FISHERIES MANAGEMENT & LEGISLATIVE REPORT
by Tom Fote
(from Jersey Coast Anglers Association September 1997Newsletter)
JULY 29-30 ASMFC STRIPED BASS BOARD MEETING REPORT
JCAA PROPOSAL ON ADDENDUM 2 TO AMENDMENT 5 OF THE STRIPED BASS MANAGEMENT PLAN
ASMFC Striped Bass
Hearings
Tuesday September 16 7:00 PM
Ocean County Administration Building
Room 119
JULY 29-30 ASMFC STRIPED BASS BOARD MEETING REPORT
I just returned from the Atlantic States Fisheries Commission Striped Bass meeting that was held in Warwick, Rhode Island on July 29 and 30. I am always amazed that some state directors come prepared to manipulate the meeting for the gain of their states’ commercial interests and the commercial fishery as a whole. They are always looking to further restrict the recreational fishery in order to protect and expand the commercial fishery. The recreational community is about to take it on the chin again. These same state directors are hoping that we will get so lost in the statistics of the plan and spend so much time arguing among ourselves about the allocation of the diminished recreational quota along the coast, that we will miss the big picture and fail to place responsibility where it belongs. The responsibility belongs on the state directors who have allowed the expansion of the commercial quotas in the bay and along the coast. The state directors and the commission will deny that there is an organized effort to favor commercial interests. They will point to my criticism of this new plan as biased and suggest that I am once again overreacting to their decision. My response is that I have been to enough ASMFC meetings, watched the deals being made and lived with the decisions that were made well before any meetings began to know when the recreational community is being shortchanged. What every recreational angler needs to do is carefully read my summary of meeting and the resulting proposals. Look beyond the simple battle among the recreational anglers who could consume all our energies and look at the bigger picture. Ask yourself why there are not enough striped bass for all the recreational anglers when in 1995 the ASMFC declared striped bass a "recovered fishery"?
I received the materials for the Striped Bass Board Meeting the day before I left for Warwick.. Bruce Freeman, who represented NJ Fish and Game, received only part of the material by fax the day before the meeting. Our striped bass advisors were also left without materials until the last minute. ASMFC had not scheduled an advisors meeting to comment and review these documents. They will also not have a meeting to review the proposals in the hearing document before it goes out to public hearings. So much for public input. This chain of events did not allow us an opportunity to review the material and confer with our advisors before the meeting.
I could spend a lot of time reviewing all the charts and graphs that were given out and the minutia of the plan. I could also describe the methods used to devise the state by state quotas. They will all be available in the public hearing document which will not ready until latter this month. We will go over them when the document comes out, In truth I believe all this pretense at statistical analysis and presentation are simply a smoke screen to divert our attention from what is really happening in this fishery. Unlike the ASMFC, I am going to use the KISS principle (Keep It Simple Stupid) to review what happened and what was proposed.
First, a brief history of Amendment 5. Under Amendment 5 the Striped Bass Advisory Committee and a majority of the comments at the public hearings called for a 24 inch size limit recreationally and an increase in the commercial catch from 20% to 40% of their historic limit. After the public hearings the Striped Bass Board voted to keep the 28 inch size limit along the coast, and allow the producing areas a 20 inch size limit for both commercial and recreational fishing. After looking at the projections for the total harvest by recreational anglers at a 2 fish limit, 28 inches for the coast, the Board decided ,on advice of the Technical Committee representatives, to increase the commercial catch along the coast to 70% of its historic base year average. The Technical Committee members were unconcerned about the long term effects of this commercial increase providing the recreational limit remained at 28 inches. They stated that this stock was recovered. The Technical Committee reassured the Striped Bass Board that there was no reason to be concerned with the overharvesting of 90,000 fish at 28 inches or larger by Maryland in the winter trophy fishery. Under Amendment 5 they allowed an increase from 2,000 to 30,000 fish at the 28 inch or larger size in the Chesapeake and recorded it against the coastal quota. Their rosy view of the recovery of the Striped Bass stock allowed them to take these positions.
Given the rosy prognostications of the Technical Committee, I was anticipating an opportunity for the coastal recreational anglers to fish at a slightly lower size limit and take some of the pressure off the larger fish. Imagine my surprise when the Striped Bass Technical Committee report concluded that there are not enough 28 inch or larger fish to continue harvesting at the present rate. They blamed this condition on the growth in the coastal harvest which is restricted to 28 inch or larger fish and to the growth in the number of recreational striped bass trips. After considering the recommendations from the Technical Committee and debating different proposals to go out to public hearing for Addendum 2, the Striped Bass Board voted to go to public hearing in the first two weeks of September with the following outlined proposals. These proposals are based on a VPA figure that calls for a total reduction in the harvest of the 28 inch or larger fish based on the 1996 marine recreational survey figures. The Technical Committee and the Striped Bass Board used these figures even though they had publicly questioned the statistics about number of fish caught or size of fish kept accumulated from some states. The Technical Committee admitted that the standard deviation in these statistics is very high making it difficult to precisely predict the outcome. But they will do it anyway!
Since much of the discussion about the following options will be based on statistics about the mortality rates of the 28 inch or larger fish, it is important to know how these statistics are determined. Here is how the fish are being assigned by size. Under the current use of VPA and SSB it makes no difference where and when fish are caught. The decision about whether a mortality rate is assigned to the coast or the bay is based entirely on the size of the fish. For example, a fish 28 inches or larger that is caught upstate in New York’s Delaware Water Gap in the middle of August is considered against the coastal fishery mortality rate as a migratory fish. A fish caught in the 20 to 26 inch slot limit in Maine is counted against the mortality rate of one of the producing areas; Chesapeake Bay, Delaware Bay or Hudson River. Many people assume a 28 inch fish caught in the Chesapeake Bay in August would have been counted against the Chesapeake Bay total mortality rate but, as you can see, this is not true. We knew that the large fish trophy fishery in the Chesapeake Bay in the winter was being counted in the coast’s mortality rate. What I didn’t realize was that all 28 inch fish, no matter where or when it is caught, are counted in the coast’s mortality rate. This is one of the reasons why the Chesapeake Bay has been below the target mortality rate while catching more and more fish. Wouldn’t you like to make withdrawals from your bank account only to have them show up on someone else’s statement. To be fair, the small fish that are killed as bycatch are counted against the producing areas, including hook and line release mortality. However, these mortality figures are counted against two very large year classes of small fish making the increase in mortality for the bay almost negligible. The increase against the coast, however, is quite dramatic. This is because the entire coast is fishing on a limited population of 28 inch or larger fish. To further complicate the issue, the Hudson River and Delaware Bay do not have adequate statistics placed within the model to avail themselves of the benefits of being producing areas. New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania and Delaware recreationally opted for what they felt was conservation with a 28 inch size limit in the Delaware Bay and Hudson River up to the George Washington Bridge. This lack of understanding about how mortality rates were figured negated the gains made by the recreational anglers in these states allowing the Chesapeake to catch more small fish while they were counted against all the producing areas. In other words, Chesapeake Bay caught all the small fish counted in the mortality rates for all three areas.
I once accused Maryland of double dipping on the statistics catching both premigratory fish initially and then adding post migratory fish in their winter trophy program. Now I can see that they are quadruple dipping, taking advantage of the savings from Delaware Bay and the Hudson River and counting their 28 inch fish against the coast no matter when they are caught. Was this just good luck for Chesapeake Bay or did they use their statistical expertise to develop a long range plan that would use every new statistic to their advantage? With this information at hand it would be easy for recreational anglers to turn on one another in a allocation battle. This is exactly what some state directors with strong commercial interests would like. They decide how much of the pie to allocate to recreation and we oblige them by fighting among ourselves while their commercial fisherman gobble up the rest.
The first option under the hearing document is to accomplish a reduction recreationally along the coast by reducing bag limits or imposing seasonal restrictions. The Technical Committee was instructed to come up with a variety of options. The commercial fishery would be have no reduction along the coast under any of these options. The Chesapeake bay would also be allowed to increase their catch commercially under any of the proposed options. So the only group taking any kind of reduction will be the coastal recreational angler
The second option would accomplish the reduction by setting up state by state quotas. They will undoubtedly produce a myriad of charts that will confuse even the most knowledgeable.
I requested that a third option be placed in the hearing document. I requested a status quo for all groups for 1998. I believe that the statistics are not precise and feel that the discussed proposals for allocating the large fish would result in an inequitable burden on the coastal recreational fishermen. No motion was made on my suggestion. New Jersey and Maine made a motion that would have held the coast at status quo and allowed for an increase under Addendum One in the bay. This motion was rejected by the board.
Therefore, only the first and second options listed above will be listed on the public hearing document. Many times the Striped Bass Board’s final action on addendums and amendments do not reflect exactly what is in the public hearing document that will be sent out at the end of August. We cannot rely on them to make a final decision based on our comments about the public hearing document. Therefore it is important that we go to these hearings with our own plan, one that is "none of the above" and does not pit recreational anglers against each other.
Jersey Coast Anglers Association and the American Sportfishing Association will be probably be sponsoring a meeting on Striped Bass before the public hearings take place in early September. It is critical that we have maximum recreational participation from all the states involved. We cannot approach these hearing divided and we must come up with a plan built on a concensus among all recreational groups no matter where there fish. Tentative dates for the meeting are between August 23 and 28. Invitation for meeting will sent out as soon as we have a date.
Please consider these thoughts. JCAA had long held the belief that one size limit throughout the range is appropriate. The Hudson River and the Delaware are estimated by the Technical Committee to produce 35% of the total striped bass population. JCAA has never considered pitting the coast against the producing areas even though we could benefit from our position between two producing areas. This present plan will force NJ fishermen to seriously consider adopting the take everything you can get attitude prevalent in the Chesapeake Bay. I can’t condone this and I know there must be a better way. One of the state directors suggested that a 24 inch size limit throughout the fishery might have prevented this problem.
There were interesting comments by some state directors discussing the possibility of limited entry on the recreational side. This proposal appeared to be generated by the states with the most commercial interests. While a limited entry may have appeal to some, think about the commercial slant on this. Rather than allowing most individual recreational anglers to go out and catch their own striped bass to take home for dinner, a commercial fisherman will gladly catch the only striped bass available so he can sell it to you. The additional danger is that it won’t stop with limiting the number of charter boats. Next they will limit the number of trips a charter boat can make or the number of people who can fish from any boat. It is not a door we want to open.
JCAA has supported striped bass gamefish because it has always felt that striped bass stocks could not support a strong recreational fishery and a commercial fishery. This is one fish that will not do well unless it is limited to a recreational catch. People at this meeting seemed to have difficulty deciding how to define or describe a quality fishery. That’s easy. A quality recreational striped bass fishery has strong year classes on all size fish that will allow a subsistence and recreational anglers to take fish home to eat and catch and release anglers to occasionally catch a real trophy size bass.
If you have any questions or comments contact me by email at tfote@JCAA.org, fax 732-506-6409 or phone 732-270-9102. I will be in contact about the date and time of the probable JCAA & ASA coastwide meeting.. The JCAA Striped Bass Committee will be having a meeting prior to the coast wide meeting to come up with a JCAA position. It is tentatively scheduled for August 11. Contact Mike Burke at 732-398-1935 for details.
JCAA PROPOSAL ON ADDENDUM 2 TO AMENDMENT 5 OF THE STRIPED BASS MANAGEMENT PLAN
On July 29-30 I attended the ASMFC Striped Bass Board Meeting and reported what took place at this meeting back to the JCAA Striped Bass Committee on August 11. The Committee met and voted to make the following proposals for 1998 and the immediate future at the upcoming public hearings on Addendum 2. Some of these ideas will not be new and additional information is available in the previous JCAA Newspapers. Previous editions are archived on our web page. Our new webpage address is <www.JCAA.org>.
In considering the following proposals, it is important to review the problems we have with some of the current state directors and technical representatives to the board. We can make excellent proposals that will go nowhere unless we change the mindset of these officials. These state directors and technical representatives have no concept of the needs recreational fishing community. They look at recreational fishing and see only catch and release fishing. In their mind, recreational anglers should be satisfied to simply catch and release fish while commercial fishermen should be the main source for people who want to eat fish. We have heard repeatedly from state directors and technical representatives that recreational anglers need only one fish. They are steadfast in their desire to protect the commercial interests since, in their minds, these are the people who provide food for the public. They have forgotten that recreational anglers and subsistence anglers are the very public they pretend to represent. They forget those fish are a public resource. The anglers who take fish for their personal consumption should have first right to the public resource. If there is an excess, then that should be available as a commercial fishery.
For the fisheries managers who deal with the marine resource on the eastcoast, this is a very difficult concept. Most of these marine managers have a background in dealing with commercial fishing and come to the commission with that bias. We should not forget the National Marine Fisheries Service grew out of the Bureau of Commercial Fisheries and incorporated the small number of employees from the Bureau of Sport Fisheries. The directors who manage fresh water fishing understand that the public resource is for personal consumption first. Only when there is an excess in a stock is any commercial fishing allowed. Our hardest task is to change this orientation. Without a substantial change we will continue to fight a losing battle. If you look at the history of marine fisheries management you will see that as any species collapses, attention is first focused on the impact on the commercial interests. Any attention to the recreational sector is second hand and after the fact.
The comments from the members of the striped bass board and members of the technical committee only confirmed our worst fears. They continue to make all decisions based primarily on the interests of the commercial fishery. Here is what we hear from those officials: "Let’s put a limited entry on the public who want to harvest fish for personal consumption." "The recreational fishermen only need one fish." These comments are all we need to hear to predict how the board is going to act unless we put pressure on them through their governors and elected officials. They actually voted to go to public hearing with the proposal to reduce the coastal recreational catch and allow the commercial catch to remain the same along the coast and increase in the producing areas.
What disturbed the JCAA the most was that the members of the board would not admit that the current problem resulted from their failure to listen to the fishing community under Amendment 5. The overwhelming public hearing documents and the concensus of the striped bass advisory board was that the states be allowed to increase the commercial fishery from 20% to 40% of the historical fishery. A majority of the recreational anglers were not happy with the double dipping of the Chesapeake Bay and were further dismayed when the board forgave the 90,000 fish overage by Maryland in their winter fishery. If the striped bass board had heeded this advice and incorporated it into its plan we would not be considering these reductions on the coastal recreational anglers at this time. Not one state director proposed any reduction on the commercial fishery at the present meeting. I was not surprised.
We need to address the current perceived short term problem and lay out a long term solution. Even though we have found huge discrepancies in the statistics they are using to determine the mortality rate on the migratory fish, I realize that we must take some pressure off the migratory fish (28 inches or larger). We need to distribute the catch in the bay and along the coast throughout many different year classes. It is not reasonable to focus on just a few year classes that are not in abundance. If the board had listened to the recreational community in 1995 and regulated a two fish bag limit at 24 inches bay and coast, we would not have this problem.
To address what the JCAA believes are the exaggerated concerns of the board, we propose;
1. The commercial fishery along the coast be reduced to the 50% level of the base years.
2. The ASMFC does not allow any jurisdiction in the producing areas catch to exceed 75% of the base year average.
3A. In 1998 along the coast we keep a two fish bag limit but we keep one fish at 28 inches and make one fish a slot fish between 20 and 26 inches with no season reductions.
3B. We go to two fish bag limit bay and coastwide at 20 inches or larger.
4. If we do 3A we look at a solution that would allow a catch for personal consumption that is the same for the producing areas and the coast in 1999.
5. We use 10 fish at 18 inches as the base line available for personal consumption and allow no increase in the commercial quota until this is a possibility. This does not mean that we want or will push for a 10 fish at 18 inches catch. That will be for the recreational community to decide when the possibility exists in the future.
Let me explain why the JCAA uses 10 fish at 18 inches as the base line for personal consumption. During the base years of ‘72 - ’79, there was no bag limit in effect in any state except New Jersey so we use that as the bag limit. During those base years fish were still being harvested at 12, 14, 16 and 18 inches. We took the highest size limit and made that the base. That is really the most conservative way of choosing the base line. The state directors often claim there is little data available. Actually, all they need to do is look at the state regulations from those years and pick the most restrictive. The reason we are not asking for unlimited bag limits is because we realize that some of the recreational anglers that harvested 100 fish at a time were selling part of their catch. We are only interested in proposing what should be available for personal consumption, not for sale.
These comments below were in response to post on the internet and email messages I received last month when NMFS decided to raise the bag limited on bluefin tuna. The quota is now back to one and it interesting to see what goes on in September.
RESPONSE TO CRITICISM ON BLUEFIN TUNA BAG LIMIT
The JCAA and many other groups have spent a lot of time in dealing with the overall tuna issue. As Legislative Chairman of Jersey Coast Anglers Association, I have put in a lot of time in the last two months trying to get a reasonable bag limit for recreational bluefin tuna fishermen. In the last month and a half, I spent time with Rolli Schmitten and met with Congressmen Saxton and Pallone and Senator Torricelli. Other members of JCAA have done the same thing. In none of these conversations or in any correspondence I have received, have any of us asked for an overall increase in the bluefin tuna quota. In fact, the recreational fishery in the small fish category has not filled their quota for the last two years. Over the last ten years, Jersey Coast Anglers Association has called for a reduction of the bluefin tuna category. In previous messages I have suggested that if we cannot have a viable recreational fishery we should shut it down completely until we rebuild the stocks. The total recreational fishery is only a small percentage of the total overall quota and has taken the largest hit since 1970. In fact, in 1970 the harvest of one, two and three year old fish was over 318,000 fish. Not pounds, fish! The current quota allows for the harvest of between 10,000 to 17,000 of these fish, depending on weight. That is a reduction of approximately 98%. The commercial giant fishery in that same period of time was only catching 4,000 fish. It has been allowed to grow to 11,000 fish. This is a 300% increase. The commercial fishery has reaped the fishery despite the fact that they caused the problem. The recreational industry has faced the true burden in this fishery. The purse seiners might be catching fewer fish than in 1970 but due to the current price per pound, they are surely making more money. The same is true of the members of the general category. In 1970 there was no market for their catch.
As you can see from above, the recreational community has taken it on the chin. If there is going to be a fishery, all we are asking for are reasonable bag limits and a fair share of whatever fish are going to be harvested. Again, the Jersey Coast Anglers Association has never asked for an increase in the overall quota and has continually asked for a reduction. It is easy to sit back and second guess people who are trying to protect your right to fish, especially if you do not have the correct historical information. I do not claim to know all the facts and have spent 12 years and thousand of hours on bluefin tuna management. Instead of criticizing the people who are trying to fight your battles, you should really try to understand the issues and support the people who have the most information on the subject. The recreational anglers who worked with NMFS and politicians to secure a proper bag limit are on the whole, totally committed to preserving the bluefin tuna fishery and rebuilding the stocks. They deserve your support and not this type of unproductive criticism. Let’s go after the real problem, the over commercialization of the bluefin tuna fishery and the failure of NMFS to manage this fishery and many others.
If you would like to learn more on this topic and other topics most of the last two years of the JCAA Newspapers are now archived at our homepage http://www.jcaa.org along with our Congressional Testimony on this subject and others. Please take the time to read it so you can be better informed. We are in the process of trying to archive all our old newspapers.
FOLLOW UP COMMENTS
JCAA and I are not asking to harvest more bluefin tuna. This is not an allocation battle. We can only harvest a little over 100 metric tons in the small fish category. This is only 8 percent of the total quota. What I am afraid is people that fish for tuna are so upset that they are no longer following the regulations and reporting their catches. That means the information on what is happening in the fishery becomes unreliable. Once that mind set takes place it will overflow into different fisheries. You knows what happens when that type of mentality takes place. When people think that regulations are truly unfair and there is no enforcement the regulations become a joke. That is my greatest fear! What I am saying is put the effort in attacking the problem instead of dividing the recreational community and fighting amongst ourselves.
What I have seen over the years is because we cannot effectively manage the problem of the commercial fishery we take it out on the other recreational anglers. Who did not cause the problem and whose insignificant catch does not make a difference. But it is the only one that will receive a cut back and it turns into a commercial fishery. Swordfish and sharks and bluefin tuna are the prime example and it is starting to happen with striped bass. The fishery managers hypothesize that we do not need any fish and turn it over to the commercial fishery. That is what happens in the real world.
"Release For Tomorrow"
Tom Fote