RFA Pushes For More Flexibility At All Regional Councils

June 11, 2013 - This Wednesday, June 12 at 9 a.m., the Mid Atlantic Fishery Management Council (MAFMC) will take up action on an Omnibus Recreational Amendment to evaluate alternatives to the current accountability measures (AMs) in place for the recreational Atlantic mackerel, bluefish, summer flounder, scup, and black sea bass fisheries.

A draft document finalized in April and up for review by the MAFMC on Wednesday would effectively help address issues with in-season closures and payback of recreational overages in quota based on harvest data collected by NOAA Fisheries within the recreational sector.

Given the fact that "recreational fisheries are inherently uncertain in that catches are estimated through a statistical methodology rather than tallied under a mandatory reporting framework as occurs in federally managed commercial fisheries," MAFMC members are set to discuss other options to these restrictive measures as they've been currently implemented.

According to the proposed amendment and environmental assessment which MAMFC will discuss, "paybacks may not be an appropriate approach for recreational overages, especially on healthy fish stocks." MAFMC also calls such accountability measures "primarily punitive in nature" and "more suitable for stocks undergoing rebuilding."

"None of the Council's recreational fisheries is overfished, nor is overfishing occurring for any of these fisheries," the MAFMC draft document states.

The upcoming debate is the result of a December 12-13, 2012 MAFMC meeting when the specific issue of black sea bass management as it relates to AMs and annual catch limits (ACL's) was brought before members, as new Northeast Regional Administrator John Bullard noted specifically that the federal government may actually be closing down a fishery because the stock is simply too healthy.

"So I'm scratching my head saying we're closing the fishery 'cause there's too many fish, so that doesn't make sense, right?" Bullard noted from a previous conversation with MAFMC member Tony DiLernia of New York. "And in 2014 that's what we'd be doing," Bullard said, adding "and so this is the problem we have to solve."

As Bullard discussed with other members of the MAFMC in December, the rigid ACL/AM measures in the recreational sector as mandated under the council's 2010 decision would ultimately lead to zero fishing in 2014 because of the sheer numbers of black sea bass now in the population.

"If you have a zero because there's no fish, that's hard, but at least you could explain it," Bullard said. "If you're doing that because there's too many fish, right, then how do we go before people and say we're all in the business of managing the fishery, we have a zero quota because there's too many."

According to the Recreational Fishing Alliance (RFA), which has long argued against the use of such rigid ACL/AM restrictions in the recreational sector due to NOAA Fisheries' data limitations in monitoring and estimating performance of saltwater anglers, the renewed debate on the absurdity of ACL/AM's in the recreational set for Wednesday morning in New Jersey could be good news for anglers on many regional fronts.

"We've been relatively lucky in the Mid Atlantic to this point as compared with recreational fishermen in other parts of the country," said RFA executive director Jim Donofrio last October following word of growing access issues with both sea bass and red snapper.

"Our members in the South Atlantic were just given 6 days to fish for red snapper since 2010 where we've actually lost days in the Gulf of Mexico, which is mind-boggling considering the history and importance of red snapper to the recreational sector," Donofrio said at the time.

RFA believes this is good news that MAFMC is hoping to revisit the ACL/AM issue, but said the real blame for this fisheries absurdity belongs to the U.S. Congress.

"The 2006 reauthorization of the Magnuson-Stevens Act introduced these rigid new measures which result in anglers actually fishing fish less as the fish populations get healthier," said Donofrio. "We've fought for seven years trying to get Congress to recognize the importance of providing limited flexibility around these arbitrary deadlines and damaging ACL requirements, yet all we got from legislators was that the enviro's 'like it' this way."

Since 2007, RFA has lobbied for federal legislation to incorporate limited management flexibility into the federal fisheries law, specifically the Flexibility and Access in Rebuilding American Fisheries Act which would've effectively dealt with rebuilding timelines, rigidly enforced ACL's and accountability measures, while also requiring a full review of the NOAA's recreational data collection by the National Research Council (NRC).

In testimony before the House Natural Resources Committee on May 21 of this year, Dr. Richard Merrick, chief science advisor for NMFS told members of Congress that the NRC recommendations had been addressed and that a new Marine Recreation Information Program (MRIP) had replaced the Marine Recreational Fishing Statistical Survey (MRFSS) as required under Magnuson-Stevens.

"MRIP estimation methods were implemented in 2012," Dr. Merrick told House members of the Subcommittee responsible for fisheries, wildlife and oceans issues. "The only thing that has not been implemented are some of the new survey methodologies, and those are continuing to evolve."

However, at the December MAFMC meetings, Assistant Regional Administrator for NOAA Fisheries' northeast office, George Darcy, responded to a question posed by one council member as to NMFS' decision to use MRFSS to monitor black sea bass harvest in 2012 by saying "the reason we use MRFSS to monitor the 2012 harvest limits is because MRFSS data were used to set the harvest limits."

Donofrio said there's a major disconnect between what gets mandated by Congress and what actually takes place inside the federal government, and even how the government responds to Congress in sworn testimony.

"Some of our friends in the national trades industry had confidence from the start that their old buddies working at the federal fisheries agency would get their job done in time to meet the federal requirements for recreational paybacks and punishments, but the truth is that this was a train wreck from the start," Donofrio said. "We're going to need this Congress to fix what an earlier Congress broke, because we sure as heck can't wait for NOAA to get the job done," Donofrio said.

In a letter to MAFMC dated May 21, 2010, RFA specifically cited problems with MRFSS/MRIP as reasons why fisheries managers should go against in-season adjustments and other rigid accountability measures.

"No one ever believed that NMFS would actually shut down fisheries like red snapper and black sea bass because the stocks were simply too healthy, but that's exactly what we're seeing today because of a broken law and fatally flawed science," he added.