A breakdown on how our fish sausages are getting stuffed, when, & by whom.
In the past, seasonal size and bag limit adjustments for summer flounder, scup, black sea bass and even bluefish have come every year. Today those regulatory adjustments are left in place for several years at a clip. But how that’s accomplished is wrapped in a lot of technical fisheries jargon, so keeping it simple is tough.
Keeping it brief on the other hand is next to impossible. In a nutshell, it’s all about the data!
In a joint management session in Galloway, NJ on April 9th, the Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council (Council) and the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission (ASMFC) and its Interstate Fisheries Management Program Policy Board (Policy Board) approved modifications to the process for setting recreational season size and bag limits – as well as the recreational accountability measures – for summer flounder, scup, black sea bass, and bluefish. These changes are part of a broader long-term effort by both the Council and Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission (Commission) to improve recreational management of these jointly managed species.
The current process for setting recreational measures – referred to as the Percent Change Approach – was implemented in 2023, but as written was designed to sunset at the end of this year. The April vote in joint session of Council and Policy Board allows the current process to continue along for several more years.
As the American Sportfishing Association (ASA) described it, the new approach attempts to smooth out the volatility that has plagued recreational fisheries regulations from year to year while creating lost fishing opportunities that has led to significant frustration for anglers and industry alike. “Anglers and sportfishing businesses have been frustrated by recreational management changing almost every year based on the variability in recreational harvest estimates,” said Mike Waine, Atlantic Fisheries Policy director for the American Sportfishing Association (ASA).
“The new approach incorporates more science into the decision-making process to better manage the recreational sector and conserve our fisheries resources,” Waine added.
How We Got Here
The harvest control rule approaches were in development for several years and are part of a collaborative recreational reform initiative between the Council, Commission, NOAA Fisheries and stakeholders. The primary goals of recreational management reform are to provide stability in the recreational bag, size, and season limits, develop strategies to increase management flexibility, and align fishing access with availability and stock status.
Prior to the 2023 reform implementation, new regulations for these Council and Commission managed species would change, up or down, every year based on angler survey data. “The Marine Recreational Information Program (MRIP), the survey used to estimate recreational catch, has inherent uncertainties that create challenges when it’s used for fine scale quota management,” noted Waine, adding “Reforming management approaches that account for MRIP uncertainty is a much-needed change while we continue to work on improving recreational data collection.”
The new process has allowed fisheries managers to implement multiple years with the same regulations, providing stability in recreational regulations and a more balanced approach to setting measures.
Commercial fishing interests and members of environmental non-government organizations (ENGOs) have opposed these reform efforts, often arguing that the approach circumvents federal fisheries law. In fact, a 2023 federal lawsuit filed by the National Research Defense Council (NRDC) argued that recreational reform initiatives failed to comply with the annual catch limit requirement as mandated by the federal Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act.
However, on September 5, 2024, Judge Beryl A. Howell of the U.S. District Court in Washington DC found that accounting for recreational fishing is significantly more difficult than monitoring commercial fisheries “given the large number of participants and access points and lack of mandatory catch reporting.”
“Unsurprisingly, this survey-based system has limitations,” wrote judge Howell, further reinforcing the fact that survey sampling like MRIP “covers only a small proportion of anglers and relies on recall as well as direct observation of catches after the actual catch has occurred, which tends to result in catch data that are more uncertain, more sensitive to details of survey design, and less timely relative to the data collected for commercial fisheries.”
Judge Howell’s findings ultimately allowed the new Percent Change Approach to recreational fisheries management to continue, which is how we have come to the next 5 years of management as approved by the Council and Commission in New Jersey on April 9.
Where We’re Going
During their April joint session, the Council and Policy Board discussed several options to improve or replace the Percent Change Approach for 2026 and beyond. After reviewing public comments and recommendations from technical committee members and advisory panels, the two management bodies agreed to maintain the current process with several modifications based on lessons learned since 2023.
The first phase of changes aims to better account for stock status when setting measures and will create more opportunities for stability in management measures. The current system uses three biomass categories to guide whether measures should change; the revised approach adds a fourth category for stocks near their biomass target and establishes a separate process for overfished stocks. These changes will likely take effect starting with the 2026 recreational measures for summer flounder, scup, and black sea bass.
The Council and Policy Board delayed the implementation of these changes for bluefish because it has been in a rebuilding plan since 2022 and is still considered “overfished”; recreational measures will continue to be set based on the rebuilding plan until the stock is declared rebuilt.
The second phase to be implemented for setting 2030 recreational measures and beyond will update the process to use a catch-based target. Unlike the current process which focuses on achieving a specific level of predicted harvest, a catch-based approach aims to achieve a target level of total dead catch, including both harvest and dead discards. Fisheries managers believe this approach will allow for more explicit consideration of how measures affect discards.
Some advisors and members of the public raised concerns about the potential for this change to create greater instability in management measures. After extensive discussion of each approach, the Council and Policy Board delayed the transition to a catch-based target until 2030 to allow time for additional analysis on the potential impacts to management measures.
As Waine noted, between now and 2030 fisheries managers will hopefully get a better handle on what catch-based targets will look like in terms of management measures. “The outcome was more and better management stability for the region and that was all part of this recreational management reform initiative that the Mid-Atlantic Council, the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission, NOAA Fisheries and the stakeholders in our community have supported over the past several years,” he added.
The Council and Policy Board also approved changes to the recreational accountability measures expected to take effect in 2026 for fluke, sea bass, porgy and bluefish. Under these revisions, when an accountability measure is triggered due to recent overages of the recreational annual catch limits, managers will also consider if those overages contributed to overfishing when determining the appropriate response.
Annual catch limits (ACLs) and accountability measures (AMs) are management measures that were written into the reauthorized Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act back in 2007. An ACL is hard-poundage quota that cannot be surpassed, while the AM is essentially the payback applied when the commercial or recreational sector goes over the ACL. Because MRIP is not a pound-for-pound monitoring tool, ACL and AM mechanisms aren’t the most sensible management tool for recreational fisheries.
On December 31, 2018, President Donald Trump signed the Modernizing Recreational Fisheries Management Act of 2017 to provide management flexibility when developing alternative recreational fisheries management approaches, thereby paving the way forward for this new approach approved by the Council and Commission. The so-called Modern Fish Act ultimately granted fishery managers the authority to implement improved management approaches tailored to the specific characteristics of recreational fisheries.
Bottom line, summer flounder, sea bass and scup regulations have remained mostly unchanged in recent years due to this new approach, and moving forward that stability will apply to bluefish as well once that fishery is deemed rebuilt.
Divide & Conquer
In other related business, the Council and Policy Board also reviewed scoping comments on the Recreational Sector Separation and Data Collection Amendment from public hearings and written comments, as well as input provided by the advisory panels and technical teams. According to the Council, the purpose of the proposed amendment is to consider modifications to the recreational management program for summer flounder, scup, black sea bass, and bluefish, specifically by considering options for managing for-hire recreational fisheries separately from other recreational fishing modes (referred to as sector separation).
This type of “mode split” already exists in certain recreational fisheries including bluefish and blueline tilefish where private anglers have a smaller bag limit than those fishing on for-hire trips.
In addition to the proposal to further divide the recreational fishing community into separate parts, for-hire and private, the amendment also looks at the collection and use of recreational data, such as private angler reporting. In the official presentation before the joint meeting in New Jersey, mandatory angler reporting and alternative harvest programs like tag or stamp programs were brought up as methods to improve overall recreational data collection.
As an example, Gulf of America anglers who target red snapper have been field-testing a mobile phone application called the iSnapper app to report their red snapper catches on every trip. Developed by the Harte Research Institute for Gulf of Mexico Studies at Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi, in partnership with the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department, the app is designed as real-time mechanism for keeping trip logs.
It should be noted that for-hire operators who are federally permitted to fish for black sea bass, fluke, scup and bluefish in federal waters are required to keep similar trip logs in the form of electronic vessel trip reports or eVTR. Where private angler catches are currently tracked via the random MRIP surveys, federally permitted for-hire vessels are required to keep and submit eVTR data on their angling customers and their catches after every trip. In many ways, that disconnect between for-hire eVTR data and private angler MRIP catches is what has led to the sector separation debate.
Based on comments presented before the joint session in April, the Council and Policy Board agreed that recreational sector separation and recreational data collection should be addressed separately. Further development of the amendment will focus on management options for recreational sector separation, including mode management, as well as consideration of for-hire permitting and reporting requirements. Members also noted there is a need to more clearly define the objectives for recreational data collection improvement.
Fisheries managers and technical staff are now working on development of draft alternatives to the amendment this summer for sector separation and the formulation of a “white paper” detailing various approaches for catch accounting. The Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission will hold its summer meeting from August 5-7 at the Westin Crystal City in Arlington, VA, at which time the Council and Board are expected to consider generalized draft options to put forward a range of alternatives for inclusion in a public hearing document specific to the sector separation topic.
Public hearings on the Recreational Sector Separation topic should come later this year, with any expected rollout of the divisive new plan set for the 2027 fishing year.
Final Thoughts
When the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act was reauthorized in 2007, I was in the camp that felt that the new requirements on annual catch limits and accountability measures would do severe damage to our recreational fishing community. While some folks opposed any and all efforts to let Congress back in under the hood, the rest of us continued to push, poke, prod and rally for change. In the end, it would take 10 years before the Modern Fish Act offered some semblance of relief in the form of the recreational reform initiative.
The Magnuson Stevens Act reauthorization also required NOAA Fisheries to develop a new recreational survey method, which the agency must feel they’ve accomplished by transitioning from the old Marine Recreational Fishing Statistical Survey (MRFSS) to the new Marine Recreational Information Program (MRIP). I’m of the opinion however that NOAA simply moved 20 pounds of trash from a burlap sack into a pretty satin pillowcase and called it a day; garbage in, garbage out, all bundled up in slick new packaging. When NOAA Fisheries admitted in 2023 their new Fishing Effort Survey used to estimate recreational saltwater participation along the Atlantic Coast and Gulf of America is likely overestimating angler effort by as much as 30 to 40%, it’s been hard for some of us not to say “told you so” once again.
And now we’re looking at sector separation. I know what opinions are like, but I’ll offer mine anyway; if the “sector separation” amendment leads to two separate subquotas within our recreational sector, one for private anglers and the other for the for-hire passengers, you can hang the “closed for business” sign out front because the recreational fishing industry as we know it – and an “open access” public fishery – will be gone forever. On the other hand, if the outcome results in flexibility to set management measures that better fit the needs of each mode while still maintaining equal conservation burden, then it’s hard to argue against.
MRIP is broken. As government officials acknowledged in 2023, their fishing effort survey is filled with “reporting errors and illogical responses” that are currently in the process of being fixed (when of course we don’t really know). And if the electronic vessel trip reports compiled by owners and operators of federally permitted for-hire vessels are more directly used to establish bag, sizes and seasons, then it’s going to be a hard fight against this mode split concept.
We’ll be covering this topic extensively over the next two years as the sector separation and data collection amendment topics winds through process. Keep an open mind, but don’t hold back either; “I told you so” is not a good mind set to have when it comes to fishing.
The government’s recreational data collection methodology is “fatally flawed”, which ultimately is the rationale behind all this management mumbo jumbo.
