Weekly featured page

April 12, 2004

Balance in fisheries/Striped bass
Balance in fisheries/Summer flounder
Non-fishing impacts on fisheries recognized
Pew expanding its influence
More on mercury
Seafood safety workshop at Rutgers

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Balance in fisheries –

Over the past several weeks circumstances have conspired to bring to the fore the issue of fairness and balance in fisheries.

Striped bass first - Primary among these is the ongoing drama centered on the East Coast’s rebuilt striped bass fishery and whether a small but vocal group of recreational anglers is going to be able to continue to keep a large part of the ocean closed to their harvest and an even smaller and even more vocal group is going to keep forcing over eight million of the Garden State’s non-fishing citizens to trek to outside New Jersey to legally enjoy what is one of the most delicious and abundant fish found in our coastal waters.

A management recommendation to open the Exclusive Economic Zone (waters from 3 to 200 miles offshore) to the harvest of striped bass has spurred a flurry of renewed interest in the management of this valuable species. It has also provided a graphic demonstration of the extent to which some legislators are willing to go against the interests of the vast majority of their constituents in favor of a small but vocal minority. The interests of those people who don’t want or can’t afford to catch their own fish are being ignored while some recreational anglers’ desire to keep as many striped bass as possible off the plates of the non-fishing public is getting a grotesquely disproportionate level of political support. A major part of these angling activists’ self-serving strategy – which they are trying to pass off as “conservation” – lies in keeping the EEZ closed to striped bass harvesting.

At a hearing of the Fisheries, Wildlife and Oceans Subcommittee of the House Resources Committee held in Washington three weeks ago, two New Jersey Congressman totally ignored the testimony of two of the top managers of our coastal fisheries (John O’Shea, Executive Director of the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission, and Jack Dunnigan, Director of the NMFS Office of Sustainable Fisheries), whose testimony left no doubt that they were both far less concerned with the mortality of striped bass in the commercial fisheries than they were with the recreational mortality. (In fact, as we reported last month, according the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission, the amount of striped bass killed by being “caught and released” by recreational anglers exceeds all of those that are killed by commercial fishermen.) Ignored, as well, was the testimony of Captain Kevin Wark, a commercial fisherman from Barnegat Light, New Jersey. In spite of the compelling testimony by these three experts, both New Jersey Congressmen in their questions and statements completely ignored recreational striped bass mortality and focused solely on commercial bycatch. It was obvious that they were looking for any excuse available, no matter how far-fetched, to maintain the EEZ closure.

One of the primary reasons for opening the EEZ to striped bass harvesting is that it would allow fishermen, both recreational and commercial, to keep striped bass caught out past three miles that now must be discarded.* As it stands, after catching and releasing any number of bass in the EEZ, and after accepting the attendant mortality, both recreational or commercial fishermen may then come inshore and legally catch and keep an appropriate limit. Allowing fishermen to keep EEZ-caught stripers would obviously reduce the overall mortality in the fishery and would have the added benefit of converting what are now dead discards into fish on the tables of recreational anglers or seafood lovers (at least those seafood lovers lucky enough to live outside of New Jersey). And, as has been so graphically demonstrated in the fluke fishery, with the stringent management measures that are in place there’s no chance that the commercial mortality, which is only a quarter of the recreational mortality anyway, would be exceeded.

So we have what appears as if it would be a win-win situation; more striped bass would end up going home to dinner and fewer striped bass would end up needlessly wasted. But this isn’t acceptable to the recreational fishing activists, with their public-be-damned philosophy that every fish in the ocean, as long as it tastes good and “puts up a fight,” should belong to them. It’s unfortunate that they can find such willing political support.

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*Conveniently, members of the Pew-funded anti-fishing organization Oceana have posted on their website information “condemning” the reported bycatch of striped bass in the EEZ by participants in the northeast multispecies fishery. Were the EEZ open to the harvest of striped bass, this needless “bycatch” would have been converted to landings, keeping the fishermen and the consumers happy and preventing the waste of a bunch of fish (see below).

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And then there’s summer flounder - According to the Atlantic States Marine Fish-eries Commission, “from 1996 to 1999 the recreational fishery for summer flounder significantly exceeded its harvest limit (33%, 60%, 67% and 13%).... recreational landings in 2000 increased dramatically. Recreational landings were 15.82 million pounds, more than double the harvest limit of 7.41 million pounds. 2001 landings, though lower than in 2000, were 11.64 million pounds, exceeding the harvest limit by 4.48 million pounds…. The impacts of these overages on the fishery are significant and extend beyond the recreational sector.... The long-term effect of these overages is a lower TAL (Total Allowable Landings) than would have been possible had the target exploitation rate not been repeatedly exceeded and the stock been permitted to recover at a more rapid rate. As the TAL is divided on a 60%/40% basis to create the commercial quota and recreational harvest limit, respectively, the commercial fishery has had lower quotas as a result of recreational overages. This, in the eyes of many fishermen and managers, is an unacceptable inequity and must be rectified through either the curtailment of the recreational harvest or a mechanism for the re-payment of overages.” (Addendum Viii To The Summer Flounder, Scup And Black Sea Bass Fishery Management Plan - Allocation Calculations For The Summer Flounder Recreational Fishery, 12/03). It’s important to note here that the commercial fluke fleet has remained on target with its quota for years.

Though a recreational “payback” has not yet been adopted, the result of the recreational anglers not being able to stay within their target quota has been a series of extremely stringent, though obviously much needed, management measures imposed on their fishery.

But rather than just accepting the fact that they are significantly exceeding their quota every year and then working towards management measures that would get them into compliance – a challenge that the commercial fishing industry ac-cepted many years ago - recreational anglers are trying to grab a part of the commercial quota.

Based on a rigorous analysis and a lengthy and sometimes painful process of public deliberations and negotiations, it was decided that 60% of the summer flounder available should be caught by the commercial sector and 40% by the recreational. This split has been in effect since the Summer Flounder Fisheries Management Plan was written. The commercial harvesters have kept to their quota. The recreational anglers haven’t even come close and now they have apparently decided that it would be easier to get more fish from somewhere else than it would be to actually design and implement significant conservation measures of their own.

Supporting this anti-conservation strategy is John Geiser, a fishing columnist for New Jersey’s Asbury Park Press. In a column on March 21 he wrote “The time-frayed argument that disinformation specialists from the commercial sector use to justify a 60-40 split in the fluke quota is that the 1,400 commercial fishermen satisfy the non-fishing public's demand for fluke. The claim is that, while there may be four million fluke fishermen out there wringing their hands that they have to make three fishing trips to catch one legal fluke, there are 250 million persons in the nation demanding fluke fillets at $9 a pound in the supermarket or $25 in the restaurant. This is utter nonsense. There are no non-fishermen calling their legislators or lobbying for more fluke when the commercial quota is reduced. Whoever heard of a member of the non-fishing public appearing at a fisheries management hearing pleading for the chance to buy an extra fluke to take home for dinner?”

Not too surprisingly considering his past scribblings regarding commercial fishing, Mr. Geiser is a bit off base in several of his assertions. In the first place, as we wrote two paragraphs above, the justification for the 60:40 split is and always has been the deliberations that the management bodies went through when deciding on that allocation.

And, we’ve never heard of anyone even remotely associated with the commercial fishing industry making “hand wringing” or any other sorts of claims about four million fluke fishermen.

Then, his contention that “there are 250 million persons in the nation demanding fluke fillets at $9 a pound in the supermarket or $25 in the restaurant” is “utter nonsense” might itself much more accurately qualify as utter nonsense. The seafood market in the United States, like almost all of our other markets, takes care of itself. If fluke fillets sell at retail for $9 a pound – they do – and if patrons are willing to pay $25 for a restaurant meal featuring fresh fluke, then that’s exactly what those consumers are demanding (perhaps Mr. Geiser was napping through those Introduction to Economics lectures when the topic was “supply and demand.”)

As far as “no non-fishermen calling their legislators or lobbying for more fluke when the commercial quota is reduced” and not having “a member of the non-fishing public appearing at a fisheries management hearing pleading for the chance to buy an extra fluke to take home for dinner,” we can only respond with a resounding “say what?” As set forth in the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act, “It is further declared to be the policy of the Congress in this Act…to assure that the national fishery conservation and management program…. involves, and is responsive to the needs of, interested and affected States and citizens.” It doesn’t say, nor does it imply, that anyone has to attend “a fisheries management hearing” or any other meeting to have his or her fish catching or fish consuming needs responded to. Fortunately for the vast majority of both fishing and non-fishing U.S. citizens, fisheries management isn’t the “be there in person to have a say” popularity contest that Mr. Geiser believes – or would like his readers to believe - it to be (perhaps Mr. Geiser was napping during the “representative democracy” classes in high school Civics as well).

And finally, regarding Mr. Geiser’s use of the term “disinformation specialists,” we’ll leave it up to our readers to decide who most deserves that appellation.

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Striped bass and disinformation hand in hand, who’d have guessed it? – An anti-commercial fishing… oops, we meant a fisheries conservation organization called “Stripers Forever” has made available on their website a letter sent to John O’Shea, Executive Director of the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission, requesting “that the ASMFC deduct at least 2,000,000 pounds from the striped bass commercial quotas for 2004,” based on the imagined commercial bycatch. The letter was signed by Brad Burns, president of the organization.

In the justification for this request, Mr. Burns writes “Recent estimates by NMFS that the bycatch of striped bass in the multi species trawl fishery off New England is 1 ½ to perhaps more than 2 million pounds confirm the reports we’ve heard for years about that fishery.” Neither we nor anyone else we’ve contacted with any familiarity with striped bass management on anything approaching a professional level was familiar with these purported NMFS estimates. In fact, NMFS representatives have emphatically stated that the agency never produced them. The closest we could come to the actual source of these mysterious estimates was the above-mentioned Pew-Oceana website, where the Pew-Oceana “scientists,” using a statistical methodology that wouldn’t pass muster in an elementary fisheries course, extrapolated a commercial striped bass bycatch mortality in the multispecies trawl fishery of from 1.13 to 2.15 million pounds.

Normally it would be hard to imagine how anyone could accidentally misidentify Pew-Oceana’s naïve attempts at fisheries statistics as estimates by the National Marine Fisheries Service, but we’ve grown accustomed to such “mistakes” by so-called marine conservationists.

Perhaps the next time John Geiser is on the lookout for disinformation specialists, he should set his sights a little closer to home.

(An interesting addendum to this is the fact that Thomas Fote, listed as the vice president of Stripers Forever, is the New Jersey Governor’s Appointee to the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission. Stripers Forever describes itself as “a not for profit organization dedicated to making the striped bass a gamefish.” Reading further, we find “by eliminating commercial exploitation of the #1 recreational saltwater fishery on the east coast, over 3,000,000 recreational anglers will enjoy the social and financial benefits that will come from an improved striped bass population.” We wonder how New Jersey’s over 8,000,000 non-fishing consumers – or John Geiser’s “250 million persons in the nation” - will feel if they can never eat a striped bass, not just in New Jersey but anywhere. We also wonder, considering that each state gets only one “public” appointee, how good a job Mr. Fote is doing in representing the full range of New Jersey’s citizenry, not just his recreational fishing cronies, at the Commission.)

While we can’t expect balance from people or groups advocating particular positions, we should be able to count on it from people who are elected or appointed to represent large and diverse constituencies. There are hundreds of millions of people who, while they don’t fish, have as much right to our rich fisheries resources as anyone else. It’s up to the fisheries managers to insure that their rights to those resources are protected to as great an extent as the rights of those who fish for a hobby. To expect otherwise is to misunderstand our fisheries management legislation, our fisheries management process and what our government is all about.

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For an eminent fisheries biologist’s view of the expansion of recreational fishing, see The Problem With George or The Role of Development in Fisheries Management by Peter A. Larkin at http://www.fishingnj.org/artgeorge.htm.

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It isn’t all the fishermen’s fault? – In a seeming breath of fresh air, marine biologists at a Royal Society meeting in London reported that “overfishing is not the sole cause of dramatically declining fish stocks in the north Atlantic Ocean, or worldwide. Environmental changes such as climate warming may be just as important.” Michael Heath, a biologist at the Scottish Fisheries Research Services' Marine Laboratory in Aberdeen, and UK chair of the international pro-ject Global Ocean Ecosystem Dynamics (GLOBEC) was quoted as saying “Marine ecosystems, particularly in the northern Atlantic, are much more vulnerable to natural fluctuations than previously realized." This is a point we’ve been making, and that the anti-fishing activists have been maliciously ignoring, for years. Relating changes in the fisheries in the North Atlantic to similar though more pronounced changes in the Pacific, "there is evidence for significant decadal-scale biological changes, which have major consequences for the abundance of natural resources," said Grégory Beaugrand, a marine biologist at the Sir Alister Hardy Foundation for Ocean Science in Plymouth. (Climate findings let fishermen off the hook - Overfishing isn't the only reason fish have disappeared, Q. Schiermeier, Nature News Service, March 3, 2004)

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Pew expanding its anti-fishing influence – Over the past three years the Pew “Charitable” Trusts have donated $5 million to the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership (TRCP). Represented on its Board and Policy Council are organizations that most of the people in the commercial fishing industry are far too familiar with; the Coastal Conservation Association, Environmental Defense and the American Sportfishing Association. In the first public utterance we’ve seen from the TRCP, Chairman Jim Range, in an article in the hunting and fishing magazine Field and Stream, comes out strongly supporting Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) and opposing the various permutations of the Freedom To Fish legislation that have been or will be introduced “If MPAs can be a useful tool in management it doesn’t seem a good idea to make it impossible to use them.” It seems as if Pew has bought yet another ally in its ongoing efforts to zone our coastal and offshore waters and to zone both recreational and commercial fishing out of large areas of them.

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And a last word (wishful thinking) on mercury – An editorial in the Wall Street Journal (The Mercury Scare, Review and Outlook. 4/8/04) starts “If you've read a newspaper lately, chances are you've seen an ad claiming that millions of women who eat tuna and other fish with mercury are poisoning their children. That sure sounds bad. Only problem is, it's a whole lot abalone. About the only thing the ads do prove is that trusting ‘environmentalists’ in a political debate is harm-ful to your health and the national well being.” The editorial emphasized the results of the most comprehensive studies of the effects, or the lack thereof, of seafood-borne mercury on a population with seafood consumption patterns similar to ours in the U.S. (except increased by an order of magnitude). The study was done by University of Rochester researchers in the Seychelles Islands (http://www.fisheriesresearch.org/rochesterrelease.htm). The Journal piece ends with “the silver lining here may be that these environmentalist scares are be-coming so routine and over-the-top that they are having less public impact. Americans are figuring out that green activists have abandoned any claim to sci-entific objectivity as they pursue political power. Ignore their claims, and en-joy your next tuna sandwich.” In between is about as good a synopsis of the politicization – and the accompanying, artificially generated media hysteria – of what is as close to an environmental and consumer-health non-issue as we’ve ever seen.

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Seafood safety workshop coming up - Rutgers Cooperative Extension is holding a one day workshop, Seafood: Assessing the Benefits and Risks, at the Campus Cen-ter at Cook College in New Brunswick, NJ on June 8. We’ll provide more details and the final agenda in the next update, but if you are a food or seafood pro-fessional, reserve the date.

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Note: For further information on any of these issues contact Nils Stolpe (njsha@voicenet.com). To contribute items or announcements for future updates contact Nils Stolpe or Greg DiDomenico (gregdi@voicenet.com).

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