NMFS Gets Skewered For Use of "Fatally Flawed" Data
March 15, 2013 - The first of what will probably a long series of debates on the upcoming reauthorization of the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act (Magnuson Act) kicked off this past Wednesday in the House Committee on Natural Resources. The federal fisheries law is set to be reauthorized before the end of 2013, and the Recreational Fishing Alliance (RFA) has led the charge in favor of a series of critical modifications to incorporate some limited flexibility into the fisheries management process.

For the past seven years, RFA has contended that the Magnuson Act is in desperate need of reform due to rigid enforcement of time-certain deadlines, flawed scientific and assessment data, rigid annual catch limits and punitive accountability measures, coupled with what RFA executive director Jim Donofrio calls bureaucratic neglect.

"As we learned yet again in the Committee, the federal government is happy to meet some of the federal requirements under the Magnuson Act, particularly those which restrict angler access, but they simply refuse to be held accountable for their own scientific responsibilities under the law," he said.

Under questioning by Committee member Rep. Frank Pallone (D-NJ), the Deputy Assistant Administrator for Regulatory Programs for the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) at the U.S. Department of Commerce revealed that legal requirements under the Magnuson Act which specifically deal with improvement of the methodology used to monitor recreational fishing harvest have not been met by the federal agency.

Rep. Pallone specifically questioned Sam Rauch about his agency's progress in transitioning from the Marine Recreational Fisheries Statistics Survey (MRFSS) to a new improved national recreational angler registry, known as the Marine Recreational Information Program (MRIP). The Magnuson Act mandated the updated survey be implemented by 2009, though Rauch replied that they had not fully met that deadline and that at this time they are still using MRFSS data in conjunction with new MRIP statisitical analysis.

"It is correct that we have a 2009 deadline that we did not entirely meet," Rauch said when questioned, explaining that his staff has looked at the mandatory requirement for data collection replacement as "more of a transition than flipping a switch."

The Magnuson Act required specific improvements that NMFS was to have implemented by 2009, including use of a national angler registry for conducting phone surveys, an adequate number of intercepts to accurately estimate recreational catch and effort, analysis of vessel trip report data from charter boats, and the development of a weather corrective factor. "Congress heard first-hand that not one of these initiatives appears to have actually been accomplished by NMFS," Donofrio said. "Mr. Rauch said that they are devising new estimates using old data, but they have not implemented any new measure which would actually provide better data as the law required."

Pallone directly questioned Rauch regarding how NOAA incorporates storms in their models of angler effort and catch, but NMFS' Assistant Administrator did not have an answer. Rauch was also asked about the status of a comprehensive fisheries disaster report on the impact of Superstorm Sandy which under the Magnuson Act was required to be completed by NOAA and delivered to the Commerce Secretary 60 days following the actual disaster declaration made on November 16, 2012. While by law that report was to have been finalized on January 15th of this year, Rauch told Congress yesterday he had no idea when the report might be completed.

RFA said the testimony from Rauch was doomed from the start as the Deputy Assistant Administrator at the U.S. Department of Commerce opened his statement by calling the recreational fishing a growth industry. "Recreational fishing generated $70 billion in sales impacts, $20 billion in income impacts, and supported 455,000 jobs in 2011," Rauch told Congress on March 14, adding that "jobs generated by the recreational fishing industry represented a 40% increase over 2010."

The report by the Department of Commerce alleges that job growth in the recreational fishing sector surged 18% from 2008 to 2011 and sportfishing sales and income skyrocketed over 40% in 2011 over 2010, all while the number of angler trips fell by 18% during the same timeframe. The disconnect in the latest federal report, punctuated by the agency's acknowledgement that survey data in the recreational sector is still being based on fatally flawed methodologies, was further rejected in testimony by Capt. Keith Logan, a charter boat captain from Myrtle Beach, SC who also testified.

"The closure of black sea bass has resulted in the complete shutdown of the charter/head boat fleet for five months out of the year," Capt. Logan said, adding "the loss of employment for those people of the fleet has been catastrophic." As a recreational charter boat captain, Logan told Committee members that the past four years have been very hard on his business in which he's lost over $123,000 in gross revenues due to black sea bass restrictions.

"According to the North Myrtle Beach and Myrtle Beach Chamber of Commerce, the number one request from tourists vacationing in the Grand Strand is for charter/head boat fishing information. Given this fact, the economic loss has included tourism dollars, tax revenues, and additional people to the ranks of the unemployed in South Carolina," Capt. Logan said.

Logan added that the effect of rigid annual catch limits and accountability measures resulting from the last reauthorization of Magnuson, coupled with the science and statistical neglect by NMFS and the Department of Commerce, has led to "detrimental and irreparable economic consequences on the Fisherman of the Grand Strand, Horry County, South Carolina and the whole South Atlantic."

"This does not only affect the fishermen of South Carolina, it is having an economic impact on the gas stations, marinas, tackle stores, golf courses, restaurants, grocery stores, motels, hotels, resorts, and rental properties," Logan said, adding "the tourists are not coming to the area to play golf and go fishing, because they cannot keep fish to eat."

RFA pointed out that the same survey data used by NMFS to generate the highly questionable federal economic reports for the Department of Commerce is also used to restrict angler access of species like black sea bass, summer flounder and also red snapper. In the South Atlantic region, the recreational red snapper season was shut down in 2010 based on the NMFS recreational data collection. Prompted in part by a lawsuit filed on behalf of the RFA, NMFS temporarily reopened the recreational fishery after a two-year closure in North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia and Florida's east coast for two consecutive weekends last September.

"That fishery was actually opened up this year," is how Rauch described the six-day South Atlantic red snapper fishery. When prompted by committee member Rep. Steve Southerland (R-FL), Rauch admitted it was a "limited season, but not much."

Given that one of those two available weekends was a washout weather-wise for many of Florida's anglers, Rep. Southerland responded "I want to be clear, it was a weekend, if you call that a season...maybe a sample of a season."