MID-ATLANTIC COUNCIL FLIRTS WITH OVERFISHING

 

The relationship between the Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council (Council) and overfishing goes back a long way. In 1999, the Council adopted a summer flounder quota that had just an 18 percent probability of preventing overfishing, an action that led to the landmark court decision in Natural Resources Defense Council v. Daley, which established the principal that, to pass legal muster, a fishery management measure must have at least a 50 percent probability of achieving its conservation goals.

 

Immediately after the court handed down that decision, the Council divorced itself from any management measure that might condone overfishing, and spent nearly two decades successfully rebuilding and conserving once-overfished stocks. At one point in the early 2010s, it was the only one of the eight regional fishery management councils that had completely ended overfishing, and didn’t preside over any overfished stocks.

Yet, overfishing remained seductive. The Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission, which manages some fish stocks in conjunction with the Council, has long been under its spell, and many recreational and commercial fishermen have also fallen for its charms. All have been willing to ignore the long-term consequences that inevitably flow from a few reckless years of excess. Only the Council, chaperoned by the marine conservation community and scrutinized by the courts, resisted overfishing’s blandishments in recent decades.

And yet, the Council was never free from overfishing’s temptations. And when temptation hovers charmingly within reach, it’s hard not to give in.

Thus, the Council dallies with a “control rule” approach to recreational fisheries management, which would set management measures for overfished stocks at “the most restrictive measures which could be tolerated without major loss of businesses such as bait and tackle shops and party/charter businesses,” without regard to whether such measures would permit overfishing or prevent the rebuilding of overfished stocks.

 

Council staff has acknowledged that key aspects of the proposed control rule approach are “not feasible,” given the standards for conservation and management imposed by the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act (Magnuson-Stevens). Staff also admits that the remaining aspects of the proposal “are conceptual…and have not been fully developed or analyzed.” Yet many Council members remain infatuated with the idea, and have refused to leave it behind.

 

But the Council’s faithfulness to the principles of Magnuson-Stevens was far more sorely tested when it set recreational harvest limits for the 2020 and 2021 seasons; its first serious fling with possible overfishing occurred at its December 2019 meeting, when it addressed recreational management measures for black sea bass.

At that meeting, Council members were confronted by a 2019 operational stock assessment (operational assessment) which, based on updated recreational catch, landings, and effort data, revealed that recreational landings were much higher than previously believed. It also revealed that the black sea bass spawning stock biomass was considerably larger than managers had realized, which would allow managers to substantially increase the recreational harvest limit (RHL). But the increased RHL was not large enough to completely offset the revised recreational landings estimates.

 

After evaluating all of the new information, Council staff recommended that the Council, along with the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission’s Summer Flounder, Scup and Black Sea Bass Management Board (Sea Bass Board), adopt regulations that would reduce recreational landings by 20%, in order to keep such landings at or below the 2020 RHL.

The Council’s Summer Flounder, Scup and Black Sea Bass Monitoring Committee (Sea Bass Monitoring Committee) disagreed. It recommended that 2019 regulations carry over, unchanged, into the 2020 season, even though doing so would probably cause anglers to exceed the RHL by 26 percent and the recreational annual catch limit (ACL) by 23 percent. Maintaining status quo regulations in 2020 was also likely to cause the combined recreational and commercial landings to exceed the acceptable biological catch (ABC), set by the Council’s Scientific and Statistical Committee (SSC), by 12 percent.

 

However, such combined landings were expected to fall about 13 percent below the overfishing limit (OFL), so no overfishing was expected to occur.

Still, avoiding overfishing was far from guaranteed. Scientists can easily adopt an OFL that is too high and allows overfishing to occur, simply because they don’t understand every factor that might affect the health of a fish stock. Such incomplete understanding is deemed “scientific uncertainty,” and is addressed in guidelines published by the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS), which state that “Acceptable biological catch (ABC) is a level of a stock or stock complex’s annual catch, which is based on an ABC control rule that accounts for the scientific uncertainty in the estimate of OFL, any other scientific uncertainty, and the Council’s risk policy.”

 

ABCs are an important part of the management process. If no ABC was established, and the ACL was set at or near the OFL, there would be a real risk that overfishing would occur, simply because managers didn’t account for the scientific uncertainty that exists even in the most-studied fisheries. Thus, Magnuson-Stevens prohibits a regional fishery management council from setting an ACL that would “exceed the fishing level recommendations of its scientific and statistical committee,” a mandate echoed in the NMFS’ guidelines, which provide that “Annual catch limit (ACL) is a limit on the total annual catch of a stock or stock complex, which cannot exceed the ABC…”

 

Yet, despite the risk that overfishing might occur, and the seeming prohibition, in both Magnuson-Stevens and NMFS’ published guidelines, on maintaining an ACL that exceeds the ABC, both the Council and Sea Bass Board approved status quo black sea bass regulations for 2020.

 

Then, early in 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic struck the United States. As part of the effort to control the virus, NMFS suspended the Northeast Fisheries Science Center trawl surveys, which are used to determine the health of fish stocks. Complimentary state surveys, which sample fish in inshore waters, were also suspended or postponed. Scientific uncertainty increased as a result.

 

At the same time, state restrictions led to a temporary suspension of the angler intercepts that form the basis of recreational catch and landings estimates. As noted in a 2020 Sea Bass Monitoring Committee report,

 

due to a lapse in angler intercept sampling due to Covid-19 restrictions, 2020 catch estimates from the Marine Recreational Information Program (MRIP) will not be available prior to the end of 2020…there are significant gaps in intercept data this year…Intercept sampling resumed at different points in the year for different states, but not all to the same level…current conditions have led to some changes in coverage and information gathered. One notable trend is that interviewers are getting fewer length and weight measurements during interviews due to the reluctance of interviewers and anglers to closely interact. Interviewers in some states are being given more discretion in sampling protocols to ensure their safety, which could ultimately create some bias in the data. In addition, at sea sampling for headboats has essentially been suspended everywhere for safety reasons.

Those changes caused another sort of uncertainty—management uncertainty—to rise to unprecedented levels. According to the NMFS guidelines, “Management uncertainty refers to uncertainty in the ability of managers to constrain catch so that the ACL is not exceeded, and the uncertainty in quantifying the true catch amounts (i.e., estimation errors). The sources of management uncertainty could include: Late catch reporting; misreporting; underreporting of catches; lack of sufficient inseason management, including season closure authority; or other factors.”

The guidelines also suggest how regional fishery management councils should address management uncertainty. “[Annual catch targets], or the functional equivalent, are recommended in the system of [accountability measures] so that ACL is not exceeded. An [annual catch target] is an annual amount of catch of a stock or stock complex that is the management target of the fishery, and accounts for management uncertainty in controlling the catch at or below the ACL.”

The guidelines further advise that “If an Annual Catch Target (ACT), or a functional equivalent, is not used, management uncertainty should be accounted for in the ACL.”

The Council lacked reliable recreational catch and landings data for 2020, and so couldn’t know whether existing regulations had kept recreational landings below the RHL, or whether overfishing might have occurred in one or more stocks. Yet the Council failed to account for such management uncertainty in any recreational fishery.

It set no annual catch targets that might buffer against management uncertainty’s effects. Instead, it maintained status quo.

 

That might work out for summer flounder. The RHL was scheduled to increase in 2021, so maintaining status quo rules provided a buffer of sorts. It might also work out for scup, as commercial landings typically fall well below quota and offset recreational overages.

But by maintaining status quo management measures for black sea bass and bluefish, the Council may have opened the door to overfishing one or both stocks.

 

The operational assessment projected that, in 2020, the black sea bass spawning stock biomass would be 22,699 metric tons; it also projected that such spawning stock biomass would fall to 20,379 metric tons in 2021–about a 10 percent decline. If the Sea Bass Monitoring Committee determined that, in 2020, overall landings would fall just 13 percent below the OFL, might status quo management measures cause landings to exceed the OFL in 2021, when the spawning stock biomass was 10 percent smaller?

 

The Sea Bass Monitoring Committee chose not to say.

But status quo regulations would leave no margin for error, despite the acknowledged scientific uncertainty, and the far greater, but unacknowledged, management uncertainty regarding the stock.

 

Emerson Hasbrouk, a Sea Bass Board member from New York, expressed concern about overfishing in 2021, particularly if commercial fishermen land their full quota, something that, because of COVID-19, did not occur in 2020. He admitted that he was “really concerned about where we’re headed here.”

Another Sea Bass Board member, Eric Reid of Rhode Island, was more vehement, saying, “To look the other way because we have no data…four or five years of [anglers] going over [the RHL], saying this is temporary…that isn’t right.”

But no one on the Council seemed too concerned. Not a single Council member voted against the status quo.

 

The Sea Bass Monitoring Committee justified its status quo recommendation by saying, in part, that the “Council/[Sea Bass] Board wished to avoid further restricting [recreational] fishery during [MRIP] transition period considering biomass is so high.” The same argument could not be made for status quo bluefish management, as bluefish were already overfished.

The problem with bluefish management, as with black sea bass, dates back to 2019, when the Council and the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission’s Bluefish Management Board (Bluefish Board) rejected the Bluefish Monitoring Committee’s recommendation to base projected 2019 landings (and so 2020 regulations) on an average of landings in the three previous years.

 

Using such three-year average would have resulted in a 2020 bluefish RHL of 3.62 million pounds, a stark drop from 2019’s 11.62 million pound RHL, and would have led to very restrictive recreational management measures. To avoid such result, both the Council and the Bluefish Board voted to base 2020 regulations just on the 2018 landings, which were the lowest in a time series that dated back to 1985. That allowed them to set a 2020 RHL of 9.48 million pounds, and adopt far less restrictive management measures than they would have adopted otherwise.

2019 recreational bluefish landings ended up to be about 2.3 million pounds, or about 17 percent, higher than they were in 2018, meaning that 2020 management measures, based on an unrealistically low projection of 2019 landings, probably caused anglers to exceed the RHL, perhaps by a significant amount.

 

Because there is no landings data, no one knows for sure; management uncertainty has completely obscured the path forward.

In the face of such uncertainty, and despite the fact that the bluefish stock was overfished, the Council’s Bluefish Monitoring Committee still recommended status quo rules for 2021. But, perhaps harboring doubts about that recommendation, it also noted that

To project recreational landings, the [Monitoring Committee] typically uses the most recent 3-year average of landings. The 2017-2019 average landings (20.30 M lbs.) with the same 28.56% reduction that was projected to be achieved under the 2020 management measures yields a 2021 landings projection of 14.50 M lbs. This landings projection methodology indicates a potential 73.86% overage of the 2021 RHL of 8.34 M lbs…these analyses indicate a potential range of 2021 landings projection estimates that should be reviewed by the Council and Board. [emphasis added]

 

But neither the Council nor the Bluefish Board chose to review or debate the landings projections. Instead, without any meaningful discussion, both bodies voted, by overwhelming margins, to adhere to the status quo.

 

Magnuson-Stevens includes 10 National Standards for Fishery Conservation and Management. First among those is the requirement that “Conservation and management measures shall prevent overfishing while achieving, on a continuing basis, the optimum yield from each fishery for the United States fishing industry. [emphasis added]”

 

Yet, before casting their votes, not a single Council member asked whether status quo rules, whether for black sea bass or bluefish, met that basic legal requirement.

 

Somebody ought to start asking such questions soon. Unless they do, the Council’s recent flirtation with overfishing could bloom into a full-fledged affair.

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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/

 

COMPETING VISIONS OF MARINE FISHERIES MANAGEMENT

 Different people have very different visions of what constitutes "good" fisheries management.

To some, fisheries managers do best when they generally leave fishermen alone, and allow them to fish as they traditionally have, taking whatever the ocean is willing to give them as they do their best to maximize harvest, regardless of its long-term impact on the stock.

Other people envision healthy and intact marine ecosystems, where fish are abundant and fishermen are constrained by regulations that best assure that fish stocks remain abundant and fisheries remain healthy throughout the foreseeable future.

Right now, in Congress, pending legislation represents both points of view.

In late December, Rep. Jared Huffman (D-CA), Chair of the House Natural Resources Water, Oceans, and Wildlife Subcommittee, along with Subcommittee member Rep. Ed Case (D-HI), released a “discussion draft” of proposed legislation to reauthorize the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act, which governs all fishing in the marine waters of the United States.

The discussion draft is comprehensive.  It looks to the future, and addresses a plethora of issues that range from the impacts of climate change on living marine resources, to the need to protect forage fish stocks, to improving the process of rebuilding overfished populations.

And on January 4, Rep. Don Young (R-AK) announced that he has again reintroduced his “Strengthening Fishing Communities and Increasing Flexibility in Fisheries Management Act.”

While a definitive copy of Rep. Young’s legislation has not yet been published on the congressional website, bills bearing the identical title, which failed in the 115^th and 116^th Congress, were backward-looking and sought to weaken the federal fisheries management process.  Both would have tipped the scales away from conservative, science-based management and toward a riskier management approach that intended to produce greater short-term economic returns.

The discussion draft and Rep. Young's bill, when viewed together, draw a sharp contrast between those who seek a sustainable fisheries future and those who would cling to the past.  

On one hand are likely supporters of Rep. Young’s bill, who are willing to sacrifice the long-term health of marine fisheries in order to maintain inherently unsustainable harvest levels—and the short-term profits that they generate—until the stocks themselves collapse in protest,  

On the other hand are those who understand that healthy recreational and commercial fisheries, and healthy marine ecosystems, can only survive in the long term if they are based on healthy, sustainable, and abundant fish stocks, and also understand that the short-term pain that accompanies science-based management measures is, in the end, nothing more than an investment in the future health of fish and the fisheries that they support.

Given that one of Magnuson-Stevens’ greatest achievements has been its success in rebuilding previously overfished stocks, looking at how the two proposed pieces of legislation—Rep. Young's H.R. 3697, introduced in the 116th Congress and presumably similar to his new bill, and the current version of the discussion draft—deal with the rebuilding issue shows just how different the two management approaches actually are.

H.R. 3697 proposed more “flexibility” in rebuilding fish stocks.  While, to those unfamiliar with fisheries issues, that might sound reasonable, anyone involved with the management process understands all too well that “flexibility” is merely a euphemism for “management inaction,” used by those who seek to delay needed harvest reductions and management measures until fishermen have an opportunity to squeeze the last bit of blood from the stone representing a particular stock of fish, at which point managers would be free to animate what then resembles a dry and lifeless husk.

It is a failed management strategy that has doomed a numberof once-abundant fish stocks, including Atlantic cod, yet demands for greater “flexibility” continue, driven by members of the recreational and commercial fishing industries.

Responding to such demands, H.R. 3697 sought to weaken Magnuson-Stevens’ rebuilding mandates. 

It would have allowed federal fisheries managers to ignore rebuilding deadlines for various reasons, and extend rebuilding times if events—whether natural or man-made—occurring outside of federal waters contributed to a stock’s problems, or if restrictions needed to rebuild an overfished stock could impair the harvest of a healthier stock within the same stock complex (as happens when regulations designed to reduce the catch of cod limit the ability of New England fishermen to utilize their entire haddock and/or pollock quotas).

If those exceptions weren’t bad enough, Rep. Young’s bill would allow delays in rebuilding if “unusual events” made rebuilding unlikely without causing economic harm to fishing communities.  Given the ocean’s changeable nature, “unusual events” of various sorts, presumably including the impacts of a shifting climate aren’t, in reality, all that unusual at all, and given that any rebuilding effort must reduce harvest, and so cause at least short-term economic harm, such provision would effectively guarantee that rebuilding deadlines could, in most cases, be safely ignored.

There is no discussion at all of what managers have to do if their rebuilding plan fails.

The Huffman discussion draft doesn’t abide that sort of nonsense. 

Instead, it would maintain all existing rebuilding mandates while also requiring managers to more carefully chart the progress of the rebuilding effort, using pre-established and measurable criteria.  Rebuilding progress would have to be evaluated at intervals of no more than two years, and if it appeared that the stock would not be rebuilt by the rebuilding deadline, if overfishing occured and the causes and impacts were not addressed, or if new scientific information revealed that more restrictive rebuilding measures are needed—or if other appropriate considerations arose—the rebuilding plan would have to be promptly revised to address such situations.  

Under no circumstances would managers be allowed to extend the rebuilding period.

And if, despite all of those efforts, the stock is unable to rebuild by the rebuilding deadline, the language of the discussion draft would require that any subsequent rebuilding plan must have at least a 75 percent probability of succeeding, rather than the mere 50 percent probability of success that applies to most fisheries management measures.

Should those provisions of the discussion draft survive in whatever Magnuson-Stevens reauthorization bill finally emerges from Congress, long overfished stocks that have failed to respond to half-hearted, though technically—if barely—legal rebuilding plans may finally be rebuilt, as more rigorous rebuilding plans finally impose restrictions that are strict enough to make a real difference.

The revisions to Magnuson-Stevens proposed in the discussion draft will make an already successful Magnuson-Stevens an even more effective fisheries management law, but effectiveness isn’t necessarily the criteria fishermen use to gauge legislation.  In the 115^th Congress, Rep. Young’s bill—then designated H.R. 200—drew the strong support of the recreational fishing and boatbuilding industries, along with related anglers’ rights organizations, because it would render Magnuson-Stevens less effective with respect to the recreational fishery.

Such groups were trying to get out from under the conservation burden imposed by current law, which requires regional fishery management councils to set annual catch limits for all managed species, and also requires managers to hold fishermen accountable when those catch limits are exceeded.  They sought “alternative” management measures, akin to the ineffective management measures typically adopted by the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission, which would allow for longer recreational fishing seasons, larger recreational harvests, and higher profits for fishing- and boating-related businesses, even if those transient gains came at the expense of the health of important fish stocks.

It will thus be interesting to see how the various industry and anglers’ rights groups, which have joined together under the umbrella of the Center for Sportfishing Policy, will react to the discussion draft.  They will probably be dismayed by the generally pro-conservation stance of that proposed legislation, which would continue to hold both commercial and recreational fishermen’s feet to the fire with respect to overfishing and shouldering an equtable share of the burden of rebuilding overfished stocks. 

At the same time, they will be reluctant to give much public support to Rep. Young’s retrograde bill which, first as H.R. 1335 and then as H.R. 200, couldn’t make it through both houses of Congress, even when Rep. Young’s fellow Republicans controlled both chambers and, after the Deomocrats took over the House, died a long and lingering death as H.R. 3697.  Given the current Democratic control of both the House and the Senate, it’s pretty clear that Rep. Young’s effort to weaken federal fisheries conservation efforts won’t get off the ground in the 117^th Congress.

So it’s likely that those seeking to weaken, rather than enhance, Magnuson-Stevens will try to convince Rep. Huffman and others to remove pro-conservation language from the discussion draft, and perhaps add some weakening language in its stead.  In the 115^th Congress, they called their bill to weaken federal fisheries law the “Modern Fish Act,” as if it represented a step forward.

But it was really an effort to regain the past, a past where recreational fishermen were only seldom the target of fisheries regulations, and had little responsibility for restoring and conserving fish stocks.  It was a past where fish stocks were, in large part, much less abundant than they are today, and fisheries managers did little to address that problem. 

Contrary to what the industry/anglers’ rights coalition might try to claim, truly modern fishery management isn’t about short-term benefits, but about long-term abundance.  Rep. Huffman’s discussion draft, with its emphasis on conservation and countering the impacts of climate change, embraces that important truth.

We should all hope that it spawns a bill that keeps fisheries management moving forward, and rejects the mistakes of the past.

FISHERIES CONSERVATION: WALKING THE WALK

 

While I usually focus on saltwater fisheries issues, I'm also generally aware of what's going on in the lakes and streams.  In that regard, I’m particularly concerned with heritage strains of our native brook trout, which have been adapting themselves to the conditions in local watersheds since the retreat of the last glaciers.

Thus, I joined a group called the Native Fish Coalition when it was formed a few years ago.  While the Coalition is concerned with preserving all native fish in their native waters, brook trout are high on its agenda.  This morning, I read something on the Coalition’s website caught my attention. 

Bob Mallard, the Coalition's executive director, had written a blog describing how some anglers were asking a state to stock non-native trout—primarily brown trout—into warm-water bass streams, in order to provide some trout fishing in the cooler months, even though the streams weren’t really suitable trout waters.  He asked why some anglers felt it was necessary to plant non-native trout everywhere, without thought to the consequences or even whether such stocking was biologically appropriate, and why organizations that emphasize trout conservation would support it.

He ended his essay by observing

“This is not meant as a declaration of war against brown trout, stocking, fishing, or anything else.  It’s simply meant to challenge the selling of recreation as conservation, while pointing out the mixed messages and bad science coming out of the trout fishing and advocacy community these days.

“If folks want to promote and improve ‘fishing,’ do it through the fishing clubs, not conservation organizations.  Mixing recreation and conservation confuses the masses, and makes the latter that much harder to sell...  [emphasis added]”

That advice doesn’t just apply to trout; it has broad application in many fisheries, including those that take place in salt water. 

Far too often, organizations that have a primarily recreational, or even a recreational industry, focus try gain greater credibility by cloaking their efforts in the mantle of conservation, even when the policies that they promote have no, or even negative, conservation implications.

I was thinking about that a few days ago after perusing the magazine of one of the nation’s bigger anglers’ rights groups.  I used to be an active member of the orgainization in question, serving as a member of its national Executive Board and as Vice Chair of its Government Relations Committee.  I resigned from those positions when they decided to change their focus from conservation to a “more fish for us” anglers’ rights agenda, but as I had already become a Life Member, I still get the magazine.

Usually, when the magazine comes in the mail, the first thing that I do is turn to its back pages, where there are brief reports on some of the efforts and objectives of both the national organization and its state chapters.  At one time, I would have described them as “conservation efforts,” and the group still has “Conservation” as a part of its name, but conservation isn’t a big part of what they're pushing these days.

The current issue describes the organization’s affiliation with other outdoor recreation and industry groups, which have staked out a position on the so-called “30x30” initiative, which is an ambitious goal, set by some conservation advocates and endorsed by some legislators, to protect 30 percent of the Earth’s lands and waters by the year 2030.

On the ocean, that means marine protected areas, a topic which has always raised some concerns in my mind, and which I wrote about a few weeks ago.  The magazine makes the usual claims that

“Marine conservation began with recreational anglers,”

and that

“Sportsmen and women continue to lead on conservation in the United States,”

But when one looks at some of the principles espoused by the coalition of recreation and industry groups that have banded together on 30x30, you find statements like

“Recognizing the positive roles that hunting and fishing play in conservation,”

and

“Protected area definitions that allow for well-managed and sustainable wildlife-dependent activities.”

Although I don't disagree with either of those basic principles, they go to the core of the recent Native Fish Coalition blog, as they are primarily concerned with promoting and maintaining recreational opportunity, with conservation being, at best, a secondary consideration.

However, the magazine does describe a legitimate conservation effort, to manage Atlantic menhaden as a forage fish rather than merely as an industrial feedstock, in a smaller article on a subsequent page.

State chapter activities saw the same kind of mixed-message split, with descriptions of three real conservation efforts—tagging Gulf tarpon in Alabama, trying to protect Gulf menhaden in Louisiana, and a suing North Carolina in an effort to improve its fisheries management policies—sandwiched between four articles promoting fish hatcheries for various speces, and two others heralding kill tournaments, including one that targeted badly overfished Pacific bluefin tuna.

Again, in promoting hatcheries and tournaments, promoting recreation is confused with conservation, even though the activities described are not at all consistent with legitimate conservation effports.  

Hatcheries, as a general rule, evidence conservation failures; if fish were properly managed, and harvest levels maintained at sustainable levels, natural reproduction would be sufficient to maintain stock health.  The very purpose of hatcheries is to maintain excessive and otherwise unsustainable harvest levels, to support recreational and, in some instances, commercial fisheries. 

If conservation was the primary concern, the first step would be to reduce fishing mortality—to zero if necessary—not to pump a legion of man-made fish into various rivers, bays, and the sea.

And the notion of an organization that professes to support conservation promoting a kill tournament for Pacific bluefin tuna, an overfished stock, pretty well speaks for itself.

Having said that, I’m not attempting to single out this particular organization for criticism.  It just happens to be large enough, and spans enough of the coast, to provide a good range of examples showing how efforts to promote recreational fishing activity are wrongly conflated with conservation, and how organizations often mislead the public into believing that they're looking out for the best interests of the fish, when they’re really looking out for fishermen and the fishing industry's bottom line.

Thus, Jeff Angers, President of the Center for Sportfishing Policy, a coalition of industry and anglers’ rights organizations, was clearly promoting recreation, and the recreational fishing and boating industries' interests, when he attacked the federal fishery management system 

“eliminates opportunities for Americans to share in share in America’s public resources,”

by imposing restrictive—but scientifically necessary—seasons and bag limits, and complained that

“Thousands of businesses—from bait and tackle shops along the coast to retailers and manufacturers across the nation—suffer the consequences of the government’s folly.  With their time on the water choked by regulation, boaters and anglers are far less likely to purchase goods and services related to fishing.  This has an impact on business.”

Yet he also couched his attack on Magnuson-Stevens, and his effort to weaken federal fisheries management, as a pro-conservation measure, because

“A considerable portion of the overall funding for the nation’s conservation efforts is in fact generated by recreational fishing licenses and excise taxes.”

In other words, the government ought to allow anglers to overfish, because by doing so, they will generate the revenues that they need to combat overfishing.

It’s a clearly nonsensical argument, but just another example of what can happen when people attempt to appear virtuous by talking about conservation, when they’re actually promoting a recreational, and not a conservation, agenda.

Contrast that language with the language used by Stripers Forever, an organization dedicated to striped bass conservation on the East Coast.  

While I’ve criticized the group in the past for exactly what I’m writing about today, promoting recreational fishing in the guise of conservation, that criticism is no longer valid.  Today, Stripers Forever advocates that, in addition to ending the commercial fishery,

“To further reduce striper mortality, the coastal recreational harvest would be carefully regulated to protect the population of large breeder fish and to promote and enforce the use of angling gear and techniques that do not unnecessarily damage stripers that are caught and then released.

“The allowable catch of wild striped bass should always be subordinated to conservation measures necessary to maintain a healthy population.  [emphasis added]”

And that is what real conservation advocacy sounds like:  Putting the needs of the fish ahead of wants of the fishermen, because in the end, if we want healthy fisheries—recreational or commercial—the fish must always come first.

No weasel words about killing more fish to provide more money for management.  No injections of factory-spawned hatchery fish to maintain unsustainable harvest.  No effort to remove the conservation burden from their own shoulders, and leave it for others to bear.

Cynics might say that, by advocating for a commercial closure, Stripers Forever is still promoting recreational fishing.  While there might be a grain of truth in such an assertion, it still amounts to little more than a squabble over allocation and the appropriate management measures, rather than an impeachment of Stripers’ Forever’s goals.

Because the core truth of its argument, that “The allowable catch of wild striped bass should always be subordinated to conservation measures necessary to maintain a healthy population” holds true whether or not there is a commercial fishery.

A commercial fishery might lead to slightly more restrictive recreational measures, but whether both fisheries were governed by regulations that constrained harvest to sustainable levels, or whether the commercial fishery is ended—something that’s been done with billfish offshore and a number of species inside state waters, and most fish in fresh waters, and so can’t really be viewed as extreme—leaving only anglers to fish at sustainable levels, the impact on striped bass would be the same.

They would thrive.

That's what fisheries conservation is about--keeping fish stocks healthy and abundant.  It’s not, in the first instance, about maintaining recreational (or commercial) landings, or promoting the fishing industry, or touting economic gains.

It’s about stewardship.  Putting the fish first.

Because if our stocks of fish thrive, our fisheries will do the same.

 

 

 

 

 

 

SALTWATER FISHERIES: AS A NEW YEAR BEGINS

 

Ever since I began writing this blog, I started each new year with an overview of the fisheries issues that will likely arise in the next twelve months.  As I look at the prospects for 2021, the list may be longer than ever.

Highly Migratory Species

Over the course of the year, I fish for just about everything from blowfish to bluefin.  But from June through October, whenever the wind doesn’t blow, I do my best to get offshore.

There’s something about fighting big fish—the sort that can cause you real pain over the course of an hours-long battle, and force you to pit both your strength and your skill against their wild power—that appeals to me more than any other kind of angling.  While trolling for tuna or billfish is, in my eyes, the ultimate expression of the offshore angler’s craft, recent years have found me spending more and more time pursuing sharks--which is also how I cut my offshore teeth--largely because I’ve been helping some researchers at Stony Brook University gather data on various species, something that allows me to give just a little bit back to an ocean that has provided me with so much joy for so long.

We’ve had some notable firsts on those trips.  Last June, we caught, sampled and tagged the first white shark that has ever been hooked from one of my boats.  About a month later, we placed an acoustic tag in a blacktip; one of the researchers said that, when we released that fish, it represented the northernmost deployment of an acoustic tag in that species.

I’m not sure whether that is true or not, but tagging a blacktip off central Long Island still felt pretty good.

But one thing that hasn’t felt good is the disheartening decline in the number of shortfin mako sharks that we’re seeing. 

We fish in a few different spots.  One, near the wreck of the tanker Coimbra, a little more than 25 miles south of New York’s Shinnecock Inlet, has reliably produced makos for me since 1984.  Yet I haven’t had a mako there in the past two years.  I usually abandon the Coimbra in mid-July, and move inshore to some 20-fathom structure off Fire Island.  It, too, was a historically productive mako spot, producing many multi-mako days—we had 6 in one day just a few years ago—but in recent seasons, that productivity has fallen off sharply, with most trips producing no makos at all.

I’d like to think that was just a product of changing conditions, but that isn't true.  Scientists at the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas (which, despite the name, also addresses the harvest of sharks and billfish) have found that the North Atlantic stock of shortfin makos is badly overfished and suffering from overfishing, and that total catch, including dead discards in the longline fishery—the fishery accounting for most of the overall fishing mortality—might have to be reduced to somewhere between 0 and 100 metric tons to provide even a 50 percent probability that the stock can be rebuilt in the next 50 years.

Most of the ICCAT member nations are willing to make the sacrifices needed to begin such rebuilding.  Led by Senegal and Canada, they have proposed banning all shortfin mako harvest in order to best assure that such rebuilding will, in fact, occur.  Unfortunately, in 2019 and again in 2020, their efforts have been undermined by the European Union and, somewhat surprisingly, the United States, which have successfully managed to keep dead shortfin makos flowing into their ports.

Changing minds in the European Union is beyond our power (although it should be noted that, as Brexit neared, the United Kingdom broke away from the EU's position on makos and now supports banning all harvest), but with a new and, hopefully, more conservation-oriented administration entering the White House on January 20, there is at least reason to hope that the United States will belatedly jump onto the mako conservation bandwagon.  

Perhaps, if that happens, it will be enough to convince ICCAT to go along.

Greater protections for western stock bluefin tuna management may also be needed.

A lot of fishermen will argue that bluefin represent a success story, with more fish being seen and caught off the northeastern United States than have been taken in many years.  While there has certainly been an uptick in bluefin numbers, current abundance still doesn't match what we saw in the 1970s--and yes, I was there, and can say that first hand.  Also, most scientists currently believe that many of the bluefin we catch off the East Coast were spawned in the Mediterranean Sea, and not in the Gulf of Mexico, so the observed abundance may not represent the true condition of the so-called “western stock”—the Gulf of Mexico-spawned—fish.

There is reason to believe that the western stock quota has been set too high.  Sylvie Lapointe, Canada’s deputy minister of fisheries and harbour management has said that

“The science advice this year was pretty clear, that if we were to simply roll over the existing total allowable catch, which is 2,350 metric tons in 2021, we would have a 94 per cent chance of overfishing next year.”

Thus, western stock bluefin may well experience overfishing in 2021.  The good news is that a new stock assessment, that should be released next year, will either demonstrate that the 2021 quota was not reasonable, or provide a solid scientific foundation for reducing the western stock quota for 2022 and beyond.

Assuming, of course, that ICCAT follows the science.  That's does not always happen, as the mako's plight shows.

Federally-managed fisheries

The biggest news in federally managed fisheries is that the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation andManagement Act, which governs all fishing in federal waters, is up for reauthorization in the 117^th Congress.  While there is no guarantee that such reauthorization will ultimately occur, Congressman Jared Huffman (D-CA), who chairs the House Natural Resources Water, Oceans, and Wildlife Subcommittee, along with Rep. Ed Case (D-HI), have released a so-called “discussion draft” of a proposed Magnuson-Stevens reauthorization bill.

On balance, the discussion draft represents a very solid first step in the reauthorization process.  It not only maintains, but strengthens, Magnuson-Stevens’ strong commitment to prevent overfishing and rebuilding overfished stocks, and generally enhances the bill by adding a number of sections, including sections that would require fishery managers to give greater protection to forage fish stocks and to consider the impacts of climate change on the stocks that they manage.  

Like any major piece of legislation, it has a few warts, but they’re relatively minor ones, which will hopefully be pared down as the process moves forward. 

If the final Magnuson-Stevens reauthorization bill doesn’t contain a forage fish section—although I think that it will—the issue of forage fish conservation will almost certainly be addressed in stand-alone legislation.  Both fishery managers and the public at large are coming to the realization that, if we are to have healthy populations of predator species, we need equally healthy populations of prey.  So expect to see forage fish legislation, in some form, introduced fairly early in the 117^th Congress.

Regulatory issues will also emerge in the regional fishery management councils.  Of three that will probably generate substantial attention—and there will undoubtedly be others—during 2021, two will emerge from the Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council.

The first of those will be bluefish rebuilding.  An amendment to do that is already well underway, and must be finalized ahead of the 2022 season.  The Mid-Atlantic Council, working in partnership with the ASMFC, is expected to complete a draft amendment in February, and release it for public comment shortly thereafter.  Given the importance of bluefish to anglers on the East Coast—and we ought to remember that bluefish is primarily a recreational, and primarily a release-oriented fishery, and ought to be kept that way—anglers should be ready to comment on the amendment when the time comes.

The other Mid-Atlantic issue that we expect to see is the so-called “recreational reform initiative,” which has been in progress for the last two years.  The reform initiative includes some very worthwhile efforts, particularly with respect to the way it proposes to deal with uncertain, inadequate, or anomalous data.  However, anglers need to be cautious, because the recreational fishing industry, both on the tackle and on the for-hire side, is pushing to add some provisions that would, if adopted, both undercut the current annual catch limits and accountability measures applicable to the recreational sector (and so probably would be illegal), and perhaps introduce “sector separation” into some fisheries, which would reserve a portion of the recreational landings for the for-hire sector.  This is an issue that anglers should be watching closely.

The final contentious issue likely to emerge at the council level will, once again, be recreational red snapper harvest in the Gulf of Mexico.  As I mentioned a few months ago, the so-called “Great Red Snapper Count” has revealed that the red snapper biomass in the Gulf is larger than scientists could previously demonstrate.  In response, the usual suspects in the anglers’ rights, tackle and boating industries are pushing the Gulf of Mexico Fishery Management Council to adopt a knee-jerk liberalization of recreational red snapper regulations, instead of taking the time to integrate the Red Snapper Count data into the stock assessment and arrive at a reasoned decision as to how that data should influence the management regime.

Closely connected to that issue is the issue of “calibrating” the state estimates of recreational red snapper landings into data that can be integrated into and used as a part of the Marine Recreational Information Program.  Fisheries managers have been working on such calibration since 2018, but the same organizations that are trying to rush the Gulf Council into increasing recreational red snapper limits are also pushing for increases based on the uncalibrated state data.  The two issues, combined, are likely to ignite a new round of controversy down there.

At the ASMFC

For many East Coast anglers, not only the most important fisheries issue, but the only fisheries issue, that the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission will look at this year is the proposed Amendment 7 to the striped bass management plan. 

My own view is that such an amendment isn’t needed.  The currentAmendment 6 to the Interstate Fishery Management Plan for Atlantic Striped Bass sets out a reasonable and balanced approach to striped bass management, that recognizes the need for larger, older females and a diversity of ages and sizes of fish in the spawning stock, while also providing for viable recreational and commercial fisheries.

However, the ASMFC’s Atlantic Striped Bass Management Board feels otherwise, apparently believing that the nearly two decade old amendment doesn’t adequately account for new information about the striped bass stock.  

A number of Management Board members have pointed to the stock’s currently overfished status, and it’s decade-long decline, as evidence that Amendment 6 isn’t working, although a closer look at the facts clearly demonstrates that what really isn’t working is the Management Board itself, which twice, in 2014 and again last year, ignored Amendment 6’s clear injunction to begin a 10-year striped bass rebuilding plan, and has often delayed needed management actions, that might have averted more serious problems, until the bass stock falls into real peril.

Currently, the Management Board seems to fall into two camps, one of which, centered in the northeast, appears to be seeking a more conservative management regime, and another, centered in the Mid-Atlantic, seeking to relax regulations, increase harvest, and permanently reduce striped bass abundance, while increasing the long-term risk to the stock.

At the moment, the latter group seems to be in the ascendance, as a Work Group report, cobbled together to guide the amendment drafting process, has gone so far as to deem striped bass management a “success” despite the fact that the stock is now overfished, and is seeking management measures that emphasize “regulatory consistency” and “flexibility” rather than a fully-rebuilt stock managed for long-term sustainability. 

If they get their way, the Management Board, already known for its delayed and ineffective action, will be officially granted permission to respond to problems even more slowly, and to be even less effective when it finally acts.

The good news is that the amendment process is still in its early stages, and that when the initial Public Information Document—similar to the scoping documents used by the regional fishery management councils—is released for public comment, something that will probably happen in February, striped bass anglers will have an opportunity to provide their views on how the stock ought to be managed, and will thus have a good chance to change the course of the amendment, and give the more conservation-oriented managers in the northeast a chance to prevail. 

But that won’t happen unless everyone concerned with the long-term health of the striped bass resource is willing to stand up and be counted. 

And yes, I recognize that anglers’ views were largely discounted when the Management Board drafted Addendum VI to Amendment 6 to the Interstate Management Plan for Atlantic Striped Bass, but that was largely a provisional document.  Addendums typically have only a short-term impact, while amendments can last for decades.  

A bad addendum can usually be corrected in a few years, and its damage limited.  A bad amendment could, at worst, result in a crash of the stock, and a recovery that won’t be completed within the lifetimes of many anglers who are fishing today—if such recovery happens at all.

So those who see striped bass as the most important issue of 2021 have good reason for their opinions.

There are other, important but perhaps not as immediately critical issues fulminating at every level of management, including a possible reallocation of summer flounder, scup and black sea bass at the Mid-Atlantic Council, offshore aquaculture legislation in Congress, a new effort to create marine protected areas which may or may not permit recreational fishing, offshore wind farms, and the perennial fights over red snapper and other reef fish in the South Atlantic. 

Up in Alaska, the threat posed to Bristol Bay’s salmon by the Pebble Mine has receded somewhat, but has not gone away.  A number of internationally managed tuna stocks, on both the Atlantic and Pacific coasts, are not doing too well.  Many salt water “pan fish,” which don’t generate headlines but are nonetheless pursued, and valued, by anglers, are given no protection at all.  Everywhere, the science and data used to manage recreational fisheries is under attack by industry efforts to increase landings and short-term profits, at the expense of long-term sustainability.

Thus, if you’re interested in fisheries issues, and want to get involved in the management debate, I can promise you one thing for certain.

In 2021, you won’t be bored.