October 5, 2009

 

Nichola Meserve
Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission
1444 ‘Eye’ Street, Northwest #600

Washington, DC 20005

 

Dear Ms. Meserve:

 

                  Coastal Conservation Association New York (“CCA NY”) is taking this opportunity to comment on the Draft Addendum IV to Amendment 4 to the Weakfish Fishery Management Plan for Public Comment (“Addendum IV”).

CCA NY is pleased to see the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission (“ASMFC”) finally consider meaningful action to respond to the precipitous decline in weakfish stocks, although it is disappointed that ASMFC’s Weakfish Management Board (the “Board”) has been aware of problems with the stock for the past ten years,[1] yet refrained from taking meaningful action until after the stock had collapsed. In the face of a stock decline that cannot be readily attributed to any single cause, taking immediate action to reduce such mortality as ASMFC may be able to control should always be seen as a preferable alternative to doing nothing and allowing the situation to deteriorate further, so that any recovery effort ultimately undertaken will only be more difficult.

Today, the weakfish stock has collapsed to the point that biomass is just 3% of that of an unfished stock.[2] It is now generally recognized that the stock has declined to an “all-time low” and is in “a depleted state”.[3] The situation has become dire enough that one member of the Board, Dr. Jamie Geiger of the United States Fish and Wildlife Service, suggested that the weakfish stock may have fallen to such lows that managers might wish to consider invoking the provisions of the Endangered Species Act as one of the “management tools” available to them.[4]

Given that the stock has fallen to levels in which “recent fish removals (landings and dead discards combined) represent a significant proportion of the remaining biomass”,[5] and have been deemed to be “unsustainable”,[6] it is clear that any restrictions on such removals must be more than merely cosmetic. The Board must take action sufficient to give the weakfish stock a real opportunity to recover. The only way to do that is to prohibit all commercial and recreational harvest. Thus, with respect to point 2.3.2, Recreational Fisheries, CCA NY asks that the Board adopt Option 5, a harvest moratorium, and with respect to point 2.3.3, Commercial Fisheries, CCA NY asks that the Board adopt the harvest moratorium described in Option 4. CCA NY also asks that, respect to point 2.3.1, Biological Reference Points, the Board adopt Option 3, as recommended by the Weakfish Technical Committee.

                  CCA NY recognizes that there will be substantial opposition to such prohibition on harvest, and that many fishers in both the commercial and recreational sectors will argue that that, since natural mortality may arguably be the biggest contributor to stock decline,[7] and since recovery will occur very slowly even with a complete harvest moratorium,[8] further restrictions, much less a complete closure of the fishery, are inappropriate. CCA NY disagrees. Although, absent any reduction in M, recovery will be a very slow and painful process, elimination of all harvest will lead to a biomass more than twice that of a fished stock by 2020.[9] Should M decline, a recovery of an unfished stock would occur over a much shorter period, and allow meaningful fishing opportunities to occur much sooner than would a stock subject to continued harvest.

Half-measures that would permit some level of harvest have been suggested for both the recreational and commercial fisheries. CCA NY must make the observation that compromise measures have been instituted in the weakfish fishery before, but have never demonstrated any benefit to the stock, which is now at its lowest recorded level of abundance, nor have such measures ever brought any other species back from collapse (the current plight of the Southern New England/Mid-Atlantic stock of winter flounder, another stock in which compromise measures were repeatedly instituted in lieu of a more rigorous and biologically justified management regime, stands as mute evidence of the consequence of adopting such half-measures, just as the recovery of striped bass stands as testimony to what can occur when managers elevate the long-term interests of the fish and, as a practical matter, of fishers, above the short-term interests of harvesters.)

With respect to the recreational fishery, even the imposition of a one- or two-fish bag limit will be of dubious benefit. “The [Technical Committee] is uncomfortable with the accuracy and precision of state level data used to develop the creel/size combination tables” presented in Addendum IV.[10] Thus, even the estimated 54 percent reduction in harvest that would supposedly result from a one-fish limit[11] could be overly optimistic. In addition, CCA NY questions Addendum IV’s assumption that such a bag limit would discourage directed fishing for weakfish, since a significant portion of the fishery, particularly in the northern half of the fish’s range, is conducted largely on a catch-and-release basis that may reduce harvest, but still accounts for a portion of the release mortality.

With respect to commercial harvest, CCA NY believes that a continuing bycatch allowance can only be detrimental to the fishery, as it will lead to a higher level of fishing mortality than would a complete closure. While it may be pleasant to believe that fishers will adhere not only to the letter, but also to the spirit, of any management measure, such a belief is not grounded in reality. The creation of any bycatch allocation will lead to some degree of directed fishing, particularly when there are few alternatives available to fishers at any given time and place, as well as to fishers making a mockery out of any trip limit established by engaging in multiple trips over the course of a single day. Requiring other fish to be landed along with the weakfish is not a workable solution to creating a bycatch-only fishery unless the allowable landings of weakfish are held to a very low proportion of the target species. The current proposals that permit “bycatch” weakfish landings that are no less than 50% of total trip landings[12] are nowhere near restrictive enough to avoid rewarding fishers for “accidentally” encountering weakfish and bringing them back to the dock.

Prohibiting the landing of weakfish as supposed “bycatch” will undoubtedly raise the objection that an unacceptable level of dead discards will result. CCA NY believes that any significant waste of fisheries resources is regrettable. However, from a strictly biological viewpoint, a dead fish is a dead fish, and from the viewpoint of stock recovery, it doesn’t matter whether removals are utilized or not after they are killed; the harm is already done when the fish are taken out of the spawning stock biomass. A moratorium is not a perfect answer to eliminating fishing mortality, as some dead discards will inevitably occur. However, it is likely to result in a lower level of fishing mortality than any management regime which permits fishers to be paid for landing weakfish, and thus creates an incentive to direct effort on the species and/or attempt to frustrate the management measures that are imposed.

Having said that, CCA NY does not recommend a moratorium lightly. While it believes that there is good, peer reviewed science that strongly suggests that a recreational and commercial moratorium is the only proper response to the current stock collapse (such science being an essential prerequisite to any such moratorium) it believes that such moratorium must be augmented by a periodic review of the stock’s health, to determine whether a moratorium continues to be justified, and that a trigger, probably linked to the spawning stock biomass threshold, be established, at which point harvest could again occur.[13]

                  Thank you for considering CCA NY’s views on this matter.

 

Sincerely,

 

Charles A. Witek, III

Vice Chair