The "rebuilding" mess

(from the October, 2006 issue of National Fisherman)

Since 1996, our fisheries have been on a collision course with the Sustainable Fisheries Act (SFA). The impossibility of meeting the ten year “rebuilding” schedule is in the public eye now because of what it’s on the verge of doing to the summer flounder (fluke) fishery in the mid-Atlantic and southern New England, but it will be confronting us in fishery after fishery in the next several years.

Why is compliance impossible? Consider all those factors that influence the size of a fish stock. First off, we’ve got everything that affects recruitment. This includes the number of spawning fish, viability of the spawn, water quality, water temperatures, currents, cannibalism and predation. Then, once “recruited” into the population, the fish are subject to cannibalism, predation, parasites, diseases, water quality, and fishing. And the managers can only control fishing.

So we have an ocean that’s home to burgeoning populations of various marine mammals, all very effective at eating species that are important to recreational and commercial fishermen (for an idea of how accomplished they are, take a look at “It’s not just fishing” from the April 2006 issue of National Fisherman). We’ve got the impacts of ongoing coastal development on water quality, and on the critters that live in that water. We’ve got water temperatures that – global warming or not – are pretty far from the normal. We’ve got –at least in the mid-Atlantic – a bumper crop of spiny dogfish eating anything that they can catch and swallow. And we’ve got fishing.

The Sustainable Fisheries Act makes no provisions for controlling, or even for allowing for, anything but fishing. Regardless of any other factors, the burden for returning a population of fish to some arbitrary “healthy” level falls on the shoulders of commercial and recreational fishermen.

As the summer flounder situation makes abundantly clear, no matter how much you cut back on fishing, this isn’t necessarily going to happen. That’s because there’s so much going on that can impact on the size of a stock that nobody’s bothering to (or even can) control, and the Act doesn’t permit the managers to allow for any of it.

With summer flounder, management restrictions seem to have hit the point of diminishing returns. Fishing has been continuously cut back and the stock has responded accordingly, doubling in size over the last several years. But it hasn’t responded enough to meet the rebuilding requirements, which are evidently to reach a stock size last seen in the 1930s. Even if fishing were halted completely, it’s questionable if this target could be reached.

Why? Maybe the rebuilding target was too high. Or maybe there’s other stuff going on that is outweighing the impacts of the long series cutbacks on fishing. Whatever the case, according to NMFS personnel the TAC will have to be reduced by almost 80% for the next fishing year. In spite of a stock that has been increasing steadily,. Constrained by the SFA, they can’t do anything else (fortunately, the Mid-Atlantic Council could, and did. At their meeting on August 2, Council members voted for a TAC reduction of less than 20%).

We’ve got fishermen who did what they were supposed to; toed the line, participated in the system, fished “sustainably” and followed the rules. And the fish responded accordingly. What’s their reward? Apparently, if NMFS has it’s SFA mandated way, an almost complete shutdown of the fishery and the financial devastation of the people and businesses depending on it. And similar scenarios are surely in the pipeline for other “recovering” fisheries.

How did we get into this mess? Quite simply, by a handful of foundation-funded NGOs – and, I’m afraid, some complicit fishermen – convincing Congress that inflexibility was the Holy Grail of fisheries management because it would remove any trace of judgment from the management process. The fishermen should be, according to these self-proclaimed “protectors of the fish,” locked into rebuilding schedules with no wiggle room, regardless of whether they’re responsible for the condition of the fish or of the effectiveness – or effects – of forcing their compliance.

So where does the continuing increase in marine mammal stocks leave us? How about ongoing wetland loss, climate change, regime shifts, more frequent red tides or offshore energy development? Right behind the eight ball, folks, ‘cause we’re the only ones who have to pay the piper. And we’re going to remain in this untenable position until the managers can start using the judgment that the members of the Mid-Atlantic Council have demonstrated that a majority of them possess.

Nils E. Stolpe