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by Tom Fote
(from Jersey Coast Anglers Association April 1994 Newsletter)
In this month's column, I would like to discuss one of the major causes of the decline in marine recreational and commercial fishing. It is a key factor contributing to the decimation of many inshore marine fish stocks and the ecosystem as a whole. Fisheries managers might think they can manage the stocks. But, in reality, what they are managing is a growing list of increasingly depleted resources and, when all is said and done, the only thing they can exercise any amount of control over are the fishermen.
While over fishing is the key factor in the decline of most pelagic species, this is not necessarily the case with inshore species that are dependent upon an estuarine environment for their reproduction, nursery areas, maturation and ultimate survival. Some of these unique species, such as striped bass, shad and river herring, depend heavily upon clean fresh water entering the estuary system for reproduction and survival. Other species, like weakfish and winter flounder, require the healthy brackish water of a bay environment for spawning purposes and to nurse their young. Still others, like fluke, don't spawn in the estuary at all, but their larval and immature offspring depend entirely on the health of the bay ecosystem to nurture them through their first few years of life.
You might think, keeping these simple truths in mind, that all recreational and all commercial fishing groups could find common ground in fighting against the further degradation of our estuary systems. Between these fishermen and the many environmental groups who work on clean water issues, we could present a formidable, united lobbying effort to come to the defense of these incredibly important and dwindling estuaries.
Habitat destruction, degradation and contamination of the resource are the most pressing reasons that both the recreational and commercial fishing industries are suffering. I rate these problems first on our list of foes, because once the damage is done in these areas, the consequences can last hundreds of years. It is one issue that both segments of the fishing industry and environmental groups can all agree upon and should be working together to correct. Unfortunately, this is not always what happens. Here are some of the reasons that we remain fractionated among interest groups and that, so frequently, we loose sight of these basic objectives.
1. The heavy handed use of money and political influence by the opponents we are pitted against is often so powerful that some groups become overwhelmed and just plain give up.
2. Both fishing user groups are finding it so hard to make a living that after the first few rounds of a battle they give up and say let someone else do it. In other words, the well organized and financed opposition just outlasts us.
3. Some fishermen become afraid that if too much attention is paid to the problems of contamination of edible fish, people will stop eating fish or stop going fishing. Fearing a loss of business and revenues, some groups are burying their heads in the sand. The less said about the problem the better off the fishing industry is and some live by the expression, "out of sight out of mind". I have seen this happen with both the dioxin and P.C.B. issues.
4. The industry and certain environmental groups and professionals allow themselves to be bought off by the very groups causing the damage. I guess this upsets me the most because it allows the environmental destroyers, or the agencies that are responsible for correcting the damage, to get away with denying responsibility for their actions or allows them to put forth alternative solutions that do not repair the damage done. This is sometimes accomplished with quiet contributions to opposing groups or by hiring environmental consultants that act as hired guns ready to testify on behalf of the despoilers, regardless of the facts. But sometimes it is accomplished in more subtle ways, like spending money on processing plants and dock repairs at commercial fishing ports or by running a tournament for the recreational fishing community in the name of good public relations, while the environmental assaults continue unabated. It can even be done in the form of large donations to universities or grants that allow people to do research on one thing or another. This will often keep the learned opposition from attacking too hard on a particular issue because they might lose their grant money. Another way that has proven effective recently is the divide and conquer technique of helping one environmental group look after its own agenda while forgetting the more important issues entirely or the concerns of other groups involved in a concerted effort. This is being done in south Jersey by promising the acquisition of land for nesting birds, when the real environmental problem is the destruction of immature fish by a poorly designed power plant.
5. This last factor scares me the most. Many major polluters have very deep pockets. Those that are monopolies, like power companies, have the ability to increase their funds to oppose environmental responsibility by simply raising your electric or gas rates. They can raise your rates a few pennies to pay for a building full of high priced lawyers capable of tying up the correction of environmental problems almost indefinitely. They will do this, rather than raise rates and use the money to correct the root problem of pollution. In some cases the pollution problem with utilities is simply hot water discharges that upset the thermal balance of the estuary environment or the destruction of billions of immature fish each year in the intakes of antiquated power plants. They will hold out a carrot to opposing environmental groups and tell them to take it or face our legal staff that has the funding to fight you in court for the next 20 years.
In the case of independent municipal authorities, these groups have the luxury of taxing you, John Q. Public, to fight environmental reform, while endangering the health and welfare of millions. This can be done in the form of increased bridge and tunnel tolls or usage fees, but the bottom line is the same. Your money is used to fight battles that will ultimately effect the estuarine and marine environments and the health of you and your family, while they try to present the front of being caring and understanding to your position and the damage they are causing.
What I am trying to say to all the conservationists and environmentalist, both professional and lay persons alike, is to beware of the "Trojan Horse" grant, offered in the name of silence. We've seen them offered and taken several times over just the last two years and the tactic is even more widespread than we might care to believe. Remember, as environmentalists or fishermen, we should not be fighting for short term, patchwork solutions that are only bandaids on the real problems. If we are really going to pay our debt to future generations, we must fight for solutions to problems that won't leave our grandchildren to shoulder the burden of the destruction of the environment they will once inherit.
There will be a meeting of the ASMFC Habitat Committee on May 16 in Washington, DC to take up a variety of habitat degradation issues. We will keep you informed.
I hope you all read last months column and understood what I was trying to say, because the state director's representative from New York to the ASMFC made a motion at the last meeting to increase the commercial quota on striped bass from 20% of its baseline catch from 1972 to 1979, by an additional 25%. This is the same representative that forced the recreational size limit for coastal striped bass to be raised to 34 inches from 28 inches as part of Amendment 4.
The first reason he stated for this position was because the recreational catch has grown since it was reopened in 1990 and the commercial catch has stayed stagnant since 1990 at 20% of it historical levels. I pointed out to this director that I was fishing in those years and so were a lot of my friends and acquaintances from Maine to North Carolina. During that time period, they were taking home 30 to 40 times the number of fish that they have been allowed to keep under the management plans since 1990. It is apparent that some ASMFC members are using the lack of good recreational statistics from the base years 1972 through 1979 as a club to beat us over the head. It's funny that when they use the commercial data from those base years, which is derived mostly from anecdotal data that they themselves admit is faulty, we're suppose to take it as gospel. On the other hand, they show no interest in obtaining any data at all to help establish the true recreational catch from that period of time.
The next point that was made was that because we have not been harvesting the number of fish that we are allowed under the management plan, they take the unused allotment and give it to the commercial sector in the same year that they have raised the recreational size limit by six inches to reduce our mortality rate. This absurdity speaks for itself. The directors and some of the extreme conservationists on the Commission manage to keep the recreational sector from meeting its allowable cap each year and then turn around and use fish saved as a bonus for the commercial side to harvest.
The representative from Rhode Island showed his own bias by stating that recreational fishermen should be happy with just catch and release fishing because they don't really need to keep any fish. It appears to me that what he was trying to tell us was we should be happy to just go out and catch but not keep fish, while his commercial fishermen should be given free reign to harvest the resource at will. Well, I'm sorry, but recreational fishermen have just as much right to harvest and enjoy consuming striped bass, and have been doing so all the way back to colonial times, and I am not going to let the likes of this guy take that right away from me or any other recreational fishermen. Let's remember that the first striped bass fishermen were not commercials, but were subsistence fishermen taking food home to their families and sharing them with their neighbors. That is the traditional fishery that goes back tens of thousands of years whether commercial fishermen and some state directors like it or not!
It will be interesting to see how this vote goes at the next striped bass board meeting on April 26 in Norfolk, VA. Contact your state director and let him know how you want him to vote on this. The truly absurd part of it is that the commissioners are presently involved in drafting Amendment 5 which should treat both commercial and recreational sides of the equation equally. Whatever percentage increase is proposed, it should be applied equally to both sides, using the base years of 1972 through 1979 as a guide. There will be another striped bass board meeting on May 16 in Washington, DC. Don't delay, call your representative today!
The Policy Board of the ASMFC overrode the decisions made by the weakfish board by shortening the period of time required to bring all states into compliance with the Weakfish Management Plan. There was also more discussion about how the Weakfish Plan should be amended to operate like the fluke plan, assuring that historical catch rates are maintained. Instead of regulating the fishery like the fluke plan, which was 40% recreational and 60% commercial, the weakfish plan never addressed the historical catch ratio. Basically, they took what was being caught at the present time, 10% recreational and 90% commercial, and then said reduce those levels by an additional 25%. I will be working with others to have that fishery institute a historical catch rate of harvest at either 40/60 or 50/50, whatever the actual harvest rate was during an established set of base years yet to be determined. There is a Weakfish Board meeting scheduled for May 16 in Washington, DC.
The committees involved in developing management plans for these fisheries met recently and we will publish the recommendations going to public hearings in the May newsletter. Keep a watchful eye on when these public hearings will be taking place. Make sure your voice is heard and your opinions presented.
You will find a copy of the permit necessary for the angling category for the 1994 season in the center section of the newsletter. I advise everyone who owns a boat who thinks they have even a remote possibility of catching bluefin, to apply for the permit this year while it is FREE. If you troll bluefish, chum the inshore ridges for bonito and albies, if you chuck or troll the Mudhole, apply for a permit. As with the commercial side, we must establish our participation in the fishery. Send in for your permit now.
A short comment on the JCAA Recreational Pelagic Fisheries Symposium. We are trying to provide a transcript of this important event, but, to date, we have not been able to raise enough funds to pay for a stenographer and the cost of transferring her notes into a finished transcript. Another way of covering this cost would be for anyone interested in getting a copy of the transcript to send a donation of $10 to cover the cost. If we receive 200 requests, we will have enough money to cover the cost of the transcripts, but we have to know how many prior to April 30.
We are all aware that the 1993 catch of bluefish was way down from the levels of 1992, which were down from '91 and '90. The recreational catch is at about 25% of the catch we experienced in 1989. This is going to have serious implications on both the recreational and commercial fisheries for bluefish. The next Bluefish Board meeting will be on April 28 at 1:00 PM in Norfolk, VA. I will keep you posted.
Tom Fote is JCAA's Legislative Chairman and the Governor's appointee from New Jersey to the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission. Contact Tom at 908-270-9102 or fax at 908-506-6409. His mailing address is: 22 Cruiser Ct., Toms River, NJ 08753