Coastal Conservation Association (CCA)

Allocation: Escaping the Tradition Trap

By Charles A. Witek III
CCA NY Fisheries Committee Chairman
TIDE
Jan/Feb 2005

Anyone who wants to understand CCA’s goals need only look at our mission statement: The objective of CCA is to conserve, promote and enhance the present and future availability of… coastal resources for the benefit and enjoyment of the general public.

We’re best known for the work we’ve done to conserve marine resources, but that is only half of our mission. The other half, promoting the availability of those resources for the benefit and enjoyment of the general public, is no less important.

In the United States, public access to fish and wildlife has, since the founding of our nation, been enshrined in the “public trust doctrine;” the concept that the government holds and regulates natural resources for the benefit of all of its citizens. That doctrine, when applied to marine resources, isn’t very different from the mission statement of CCA.

Application of the doctrine to real world situations, though, always causes controversy. Who constitutes “the public”? When resources aren’t abundant enough to satisfy everyone’s needs, how should they be allocated? Should people who make their livelihood by exploiting such resources have greater access to them than the general public, who accesses them for personal use? Or should personal use be favored?

In the case of fresh-water fish, the debate ended long ago, with commercial harvest of most species being outlawed in favor of maximizing direct public access to the resource. Along the coast, the battle still rages. It is complicated by the notion of “traditional use,” which strives to guarantee access to historic users and allocate between recreational and commercial fisheries based on historic harvest data. Such an approach ignores advances in fishing technology and the way demographic changes have altered the face of our fisheries. It frequently enshrines destructive fisheries practices, and relies on historical harvest data that is often incomplete or grossly inaccurate.

To win an allocation fight, anglers must escape that “tradition trap” and successfully navigate an uncertain data landscape that offers rascals of all persuasions ample opportunities to ambush the uninformed or unwary.

Summer flounder management in the Mid-Atlantic clearly illustrates the problem. The management plan now in effect gives just 40 percent of the harvest to anglers, based on harvest data from the 1980s. However, as the summer flounder population expanded in response to strict management measures, the fish available to anglers became both larger and more abundant. That improvement, coupled with an apparent increase in the number of anglers participating in the fishery, caused the recreational harvest (measured by weight) to spike well over anglers’ allocated share. Except on rare occasions, it hasn’t dipped below 40 percent since.

To constrain harvest, managers imposed bag and size limits that, in some states, seemed almost punitive and discouraged some anglers from fishing at all. The for-hire fleet, which has historically catered to anglers seeking full coolers, suffered disproportionately as a result.

Representatives of the party and charter boat industry responded by filing a petition with the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS), demanding that the recreational fishery’s allocation be increased to 50 percent of total harvest, certainly a worthwhile goal. They alleged that the current 40/60 allocation didn’t represent anglers’ historic share of the fishery because, by the 1980s, commercial overfishing had badly depleted the resource and made summer flounder less available to recreational fishermen. Basing allocation on just the first five or seven years of that decade, they argued, or perhaps years from the 1960s or ‘70s, would show that anglers were entitled to more fish.

Unfortunately, their argument is completely unsupported by historical data. In response to the petition, NMFS and Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission (ASMFC) biologists prepared a report which demonstrated that if the five- or seven-year periods recommended by the petitioners were used to determine allocation, anglers’ share would only rise to 42 percent or 44 percent, respectively, not to the 50 percent sought.

Data from the 1960s and ‘70s provided no more support. Although some claim that anglers took nearly 80 percent of the harvest during that period, Dr. Mark Terceiro, a NMFS biologist, easily debunked that claim. He noted that data was available for only 1960, 1965 and 1970, and that the 1960 data included summer flounder within the broad category of “flatfish,” rendering it meaningless. 1965 and 1970 data included a “summer flounder” category. However, despite the title, the category incorporated harvest data for multiple flounder species, such as Gulf and southern flounder caught as far away as the Florida Keys and the Gulf of Mexico.

In addition, researchers demonstrated as early as 1977 that the harvest data in the 1965 and 1970 surveys overstated the actual recreational catch by about 100 percent. However, since commercial fishermen weren’t required to report all of their landings until the 1980s, commercial harvest for 1965 and 1970 is underreported. North Carolina, for example, didn’t begin any commercial reporting until 1977. If, in 1965 and 1970, North Carolina’s commercial fishermen landed the same amount of summer flounder that they took in ’77, the recreational share for those years would have been around 40 percent, just as it was in later years. Fishery managers know that. If any of them doesn’t, there is little doubt that advocates for the commercial fishery will quickly bring it to their attention.

Anglers should receive a larger share of the summer flounder harvest, but relying on historical data isn’t the way to get it. When your best arguments are based on bad assumptions, and on data known to be inaccurate for more than a quarter-century, it’s time to chart a new approach that addresses the realities of today’s fisheries, and not the conditions that prevailed two decades ago.

In the 1980s, the summer flounder population was in sharp decline. Today, we are experiencing a magnificent recovery, with respect to both the number and size of fish being caught. Anglers in the Mid-Atlantic are making more fishing trips today than they did in the 1980s, but are still locked into an 1980s-share of the summer flounder fishery. The average size of summer flounder has increased markedly, but commercial fishermen still may exploit the barely-mature 14-inch fish that have been off-limits to anglers for years.

The expanding flounder population is also changing the economics of the fishery. Since 1999, commercial harvest has increased from 10.5 to 14.3 million pounds while the price per pound has steadily decreased from $1.81 to $1.62 in response to the increased supply. Concurrently, anglers are being discouraged from fishing by ever-stricter regulations, and businesses are lamenting the loss of angler dollars. Increasing the recreational harvest could thus benefit everyone, supporting the price received by commercial fishermen while allowing managers to ease recreational regulations and so encourage anglers to fish, and consequently pump more dollars into coastal businesses.

Summer flounder provide just one illustration of the allocation issue. Similar examples exist along every coast, with fish as varied as cod, scup and vermillion snapper. Setting aside the past, and managing fish in a manner appropriate for the present and the future, is an unsettling concept for fisheries managers more comfortable with perpetuating the patterns of days gone by. However, it is a concept that anglers should and must support, if the interests of the public—and future generations—are to prevail.