marine industry professionals
Sportfishing group opposes new catch limits
By approving regulations that limit or possibly close numerous marine fisheries to recreational fishing despite a lack of scientific data, the Gulf of Mexico and South Atlantic Fishery Management Council have "once again landed the federal fisheries management process in hot water with the sportfishing community," the American Sportfishing Association said in a statement.
The regulations, which require the Secretary of Commerce’s approval, could affect fishing practices and seasons for numerous stocks, such as dolphin, wahoo and dozens of species in the snapper-grouper complex.
The decision-making process is being driven by a Dec. 31 deadline for annual catch limits and accountability measures in the reauthorization of the 2006 Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act, which the sportfishing community believes requires congressional action to amend, the ASA said.
Rep. Rob Wittman, R-Va., introduced the Fishery Science Improvement Act on June 22. The legislation, which has bipartisan support from 26 additional members of Congress, removes the requirement to implement annual catch limits on stocks for which there are inadequate data and there is no evidence of overfishing.
“The recreational fishing community isn’t against annual catch limits, per se, but we are against setting them based on guesswork,” ASA president and CEO Mike Nussman said in a statement. “Most of the annual catch limits that have been set in the South Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico are based simply on recent landings, instead of the suite of fishery data needed for solid population assessment. Quality data should be used to determine the optimum amount of harvest that can be taken to allow for sustainable fishing.
“We hope Congress will pass this common-sense, bipartisan and simple solution before the end of the year,” he added. “This nation’s 24.7 million saltwater anglers and the $82.3 billion economy they support are depending on it.”
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Annual Catch Limits (ACL’s) and Accountability Measures (AM’s) as included in the last reauthorization of Magnuson in 2006 have no place in our recreational sector. Anglers are not required to check in their daily catch of fish, this is wholly unreasonable in an industry that supports millions of anglers around the nation – because of the sheer numbers of individual anglers, we are therefore monitored using arbitrary, random survey collection models, currently MRFSS though NOAA Fisheries was supposed to have this replaced by MRIP in 2009 (they have not, the federal fisheries service continues using “fatally flawed” data to place ACL’s on our anglers while soon asking for recreational overage paybacks based on this same hopelessly flawed data through AM’s in the coming months).
How can we be so rigidly managed with ACL’s and AM’s when methodologies for monitoring our catch are based on random phone surveys and dockside intercept surveys?
Northeast and Mid-Atlantic anglers have watched their access to resource erode in maddening fashion since the federal fisheries law was reauthorized complete with ACL’s and AM’s coupled with arbitrary and inflexible timelines – meanwhile, our community has screamed for comprehensive Magnuson reform.
As predicted by many grassroots advocates, the South Atlantic and Gulf fisheries are now taking the same deep impact due to these arbitrary deadlines and overly restrictive management definitions contained within the Magnuson Stevens Act – many of us have lobbied for a “common-sense, bipartisan and simple solution” to this train wreck since 2007, actively participating in a national rally in 2010 down in DC with more than 5,000 fishermen asking for Congressional relief.
Regrettably, Mr. Nussman and a few of the other national ‘leaders’ said at the time that there was no reason to reopen Magnuson, that everything was just fine – he actually called the Magnuson reauthorization of 2006/2007 a big win for anglers at the time, and has continued to support ACL’s and AM’s, saying even today that “The recreational fishing community isn’t against annual catch limits, per se, but we are against setting them based on guesswork.”
It’s all “guesswork” Mr. Nussman, educated guesswork, and while ACL’s and AM’s may work in the commercial sector, they are absolutely inappropriate management tools for the recreational sector, as are catch share programs and individual fishing quotas.
The commercial sector can capably be monitored based on pounds of fish, but when the recreational sector is bound by random harvest surveys and forced to clumsily translate pounds of quota into numbers of fish and then back into pounds of harvest for the purpose of setting annual catch limits, you can expect that things will only unravel even further.
NOAA has failed to meet the deadline for implementing a new recreational harvest collection system, and they’re now three full seasons late on meeting their Congressional mandated commitment. We can’t afford more legislation that gives NOAA ‘time’ to react, and we certainly no longer hold the luxury of hedging our anger and frustration at this federal agency.
The recreational fishing community is indeed opposed to ACL’s in our sector, you can’t set hard limits and then ask for overage paybacks in a community which will forever be monitored by random harvest methodologies!