Fishery Management: An Analysis of Fish Stock Assessments

Center for American Progress

Counting Fish 101

An Analysis of Fish Stock Assessments

George Lapointe, Linda Mercer, and Michael Conathan   

Science is integral to fishing operations. Without the ability to estimate how many fish exist in the ocean there’s no way to determine how many of them we can catch while allowing the remaining fish populations to stay viable. But fish live in a mostly invisible world beneath the ocean surface, they move around constantly, and they eat each other.

This creates a dynamic population structure that’s incredibly difficult to track, making fish virtually impossible to count. Thus, fisheries scientists—like political pollsters or other statisticians—must rely on imperfect data to make their predictions about the status and health of fish populations.

They take these data—some of which they collect, some of which come from fishermen—and plug them into scientific models which, in turn, create estimates of population health. Because the entire population of a given species is frequently divided into subpopulations known as “stocks,” these estimates are called “stock assessments,” and they form the backbone of modern fishery management in the United States.

These assessments provide an estimate of the current state of a fish population and, in some cases, forecast future trends. This tells us whether fishery management goals are
being met and indicates the type of conditions to which the fishery will have to adapt in the near future. In an ideal world, scientists would have the resources to provide managers with updated stock assessments for each species every year, but their expense and complexity mean they can only be updated periodically.

Regardless of how frequently they can be updated, strong, science-based stock assessments are the key to future sustainability, not just of the fish but also of the fishing industry. Fishing is an inherently unstable business, yet strong, accurate science can give fishermen a better understanding of whether their resource will remain healthy, and if it does, how many fish they will be allowed to catch. This in turn allows fishermen to make informed business decisions and stabilizes coastal economies.

Read the full report here.

Sea Level’s Rise Focus of Summit

Projections of dramatic change draw group to UCSD to strategize about vulnerabilities of affected areas

LA JOLLA — Climate researchers, social scientists and policy experts from across the Pacific Rim convened at UC San Diego last week to get ahead of seas projected to rise so dramatically that they could create some of the most visible effects of global warming.

Representatives from about 20 leading research universities and nonprofit groups in South Korea, Russia, Indonesia and elsewhere met to prepare for potentially catastrophic effects on 200 million people and trillions of dollars of coastal assets.

Sea levels off most of California are expected to rise about 3 feet by 2100, according to recent projections by the National Research Council. Higher seas create challenges for port cities from San Diego to Singapore, including the potential for dramatically increased damage to coastal roads, homes and beaches — especially during storms.

“All future development has to be assessed in regards to future rises in sea level,” Steffen Lehmann, professor of sustainable design at the University of South Australia, said during the conference. “Reducing the vulnerabilities of urban (areas) is the big topic, the big task ahead of us now.”

Potential responses include managing a retreat from eroding bluffs and reshaping coastal areas to buffer development from higher water levels. “The missing link (is) between the science and those guys in planning offices and architecture firms and city municipal offices,” Lehmann said.

David Woodruff, director of the University of California San Diego’s Sustainability Solutions Institute, organized the workshop to address that problem with cross-disciplinary discussions that move toward international action.

“We are trying to affect societal change,” he said. “The sooner we start scoping options, the less expensive it will be to save current infrastructure.”

The workshop was sponsored by the Association of Pacific Rim Universities, a consortium of 42 leading research institutions. Participants drafted a report about rising sea levels for top university leaders so they can make the topic a priority with national-level leaders around the Pacific Rim.

“I really think universities can play a key role,” said UC San Diego’s Charles Kennel. “They are right at the pivot point between connecting knowledge to action. … One of the places they need to transfer their knowledge to is adaptation to climate change.”

A warming climate causes sea levels to rise primarily by heating the oceans — which causes the water to expand — and by melting land ice, which drains water to the ocean. Sea levels at any given spot depend on a complex interaction of factors, such as ocean and atmospheric circulation patterns and tectonic plate movements.

Global sea level has risen about 7 inches during the 20th century, the National Research Council said.

While sea-level-rise projections aren’t a sure thing, they are widely accepted by mainstream scientists. Skeptics see it as a waste of money to plan for problems that may not materialize for decades, or may be more modest than predicted.

Read more on the Union-Tribune San Diego.

KUOW (NPR) Radio – Ray Hilborn on Overfishing: How Big Is The Problem?

Fish is a significant source of protein in the human diet; around 90 million tons are caught every year. Are some fisheries in danger of collapse? What species are being managed the right way? UW professor and fisheries expert Ray Hilborn talks to David Hyde about his new book “Overfishing: What Everyone Needs To Know.”

Listen to the full interview here via KUOW NPR – 94.9 FM (Seattle).

Ray Hilborn is a professor of fisheries at the University of Washington. Reporter Ross Reynolds hosts this fast–paced news call–in program. Engaging, stimulating and informative – a forum where listeners have the chance to speak directly with experts on news–oriented topics. The Conversation covers the very current topics and issues of the day.

New NOAA Ship Strengthens Ties between Scripps Oceanography and Southwest Fisheries Science Center

Collaborations between La Jolla institutions began more than 70 years ago and flourish today with a mix of strategic relationships Scripps Institution of Oceanography/University of California, San Diego

NOAA anticipates bringing the Reuben Lasker to the West Coast in 2013 and beginning operations in 2014. The ship will support scientific assessments of fish stocks and other marine life on the U.S. West Coast.

“Reuben Lasker represents an important investment by the American people in our ability to monitor the health of our ocean ecosystems,” said Bruce Appelgate, associate director of ship operations and marine technical support at Scripps. “This process of investment must continue in order to revitalize the United States research fleet, so that societally important issues can be properly understood.”

NOAA Ship Reuben Lasker, named after a pioneering fisheries biologist and Scripps adjunct professor, was launched on June 16. Credit: Val Ihde, Marinette Marine Corp.

The new vessel honors the late Reuben Lasker, a pioneering fisheries biologist who served as director of SWFSC’s coastal fisheries division and worked in a key position as an adjunct professor at Scripps. Lasker fostered fundamental collaborations that formed a scientific bridge between Scripps and SWFSC.

“Reuben Lasker was arguably the father of West Coast fisheries oceanography,” said Dave Checkley, a Scripps professor of oceanography and director of the Cooperative Institute on Marine Ecosystems and Climate (CIMEC), a Scripps-led NOAA program established to study climate change and coastal ecosystems. “He brought his basic knowledge of insect biology to bear on plankton and fish, and combined this with oceanography to lead the Southwest Fisheries Science Center’s program on small pelagic fish, particularly anchovy and sardine.”

“He and his colleagues are renowned worldwide for their contributions to the biology of these fish and their ecology and fisheries oceanography. He, as much as anyone, fostered the close and productive collaboration between academia and fisheries.”

Checkley, who noted that Reuben Lasker served on his Ph.D. committee, said the namesake vessel furthers the close collaborations between Scripps and NOAA in fisheries oceanography that was formalized in 1949, following the collapse of California’s sardine fishery and the inception of the California Cooperative Oceanic Fisheries Investigations (CalCOFI) program, a unique partnership of the California Department of Fish and Game, NOAA Fisheries Service, and Scripps. CalCOFI stands as one of the world’s longest and most important marine monitoring programs and has provided valuable insights about various aspects of the waters off California and its inhabitants for more than 50 years.

“The Reuben Lasker will be one of NOAA’s state-of-the-art fisheries vessels and will not only enable the continuation of CalCOFI but enhance it with its superior capabilities,” said Checkley.

Read the full announcement via the Scripps Institution of Oceanography.

Whales Show Signs of Coping With Man-Made Noise Underwater

By WILLIAM J. BROAD | Senior Science Writer

Perhaps we can save the whales — or at least their hearing.

California Still Leaving Plenty of Fish in the Sea

 Letters to the Editor

Re “Fisherman agree: Big fish need little fish” (Viewpoints, June 22):

The article omitted key facts the public should understand about California’s fisheries. Appealing to the Pacific Fishery Management Council to “forestall the harvest of forage species that aren’t currently being fished,” the authors cited a Lenfest Forage Fish Task Force study finding that worldwide, forage fish are mostly ground into meal to feed livestock and farmed fish. This is untrue in California. They didn’t point out that according to the same report, we already leave plenty of forage fish in the sea. West Coast forage fisheries harvest only 2 percent of the total forage pool, leaving 98 percent in the ocean. The most important forage species on the West Coast are already well managed. The PFMC recently approved deliberative action, allowing more time for scientific analysis and the development of the most practical, effective management tools. This is a win for all, providing the most cost-effective and timely response to concerns that new fisheries might over-exploit forage species.

— Diane Pleschner-Steele, executive director, California Wetfish Producers Association

Sardine population growing significantly

Opinion

By DIANE PLESCHNER-STEELE 

Guest Commentary

Reading the recent opinion piece on this page by Oceana, one might think that sardines should be placed on the endangered species list. But in reality, this important fishery is doing just fine thanks to existing precautions.

The Oceana commentary, “Sardine population on verge of crash,” bases some of its allegations on a report by two National Marine Fisheries Service scientists. Yet Oceana fails to mention that those scientists deliberately omitted the most recent stock assessment and failed to submit their paper for internal review. That paper and its conclusions were later repudiated by the National Marine Fisheries Service.

The fact is, sardine abundance trended significantly upward in 2011 and that led to the increase in sardine harvest quota in 2012.

California’s wetfish industry — named for the fish that were canned wet from the sea — is under attack by extremist groups like Oceana who claim overfishing is occurring. That allegation is false; fishermen have long recognized that a sustainable fishery was good for both people and fish.

Historically, sardines exhibited dynamic swings of a million tons up or down during the first decade of decline. We may be entering another such period, given the 30-year cycle of the stock. But the issue is scale. Sardine management policy is complicated because fishery managers now recognize these dynamics.

The sardines’ visionary harvest policy sets annual quotas far lower than the maximum sustainable catch allowed in most fisheries, and subtracts 150,000 metric tons from the population estimate, allowing for forage and uncertainty. According to the 2011 sardine stock assessment, the coast-wide harvest rate including Canada and Mexico was less than 15 percent of the biomass — decidedly NOT overfishing.

This precaution has been recognized by a host of respected scientists, including the “Little Fish, Big Impact” report referenced by Oceana. Another Oceana omission is found in Appendix E of that report:

Fosmark: Ocean Policy Respite Is Step in Right Direction

By Kathy Fosmark
Special to Roll Call

Recent House passage of an amendment providing for a pause in implementation of the new National Ocean Policy is a welcome development for those seeking to maintain and enhance the productivity of our nation’s marine and inland areas.

This action was supported by groups as varied as the American Farm Bureau Federation, the American Forest and Paper Association, the National Association of Home Builders, the National Fisheries Institute and the National Ocean Policy Coalition, among many others.

Because it is being implemented by executive order rather than statute, the policy has not been subject to the scrutiny that accompanies the legislative process. In turn, significant questions about this initiative, and its potential effects on citizens, businesses and existing laws and processes, have still not been adequately addressed.

For example, how will regional fishery management councils effectively carry out their responsibilities under the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act when the National Ocean Policy requires federal implementation of potentially inconsistent regional zoning plans developed by regional planning bodies?

In addition, the National Ocean Council has disclosed that federal agencies have been directed to prioritize the National Ocean Policy in their budgets and asked how existing resources can be repurposed. With resources already scarce, how will this affect the continuation and improvement of existing authorized activities such as fishery stock assessments that directly affect recreational anglers and commercial fishermen across the country as well as the communities they support?

Concerns about potentially repurposing funds across the federal government in support of an initiative that has not been authorized by Congress are underscored by recent headlines surrounding the disclosure that tens of millions of dollars of taxpayer funds were reprogrammed within the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration without Congressional notification.

Ocean Conservancy’s May 24 Roll Call op-ed referred to a “gross overreaction” among those who support a time-out and suggested that concerns about prohibitions on fishing activity are unfounded. Concerns about the potential for the policy to lead to new and unnecessary marine access and use restrictions, however, are real and based in part on past experience.

Read the full article on Roll Call

Oceans Plan Meets Wave of GOP Resistance

  Congressional Quarterly Weekly – IN FOCUS

June 4, 2012 – Page 1137

  By Lauren Gardner | Staff Writer

House Natural Resources Chairman Doc Hastings, a Washington Republican, fears the blueprint will usher in ocean “zoning.” Texas Republican Bill Flores succeeded in attaching a rider to the fiscal 2013 Commerce-Justice-Science appropriations bill that would bar any expenditures to implement the ocean policy, and Hastings vows to press for similar language in every spending bill that comes to the House floor.

The opposition reflects concerns by many of the industries that make a living in the coastal waters — including oil and natural gas producers, commercial fishermen and seafood processors, boat owners and operators, shippers, and sports fishermen. An industry-backed group called the National Ocean Policy Coalition backs efforts to delay the policy through appropriations riders, saying that “further policy development and implementation should be suspended until Congress, user groups, and the public have been fully engaged and all potential impacts have been assessed and are understood.”

Critics worry that the administration will pay for its initiative by siphoning money from programs that lawmakers intended to fund, and they complain that the White House is moving forward without congressional authorization. Some lawmakers predict the plan, which is expected to be put in final form this summer, will inevitably lead to new regulations that further burden business activities including offshore drilling, wind power, commercial and recreational fishing, deep-sea fish farming, and boating.

Spearheading support for an ocean policy are environmental groups such as Oceana, the Ocean Conservancy and the Pew Environmental Group — a roster that invites the suspicions of industry groups.

Even the co-chairmen of the Senate Oceans Caucus are divided. Rhode Island Democrat Sheldon Whitehouse calls the proposal a “very pro-business and very sensible means for rationally sorting out conflicting uses in a really important resource.” But Alaska Republican Lisa Murkowski says flatly: “I don’t like it.”

“They’ve got an idea that sounds nice on paper, establishes all kinds of different programs,” she says. “And again, we’ve had no sense of funding or real direction.”

 Read the rest of the article on CQWeekly.com

Q&A: Eat that fish! When Overfishing is Also Sustainable

Ray Hilborn, Professor of Aquatic and Fishery Sciences at the University of Washington, and Co-Author of Overfishing: What Everyone Needs to Know

Written By Christie Nicholson 

Contributing Editor at SmartPlanet

Many of us think that if a fish species is overfished we probably should be wary about choosing it at the supermarket or on the restaurant menu. But the opposite may be true. Our boycotting of some overfished species may be hurting us and the American fish industry, not the fish.

This counterintuitive opinion is laid out by Ray Hilborn, professor of aquatic and fishery sciences at the University of Washington, and co-author of Overfishing: What Everyone Needs to Know.

Hilborn holds that the public, food retailers, NGOs and congress have misunderstood what defines a sustainable fishery. In fact overfishing and sustainable can, oddly enough, go together.

SmartPlanet caught up with Hilborn in Seattle, WA to get a better understanding of this paradox and why he thinks a fish boycott doesn’t make sense.

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SmartPlanet: What are red listed fish?

Ray Hilborn: Red lists are advice that a number of NGOs provide on what species of fish one should avoid eating.

SP: And Whole Foods stopped selling such fish based on these red lists?

RH: Yes Whole Foods made a commitment to not sell any food that’s on the red list of the Monterey Bay Aquarium and the Blue Oceans Institute.

SP: And other stores and restaurants have done similar things?

RH: Yes red lists are widely used.

SP: What are the criteria for red-listed fish?

RH: The three criteria that most NGOs use. One is status with respect to overfishing. The second is concerns about bycatch. So if you have a fishery that is catching a significant number of turtles, or sharks, or other species they’ll often get red-listed. Finally there are concerns about the environmental impacts of fishing, particularly concerns about trawl nets, or nets that touch the bottom and change bottom habitat.

SP: But you have made the point recently that if a species is overfished it doesn’t necessarily mean that it can’t be sustainable. And this seems counterintuitive. People might say well red lists sound more like the right thing to do.

RH: There’s an enormous lack of understanding about what sustainability really is. Essentially sustainability has nothing to do with the abundance of the fish and much more about the management system. So if you’re managing it in a way where if it gets to low abundance you’ll reduce catches and let it rebuild. That’s clearly sustainable.

You can have fish that are overfished for decades but still be sustainable. As long as their numbers are not going down they are sustainable. Some of it is “overfished” with reference to the production of long-term maximum yield. It doesn’t imply declining and it doesn’t imply threat of extinction.

SP: And even if it falls into this latter category that you just described it should be safe for consumers to eat?

RH: So long as it’s in a management system like the U.S. where when stocks get to low abundance we dramatically reduce catches, and the evidence is they then rebuild. Then yes, those stocks are perfectly sustainable.

SP: What about this issue of bycatch?

RH: OK, so the NGOs will say, “Oh this stock is not sustainable because there is bycatch of sharks.” Well the stock is sustainable. Every form of food production has negative impacts on other species. And that’s where there’s an enormous double standard applied to fish.

For instance, I guarantee you there’s a big environmental impact of buying soybeans that come from cutting down rainforest. There’s a much higher standard applied to fisheries than almost anything else we eat.

SP: What goes into creating a sustainable fishery?

RH: The first thing is you have to monitor the trend in the stock. You have to have a  system based in good science, that says this stock is going down. Then your management actions have to respond to the trend.

SP: What about foreign fish? Which ones can we eat?

RH: Much of the fish of the world do not qualify as sustainable because we just don’t know what’s happening in other countries like Africa or Asia. Now, very few fish from those markets makes their way to the U.S. market. But some of the Atlantic cod populations in Europe are still fished much too hard. But the big propulsions in Europe are actually quite sustainable. Much of the cod that make it to the U.S. are coming from Iceland or Norway where the stocks are in good shape.

SP: But how do you tell the difference if it’s cod coming from an overfished area?

RH: Well, that is a major problem. But if it’s Marine Stewardship Council certified you can be pretty sure that it’s what it claims to be. Personally, I tend to buy a pretty narrow range of fish that come from my region, like salmon, halibut, and black cod. And pretty much all of those are MSC certified.

SP: You mention that the boycott on sustainably caught fish does nothing for conservation.

RH: You can boycott this all you want, it’s not going to affect what’s caught. Because for these overfished stocks enormous effort is being taken to catch as little as possible and it’s not the consumer market that drives the amount of catch. Those fish are going to be caught and they’re going to be sold because there are a lot of markets in the world that don’t care about classification and red lists, essentially all of Asia, which is the world’s biggest seafood consuming market.

The places that consumer boycotts might have an effect is for fish like bluefin tuna or swordfish.

SP: Well if boycotting makes no difference, is there a negative side to boycotting?

RH: My real target is to tell retailers and the NGOs, “Look, let’s get more reasonable about what we mean by sustainability.”

SP: And we need to get more reasonable about the definition of “sustainability” because there are real economic dangers to the fishing industry? Or is it because of something else?

RH: Yes, that’s certainly one of the issues. Let’s not punish these fishermen who have paid a very high price to rebuild these stocks. Let’s let them sell what they’re currently catching.

SP: So it seems the word “overfished” is also more nuanced?

RH: Well I think Congress had this very naïve view that somehow you could manage every stock separately and if cod is depleted, at low abundance well we stop fishing it, but they don’t appreciate the cost of all the other species that we could not catch because we can’t catch those species without also catching some cod as bycatch.

Now, there’s a lot of work going on to try to solve that problem. But I it’s important to convince people that we will always have some overfished stocks. And if we continue with our current U.S. statement that ‘no stock shall be overfished’ we’re going to have to give up a lot of food production. We’re certainly doing that now.

SP: You’ve also argued that fish is a food we need?

RH: If we don’t catch certain fish with trawl nets, and let’s say it’s twenty million tons, then that food is going to be made up some other way. And what’s the environmental cost of the other ways of producing the food? My initial calculations suggest that it is quite a bit higher. We should always be saying, “Well if we don’t eat this, where else is the food going to come from, and what’s the environmental cost of that?”

SP: So you ultimately feel that the marketing of these red lists has gotten to the point where it’s lost rational sense?

RH: Yes. I’m pretty convinced that seafood production is more sustainable than growing corn in Iowa or wheat in Kansas. Because growing corn in Iowa forces us to lose topsoil every year. In another 200 years the topsoil will be be largely gone. Is that sustainable?

SP: So your feeling is that disappearing fish from the store shelves is going to force us to lose food and presumably money?

RH: Yes, and to eat more livestock or chicken now.

Check out the article on the SmartPlanet blog.