Wasteful Fishing Regulations Not Keeping Pace With Climate Change
Hundreds of thousands of pounds of valuable fish caught off Connecticut’s coast are thrown overboard every year, and 80 percent of them are dead by the time they hit the water, experts say.
Commercial fishermen, environmentalists and state officials say a prime reason for such a stunning waste of a natural resource is an out-of-date federal regulatory system that hasn’t kept up with the realities of a changing climate and shifting fish populations.
“It’s just a wholly unjustifiable practice,” said Peter Auster, a senior research scientist at Mystic Aquarium. “This waste … is pervasive in the way we’re managing fishing.”
“The whole construct of the [regulatory] system needs to be questioned,” said Curt Johnson, executive director of the Connecticut Fund for the Environment and Save the Sound.
The problem is that federal fishing regulations are designed to protect fish species based on where they used to be most plentiful. Some of those fish populations have now shifted their range north as a result of global warming, but federal fishing quotas haven’t changed. As a result, Connecticut fishermen are saddled with low, out-of-date quotas, forcing them to throw back huge amounts of certain species, even though those fish have become plentiful off New England.
Exactly how the regulations should be reformed is a controversial issue involving the competing interests of commercial fishing in different states, congressional politics, disagreements over long-term environmental goals and fishing economics.
Climate change is the complicating factor. Water temperatures in Long Island Sound have increased by about 1 degree per decade the past 40 years. The trend has triggered a major shift in species that now thrive in Long Island Sound, according to marine scientists and fishery experts.
cComments
“At the same time, fish that like warmer waters, including fluke and black sea bass, appear to be flourishing off the shores of southern New England” Just so readers know, C Bass and fluke are not strangers to southern New England waters. They have always resided in our waters in…
Joel Hovanesian
at 6:43 AM September 08, 2015
Add a comment See all comments
5
Studies show populations of traditional cold-water species, like lobster and winter flounder, have declined dramatically since the late 1990s.
At the same time, fish that like warmer waters, including fluke and black sea bass, appear to be flourishing off the shores of southern New England.
“The climate is changing,” said Bobby Guzzo, a commercial fisherman who operates two boats out of Stonington, “and so are the fish.”
The frustration among fishermen is evident in their voices and their eyes as they talk about being forced to throw overboard thousands of edible fish they know will die. And it’s more than just the loss of potential profits. Those wasted fish will never reproduce to help build depleted stocks, and consumers will pay higher prices for fewer available fish.
“It’s morally wrong,” said Alan Chaplaski, owner and captain of the Neptune, a Stonington-based fishing vessel that’s rusty and battered from decades of working the waters off southern New England. Chaplaski, 65, shook his head as he sat on the edge of the Stonington docks last week, a weary look on his deeply tanned face.
“We try hard not to target the wrong fish,” he said, “but you have to pay the bills.”
Tossing Overboard
In the early 1980s, as many as 1 million winter flounder were being caught by recreational fishermen in Long Island Sound, said David Simpson, director of the marine fisheries division of the Department of Energy and Environmental Protection.
In 2014, anglers reported catching barely 600 winter flounder in the Sound.
Simpson said most of the fish being caught in the Sound these days are taken by recreational anglers. Connecticut’s commercial fishing boats are getting most of their catch in deeper waters off southern New England.
Guzzo, 59, has been a commercial fisherman his whole life. Referring to black sea bass and fluke, Guzzo said: “Over the years, we’ve seen these fish have moved up here.”
What is frustrating Guzzo and other Connecticut fishermen is that the current federal regulatory system is forcing them to throw back hundreds and thousands of pounds of valuable fish they’ve caught in their nets.
Once a commercial fishing boat hits its quota limit, which can be as little as 20 pounds a day for species like fluke (also known as summer flounder), any more of that fish brought aboard has to be thrown back.
“We’re catching 200, 300 pounds an hour sometimes,” Guzzo said. “It’s a very wasteful way to fish.”
Simpson estimated that “hundreds of thousands, if not millions of pounds, of fish are being thrown back dead … It makes no sense.”
One Connecticut commercial fisherman, who asked not to be identified because he was afraid of the reaction of federal officials, said he was fishing for scup last winter when he found his nets overflowing with black sea bass that he had to discard because of the quota regulations. “In the course of a day, I threw 20,000 pounds of black sea bass overboard,” he said.
The technical term for fish that are caught commercially and thrown back in the water dead or dying is “dead discard” or “bycatch.”
One ocean conservation group estimated last year that more than $1 billion worth of “dead discards” are being thrown away annually by commercial fishing boats in U.S. waters.
In New England, according to a report by the nonprofit organization Oceana, tens of millions of dollars worth of sea scallops, flounder and other fish are being discarded each year as “bycatch” by commercial fishing operations.
Oceana recently filed a lawsuit against the federal government to force reform of its system for monitoring and controlling the practice of discarding millions of dead fish. The lawsuit charges the federal government with a “continued failure to create a method for monitoring the amount of wasted catch in New England and Mid-Atlantic fisheries.”
The estimate that 80 percent of the fish thrown back in the water die comes from the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission. Kirby Rootes-Murdy, a fisheries management coordinator with the commission, said the death rate for fish that recreational anglers return to the water is about 8 percent.
Fish caught by a commercial boat’s nets are usually far more stressed than those pulled up by recreational fishermen, Simpson said. A fish brought up in a net is often compressed by the weight of hundreds of other fish. Commercial fishermen must sort out their catch, decide what to keep and what to throw back, and that can take a lot longer than an angler removing a hook from a fish’s mouth and dropping it back in the water.
Federal regulators say they are considering ways to reduce the number of “dead discards.” Rootes-Murdy said the bycatch issue is expected to be addressed by the Atlantic States fisheries commission “in the next few years.”
Shifting Territory
Connecticut fishermen and state fisheries officials say a great part of the problem is that the federal system for setting state fishing quotas hasn’t kept up with the pace of climate change.
They argue that fishing quotas are being based on where fish species, such as fluke and and black sea bass, used to be concentrated 20 or 30 years ago, rather than where they are now.
Fishing quotas or limits for fluke and black sea bass are set by the Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council and the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission.
Even though those species are now flourishing off the coast of Connecticut and southern New England, that region has no representation on the Mid-Atlantic council.
Black sea bass and fluke used to be concentrated off the Mid-Atlantic coast as far south as North Carolina, according to Simpson and other experts. Now those areas are seeing far fewer of those fish, which are widely sought. Simpson said commercial boats from those states have to travel hundreds of miles north to fill their quotas.
In 2014, according to the Mid-Atlantic council’s statistics, more than 6 million pounds of black sea bass were landed by commercial and recreational fishermen from Maine to North Carolina. The commercial landings totaled 2.38 million pounds, and recreational fishermen brought in 3.78 million pounds of black sea bass.
Connecticut fishermen are limited to 1 percent of the commercial catch of this fish species, which Simpson said amounts to about 22,000 pounds of black sea bass this year. Boats from North Carolina get to bring in 11 percent of the black sea bass total, and Virginia fishermen get a 20 percent quota.
cComments
“At the same time, fish that like warmer waters, including fluke and black sea bass, appear to be flourishing off the shores of southern New England” Just so readers know, C Bass and fluke are not strangers to southern New England waters. They have always resided in our waters in…
Joel Hovanesian
at 6:43 AM September 08, 2015
Add a comment See all comments
5
The quotas for fluke are even more out of balance, Simpson said, with North Carolina commercial boats being allocated 30 percent of the catch and Virginia 20 percent. Connecticut’s share is set at 2.25 percent of the overall catch along the Mid-Atlantic and New England coast, or about 250,000 pounds of fluke.
Connecticut fishermen are furious that quotas for fluke are expected to be cut by 27 percent for 2016.
Simpson said the fish surveys and population estimates used to set quotas for species like fluke may be out of date. Rootes-Murdy said those estimates are routinely updated. He said the quotas for fluke were based on a 2014 assessment that showed there was an increase in “fishing mortality,” and that the quota is being cut back to prevent overfishing.
Connecticut fishermen angrily disagree.
Meanwhile, fishermen from the Mid-Atlantic region don’t want to give up any of their current quota that might allow an increase in Connecticut’s share.
Bill Bomster, a scallop fisherman out of Stonington, said Connecticut’s few remaining commercial boats that go after fluke and black sea bass and other fish are being hammered by the quota system. Although the scallop fleet is doing well, Bomster warns that the rest of Connecticut’s fishing fleet is in serious danger.
“We’ve got to get more quota or the fish guys are going down,” he said.
And environmentalists argue that fishing regulations should aim to bring back depleted fish populations rather than simply focus on taking out as many fish as possible.
Fishing Lobby
U.S. fisheries are regulated under the Magnuson-Stevens Act. Congress is preparing to renew that law’s authorization and it’s become a focus of lobbying by the fishing industry, environmental groups and legislators from Alaska to New England.
The law was intended to curb overfishing of certain species and regulates fisheries up to 200 miles off the U.S. coast. Eight regional councils were created to set fishing quotas for the fish species concentrated along different coastal areas.
But that hasn’t always prevented overfishing: Maine’s Atlantic cod population has crashed in the past few years, forcing severe restrictions on cod fishing.
Environmentalists are worried that the fishing industry wants a relaxation of some of the law’s requirements for protecting overfished species. The law now calls for a depleted fish species to be “rebuilt” within 10 years. Industry lobbyists and some in Congress are pushing for more flexible quotas and timelines because of shifts caused by climate change and because of frustration with the regulatory system.
Lisa Suatoni, a senior scientist with the Natural Resources Defense Council, points out that recent research indicates that the efforts to increase stocks of once-depleted fish species like scup and black sea bass are working.
“We’re trying to keep the law from being eroded,” she said.
U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., called the fisheries management system along the Atlantic coast “almost Byzantine in structure … almost incomprehensible.”
Blumenthal and Sens. Jack Reed of Rhode Island and Charles Schumer of New York are all pushing for reforms and changes in the various regional boards and commissions that set regional fishing quotas.
“The point is not to, in any way, dilute or weaken environmental protections,” said Blumenthal, who sits on the U.S. Senate Commerce Committee, which has jurisdiction over federal fisheries regulation. “Fishermen are not going to dictate these quotas.”
Blumenthal said there is a need for better, more up-to-date information on fish populations and how they may be shifting in response to climate change.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration released new recommendations last month for ways regional marine science centers can improve systems for recognizing how climate change is affecting fish species.
Suatoni said NOAA’s new policy is a signal that federal officials are “recognizing that things are on the move” and that regulators need better strategies to deal with the changes in climate and fish populations.
“The biggest calamities in fisheries happen when someone is overfishing a species at the same time as the climate is becoming unfavorable to that species,” Suatoni said.
The contradiction for Connecticut’s fishing industry is that, although fish like fluke and black sea bass may be vanishing elsewhere, they are becoming more numerous in the state’s waters.
Mike Gambardella is a fish wholesaler in Stonington whose family has been in the business for more than a century.
“This year we’ve seen the biggest black sea bass ever,” Gambardella said. “They’re huge … Catching them is no problem whatsoever. They’re throwing more fish overboard than they’re bringing in.
“It makes no sense at all.”
