Since the Dr. Rothschild op-ed appeared in August, Saving Seafood has conducted an in-depth analysis of this rift, interviewing parties in the Scientific, Regulatory, Environmental and Industry communities.
WASHINGTON — Nov. 22, 2011 — Late last summer, in an opinion piece published in the New Bedford Standard-Times (“Your View: Fish, the intent of Congress and jobs,” Aug. 10, 2011), Dr. Brian Rothschild of the University of Massachusetts School for Marine Science and Technology called for a wholesale revamp of what he called the “broken and dysfunctional” U.S. groundfish regulatory system. Responses to the article, by Acting Chairman of the New England Fisheries Management Council (NEFMC), C.M. “Rip” Cunningham, Jr., and Ken Stump, Policy Director of Marine Fish Conservation Network, have highlighted on the competing business, scientific, ideological and regulatory interests in the debate over regional fisheries management.
The initial op-ed by Dr. Rothschild and the responses to it from the Council Acting Chairman and members of the environmental community laid out in clear terms the deep disagreements between those who think the current regulatory and rulemaking system is productive and those who find it disfuctional and in need of deep reform or replacement.
Since the Rothschild op-ed appeared in August, Saving Seafood has conducted an in-depth analysis of this rift, interviewing (or at least getting emailed responses to questions from those who refused interviews) the parties who commented, and others in the Scientific, Regulatory, Environmental and Industry communities.
Rothschild argues that the northeast fishery management regime is damaging the industry while ignoring the agency’s Congressional mandate to fully involve fishermen in the regulatory decision-making process. He says they have failed to craft rules using the best science by having, “no master plan to improve communications, revise data collection, conduct cooperative research, and achieve optimum yield.”
Originally billed by NOAA as a means to end overfishing while rebuilding fisheries and fishing communities, the “catch share” system imposed in New England, known as “sectors”, has come under fire by both the commercial fishing industry and elected officials.
Although few fishermen are asking for a return to the previous days-at-sea system, many argue that the current system was rushed into place under pressure from environmental groups who pushed an agenda that resonated ideologically with Federal officials responsible for overseeing rule-making. They argue that irrational zeal for catch share implementation caused the system to be enacted before appropriate well-designed protections for fishing communities and small operators were fully developed.
The negative impact of the sector form of catch shares management on the New England industry and communities since its 2010 implementation has made headlines across the region. Massachusetts lawmakers, mayors of industry-reliant communities and Governor Deval Patrick made a well-publicized but unsuccessful legal challenge and petition to the Department of Commerce for relief. This resulted in what many viewed as a languid-at-best response from regulators.
Rothschild gave additional voice to those feelings by detailing what he called NOAA’s “disregard of the economic and social impact of fisheries management”, their willingness to “unfairly” allocate fish to some sectors to the disadvantage of others, and their ignoring valid scientific findings and suppressing debate over fish stock levels. Specifically, he cites NMFS data showing that 100,000 tons of fish per year valued at an estimated $300 million to the industry, and $1.2 billion to the economy could have been caught sustainably but were not landed as a result of the current management plan.
“We’re leaving $300 million worth of fish in the ocean every year because the agency isn’t willing to come up with a scheme to help industry catch those fish,” Rothschild told Saving Seafood. “You’re not talking about a trivial amount of fish. You are talking about hundreds of millions of dollars of fish, and those translate into jobs.”
With courts required to defer to the agency’s economic and scientific findings in legal challenges, he says that the entire system has proven to be inconsistent with Congressional intent in the Magnuson-Stevens Act and subsequent revisions like Amendment 16. He has called for a Congressionally-chartered committee to reform the entire system.
However, top-ranking NEFMC officials have disputed the economic analysis presented in Rothschild’s article. In an opinion piece published a few days later in the same newspaper (Your view: Fishery Management Council shows record of creditable work, August 17, 2010), Acting Director Cunningham responded to Rothschild's argument that officials are ignoring the economic impact of regulations on the industry. Cunningham claimed that the fisheries management system has “directly” benefitted New England fishermen not only with increased stocks but also with a tripling of sea scallop fleet revenues from about $120 million in 1994 to over $450 million in 2010.
Critics argued that this analysis is a version of the proverbial ‘mixing apples and oranges’ as Rothschild’s criticisms were aimed at the sector catch share system for groundfish and sea scallops remain managed under a days-at-sea program.
A highly critical report produced by the Northeast Fisheries Science Center for NOAA about the current management system’s impact on New England fisheries undermines claims of any short-term economic gains for the industry as a whole, buttressing Rothschild’s regulatory critique. The findings show that landings and revenues across the groundfishing fleet in the northeast are down from May 2010 to April 2011 in the first year of the catch shares program.
NFSC researchers found that active vessels were down 17 percent in the 2010 fishing cycle from 2007. In addition, there were 48 percent fewer groundfish trips and 33 percent fewer days absent on trips. Compiled by Preston Pate and SRA-Touchstone Consulting Group, and requested by NEFMC Chairman John Pappalardo in December 2009, the researchers note that the economic result has been a decline in fishing industry jobs.
Cunningham pointed to the NEFMC reaction to the study as an example of the council’s responsiveness to the fact “that the groundfish industry is adjusting to a new catch shares harvesting strategy”, adding that they planned workshops and developed an action plan to address the report’s findings. Nevertheless, the report is not flattering to its subject.
“Fisheries management in New England is beset with problems and challenges that are characteristic of fisheries management in general, but may be even more acute in this area now due to concurrently changing factors of law, management programs, and economics,” wrote the authors.
Overall, Cunningham’s primary defense of federal regulators centers on the fact that stocks are rising for many species. As key signs of regulatory accomplishment, he points to the rebuilding of Georges Bank stocks of Haddock, Redfish, and Winter Flounder. He referenced the sustainable management of the Monkfish and Herring fisheries , which are no longer overfished. And he cited success in Gulf of Maine Cod, though controversial recent stock assessments have called that into question.
In response to Saving Seafood’s e-mailed questions, Cunningham noted that he never claimed, “that all stocks within the Council’s jurisdiction have been rebuilt” nor that the relatively new sector management program is responsible for stock rebuilding successes.
“Most fishery scientists and managers in this region believe that the improvements in stock status that we are seeing today are a result of the controls the Council placed on the groundfish fishery,” he wrote.
He also defended the science used to justify those restrictions, arguing that NOAA’s NFSC, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, the Maine/New Hampshire inshore trawl survey, and SMAST Dartmouth, along with catch and landings reports submitted by fishermen and fish dealers, are all used in establishing NMFS policies.
Similarly, Marine Fish Conservation Network Policy Director Ken Stump pointed primarily to stock rebuilding to defend the current system in an August 23 posting on the Conservation Law Foundation’s Talking Fish blog. In a much more virulent attack on Rothschild, he argues the facts don’t bear out Rothschild’s “jeremiad” and “exaggerated portrayal” of federal regulators that “lacks only horns and a tail to be complete.”
“The number of stocks experiencing overfishing is sharply down; catch limits are in place; a number of previously overfished species are rebounding; and fishing revenues and allowable catch limits on healthy stocks are going up,” wrote Stump
While overfishing is generally recognized as having declined and many stocks are up, allowable catch limit levels tell only part of the story of how federal regulations impact New England fisherman.
SMAST’s Emily F. Keiley, who works with Rothschild, told Saving Seafood that although the framework for setting the catch limits changed in 2010 and is not directly comparable with the previous system, the current Annual Catch Limit (ACL) restrictions on the level of allowable landings and the Total Allowable Catch (TAC) limits under the previous management regime serve essentially the same purpose — limiting potential landings. This is important because although landings are up as a percentage of the allowable catch, the overall level of fish being caught in New England fell dramatically in the first year of catch shares.
According to NMFS data, in 2010, 34.4 percent of the allowable commercial landings (95,165 tons) of the Northeast multispecies potential catch was caught resulting in 32,764.6 landed tons. Viewed by percentage, this is a seeming increase over the levels seen in previous years. But the total catch limit today is much lower than the 144,353 tonnes allowed in 2009 or the 172,302 tonnes allowed in 2008.
In 2008, only 25 % of the TAC was landed, but since the overall limit was over 76,000 tons higher, the resulting 43,652 landed tons is a lower percentage of the limit but is still over 10,000 tons more than what was caught in 2010. So while landings may be up as a percentage-wise, the actual numbers tell a much different story. This underscores Rothschild’s contention that that a substantial portion of the allowed catch goes uncaught despite being allowable under sustainability limits.
The unanswered question is why aren’t commercial fishermen landing more? For Rothschild and other industry critics, the documented toll that federal regulations are having on the industry is the inescapable culprit. Fewer boats and fishermen mean less fish caught overall.
However, the main focus of Stump and his fellow defenders of federal fishing regulation remains the environmental aspect of NOAA’s mandate. In a response to Saving Seafood’s e-mailed questions, he acknowledged that the new catch-share regime central to Rothschild’s critique cannot be pointed to as the main driver of fisheries management success claims, nor that “current management has been an unqualified success.”
“I merely noted that the region’s prospects are beginning to look brighter after many years in the wilderness and that the measures in Amendment 16 should be given a chance to work,” wrote Stump. “We await confirmation from new stock assessment updates, but there is every reason to believe that the new system of enforceable ACLs accountability measures will be an effective tool for preventing overfishing, as in other regions where catch limits have been employed as a central management tool (e.g., Alaska, West Coast).”
Neither defenders of the current regulatory regime nor Rothschild address long-standing complaints from NOAA critics that the role of nature on stock rebuilding is an often-ignored aspect of fisheries management.
When asked about the issue, Cunningham said there is an undeniable role of nature in rebuilding stocks, as seen in the case of Georges Bank Haddock.
“If you are asking whether I believe that good fisheries management can help rebuild stocks, the simple answer is yes,” wrote Cunningham. “Does it always work the way managers hope it will, no. And of course, natural and sometimes random recruitment events can impact populations dramatically.”
But he added that, while not perfect, the science provided by NOAA fish population dynamics specialists gives a “strong indication of where a stock is headed.”
For his part, Stump was more severe in dismissing criticism of NOAA science, despite acknowledging NMFS evidence that fish populations don’t always increase in the manner expected when fishing is restricted. He noted a recent study of Canada’s Scotian Shelf published by Nature online in July (Transient dynamics of an altered large marine ecosystem, September 2011). The study hypothesizes that after regional fishing controls were implemented in the early 1990s an initial 900% increase in forage fish and a subsequent massive decline occurred when foraging species outstripped their food source of younger and smaller but traditionally dominant species.
Cod stocks have been rebuilt to around 34% of the level that was typical in the 1980s, and haddock now exceeds historical levels. He said the study demonstrates the “profound unintended consequences” of overfishing that can take decades from which to recover.
“If some people, including Rothschild, want to re-litigate 50 years of fishery science by denying that control of fishing mortality has any effect on fish populations, go right ahead,” Stump wrote. “The rest of us will acknowledge that fisheries science is necessarily imprecise and imperfect, but that is hardly reason to throw out the science. The fact that other factors extrinsic to fishing mortality, such as climate, food web dynamics, habitat quality, also play a part in the dynamics of fish populations is surely reason to exercise caution in setting catch limits, not to abandon catch limits as a failure.”
When asked about Rothschild’s critique about the inability of judges to address legal challenges to the current fisheries management regime and the science used to back regulations, Stump was similarly dismissive and charged Rothschild with playing politics. He noted that the legal system is not designed to “manage the fisheries or decide whose science is right” but added that there have been successful court challenges in the past.
“Unfortunately, people like Rothschild seem infected by the Tea Party mentality of the times, which takes a knee-jerk position against anything that reeks of ‘big government’.” wrote Stump. “Rothschild’s attacks on the Northeast Fisheries Science Center are clearly designed to curry political favor with disaffected fishermen in the region, but Rothschild’s attacks on NFSC science fail because he is not credible in saying that the system ignores science or uses bad science. The problem is not the courts or the way the judicial system rules on matters of fisheries, since I don’t think we want the courts running our fisheries; the problem is that Brian Rothschild’s arguments are not credible.”
When asked about NOAA science, Cunningham cited the agency’s sponsoring of peer-reviewed studies and other research, as well as a 2010 U.S. Inspector General’s finding that “decision-making is well-supported by the information we receive” in countering Rothschild’s claims about problems.
But neither he nor Stump address Rothschild’s primary point that commercial fisherman are not landing all of the fish that could be removed sustainably under the existing catch limits.
When asked about his broader reform recommendation, Rothschild said that fishing regulators have to be forced to recognize science that they may not like and realize their decisions’ effect on not only the fishery’s environmental well being, but also the overall state of the industry.
“If you read the law, the law doesn’t say, ‘Let’s rebuild the stocks and walk away,’ said Rothschild. It isn’t, ‘Let’s stop overfishing.’ It’s let’s collect economic data; let’s involve fishermen in what we are doing; let’s develop management strategies that take into account the sustainability of the fish and those that harvest the resources. This is my reading of National Standard 1, the law of the land.”