Coastal Conservation Association (CCA)

Wanted: New Paradigm

By Dick Brame
Atlantic States Fisheries Director
From the July/August 2005 Issue
of TIDE Magazine

It has been said that it is relatively easy to manage collapsed fish stocks. Once things slide to a certain level of depletion, you simply stop all, or the vast majority of, harvest by all sectors and wait for recovery. Once you have removed all alternatives, the remaining choice is an easy one to make. It may not be popular, but there is usually no doubt that it is necessary.

However, once fish stocks are restored, who gets them? Once abundance increases, how do you decide who gets what slice of the restored pie?

The process that tries to produce an answer to this question has generally been based on some period in the past. For example, if the commercial sector caught 60 percent of the fish and the recreational sector 40 percent of the fish during some time frame in the past, say 1981 to 1989, then those years might be used to determine how the allowable catch for the future will be set.

Understandably, there are more than a few problems with this scenario. It presumes catches were measured accurately throughout time. We know the recreational catch was never measured methodically until the early 1980s. Most commercial catch data goes back further, but the accuracy of the reporting is largely unknown.

Most fish stocks that declined in recent history were often at low levels of abundance during the 1980s like summer flounder, weakfish and striped bass. As stock abundance declines, recreational harvest generally nosedives since anglers will most likely catch whatever is available. If summer flounder have all but disappeared, anglers will move on to another species that is more abundant and easier to catch. Commercial fishermen will fish a stock harder, and further, to maintain their harvest levels until the stock is physically incapable of producing. For that reason, the commercial percentage of harvest is artificially inflated in times of stock decline.

The “base periods,” those years used to determine abundance in the past, are often set in the 1980s, a time notorious for low populations of several species of importance along the Atlantic coast.

The underlying demographics of who is harvesting the fish have changed dramatically over the past 25 years. Population growth on all coastlines has exploded and thus more recreational fishermen are pursuing their favorite species now. There are more recreational fishermen, generating more economic activity related to fishing, than there has ever been before.

For these reasons, the time is ripe to develop a new method to fairly allocate fish stocks. The most logical tool to explore at this juncture is a method that brings the greatest economic benefit to the country.

CCA has asked the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) to look into using this method on summer flounder, an Atlantic coast stock that is presently allocated 60 percent commercial and 40 percent recreational, based on data from the early 1980s.

Amendment 14 to the Summer Flounder Management Plan, due to begin discussions this year, is supposed to explore all aspects of summer flounder management and CCA has suggested that NMFS take this opportunity to look at an economic model as a new tool to develop allocation schemes.

No one would argue we should allocate half the lobster or blue crab fishery to the recreational sector as they have historically been primarily a commercial species. But the other side of the coin is that prominent sport species, such as red drum, speckled trout, summer flounder, striped bass, bluefish, weakfish, king mackerel, tuna and dolphin, to name just a few, should be allocated primarily towards the recreational sector and managed for abundance rather than yield.

We take a census in this country every 10 years to determine how the population has shifted, and where resources and representation should be allocated in the future in response to those changes. A similar system is sorely needed in fisheries management, one that looks at present realities to determine future solutions.