September 3, 2021 — Since March 2019, the Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council (Council), in conjunction with the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission (ASMFC), has been working on what they call the “Recreational Reform Initiative,” (Initiative) a project that could completely change the way recreational fisheries are managed in the mid-Atlantic region.
The Council describes the Initiative this way:
- better incorporating [Marine Recreational Information Program] uncertainty into the management process;
- guidelines for maintaining status quo recreational management measures (i.e., bag, size, and season limits) from one year to the next;
- a process for setting multi-year recreational management measures;
- changes to the timing of the recommendation for federal waters recreational management measures; and
- a proposal put forward by six recreational organizations called a harvest control rule.
The amendment will consider options for managing for-hire recreational fisheries separately from other recreational fishing modes (referred to as sector separation) and will also consider options related to recreational catch accounting such as private angler reporting and enhanced vessel trip report requirements for for-hire vessels.
Goal/Vision:
- Stability in the recreational management measures (bag, size, season)
- Flexibility in the management process
- Accessibility aligned with availability/stock status
Reading that description, one of the things that sticks out is that, despite all of the words, there’s not a single mention of maintaining healthy and abundant fish stocks.
That could signal a problem.
Recreational fishery management isn’t perfect, and could benefit from new approaches that account for management uncertainty, and perhaps align management changes with the biennial stock assessment updates that are produced for summer flounder, scup, black sea bass, and bluefish. Still, there is one aspect of the Initiative that might be taking recreational fishery management in the wrong direction.
That is the “proposal put forward by six recreational organizations called a harvest control rule” (Control Rule) which supposedly promotes the Initiative’s Goal/Vision of stability, flexibility, and accessibility in recreational fishery management.
If that Goal/Vision reminds you of the debate over the so-called “Modern Fish Act” a few years ago, that’s not a coincidence. The organizations promoting the Control Rule are the same ones that promoted the Modern Fish Act, and are continuing to disrupt red snapper management in the Gulf of Mexico; they are now bringing the same arguments that they have made in the Gulf to the mid-Atlantic region.
They haven’t concealed their intent to undermine the current federal fishery management system, and its use of science-based annual catch limits and accountability measures, in favor of the sort of less structured, seat-of-the-pants management measures that are often used by state agencies, and which have so often failed when employed by the ASMFC.
Read the full story at the Marine Fish Conservation Network