FISHERIES MANAGEMENT & LEGISLATIVE REPORT

by TOM FOTE

(from Jersey Coast Anglers Association - October 1996 Newspaper)

Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission Week

Summer Flounder Scup & Sea Bass:

Striped Bass Action Alert !!!

Striped Bass - Table of Commercial Quotas

Bluefin Tuna:

Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission Week

The ASMFC 55th Annual Meeting will be taking place on October 20-24, 1996 in Hyannis, MA at the Tara Hyannis Hotel and Resort (508-775-7775). To obtain a complete list of the agenda call ASMFC at 202-289-6400.

The following is a list of some of the meeting dates: the Blackfish (Tautog), Striped Bass and Habitat Committee are meeting on October 21, Weakfish and Shad and River Herring on October 22; Eel and Winter Flounder on October 23; and Policy Board and Executive Committee will meet on October 24.

Summer Flounder Scup & Sea Bass:

By the time you read this newsletter, the Summer Flounder Board Meeting will have taken place on September 17 and 18. I will be attending this meeting as the proxy for the Governor’s appointees and will be a voting member on the ASMFC Board. I approached the Summer Flounder Board and asked them when they would deal with the law suit question of the pay back of the three million pounds by the commercial fishermen. I was informed that this issue is on the agenda. The needs to be addressed especially in the light that they are talking about major cutbacks in the 1997 quota. I do not want to hear any discussion of a reduction in the recreational bag limit until the lawsuit issue and the underreporting of commercial landings are addressed. Under the lawsuit, three million pounds were taken a year early, not allowing them to spawn and enlarge the stock. The pay back should include potential stock that was lost. This meeting will mainly deal with the commercial regulations for summer flounder and scup and the overall quota for 1997. Recreational bag limits will be discussed in October. I will give a report about this at the JCAA meeting.

Striped Bass Action Alert !!!

September 9, 1996

There is a crisis looming in the striped bass fishery which demands your immediate attention. The Striped Bass Board of the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission will be meeting on September 25^th at 8:30 A.M. at the Raddisson in New London, Connecticut. At that time the Striped Bass Board will be taking a crucial vote on a motion made at the July 23^rd board meeting to freeze all commercial quotas for 1997.

The Striped Bass Board met on July 23 and heard a report from the technical committee which states that we could exceed the interim mortality rate. Looking further at this report, it assumed a worst case scenario, that everyone would catch their full commercial quota and that every state would be catching two fish at twenty-eight inches. Neither one of these scenarios will happen.

If the Management Board fails to act at its next meeting, the commercial quota for Chesapeake Bay will almost double while the quota for the coast will remain the same or actually goes down. This is due to the double standard for the Chesapeake Bay which allows the states of Maryland and Virginia, plus the Potomac River Fisheries Commission to double dip on both the ocean and bay mortality rates, even though they are harvested in bay waters.

There was a motion to freeze all commercial quotas for next year in the bay and the ocean. This motion would save a couple of hundred thousand striped bass next year. It was tabled until the following meeting. We can stop this slaughter. Now is the time to contact your state directors and demand that all commercial quotas be frozen or reduced to levels less than 1996 to prevent a catastrophe that could overharvest the fishery quickly and undo all the benefits we have gained after 12 years of cooperative efforts to save and restore the striped bass fishery.

Since I wrote the preceding paragraphs for JCAA’s newspaper, I received additional information which is summarized in the attached table. It points out that "no action" will allow the Potomac River Fisheries Commission, Maryland and Virginia, a quota increase somewhere between 2,278,000 and 2,299,000 in 1997 over their existing quota allocation of 3.7 million pounds. The total allowable commercial harvest for 1996 was 6,154,200. If permitted to take place this unwarranted and dangerous course of action will increase the commercial quota by an additional forty percent over 1996 levels. The increase will be comprised of small fish since Chesapeake Bay commercial fishermen are permitted to retain fish of 18 inches or larger. If you look at the commercial allowable quota along the coast for 1996 it was 4,040,400. Compare this to the increase in the Chesapeake Bay harvest you discover that this increase alone is fifty six percent of the allowable quota for the rest of the coast combined. There is talk of reducing the quota along the coast and the figures I have seen could make the increase in the Chesapeake Bay greater than the allowable commercial harvest for the entire coast and all the states that depend upon that quota and a healthy fishery. It seems insane to talk about reducing the coastal quota while considering a huge increase in harvest for the Chesapeake Bay. If it is necessary to reduce the commercial quota for the coast, it should be matched with an equal or greater reduction in the spawning areas represented by Chesapeake Bay and other estuaries.

The Chesapeake Bay quota increase is being driven by a model that has never been Peer Reviewed and never been formally presented to the Management Board and full commission for review. For more than three years the technical committee and then the Striped Bass Management Board has been requesting an internal review of the Harvest Control Model, but Maryland has yet to turn over the model and its research.

All concerned and thinking saltwater anglers and members of the recreational fishing industry should contact their state directors and members of the ASMFC involved in the striped bass management plan and ask them to, at the very least, freeze all commercial quotas in the Bay and along the Coast until the Harvest Control Model has been reviewed and all decisions based on its data can be resolved. This is not the time for the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission to destroy whatever confidence they have gained by allowing this huge increase in the Chesapeake Bay, especially one based on a "secret model." Remember, this meeting is on September 25^th, so time is short. If you have any questions, please call me. Thomas P. Fote, Legislative Chairman, Jersey Coast Anglers Association

908-270-9102 fax 908-506-6409

Striped Bass - Table of Commercial Quotas:

This Table Was Compiled With Data From Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission on September 9 For Jersey Coast Anglers Assn. by Tom Fote.

The With and Without columns in the table stand for the fact that the bay jurisdictions are considering either of two commercial quotas for 1997. This is dependent on whether or not they reallocate by the 1972-79 market share. The bay has not, for certain reasons, been using the 72-79 reshuffling like the rest of the coast in 1995-96.

These are possible quotas if nothing else happens.

The reason there could be a reduction in the coastal commercial quotas is that the technical committee has determined that the mortality rate is greater than expected in 1994 and there are fewer small fish than expected along the coast to be harvested.

Bluefin Tuna:

The Angling Category at a Loss Again!

I received a call from Bill Hogarth informing me that the transfer of ten metric tons requested by JCAA, the CCA of NY, the Legal Defense Fund, Congressman Michael Forbes (R-NY) and Congressman Frank Pallone had been placed in the angling category. This would allow the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) to open the fishery for three days (September 13-15) and then make an assessment to see if the ten tons of additional quota is caught. If not, additional days will be open. The NMFS also put a daily bag limit of one fish per day per boat. I think NMFS intentions were good but this is only part of what we asked for. The way this opening is being implemented is ridiculous. What JCAA asked for was a transfer of ten metric tons into the Angling Category until the reassessment could be completed and then they would have open the fishery. We know the data they used to close this fishery was faulty. They now claim the reassessment is done and they are sticking by their original data, which makes no sense. To top it off, they opened this fishery with so little notice it does not help the party and charter boats. Recreational anglers will not go out and spend the time and money to catch only one fish per boat. The one fish per boat daily bag limit completely eliminates party and charter boats from recouping lost trips. It strictly allows a by catch fishery of one fish per boat. This failure to correct the problem hurts the whole recreational industry from North Carolina to Rhode Island.

What needs to be done is to educate the new employees at NMFS about the real history of the bluefin tuna fishery, something we’ve been trying to do for years! It is amazing how the short term commercial enterprises responsible for destroying a stock have become the traditional fisheries. It is equally amazing that NMFS employees forget the purpose of the original quotas. Luckily there are a few scientists still working in the field who were part of the original decision making process. They continue to communicate with us about the true historic nature of this fishery. NMFS continues to wear blinders when this is discussed.

Why the scientists demanded that fifteen percent of the total western Atlantic quota for bluefin tuna be harvested in school tuna when the original quotas were set up The NMFS encouraged the purse seiners to travel to the east coast in the early 60’s to target giant tuna because it was an underutilized species and no commercial group was fishing for them. This was done mainly because the canneries in Maine were going out of business because of the collapse of the commercial sardine fishery. After the purse seiners reached the east coast, they realized the canneries were not designed for giant tuna and they began targeting small bluefin. This was strictly a business decision on their part. The small fish fishery had been the domain of the recreational sector for over seventy years. In the NY Bight alone, areas like Sheepshead Bay and Beach Haven had developed huge charter and party boat fleets to fish on small and medium bluefin tuna. At the JCAA Large Pelagic Symposium in 1994, JCAA documented the existence of fifty-four full time charter boats from the Beach Haven Marlin & Tuna Club targeting this fishery since the early 1900’s. These boats went from sail to steam to diesel. Sheepshead Bay experienced the same type of development and I can remember as a child seeing fifty to sixty party boats and one hundred charter boats sailing there. My dad would tell me how he went out handlining bluefin from those boats before World War II and promise that one day we were going to do this together. The bread and butter fish for these boats was bluefin tuna. The last time I was in Sheepshead Bay I saw only nine boats docked in an area capable of handling hundreds. Four were dinner cruise boats. Today, the Beach Haven Marlin & Tuna Club has no full time charter boats.

Why did this happen? In less than ten years the purse seiners had totally collapsed the fishery. This was done with the blessing of the Bureau of Commercial Fisheries the predecessor of NMFS. What data we have indicates the recreational sector was harvesting at least one thousand metric tons of small fish up and down the coast in the 50’s and 60’s Before 1970 the giant tuna fishery was considered strictly a recreational fishery with almost no commercial market value. Giant bluefin were often sold for five cents a pound for use as cat food. Once the Japanese convinced their population that giant bluefin tuna was a gourmet food they have been targeted with a vengeance off our east coast. About the same time, the purse seiners were destroying the small fish stock taking about 12,000 metric tons per year. These were fish generally smaller than fifteen pounds. The bluefin tuna populations could not survive this double whammy. NMFS, in its infinite wisdom, finishing up the destruction decided to push the purse seiners off the small fish and give them giants. After all, now they were worth big money. They began establishing quotas with ICCAT.

Biologists realized the best way to monitor the status of bluefin tuna stocks was to monitor all age classes. This could be done by a random sample of the young age class to see if they were increasing or decreasing. Because the recreational fishery is random in nature, data collected from recreational fishing of the small class fish would better reflect the entire stock. For this reason it was decided that fifteen percent of the quota of the western Atlantic should be allowed in small fish. This would allow the biologists to collect the data they needed to determine if the stocks were rebuilding or further collapsing. ICCAT was convinced that the bluefin tuna stocks in the western Atlantic were in such bad shape that no fishing should be allowed except for a targeted quota that would allow data collection. All quotas were originally established with this goal in mind and this continues to be the reason for these quotas.

With the growth of the nontraditional giant tuna fishery for the Japanese markets , more and more fish were caught for shipment to Japan, not for the U.S. market. By the present day, the only bluefin tuna allowed to be sold are for shipment to Japan. U.S. consumers no longer have access to small bluefin tuna through the commercial market but can still catch bluefin tuna for personal use. Now NMFS has thrown away the recreational quota, allowing U.S. citizens access to only twenty percent of the overall catch for their consumption. The present quota system has no basis in scientific monitoring, but allows a limited few to make a lot of money selling off the remaining giants. The Department of Commerce delegation went to ICCAT and gave away the right of U.S. citizens to consume bluefin tuna. Now only the Japanese have that opportunity. They cut the small fish fishery in the western Atlantic down to eight percent. The U.S. interpreted this in the narrowest possible way, limiting it to the US Quota. NMFS only allows a total catch of 100 metric tons of small fish. We need to go back to the fifteen percent of the western Atlantic quota, which will provide 450 metric tons of small fish from a total quota of 3,000 metric tons for the angling category. This is equivalent to approximately 990,000 pounds of small fish. At an average of twenty-five pounds per fish, even this only equals 39,000 fish for the entire coast. Only the United States wants a part of their quota in small fish in the Western Atlantic. Given the number of permit holders, this is only about three fish per permit per season. Now you can see how small this fishery really is, even expanded to 450 metric tons. This is what North Carolina to Rhode Island need at the very minimum to have a viable recreational fishery. That is why, in 1992, JCAA and its member clubs voted that the ICCAT delegation should go back and reinstate the fifteen percent of the quota for small fish. We have not deviated from this position and it becomes more and more clear that this is the correct course of action. There will be ICCAT Advisory meetings scheduled for October to develop the U.S. delegation’s position. We are demanding that this delegation come back with fifteen percent of the small fish fishery for the angling category. The JCAA does not believe that it is our job to determine the overall quota. That should be based on scientific information. We have always supported any cuts necessary in the overall quota to rebuild these stocks. What we are demanding is the fifteen percent share of small fish of the quota established for scientific monitoring. If you want to catch or consume bluefin tuna, if you care about the recreational fishing industry along the east coast, do not remain silent on this issue. It is time for us all to act. The people you need to contact are:

President Clinton, 1600 Pennsylvania Ave, Washington, D.C. 20230
Mickey Kantor, Secretary of Commerce, Department of Commerce
14th and Constitution, NW, Room 35858 Washington, D.C. 20230,
Tel: 202-482-2112 - Fax 202-482-4576

Will Martin, Deputy Assistant Secretary of Commerce
Department of Commerce, International Trade
14th and Constitution, NW, Room 5809
Washington, D.C.
20230, Tel: 202-482-6076 - Fax 202-482-6000.

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