Ocean fish are the last wild creatures that humans hunt for food
on a large scale. The oceans once supplied a seemingly unending bounty of
seafood, with codfish so plentiful off the coast of New England,
fishermen merely needed to dip baskets into the water to catch them. Today,
many of our nation’s commercially important fish populations (or what fishery
managers call “stocks”) are fished at unsustainably high rates, with some, like
New England cod stocks, fished down to historic lows,
endangering the future of not only the fish stocks, but our nation’s fishermen.
As American seafood consumption continues to rise, we need
healthy, productive fish stocks to support this growing demand. Overfishing –
catching fish faster than they can reproduce – threatens the vitality of our
fish stocks and the fishermen who depend on them for their way of life.
Twenty years of ineffective regulation of U.S.
fisheries by the National Marine Fisheries Service and the regional fishery
management councils led to fish stock crashes in New England,
the Pacific, and other parts of the country, resulting in severe economic and
ecological impacts. Congress recognized the threat posed by overfishing when it
passed amendments to Magnuson Act known as the Sustainable Fisheries Act in
1996, requiring the regional fishery management councils, using guidance
provided by the National Marine Fisheries Service, to define and eliminate
overfishing and create plans to rebuild overfished populations within 10 years
if possible. To track rebuilding progress, the Sustainable Fisheries Act also
required the Secretary of Commerce to report to Congress annually on the status
of each fish stock managed by the councils. This report analyzes data from the
2001 – 2004 “Status of U.S. Fisheries” reports (the most recent reports
available) and action by the regional fishery management councils from 2001 –
2005 to assess the efforts made by fishery managers to eliminate overfishing
and rebuild overfished stocks. Key findings of this analysis include:
Progress reducing the number of stocks that are overfished and
experiencing overfishing is an administrative shell game. At first glance there
appears to be a declining trend in the number of stocks that are overfished and
experiencing overfishing. However, administrative actions, such as dropping
stocks out of the count, deciding that not enough information existed so they
should be moved to the “unknown” category or collapsing many stocks into one
“complex,” account for most of the declining trend: 60 percent of the
overfished stocks and 75 percent of the stocks experiencing overfishing between
2001 and 2004 were taken off the list due to administrative shuffling or
reclassification. In a nutshell, the number of stocks that are overfished and
experiencing overfishing has not appreciably declined.
By 2004, only 13 percent of the nation’s fish stocks could be
considered “healthy.” The number of healthy stocks, i.e., those stocks that are
both not overfished, nor experiencing overfishing, remained constant between
2001 and 2004. Not only is the number of healthy stocks very low, there has not
been a discernable gain in healthy stocks between 2001-2004.
Councils have a pattern of allowing overfishing to continue on
overfished stocks. Many councils allowed overfishing to continue on overfished
stocks between 2001 and 2004, including New England’s Georges
Bank cod, Pacific groundfish, and Gulf of Mexico
red snapper. As of 2004, five councils and NMFS allowed 27 overfished stocks to
also be subjected to overfishing, despite legal requirements to end
overfishing.
Some councils refuse to accept scientific recommendations with
disastrous results. Several councils have a history of refusing to accept scientific information that requires the adoption of strict
conservation measures. It took a federal lawsuit to force the New England
Council to adopt a plan to rebuild Georges Bank cod by
2026. The Gulf Council exceeded red snapper catch levels recommended by
scientists by 50 percent and, as a result, does not expect the population to be
rebuilt until 2032. It took a federal disaster declaration for the Pacific
Council to finally take action to protect groundfish and, as a result, canary
rockfish will not be rebuilt until 2074.
Ineffective management tools are common. When councils set catch
levels without a mechanism to stop fishing once the level is reached,
overfishing often results. Many councils continue to use these ineffective
measures, even when a stock is declared overfished. Closed areas or fishing
moratoria have allowed successful rebuilding of whiting and lingcod in the
Pacific, and goliath and Nassau
grouper in the Gulf of Mexico.
NMFS does not know if the majority of stocks it manages are overfished
or experiencing overfishing. In 2004, NMFS did not know whether 70 percent of
all the nation’s stocks were overfished or not. For over half of all the
nation’s stocks, it does not know if they are experiencing overfishing. NMFS
has worked to increase its knowledge of commercially important stocks, but
knows less about so called “minor” stocks than it did four years prior.
Out-of-date data is prevalent for some councils. The variance in
the availability of current data for different councils is striking. The Gulf, South
Atlantic and Caribbean councils work with
data that is sometimes over 5 years old. While the New England,
Pacific, North Pacific, and Western Pacific councils tend to work with more
recent data.
Ten years after the passage of the Sustainable Fisheries Act,
efforts to prevent overfishing and rebuild overfished populations remain
inadequate. Overfishing continues on overfished populations, while
administrative changes to the status of the stocks reports mask the councils’
failures to control overfishing. Recent council actions to rebuild overfished
populations are an improvement over past inaction, but still fall short of what
is required to protect our nation’s fish. Councils need to move beyond adopting
the easiest and most obvious measures, actively encourage better data
collection, and utilize moratoria, long-term closures, and “hard” catch limits
to provide the thorough levels of protection needed for sustaining fish
populations for future generations.
