GULF RED SNAPPER MANAGEMENT IN THE SPOTLIGHT AGAIN

 Of all the fisheries issues that have arisen over the past decade, the fight over recreational red snapper management in the Gulf of Mexico is among the most acrimonious, and one of the most difficult to resolve.

It started out simply. As fisheries managers began to successfully rebuild the red snapper stock, red snapper anglers began catching, and keeping, more fish. As other anglers became aware of their success, those anglers began targeting red snapper, too, pushing recreational landings even higher, to the point that they regularly exceeded the annual catch limit.

In response, federal fisheries managers tightened restrictions in an effort to get recreational landings under control. Anglers, bristling at regulations that became more restrictive at the same time that red snapper were growing more abundant, convinced state fisheries managers, who had previously followed the federal managers’ lead, to go out of compliance with federal regulations. That led to higher recreational landings in state waters; to compensate, federal managers kept shortening the season in waters they controlled, leading to a spiral of higher state landings and more restrictive federal rules that finally culminated, in 2017, to a federal red snapper season that was only three days long.

After various anglers’ rights groups, and their allies in the fishing and boating industries, complained to the new presidential administration about the shortened season, the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) agreed to reopen the recreational red snapper season for part of the summer, an illegal action which assured that overfishing would occur, and led to a lawsuit which was settled only after NMFS stipulated, in writing, that it would not take such an action again.

Things just kept getting worse until the Gulf of Mexico Fisheries Management Council adopted a solution that, it hoped, would satisfy all parties: NMFS would continue to set the annual recreational catch limit, but the states, some aided by state-administered, NMFS-approved surveys that provided more timely information on recreational catch, landings, and effort, could set fishing seasons that best suited their local fisheries.

That solution was heralded by many who had previously criticized the federal fisheries management system. On February 6, 2020, the Center for Sportfishing Policy, one of the most unrelenting critics of federal red snapper management, announced that

"Today, the recreational fishing and boating community praised final action taken by NOAA Fisheries to implement state management for private anglers fishing for red snapper in the Gulf of Mexico. Today’s action cements the management changes found in “Reef Fish Amendment 50: State Management for Recreational Red Snapper” agreed to by the Gulf of Mexico Fishery Management Council (Gulf Council) in April 2019 and sent to Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross for approval…

“'We have reason to celebrate today thanks to the willingness of the state fish and wildlife agencies on the Gulf Coast and the leadership of Secretary Ross and congressional champions like Senator Richard Shelby (R-Ala.) and Representatives Garret Graves (R-La.), Steve Scalise (R-La.) and Austin Scott (R-Ga.),' said Jeff Angers, president of the Center for Sportfishing Policy. 'Over the past two years, private recreational red snapper anglers in the Gulf have become more active partners in the states’ data collection systems and enjoyed much longer red snapper seasons than the federal system was able to provide.'

But now, the enthusiasm for the new management measures seems to be waning, as new data is revealing that recreational red snapper landings, even under joint state and federal management, continue to exceed sustainable levels.

Much of the problem appears to arise from anglers’ misunderstanding of the data generated by state surveys such as Alabama’s “Snapper Check” and Mississippi’s “Tails ‘n Scales.” Such surveys were intended to supplement the federal Marine Recreational Information Program (MRIP), and provide more timely estimates of recreational landings. Because each employs a methodology that differs somewhat from the methodologies used by the other states and by MRIP, scientists recognized, as early as January 2018, that the results of each survey would have to be calibrated into a so-called “common currency,” before they could be used in the fishery management process.

When surveys such as Alabama’s Snapper Check showed lower landings than did MRIP, anglers immediately assumed that the state figures represented the more accurate estimate; state fishery managers did the same thing, depending on the lower state numbers to set a longer season that resulted in a larger harvest.

Yet even as most states’ 2020 red snapper seasons were beginning to open, state managers had reason to know that the state surveys were undercounting recreational landings. A document released by the Gulf of Mexico Fishery Management Council (Gulf Council) in early June indicated that, if the state surveys were calibrated to work with MRIP data, Mississippi and Alabama would see their quotas cut by 63 percent and 58 percent, respectively, while Louisiana’s quota would be reduced by nearly 30 percent.

Despite that knowledge, the Gulf Council set 2020 state quotas at levels that, given the uncalibrated state surveys, would certainly lead to overfishing. States made no effort to prevent that from happening; Alabama even reopened its season for three days in October, after closing it in early July, so that anglers might land their entire, uncalibrated quota.

But actions have consequences, and because the Gulf Council and the fisheries managers in the Gulf States decided to ignore the calibration issue, Alabama, Mississippi, and Texas, have overfished their recreational allocations and must now be held accountable for such overages.

Although anyone paying attention to the issue should have known that would happen, as soon as the news came out, long-time critics of federal red snapper management began to feign surprise and renew their attacks on federal fisheries managers.

As part of their renewed assault, spokesmen for various angling-related organizations falsely claimed that the data generated by MRIP conflicted with the state data when, in truth, all of the data merely needed to be calibrated into a common currency. As NMFS noted, “The MRIP state surveys are designed to improve regional monitoring of the recreational red snapper catch and effort. Estimates from these surveys can be used for federal scientific stock assessments and fishery management once there is a transition plan that describes how to integrate state and general data, and how to calibrate new and historical catch and effort data.”

Instead of explaining the need for calibration to the angling community, various anglers’ rights organizations, assembled under the banner of the Center for Sportfishing Policy, seemingly tried to incite angler outrage against federal fisheries managers. Ted Venker, Conservation Director of the Coastal Conservation Association, went so far as to accuse federal managers of engaging in “gamesmanship” and a desire “to continue its adversarial relationship with the states and with recreational anglers.”

That statement proved so outrageous that NMFS took the unusual step of issuing a public response, which stated, in part, that “The recent press release regarding NOAA Fisheries’ Marine Recreational Information Program (MRIP) contains many inaccuracies and omissions. Foremost among them is mentions of ‘gamesmanship.’ Along with our state partners, NOAA fisheries has dedicated significant time, expertise, and resources toward the development of these state data collection workshops.”

The anglers’ rights community offered no explanation as to how NMFS’ helping the states to develop their recreational data programs constitutes “an adversarial relationship” with such states. Instead, it started a new initiative to discredit federal managers, this one based on something called “The Great Red Snapper Count (Count).”

The Count, standing on its own, is a remarkable scientific endeavor. Supported by a $10 million federal grant, it has engaged a number of highly qualified biologists, using state-of-the-art scientific methodologies, to determine how many red snapper now reside in the U.S. portion of the Gulf of Mexico. The results, once they are finally calculated and reviewed, should make a significant contribution to scientists’ knowledge of Gulf red snapper.

The Harte Research Institute for Gulf of Mexico Studies, a part of Texas A&M University at Corpus Christi, is lead institution for the Count. It advises that “Results from this study will be compared with stock assessment results to examine what accounts for any differences observed. This project represents a unique opportunity to bolster the stock assessment-derived estimate of red snapper abundance for the U.S. Gulf of Mexico, with the goal of ensuring the most robust management possible for this iconic fishery species.”

Mississippi State University Extension, another institution involved in the study, echoes those comments, saying that “the Great Red Snapper Count will provide new insight into the Gulf of Mexico red snapper population, while also helping to calculate the current stock assessment.”

Although the Count’s results have yet to be finalized and peer-reviewed, it appears that it has already made one big discovery: Most of the red snapper in the Gulf of Mexico don’t live on reefs, wrecks, oil rigs and other high-profile structure, as people have long believed. Instead, the majority reside over sand, mud, or other low-profile bottom, where few people fished and even scientists failed to look for them.

That’s the kind of information that, if confirmed, can and should be integrated into the red snapper stock assessment. It will inform scientists not only about current abundance, but about the likely size of the unfished red snapper stock, the spawning potential of such unfished stock, and how today’s population and spawning potential compares. That information, in turn, will allow fishery managers to determine the health of the stock, and calculate the harvest limits that must be imposed to assure its sustainability.

Unfortunately, anglers’ rights groups are using the preliminary information for something else—to renew their attack on federal fishery managers. The Coastal Conservation Association’s Texas chapter issued a press release which alleged, in part, that

"It turns out that NOAA just doesn’t count snapper very well…This week, the Great Red Snapper Count, as it was called, revealed that, while preliminary, instead of the 36 million red snapper NOAA believed were in the population, there are really more like three times that number, or 100-million plus red snapper out there…The implications of this are hard to overstate. It means that the foundation of everything NOAA thought it knew about red snapper is fundamentally cracked…It means that the only crisis in red snapper has been NOAA’s faulty data and its culture that tailors management for the privileged few rather than the many. The snapper count means that NOAA has been wrong about a lot of things and has been wrong for a long time."

Like the earlier comment about “gamesmanship,” those allegations, too, were inaccurate, and unjustifiably stirred up anglers’ ire. As NMFS explained, “the preliminary abundance estimates produced by the study are consistent with those of the 2018 Gulf red snapper stock assessment conducted by NOAA Fisheries for natural and artificial structures, of high relief areas…What’s new is that this study better estimates the red snapper living in the low relief/bottom habitat, such as sand or mud.”

NMFS wasn’t aware of the number of fish that lived over such bottom because “Historically, much of the Gulf red snapper stock assessment data comes from the fishery. The fishery occurs mostly on the high relief natural and artificial structures in the Gulf or from surveys conducted near those areas. And, while we suspected there were more fish out there, a study of this magnitude is unprecedented.”

Now that the Count has revealed the fish’s presence, that information will be incorporated into the management process, although right now, no one knows how it will impact management measures.

As NMFS has already advised, “While it is difficult to determine exactly how this study will influence red snapper management, we intend to incorporate study results into an interim stock assessment in 2021. We will work with our partners on the Gulf of Mexico Fishery Management Council and their Scientific and Statistical Committee to peer-review the assessment and make adjustments to red snapper management as appropriate.”

That’s the right way to manage red snapper: Using new data to augment current information, to assure that such management employs the best available science, and best assures that the red snapper stock is sustainable in the long term.

Hopefully, despite the ongoing controversies surrounding recreational red snapper management in the Gulf, NMFS will be allowed to do just that.

-----

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

WHAT THE RECENT ELECTION CAN TEACH US ABOUT FISHERIES MANAGEMENT

 As I began writing this blog, Election Day 2020 has passed.  Pre-election polls predicted that former Vice President Joe Biden would win the presidential race by a comfortable margin, but now, more than 12 hours after the last polls closed, the race remains too close to call.

The outcomes in six battleground states—Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, and Nevada—remain unknown, and the identity of the next president remains unknown as well.  It may take another week, and perhaps one or more court decisions, before the winner is finally known.

According to the most-touted numbers, it wasn’t supposed to happen that way, and the recriminations are already beginning.  Pollsters are in the crosshairs of many journalists.  An article in The Guardian, for example, said

“The polls on the whole proved to be grossly misleading, overestimating Biden’s strength in state after state even more than they overestimated Hillary Clinton’s strength in 2016.  Major pollsters missed the mark in many places by high single digits, and polls at the more granular district level even farther off.  While polling analysts settled on tidy conclusions after 2016 about what was broken and how to fix it, it was unclear how the enterprise of polling could be salvaged this time.  In Wisconsin many polls were 10 points off and in Florida eight points.  Elsewhere, the polls looked a bit more accurate.”

Given the way polls were presented in the news before election day, with both broadcast and newspaper journalists generally predicting former Vice President Biden coasting to an easy win, with a landslide of historic dimensions not out of the question, The Guardian’s comments don’t seem unreasonable.

But people who really understand polling would disagree.

Polling is not an exact science; while we tend to focus on the point estimate—the prediction, in this case, that Vice President Biden had an 89 percent chance of winning the election, or that he was leading by 2.5 percent in Florida—that point estimate is just that, an estimate.  It does not represent a precise quantity, but is only the most likely outcome in a range of possible outcomes, any one of which could plausibly represent the actual election results.

In other words, to truly understand what a poll says, you have to understand the concept of margin of error.

On the eve of the election, Five Thirty-Eight, a firm that specializes in analyzing data, including polling data, and issuing predictions, released a story titled

“Biden’s Favored In Our Final Presidential Forecast, But It’s A Fine Line Between A Landslide And A Nail-Biter.

The article went on to explain what all the pollsters’ critics are missing—that you can’t consider the point estimate without also considering the margin of error, saying

“what’s tricky about this race is that—because of Trump’s Electoral College advantage, which he largely carries over from 2016—it wouldn’t take that big of an error in Trump’s favor to make this election interesting. Importantly, interesting isn’t the same thing as a likely Trump win; instead, the probably result of a 2016-style polling error would be a Biden victory but one that took some time to resolve and which could imperil Democrats’ chances of taking over the Senate.  On the flip side, it wouldn’t take much of a polling error in Biden’s favor to turn 2020 into a historic landslide against Trump.”

As things stand on this post-election Wednesday, we seem to be living through the former scenario, with a polling error in Trump’s favor leading to a very closely contested election, but—if predicted outcomes in Arizona, Michigan, and Nevada turn out as expected—one that Vice President Biden will ultimately win.

Five Thirty-Eight explained that the average polling error in a presidential election was about 3 percent, and then observed that

“with a 3-point error in Trump’s direction…the race would become competitive.  Biden would probably hold on, but he’d only be the outright favorite in states (and congressional districts) containing 279 electoral votes…”

And right now, that seems to be about where things are headed.

So what does a presidential poll have to do with fisheries management?  Actually, quite a lot.  Both involve data analysis.  Both deal with uncertainty.  And both are misunderstood by the general public.

Consider stock assessments.

If we look at the 2013 update to the 2012 benchmark assessment for striped bass—the assessment that should have triggered the creation of a 10-year rebuilding plan, had the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission’s Atlantic Striped Bass Management Board done what its own management plan said it “must” do—we’ll notice that the female spawning stock biomass estimate was

“58.2 thousand metric tons (95% CI:  43,262-73,212) in 2012...The [spawning stock biomass] point estimate in 2012 remained just above the threshold level of 57.6 thousand metric tons (1995 SSB value) and indicates that the striped bass are not overfished.”

But that point estimate, which said that the stock was not overfished, was like the Five Thirty-Eight prediction that Vice President Biden would end up with a 2.5 percent lead in Florida—it didn’t tell the whole story.  To get that, we need to look at the parenthetical “(95% CI:  43,262-73,212).”  “CI” means “confidence interval,” and what that parenthetical tells us that there is a 95 percent probability that the actual size of the female spawning stock biomass is somewhere between 43,262 and 73,212 metric tons, and not necessarily that close to the 58,200 metric ton point estimate.

That’s an important thing to remember, because if the actual size of the spawning stock biomass fell within a substantial portion of that 30,000 metric ton range—anywhere between 43,262 and 57,600 metric tons—the stock would have already been overfished all the way back in 2012; in fact, there was a 46 percent probability that was the case.  In fact, the chance that the striped bass was overfished at that time was probably no worse—and perhaps a bit better—than the chances of Trump winning Florida in the 2020 election.

But the average person—and that includes the non-scientists on the ASMFC’s management boards—who reads a stock assessment which says that the striped bass, or any other species, “are not overfished” isn’t likely to consider the implications of a wide confidence interval; they will merely take the point estimate at its face value and believe all is well.

Such a misunderstanding of the data can cost the public dearly, weather we’re talking about an election or the health of a fish stock.

When the press talks about political polls, they often refer to each poll’s “margin of error,” expressing it as a percentage.  Like a rigorously calculated confidence interval, the margin of error warns that the point estimate, while somewhere in the ballpark, probably doesn’t precisely reflect the public’s opinions. 

The Marine Recreational Information Program, which estimates recreational fishermen’s catch, landings, and effort, measures margins of error in its estimates, too.  They call it “percent standard error,” and it provides a good measure of the precision of MRIP estimates.  But while the margins of error in political polls are fairly small—remember that in The Guardian’s article quoted above, the author was outraged that “Major pollsters missed the mark in many places by high single digits, and polls at the more granular district level even farther off”—fisheries managers would often be thrilled if their surveys had such low levels of error.

For example, 2019 landings estimates for black sea bass in the New England/Mid-Atlantic region have a percent standard error of 7.5—starting to get into that “high single digits” range that The Guardian complained about in political polls.  Break that data down to the state level—the level where most political polls, and most recreational black sea bass regulations, begin—and the best percent standard error that you find is 14.5 percent in New York and 15.7 percent in Rhode Island; it runs as high as 40.3 percent in Virginia, although most states are in the high teens/low twenties range. 

But all those percent standard errors are far higher—generally, by an order of magnitude—than the margin of error in political polls, yet fisheries managers use them to manage fish stocks on an everyday basis.

Then we cut the data even finer.  In political polls, it’s broken down into voting districts within a single state; in MRIP estimates, into two-month “waves” and/or into sectors of the overall angling community.  When you do that, the error grows.

New York, for example, has one black sea bass bag limit for Wave 4 (July/August), and a higher bag limit for Waves 5 and 6 (September/October and November/December).  Breaking things down that way takes the percent standard error from 14.5 to a still relatively tolerable 18.8 in Wave 4, a higher 23.0 in Wave 5, and a very imprecise 35.4 in Wave 6.

Other states break down the data differently, but in all cases, when state-level data is broken down into smaller units, the percent standard error will always rise.

The final big issue that is common to both election polls is uncertainty.  In the most recent election, that took the form of things such as who recently-registered voters will choose, the impacts of COVID-19 on voters’ decisions, and how mail-in voting would affect the outcomes.

In fisheries, uncertainty is broken down into things such as scientific uncertainty, relating to things like the actual size of the fish population or how it is being impacted by climate change, and management uncertainty, such as the actual level of angler effort, and how that was effected by the pandemic.

But whether we’re talking about elections or fisheries, uncertainty can be unknown, and can never be quantified.  Pollsters might worry about whether and how COVID-19 might impact voting, but they have no way to quantify such worries and include them in their polling models.  Scientists might have suspected that they were underestimating recreational landings, and that those landings were the reason that their population models repeatedly overestimated biomass while underestimating fishing mortality, but until MRIP was updated, they had no way to know for sure.

Thus, in polling as in fisheries, we know that the point estimates are imprecise, and may be higher or lower than the value that we try to measure.  And we know that uncertainty will always play a role in real-world outcomes.

In politics, we deal with those unknowns by devising alternative strategies; in this presidential election, both candidates sought “alternative paths” to the 270 electoral votes that they needed, and campaigned in as many states as possible in an effort to attract voters who might transform such alternative paths into viable routes to the White House.

In fisheries, as in politics, typical deviations from the point estimate can have real impacts on the outcome.  But in the fisheries world, unlike the political, the adverse impacts of such deviations don't get much attention. 

In 2000, a federal appellate court decided the matter of Natural Resources Defense Council v. Daley, and established the principle that a federal fishery management measure must have at least a 50 percent probability of achieving its goal in order to pass legal muster.

Of course, that means that a measure that has a 50 percent probability of not achieving its goal is acceptable, too.

So start with management assumptions based on a point estimate of biomass, a point estimate of recruitment, and a point estimate of fishing mortality, all of which might be bounded by fairly wide confidence intervals, and use that to calculate the overfishing limit (which has just a 50 percent probability of preventing overfishing), which will be reduced to account for known sources of scientific uncertainty, to come up with the acceptable biological catch, which then may, but often is not, further reduced to account for known sources of management uncertainty to calculate an annual catch limit.

Once the annual catch limit is set, adopt recreational management measures based on estimates of the previous year’s catch, effort, and landings, estimates which will, at best, have a percent standard error approaching 10 percent.  If you’re dealing with an ASMFC managed species, go one step further, and allow the states to set their own regulations which will assure at least a 15 or 20 percent standard error if set on a statewide level, or maybe a 30 or 40 percent standard error—or more—if broken down further, into wave and/or sector.

You might be forgiven for thinking that such regulations aren't very likely to hit their mark.

Then factor in the possible impacts of unknown sources of scientific uncertainty, unknown or unaccounted-for sources of management uncertainty, and managers’ all-too-frequent reluctance to adopt probabilities of success materially higher than the 50 percent standard created in Natural Resources Defense Council v. Daley (If you’re dealing with an ASMFC- or state-managed species, when that standard doesn’t apply, there’s even a real chance that fishery managers will accept a less-than-50 percent probability of success as good enough, as the ASMFC’s striped bass management board did at the start of this year).

Then ask yourself why you’re surprised when fish stocks fail to rebuild or—need I say it again—why ASMFC-managed fish stocks so often decline.

Political journalists are complaining because recent polls missed their predictions by a few percent.

If they really want cause to complain, they ought to look at some of our fisheries—particularly our ASMFC- and state-managed fisheries—to see what a real miss looks like.

In fact, I wish that they would.  If the public had a better idea about how those management bodies worked, perhaps they’d get outraged, and try to change things.

 

 

 

 

MARINE FISHERIES ETHICS: DEFENDING THE COMMONS

 It was just an offhand comment in an Internet forum, in a thread about false albacore (a/k/a “little tunny”).  Somebody got offended when another angler commented about releasing fish properly, and responded

“But what an angler does with his catch within the law?  Is nobody’s business but their own.”

It’s a sentiment that I’ve heard echoed more than a few times, various versions of “If it’s legal, than it’s OK,” or “Don’t worry about it.  Nobody broke any laws.”

Yet when I saw that comment about false albacore the other day, I couldn’t help but have a negative reaction—and not just because of the lousy grammar.

What’s right and what’s legal can often be a long way apart. 

False albacore are a good example of that.  They fight well, often bust bait on the surface, and can generally be found close to shore.  That makes them popular with light-tackle anglers, and particularly valued by the flyfishing crowd, who can’t generally find any fish that pulls harder without traveling some distance offshore.

On the other hand, while false albacore, if properly handled and eaten on the same day that they’re caught, can provide excellent sushi and sashimi, the fish are otherwise typically shunned as seafood.  Because of that, the commercial false albacore fishery is very small; in 2019, East Coast false albacore landings were around 450,000 pounds, with an ex vessel price of roughly $250,000, or about 56 cents per pound.  Recreational harvest is significantly higher—about 1.8 million pounds—but only about half of that was actually landed; the rest is attributed to fish that were dying when returned to the water.

At the same time, false albacore are the most abundant tunain the Atlantic ocean; fishing mortality doesn’t have much impact on the health of the stock, so fisheries managers haven’t bothered to regulate the false albacore fishery.  Thus, everything is legal.  An angler could kill every one that he catches, then dump them back, dead, into the sea, and face no legal consequences at all.

While the commenter on the website was arguing that it was nobody’s business how an angler releases false albacore, his comment that “what an angler does with their catch within the law…is nobody’s business but their own” would apply the angler who killed and wasted his entire catch as well.

Yet we all should agree that sort of action—although legal—would be ethically reprehensible, no matter how abundant and unregulated false albacore might be.

To demonstrate that point, let’s step outside the fisheries context just for a moment, and think of another natural resources issue.  Back in the mid- to late 1800s, right after the Civil War, just as the first trans-continental railroad was built, buffalo—more properly, American bison—abounded; it’s generally believed that somewhere between 30 and 60 million of the great animals, which might weigh somewhere around 1,500 pounds each, lived on the Great Plains.

After the railroads were built, they began advertising special trips for East Coast sportsmen, who could engage in “hunting by rail” for the buffalo.  A contemporary journalist described one of such hunts this way:

“The train is ‘slowed’ to a rate of speed about equal to that of the herd; the passengers get out fire-arms which are provided for the defense of the train against the Indians, and open from the windows and platforms of the cars a fire that resembles a brisk skirmish.  Frequently a young bull will turn at bay for a moment.  His exhibition of courage is generally his death warrant, for the whole fire of the train is turned upon him, either killing him or some member of the herd in his immediate vicinity.”

The buffalo, once killed, were left on the ground to rot.  No effort was made to recover them.

It was all perfectly legal, but was it morally right?

Today, wild American buffalo hang on in only a few places, such as Yellowstone National Park, some remote areas of Utah, and the Nature Conservancy’s Joseph H. Williams Tallgrass Prairie Preserve in Oklahoma. 

But back in the 1860s and 1870s, when bison were abundant, killing them wasn’t only legal, it was encouraged, with General Philip Sheridan encouraging the slaughter, and even the extinction, of the buffalo, believing that it would be the most effective way to weaken the various Plains tribes and end their resistance to settlers taking over their lands.

So back then, killing the buffalo was not only legal, but encouraged.

And yet, was it ethically and morally right?

Today, I think, most reasonable people would say no.

Yet if that was wrong, why would it not be wrong to kill, or even carelessly mishandle, a false albacore, or any other fish, merely because they are currently abundant, and no laws give them protection?

I would hope most thinking anglers would believe that ethics and morality would play a role there, as well.

And if we agree that it’s wrong to kill something that you have no intention to eat, and just let it rot on the beach, then isn’t it equally wrong to release a live fish in a way that makes it more likely to die?

Or for an angler to keep a fish that he has no intention of eating, with the vague expectation that he’ll be able to give it away to someone he knows?  Or to keep the fish for himself, knowing that he already has so many fish in the freezer that much will be thrown out in the spring?

Those things, too, are legal.

And those things, too, are not right.

Yet how do we answer the angler who says, “I didn’t break any laws, so what I do is nobody’s business but mine?”

My response is that such anglers are wrong, because the marine resources of the nation are a commonly owned resource.  We may use them.  But when we abuse them, we do a great disservice to our fellow citizens who may depend on such resources for food or for their economic survival.

Unfortunately, commonly owned resources are particularly susceptible to abuse.  That point was popularized, and made into a near-cliché, in Garrett Hardin’s 1968 essay, “The Tragedy of the Commons,” but the point was first made more than a century earlier, in a lecture given by English economist William Forster Lloyd, who noted that when farmers all graze their animals on a publicly-owned pasture, known in England as a “common,”

 “if [such farmer] puts more cattle on a common, the food which they consume forms a deduction which is shared between all cattle, as well that of others as his own, in proportion to their number, and only a small part of it is taken from his own cattle.”

Thus, it makes sense for a farmer to graze too many cattle on a shared pasture, for the benefits that he receives will outweigh the damage caused by overgrazing, as the effects of that damage is shared between the cattle owned by everyone.

However, that strategy only works when just one or two people abuse the system, because when abuse becomes commonplace,

“In an inclosed pasture, there is a point of saturation, if I may call it so (by which, I mean a barrier depending on considerations of interest) beyond which no prudent man will add to his stock.  In a common, also, there is in like manner a point of saturation,”

and when that point is reached, the common declines so badly that no one, including the abusers, can profit.

Hardin’s essay took Lloyds comments on pasturage and expanded them into a more general truth:  When individuals are allowed unrestricted access to a common resource, then they will naturally seek to take more than their share, and everyone will suffer.  That truth applies in fisheries as well.  People claim that they have the “right” or the “freedom” to do what they want, so long as they stay within the law, but such freedom is illusory, for as Hardin observes,

“the morality of the act is a function of the state of the system at the time it is performed.  Using the commons as a cesspool does not harm the general public under frontier conditions, because there is no public, the same behavior in a metropolis is unbearable.  A hundred and fifty years ago a plainsman could kill an American bison, cut out only the tongue for his dinner, and discard the rest of the animal.  He was not in any important sense being wasteful.  Today, with only a few thousand bison left, we would be appalled by such behavior.”

Thus, in a fisheries context, it may be legally acceptable to harvest one striped bass each day.  But right now, with the striped bass stock already overfished, it is probably morally unacceptable to do so, because of the harm that such harvest can do to the commonly owned resource.

Similarly, the comments we often hear at fisheries meetings, that back in the 1960s or ‘70s, people would go out onto party boats expecting that the fish that they caught would “pay for the trip” in food value, are irrelevant today, when growing coastal populations have placed greater pressure on coastal marine resources, and anglers can have a much more profound impact on fish stocks than they had half a century ago.

Thus, the notion that “what an angler does with his catch within the law…is nobody’s business but their own” is inherently flawed.  Such a concept might be valid if applied to a private pond, with no inlet or outlet, sited solely within the bounds of someone’s private parcel of real estate, as such fish could reasonably be deemed to be the personal property of the landowner.  But it cannot be rightly applied to the capture of fish resident in the coastal sea, for such fish are part of the commons, in which every citizen maintains an interest; thus, what people catch, let alone harvest, is everyone’s business, for everyone has an interest in the health and management of such natural resources, which are held in trust for us all.

In fact, as owners of such commonly held natural resources, it is in our interests to be good and responsible stewards, who not only take care to ensure that such resources are properly managed, but also go out of our way to point out when such resources are being abused.

In the end, natural resources, including the nation’s marine fish stocks, belong to all of us, and it is not only our right, but our duty and our moral obligation, to stand up and speak out when we find an individual taking more than his share.

 

 

 

 

ELECTIONS: THE SPORTSMAN'S DILEMMA

Normally, this blog concentrates on issues important to saltwater fishermen and to the nation’s marine resources, and in particular issues affecting the East and Gulf coasts, and doesn't examine much else.  But today, with the election looming, I'm going to broaden its scope just a bit, and take a look at the dilemma that affects not just saltwater anglers, but sportsmen of every stripe, whether they fish in fresh or salt water, or hunt upland game, big game, small game, or waterfowl.

How do we pick the right candidate?

That’s a particularly important question this time around, because the 2020 election is one of the big ones.  Based on current polling, we could potentially see the election of a new president, change of control in the Senate, and strengthening Democratic control of the House of Representatives. 

Still, as a recent article in Politico pointed out—and as we were shown, very clearly, in 2016—the polls could be wrong, and Donald Trump could win reelection.  The article notes that

“Republican registration has ticked up in key states at the same time Democratic field operations were in hibernation…

“There is uncertainty about the accuracy of polling in certain swing states, the efficacy of GOP voter suppression efforts and even the number of mail-in ballots that for one reason or another will be disqualified.

“’There are more known unknowns than we’ve ever had at any point,’ said Tom Bonier, CEO of the Democratic data firm TargetSmart.  ‘The instruments we have to gauge this race, the polling, our predictive models…those tools are built around quote-unquote normal elections.  And this is anything but a normal election.’”

Counting out a Trump win at this point would be a mistake.  It would also be a mistake to assume that Republicans will lose control of the Senate.  As an NPR article released today said,

“Control of the Senate remains a jump ball days out from Election Day.”

About the only thing that remains just about certain is that control of the House will not change.

Whoever wins, or maintains, control of the various offices, the election will have conseqences for every sportsman in the nation.

Given the differences in candidates’ positions on issues important to sportsmen, ranging from fossil fuels and firearms to fisheries conservation and clean air and water, we need to think long and hard about how our votes are cast, for few candidates, and neither party, offers us everything that we’d like.

The Democratic Party’s platform promises that

“We will support healthy coastal communities and marine ecosystems to sustain and enhance our economic well-being, including in the fishing, tourism and clean energy industries…

“America’s national parks and monuments, public lands, and marine protected areas are treasures that should be held in trust for future generations.  We will protect these precious places and preserve America’s unspoiled wilderness for hunting, fishing, hiking, and camping by codifying the roadless rule, and grow America’s outdoor recreation economy, which supports millions of jobs in rural areas…We will take actions to protect wildernesses and waters, and require full, rigorous, and transparent scientific and environmental review of any proposed mining projects near national treasures…”

That sounds good, and from a conservation perspective, it’s difficult disagree with such goals.

At the same time, we have to remember that any party’s platform is just a promise, and that there is no guarantee that the things that are promised will actually come to be.

That becomes a particularly interesting point this year, because the Republican Party elected not to fashion a new platform for the 2020 election.  Instead, the Republican National Committee adopted a resolution that states that because of COVID-19, it was unable to hold a convention with all members present, didn’t want a small number of delegates establishing such new platform, and so resolved, among other things,

“That the Republican Party has and will continue to enthusiastically support the President’s America-first agenda;

“That the 2020 Republican National Convention will adjourn without adopting a new platform until the 2024 Republican National Convention; …and

“That any motion to amend the 2016 Platform or to adopt a new Platform, including any motion to suspend the procedures that will allow doing so, will be ruled out of order.”

Based on that resolution, it seems that the Republicans’ 2020 position on issues should be viewed as the positions stated in the party’s 2016 Platform, as interpreted by the actions of the Trump Administration.

So how does that compare with the Democrats’ platform?

In 2016, the Republican platform said that

“We are the party of America’s growers, producers, farmers, ranchers, foresters, miners, commercial fishermen, and all those who bring from the earth the crops, minerals, energy, and the bounties of our seas that are the lifeblood of our economy.  Their labor and ingenuity, their determination in bad times and love of the land at all times, powers our economy, creates millions of jobs, and feeds billions of people around the world.  Only a few years ago, a bipartisan consensus in government valued the role of extractive industries and rewarded their enterprise by minimizing its interference…

“the Republican Party reaffirms the moral obligation to be good stewards of the God-given natural beauty and resources of our country.  We believe that people are the most valuable resources and that human health and safety are the proper measurements of a policy’s success.  We assert that private ownership has been the best guarantee of conscientious stewardship, while some of our worst instances of degradation have occurred under government control.  Poverty, not wealth, is the greatest threat to the environment, while steady economic growth brings the technological advances which make environmental progress possible…

“The environment is too important to be left to radical environmentalists…Over the last eight years, the Administration has triggered an avalanche of regulation that wreaks havoc across our economy and yields minimal environmental benefits…

“The federal government owns or controls over 640 million acres of land in the United States, most of which is in the West…It is absurd to think that all that acreage must remain under the absentee ownership or management of official Washington.  Congress shall immediately pass universal legislation providing for a timely and orderly mechanism requiring the federal government to convey certain federally controlled public lands to states…’

Thus, the 2016 Republican Platform clearly favors extractive industries, disfavors federal ownership of public lands, and clearly opposes most environmental regulation.  And the Trump Administration has been faithful to that platform, supporting such things as mountaintop removal coal mining and oil drilling in the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge, removing obstacles to the huge, open pit “Pebble Mine” in the near pristine wilderness of Alaska’s Bristol Bay watershed and to a smaller, but equally toxic copper mine in the headwaters of Minnesota’s Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness.

Consistent with the 2016 Platform, Trump’s Commerce Department and its subsidiary National Marine Fisheries Service unjustifiably overturned the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Service’s 2017 decision that New Jersey was out of compliance with ASMFC’s summer flounder management plan and, in the same year, illegally reopened the red snapper fishery in the Gulf of Mexico; more recently, it put bluefin tuna at risk by allowing pelagic longlining in their only confirmed western hemisphere spawning ground, and led the opposition to science-based management of shortfin mako sharks at the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas.  

Trump himself reopened the New England Canyons and Seamounts National Monument to commercial fishing, and issued an executive order instructing the regional fishery management councils to identify and remove regulatory obstacles to increased fish landings, and also authorized an offshore aquaculture permitting system, even though Congress had never delegated such permitting authority to the Administrative Branch.

On land, the Trump Administration removed protections from the struggling sage grouse in order to ease the way for oil drilling in much of its remaining habitat, halved the size of Utah’s Bears Ears and Grand Staircase Escalante National Monuments while opening up new mineral exploration and drilling opportunities in the region, and seeks to open public lands near the Grand Canyon to uranium mining.  

In California Trump, who supposedly supports states’ rights, signed an order that would divert water from rivers flowing into the San Francisco Bay delta to farms in the state’s Central Valley, even though such diversion threatens the remaining chinook salmon runs in such rivers, as well as the endangered delta smelt, and is opposed by California’s governor.

So when you contrast the Democrats’ 2020 platform with the Republican’s 2016 platform and the Trump Administration’s actions on conservation and environmental issues, it seems that sportsmen ought to be on the Democrats’ side.  

The contrast between the parties is so stark that author/angler Stephen Sautner wrote a piece for the Patagonia Journal titled “You Call Yourself an Angler?” questions how an angler could support the current administration.  In that piece, Mr. Sautner wrote, in part

“How can my fellow anglers support—even cheer—this administration and the wrecking ball it has taken to the rules that protect the same areas we fish?  If you need a reminder, this is the same administration rolling back more than 100 environmental laws.  They pulled out of the Paris climate accord.  They slashed the borders of Utah’s Bears Ears National Monument so they could open it for mining.  They kneecapped regulations that protect half the nation’s wetlands.  They want to unlock even more public lands for drilling and fracking.  They are working to gut the Endangered Species Act—the landmark law that saved the bald eagle and the peregrine falcon.  This administration has never met a gas or oil pipeline they did not want to suck from.  They gave you Scott Pruitt, perhaps the most blatantly unethical EPA Administrator in history…”

I have to admit that, as an angler who has fished on every coast of the United States, and also in many fresh waters, as a hunter who depends on the production of the prairie pothole “duck factory” for much of my waterfowl, and who has seen the sun rise over the Wyoming grasslands where pronghorns outnumber the people, I understand where Mr. Sautner is coming from.

But I also understand, even if I don’t agree with, the sportsmen who support the current administration.  That’s because it too often seems that the Democrats don’t understand, and don’t want to understand, sportsmen's concerns.  The Democratic Party has become increasingly urban, and often seems to have lost touch with citizens who live outside the ant farms of New York, Chicago, and the other big cities, and seem unwilling to make any concessions to the demands of our lifestyle. 

The Democratic Platform talks about ending “gun violence,” and in itself, that is good.  No one wants to see a friend, neighbor, or family member killed or seriously hurt, whether the damage is done by a felon with a firearm or knife, or by some drunk behind the wheel of a Mercedes.  Few rational shooters would, or should, oppose a background check program that helps to assure that firearms aren’t being sold to crazies or criminals.

But when a hunter or shooter reads that the party

“will incentivize states to enact licensing requirements for owning firearms,

it’s not unreasonable for such person to start wondering what their options would be if, for some unknown and arbitrary reason, the state licensing authority says “No.”

And there are always worries about accessing the fish and wildlife that we pursue.  Running a boat offshore requires quite a bit of fuel; running a freshwater bass boat is a little better, but then there’s the fuel for the truck that you need to haul that bass boat around.  Canoes don’t require any fuel at all, but when I head up to the Adirondacks, my canoe sits atop a Ford F-150 with four-wheel drive, big enough to carry my gear and capable enough to go off-road if I need to.

How do the Democrats’ views on “clean energy” and their focus on mass transit mesh with the need to just get out and into the outdoors?  Can their opposition to fossil fuel make our boats and vehicles obsolete?

And thus, the Sportsman’s Dilemma.

Do you vote for the party that will protect natural resources, but might restrict your ability to access them?  Or do you vote for the party that might guarantee gas and guns, but by supporting extractive industry, take away your reason for wanting them in the first place?

Everyone must make their own choice, but for me, it always comes down to the resource.  Not only our chosen sport, but our very quality of life, depend on clean air and water, on abundant fish and wildlife, and on extensive and available public lands and waters, where we, and the rest of nature, can wander.

Without healthy, abundant, and accessible populations of waterfowl, upland birds, and game, my rifles and shotguns will stay in the safe, for I’ll have no reason to use, or even own, them.

Without healthy oceans, that support an abundance of marine resources, there’s no reason for me to run a boat.

Without clean air and water, and wild places where beauty remains unsullied by drill rigs and unscarred by mines, I don’t have much need for my truck or canoe, because I can find plenty that’s polluted and ugly very close to home.

So, come next Tuesday, I’ll be voting for clean air and clean water.  I’ll be voting for science-based management of natural resources.  I’ll be voting for national monuments, and undrilled, unmined, and unfracked public lands.  I’ll be voting for beauty and life.

I’ve solved my own Sportsman’s Dilemma. 

You may find a different solution.

Although to be honest, I hope that you don’t.

 

ALL FISHERIES STAKEHOLDERS ARE EQUAL, BUT SOME ARE MORE EQUAL THAN OTHERS

 

Sometime during our school years, maybe in junior high or maybe in high school, we were probably all exposed to George Orwell’s Animal Farm, an allegorical fantasy of a once-idealistic government gone tragically wrong.  It’s safe to say that most remember the novel’s pivotal line:

“All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others,”

given that, since the book came out in August 1945, it has proven applicable to far too many political situations.

Now, given some of the things that we’ve heard at the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission, we have to wonder whether it applies to fisheries management, too.

I’ve already dedicated a couple of essays to last Tuesday’s meeting of the ASMFC’s Atlantic Menhaden Management Board, and though today’s blog focuses on menhaden too, it shouldn’t be read in such a narrow context.  What it really talks about is whether the public should have a greater say in how public resources are managed, or whether the relative handful of people who derive private profit from such public resources should be given greater sway. 

Still, last Tuesday’s meeting is a good place to start, because it included some troubling comments that illustrate how that question is being answered at the ASMFC.

In supporting the motion to set the annual catch limit at194,400 metric tons, a level of landings that the management board knew waslikely to exceed the fishing mortality target that the same management boardset just two months before, one state manager said that

“If we do it gradually…we will be able to bring all of our stakeholders with us as we move forward,”

with the “it” she referred to being reducing such landings to a level that will have at least a 50 percent probability of achieving the target fishing mortality level.

On its face, that comment might not seem so bad, but that changes when it’s read in the context of recent menhaden management actions, and stakeholder input on the actions that were or were not taken.

At its August meeting, the Atlantic Menhaden Management Board unanimously adopted so-called “ecological reference points” for menhaden management.  For the first time, menhaden landings wouldn’t be merely constrained by the amount of menhaden that could be removed from the population without harming the stock.  Instead, landings would be limited to the amount of menhaden that could be removed without causing harm to the fish, birds, and marine mammals that depend on the species as an important part of the forage base in Atlantic coastal ecosystems.

Striped bass were used as a proxy, or as some management board members said, an “indicator species” for the broad array of predators that feed on menhaden, because striped bass are more dependent on menhaden than any other fish species examined.  Thus, the menhaden abundance target was set at the level that would support the striped bass stock at its target level, while the abundance threshold was set at the level needed to support a striped bass stock that had declined in abundance and was teetering on the edge of becoming overfished.

The adoption of such ecosystem reference points was the culmination of an advocacy effort that began more than a decade ago, and was broadly supported.  In a presentation made by ASMFC staff to the menhaden management board at last August’s meeting, staff noted that

“Many comments were submitted on [ecological reference points,]”

including 16 letters signed by more than 100 organizations, more than 1,000 form letters, and over 200 individual comments.  Staff also noted that, out of all of those letters, an

“Overwhelming majority:  approve [environmental reference points] to manage Atlantic menhaden.  [emphasis added]”

While many who commented did not state just what such ecological reference points ought to be (which is a perfectly logical position, given that the matter is best determined by qualified biologists), others wanted to see reference points that

“Specified [environmental reference points that allowed striped bass to rebuild”

and/or noted that menhaden are an

“Important forage species that supports recreational fisheries and coastal economies.”

So, based on the ASMFC’s own comments, it appears that just about all of the stakeholders, whether anglers or not, were concerned with menhaden’s impact on coastal ecosystems, and wanted to see ecological reference points adopted—and presumably wanted to see the menhaden management board take those reference points seriously, and establish harvest limits that were intended to achieve the reference point target.

And that is what makes the comment about “bringing all of our stakeholders with us” by not managing to the fishing mortality target, but instead establishing annual catch limits that will knowingly exceed that mark.

Because, in the ASMFC’s own words, it seems like the “overwhelming majority” of stakeholders were already on board with setting a harvest level that would achieve the fishing mortality target. 

Of course, not everyone agreed with that overwhelming majority.  The ASMFC publishes all of the comments that it receives on fisheries issues, and a review of the materials for the August meeting reveals that there were two letters in opposition to the ecological reference points.  One of those letters came from the Menhaden Fisheries Coalition, an organization that describes itself as

“a group comprised of bait and reduction fishermen, dealers, and processors who rely on Atlantic menhaden to support themselves, their families, and other fisheries,”

and includes entities such as the Garden State Seafood Association, Long Island Commercial Fishing Association, Lund’s Fisheries, Massachusetts Lobstermen’s Association, North Carolina Fisheries Association, Omega Protein Inc., the Virginia Watermen’s Association and a number of smaller entities.

The other letter came from a group called the Science Center for Marine Fisheries, which claims to represent

“a federal initiative to bring together academic researchers and industry members to fund projects improving our understanding of the scientific uncertainties around fisheries assessments and evaluating economically important issues for fishing communities.”

There is substantial overlap between the Menhaden Fisheries Coalition and the Science Center for Marine Fisheries; Greg DiDomenico, who chairs the Science Center’s Industry Advisory Board, is also the Executive Director of the Coalition member Garden State Seafood Association.

While such organizations, and particularly the Menhaden Fisheries Coalition, claimed to support the adoption of ecological reference points, they also clearly supported maintenance of a status quo catch limit of 216,000 metric tons for the years 2021 and 2022.

And they were the only stakeholders who took such a position.

The same dynamic carried over into last Tuesday’s meeting.  

Although there were far fewer comments made overall, perhaps because many believed that, after adopting ecological reference points in August, the ASMFC would act consistently, and adopt a landings limit that was consistent with those reference points two months later, the only comments seeking to maintain the status quo, and not act in accord with the reference points, came from the Menhaden Fisheries Coalition and from the Massachusetts Lobstermen’s Association, which is a Coalition member.

Once again, the majority of the stakeholders who commented were part of a broad coalition of anglers, conservation groups, and science professionals who supported setting a landings limit with at least a 50 percent probability of constraining harvest to or below the fishing mortality target.  The only ones who opposed such action were either menhaden harvesters, menhaden processors, menhaden wholesalers, or lobstermen who used menhaden as bait—in other words, were people who, in one way or another profited from dead menhaden.

And while the memberships of such financially interested parties isn’t small—the Massachusetts Lobstermen’s Association alone claims 1,800 members—the organizations who supported managing to the fishing mortality target didn’t have small memberships, either.  They included angling organizations such as the Coastal Conservation Association and International Game Fish Association, trade groups such as the American Sportfishing Association, American Saltwater Guides Association, and National Marine Manufacturers Association, conservation organizations such as Wild Oceans, the National Audubon Society, National Wildlife Federation, Conservation Law Foundation, Wildlife Conservation Society, The Nature Conservancy, and the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership. 

Thus, even when membership is taken into account, the number of stakeholders who supported managing to the fishing mortality target far outweighed the number who supported less effective management.  Yet there was no concern about adopting a harvest limit that would "bring" that overwhelming majority of "stakeholders along."

Instead, the ASMFC’s Atlantic Menhaden Management Board opted to support the menhaden industry’s short-term financial interests, rather than the long-term interests of both the public and the Atlantic coast's ecosystems.

The only explanation for that is that the Atlantic Menhaden Management Board doesn’t view all stakeholders equally, but instead favors those who profit from a public resource, and elevates their concerns above those expressed by everyone else.

That shouldn’t come as a surprise.  ASMFC has a long history of elevating narrow, short-term economic concerns above scientific advice, the health of fish stocks or, as we see with menhaden, even ecosystem-wide concerns. 

The failure to manage menhaden to the fishing mortality reference point is just a new symptom of a very old problem, which manifested itself when the ASMFC ignored scientific advice with respect to the southern New England stock of American lobster in 2010,  permitted the now-collapsed northern shrimp stock to be overfished through 2013, adopted a 2017 amendment to the tautog management plan that allowed overfishing to continue in Long Island Sound until 2029 and, in a chain of events stretching back to 2011, ignored both scientific advice and the requirements of its own management plan to rebuild the striped bass spawning stock, decisions that left the stock both overfished and subject to overfishing at the end of 2017; even now, the weak measures adopted by its Atlantic Striped Bass Management Board a year ago have only a 42 percent chance of returning fishing mortality to the target level by the end of this year, partly because of concerns to protect Maryland’s for-hire and commercial fishing fleets.

Some stakeholders truly are more equal than others in the ASMFC’s eyes.  Those who profit from harvested fish, even when they constitute a very small minority of stakeholders, are and have always been “more equal” than those concerned with the long-term welfare of fish stocks.

That’s wrong.

And, one way or another, it needs to change.