are probably more abundant than they have ever been during my lifetime.

But a young angler really needs to go out in a boat to catch those fish with any regularity; from shore, they will catch a few, but few of what they catch will be large enough to take home. That makes it tough for young anglers, many of whom are tied to the land, and provides little tinder to catch and sustain whatever dim spark of interest a child may have in the outdoors, before it’s quenched by electronic distractions and the lure of youth soccer and baseball.

To feed the fire that forges new anglers, and make the flame run hot in new generations, children must be able to inherit the same sort of quality experiences we knew when we were young, experiences built on abundant fish stocks that we could cheaply and easily access from local docks, bulkheads and piers. For if young and inexperienced anglers are to maintain their interest in the sport, they must be able to catch fish regularly, despite their lack of skill and their simple gear. And, perhaps most important, despite their lack of a boat.

At some point, the new angler will grow old enough, and earn enough money, to buy a boat of his or her own. Provided, of course, that there are enough fish around to merit the purchase.

As my friend has suggested, that might not be the case anymore.

Thus, it is hard to understand why both the fishing tackle industry and the boating industry are supporting bills such as last year’s H.R. 200, which would have weakened federal fisheries laws and led to decreased abundance and reduced opportunities for novice anglers, instead of aggressively supporting conservation measures that will assure that tomorrow’s generation of anglers will still have a reason to go fishing.

In the sixty-plus years since I first became a fisherman, we have allowed too many of our fish stocks to decline, allowed too many of our waterways to become degraded, allowed far too many of our marshes, estuaries and other critical inshore nursery habitats to be filled in, developed and destroyed. By doing so, we have stolen a treasured heritage from today’s young anglers, and from anglers who have yet to be born.

Why should they fish, or buy fishing tackle, just to frustrate themselves on the shores of an emptier ocean than we knew in our early years?

It is our moral responsibility, and the moral responsibility of the fishing and boating industries, to pass on to our successors a world as vital and as full of life as the one we received from our elders.

Failure to do so bathes us in the shame of a thief who would steal from a child.

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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/

COOPERATIVE FISHERY MANAGEMENT ONLY WORKS IF EVERYONE COOPERATES

Anyone who regularly reads this blog knows that I am a frequent critic of the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission.

I have faulted the organization for its frequent failures to end overfishing, its chronic failure to rebuild overfished stocks, and for its tendency to elevate short-term socioeconomic considerations above the long-term health of fish populations.

So, given that record, it might surprise you to learn that I firmly believe that East Coast fish populations, as well as East Coast fishermen, are far better off having the ASMFC, even in its current flawed form, managing regional fisheries than they would be if the organization didn’t exist.  The sort of cooperative fishery management that ASMFC is empowered to provide probably represents the only long-term hope of maintaining fish populations that are not fully governed by the federal management system and the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act.

I say that from the perspective of someone who has been fishing for a very long time, who fished through the last collapse of the striped bass stock, and who witnessed the states’ flailing and ineffective efforts to address that collapse before the passage of the Atlantic Striped Bass Conservation Act in 1984, the law that finally gave the ASMFC legal authority to compel states to adopt management measures that would actually rebuild the striped bass population.

Prior to that law’s passage, all was chaos.  The ASMFC had been around since 1942, but it served in a purely advisory capacity.  When the striped bass population fell into decline, the ASMFC went to work to study the problem, and in 1981 produced its very first striped bass management plan.  That plan was designated “Fisheries Management Report No. 1,” the first management plan, for any species, ever drafted by the Commission.

That first management plan was extremely comprehensive.  Its 200-plus pages addressed everything from striped bass biology to the various fisheries to the many problems that might have contributed to the stock collapse.  It also suggested management measures intended to halt the decline and hopefully rebuild the striped bass stock.  Such measures included

“1.  a minimum fish size of at least 14 inches [total length] to be established for all producing areas to reduce fishing mortality on smaller fish (age II and III) and increase the number of recruits that enter the coastal migratory stocks;

2.  a system of daily catch limits be implemented in the coastal areas for fish up to 24 inches [total length] to minimize exploitation of small (immature) migrant females;

existing maximum size limits and bag limits in producer areas be retained and a system of spawning area/regional closures be implemented to prevent excessive exploitation of spawning concentrations.”

The management plan justified such recommendations by noting

“On the basis of [an] analysis of Maryland catch, it is highly probable that a 14 inch [total length] minimum size limit in all producing areas will result in further increases in the yield by weight in both producing areas and coastal areas, and substantially increase the numbers of females surviving to maturity.

“Since the proposed increase in minimum size limits in producing areas would likely result in greater exploitation of immature fish by coastal fisheries, additional constraints in coastal areas are also necessary.  It is recommended, therefore, that a daily bag limit of not more than 4 fish per day less than 24 inches [total length] and greater than 14 inches [total length] for hook and line fishermen be implemented in coastal areas.”

By today’s standards, such recommendations seem almost laughingly modest, but in the context of their era, they appeared almost shockingly restrictive. 

At the time, there was a 12-inch minimum size in the Maryland section of Chesapeake Bay (there was also a 32-inch maximum size, although anglers were allowed to take one fish per day over that limit for most of the year) and a 14-inch minimum in Virginia (where anglers were allowed two fish per day over the state’s 40-inch maximum); on the coast, a 16-inch size limit (fork length) prevailed, but was not universal.  Bag limits were virtually unheard-of, although New Jersey did limit its anglers to ten bass per day.

The original striped bass management plan observed that

“those deciding among these management tools must consider much more than their potential effectiveness in a biological sense.  Equally important, perhaps more so in sum total, are the measures’ acceptability to recreational and commercial fishermen in all areas where the fish are found, their political palatability, enforceability and cost effectiveness.  Considering the very wide range of parochial interests associated with this species and the fact that much remains unknown about its population dynamics, choosing a set of management measures for the Atlantic coast stocks of striped bass that meets all these criteria is a formidable task.  Clearly, to meet even limited success in this venture will require a great deal of compromising among all interested parties…”

In other words, if there was to be any hope of rebuilding the striped bass population, everyone with an interest in the striped bass fishery was going to have to work cooperatively to achieve that goal.

Unfortunately, that sort of cooperation doesn’t come naturally to people, who are usually doing their best to one-up their neighbors in an effort to get more for themselves.  Thus, the advice provided in that first management plan was largely ignored as each state expressed concern with the state of the striped bass stock, but weren’t willing to be the first to impose management measures that would place a state’s fishermen at a competitive disadvantage compared to fishermen elsewhere on the coast.

It couldn’t really be called a “race to the bottom” because, as a practical matter, the states’ bass fisheries were already hitting rock bottom by 1981, but it could be characterized as a stalwart determination to remain a part of the least common denominator, and not take the lead in doing anything that might be in the best long-term interests of the bass, if it would cause short-term pain to local fishermen—although a handful of states, pushed largely by recreational striped bass fishermen, did slowly enact modest management reforms.

Changes big enough to rebuild the bass population didn’t happen until the Atlantic Striped Bass Conservation Act took the management decisions out of the hands of individual states, and forced the states to work together, through ASMFC, to create an effective and binding solution.  The Striped Bass Act accomplished that feat by giving ASMFC the power to find uncooperative states “out of compliance” with the terms of the striped bass management plan, a finding that would result in federal regulators shutting down the entire striped bass fishery in the noncompliant state.

Granted such new management authority, ASMFC successfully rebuilt the striped bass stock.  Compelled compliance was such an effective fishery management tool that, in 1993, Congress passed the Atlantic Coastal Fisheries Cooperative Management Act, which gave ASMFC similar legal authority to compel compliance with fishery management plans for all species subject to its jurisdiction.

It all worked pretty well for 25 years.  While ASMFC didn’t have much success rebuilding fisheries after bass were restored in 1995, it still did a pretty good job of keeping everyone moving in the same general direction.  States went out of compliance a few times, but on the first 19 occasions, the threat of a fishery shutdown pushed them back into line pretty quickly.

In 2017, all of that changed.

That year, the State of New Jersey decided that it wouldn’t comply with ASMFC’s management plan for summer flounder.  It claimed that a smaller minimum size could be coupled with a slightly shorter season (in September, when fishing effort is tapering off from the summer vacation period) and some other, less-measurable factors into a set of management measures and education efforts that would be “conservationally equivalent” to the management plan.

ASMFC just didn’t buy New Jersey’s arguments.  Its Summer Flounder, Scup and Black Sea Bass Technical Committee did not find conservation equivalency, and when New Jersey moved to have its management proposals approved, not a single non-New Jersey member of the Summer Flounder, Scup and Black Sea Bass Management Board believed the proposal to have enough merit to justify seconding the state’s motion.

It was pretty clear that the New Jersey proposal didn’t meet the standards created by ASMFC’s management plan, but New Jersey went ahead with it anyway.  It was a gamble on New Jersey’s part, but perhaps not a very big one.  A new presidential administration had recently moved into Washington, and the new Commerce Secretary, Wilbur Ross, had already made it clear that he favored high harvest levels over good fisheries conservation.

In addition, the then-New Jersey governor had ties to the new administration.  So instead of making a management decision based on science and good stewardship, New Jersey decided to spin the wheel and see whether it could gain a political win, which would see Secretary Ross overturn ASMFC’s noncompliance finding.

For New Jersey, if not for the flounder, things turned out pretty well.  As it hoped, the Secretary of Commerce took the political route.  His office never even bothered to consult the regional administrator of the Greater Atlantic Regional Fisheries Office about the merits of New Jersey’s position, even though the regional office would have the most knowledge about how New Jersey’s proposed regulations could impact the fishery. 

ASMFC’s noncompliance finding was overturned.  New Jersey could keep on killing smaller fish.

John Bullard, who was the regional administrator at the time, objected to such ill-advised action, noting

“This is the first time that no one asked me for a formal recommendation.  The secretary’s decision goes against long-standing protocol, and there is a cost to that.

“There’s a reason we have regional administrators, because their experience and knowledge is valuable in making decisions like this one.  This is an unfortunate precedent…

“This is a system that keeps all states accountable to each other.  We’re now going to have to figure out how to repair that system.”

The ASMFC, echoing such comments, stated that

“We are very much concerned about the short and long-term implications of the Secretary’s decision on interstate fisheries management.  Our focus moving forward will be to preserve the integrity of the Commission’s process, as established by the Atlantic Coastal Act, whereby, the states comply with the management measures we collectively agree upon.”

For when the Secretary of Commerce condoned New Jersey’s noncompliant actions, he opened the door on a past that at least the responsible East Coast fishery managers had thought they had forever left behind, the days when states managed coastal fish stocks without regard for their neighbors, and everyone tried to scoop up the biggest share, regardless of its impact on the long-term health of the stock.

Once a door like that opens, it is very, very difficult to close.

Already, we have seen the ASMFC’s Atlantic Menhaden Management Board decide not to find Virginia out of compliance for its failure to adhere to every provision of the menhaden management plan, knowing full well that the Secretary of Commerce would overturn that finding as well, and so further weaken the management authority of the ASMFC.

Now, here in New York, we’re hearing calls—from a member of Congress, no less—for New York to go out of compliance with ASMFC’s black sea bass management plan, because it forced to New York to adopt recreational regulations that are more stringent than those in New Jersey (but which are very much in line with the state’s New England neighbors).  And he’s getting some support from people who are usually very level-headed about fishery management issues.

Given the attitudes of the current Secretary of Commerce, New York could very possibly get away with it, too.

But fisheries management, and particularly East Coast inshore fisheries management, isn’t about seeing how much you might be able to get away with.  

It is about an interstate compact, backed by federal law, which has held together a fragile coalition of states, and allowed them to manage shared fish stocks in a rational and uniform manner.  If a few more states choose to put their own parochial interests ahead of the shared interest in healthy fish stocks, and go out of compliance with rules they see as unfair, that coalition could easily fall apart, and take us back dangerously close to the days when each state did what was best for them, and not for the overall health of our fisheries.

As the first striped bass management plan noted, “to meet even limited success in [managing a fishery] will require a great deal of compromising among all interested parties.”  States that threaten to go out of compliance every time a management decision doesn’t go their way aren’t acting in the spirit of compromise at all.

ASMFC, for all of its flaws, has used compromise and a cooperative fishery management approach to benefit our East Coast fisheries.  States repeatedly going out of compliance would threaten whatever progress has been made.

I will continue to argue that ASMFC’s management process needs an overhaul.

I believe that ASMFC’s overall management record has been, at best, a “limited success.”

Even so, I will forever maintain that “limited success” is better than no success at all, and insist that whatever course ASMFC eventually takes, cooperation—and full compliance—must always be a part of its future.