EDFish

New Red Snapper IFQ Report Raises Hope for Other Troubled Fisheries

Pam Baker, EDF Sr. Policy Advisor for the Gulf of Mexico region

No matter how many scientific studies emerge confirming the benefits of catch shares, you always have opponents who say catch shares may work in “theory,” but still have doubts about their real-life application.

However, it’s hard to refute on-the-ground, tangible results, like those shown down in the Gulf of Mexico.

This week the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) released the 2008 annual report reviewing the progress of its Gulf of Mexico commercial red snapper individual fishing quota program (IFQ), which is a type of catch share.

The report shows continued success for red snapper two years into the program, and provides additional support for implementing IFQs to rebuild other troubled fisheries.

The report’s conservation highlights include:

  • Overfishing is being reversed in the commercial fishery.
  • Fishermen have caught under less than allotment by 2.5-4.0 percent in the past two years.
  • Fishermen cut their ratio of wasted fish to fish taken to the docks by almost 70 percent.  (Before the IFQ, for every fish a fisherman kept, he threw one back dead. Now, fishermen only throw one back for every three to four that they keep.)

The report’s economic highlights include:

  • Long season closures and extreme market swings have been eliminated. 
  • With year-round fishing, fishermen bring high quality fish to the dock when consumer demand is high, helping their businesses remain profitable. 
  • The price fishermen pay for quota, the long-term privilege to catch red snapper, rose by 37 percent, reflecting optimism for a healthy fishery and a commitment to conservation.

With the conservation gains seen in the commercial red snapper fishery in just a few years, we are optimistic that rebuilding is getting underway and the payoff might be a rising catch limit in the near future. The Gulf of Mexico Fishery Management Council is on the right track by considering IFQs and other catch share plans for many of its other commercial and sport fisheries that are in dire need of better management.

The NMFS report concludes that the commercial red snapper fishery is on the right track, and it identifies a few ways that it can be improved.  For example, the mislabeling of fish needs to be stopped, and better ways are needed to count dead fish that some vessels continue to throw overboard, especially off of the Florida peninsula coast.

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Occasional Series on Weird Seafood: Wreckfish

Wreckfish illustration SAFMC website
The restaurants of San Francisco and Charleston have one important thing in common: either place, you are likely to encounter a wonderfully flavorful and healthy fish choice on menus – wreckfish.

Wreckfish (Polyprion americanus) is a very widely distributed, deepwater fish found around canyons, escarpments and wrecks, as its name implies.  Juveniles associate with floating seaweed and debris, helping to distribute the animal around the world ocean as flotsam drifts.  Wreckfish may exceed six feet in length, and 200 pounds, with the oldest known individual aged at 81 years. 

Conservation is sorely lacking, with the exception of the U.S. South Atlantic region, where an innovative type of catch share called an “individual transferable quota” (ITQ) fishery management system was developed in 1991 and implemented in 1992.  ITQs allocate percentages of a scientifically-appropriate catch limit to fishermen, who may then sell or trade them within socially acceptable limits.  The wreckfish of the Pacific and Indian Oceans is a close relative; the only management system for that fish is also an ITQ, in New Zealand.

Wreckfish photo from NOAA's websiteThe wreckfish ITQ in the South Atlantic region has been a great success, pleasing both fishermen and conservationists alike. The only criticism has been of an apparent “under harvest” while fishermen have fished for other species.  I don’t think I have to explain how notable that is in this day of constant excesses! The South Atlantic Fishery Management Council (Council) is currently reviewing this fishery, including the overall quota, and possible management for a newly developing “deep drop” recreational fishery.  I am impressed with the Council’s management to date of the wreckfish, and am looking forward to their future steps on catch shares.

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Deep Water Corals “News Cruise”

Before this year is out, four exciting cruises will take place to explore the deepwater coral reefs of the Southeast.  In fact, scientists are off Florida right now with deep-diving submersibles working to understand the newly discovered reefs that will be protected by the South Atlantic Council in September

Among the neatest science coming during these cruises is the recovery of a “benthic lander” that has been studying deepwater corals in the Gulf for the past year, and then its redeployment off North Carolina this December.  It is fascinating that it has taken 40 years — nearly exactly! — to achieve in the deep sea, right in our backyard, what American scientists did on the moon with a lunar lander, way back in 1969! 

If you liked National Geographic’s “Drain the Ocean,” you’ll love the reports from these cruises, hot off the ship.

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EDF Senior Scientist Successfully Works with South Atlantic Council to Safeguard Corals

EDF Senior Scientist, Doug RaderSince 1998, EDF Senior Scientist Doug Rader has worked with the South Atlantic Fishery Management Council, marine scientists and fishermen to protect the ancient and fragile reefs against both fishing and non-fishing threats.  Working together, they designed a plan that safeguards the corals and also allows traditional fisheries in the reefs. 

A first for fishery councils in the United States, the plan strikes a novel and unique balance between achieving protection of critical habitat, while allowing fishermen to continue to have access to traditional fishing grounds with gears that do minimal damage.  The council is expected to give final approval to the entire habitat area in September.

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Catch Share Options Include Community Fishing Associations

Diane Regas, Associate Vice President - EDF Oceans ProgramCommunity Fishing Associations are a good idea.  It might surprise you to hear that from Environmental Defense Fund.  Sara Randall and Nate Grader got our position wrong, but their exploration of Community Fishing Associations (CFAs) got a lot of other things right, and those other things are worth paying attention to.  Randall and Grader take a look at what CFAs might accomplish, and some of the structural and regulatory challenges that face these new systems.  They conclude that CFAs can provide a way to promote sustainable fishing. We agree.

Community Fishing Associations–if designed well–can successfully address fishing community concerns about maintaining traditional access for fishermen by “anchoring” quota in a community.  We see CFAs as a prime example of the flexibility and creativity allowed under catch share systems to address not only conservation and economics, but a wide range of social values.  That is why EDF is working with fishermen, scientists and managers in New England to implement “sectors,” a form of catch shares based on cooperatives, and we are working to advance CFAs in New England and the West Coast.

Catch shares are not “one-size-fits all.” There are several viable options to designing catch shares, ranging from IFQs, to community-held quotas like CFAs, to area-based management approaches (also known as Territorial Use Rights Fisheries or TURFs).  We would call all of these options–properly designed–“catch shares.” 

Whatever you call them, all of these approaches need a scientifically-determined catch limit, allocations to accountable entities (e.g., individuals, cooperatives, communities), and monitoring and enforcement to ensure fishermen are staying under their allocations.  Contrary to Randall and Grader’s assertion that we just need to get the Total Allowable Catches (TACs) right to end over-fishing, fisheries need TACs set right and a well-working mechanism to make sure that the TAC is actually met.  TACs alone have a relatively poor track record in fisheries management. 

We want fisheries management to work; that’s why we have urged NOAA to create a level playing field for various fishery management alternatives, and then make sure every plan measures up.  A level playing field means holding all fisheries management plans accountable for getting results:  improved conservation, improved science and better economic conditions.  It’s the results that matter!

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Ancient Deepwater Coral Ecosystems of the Southeast

Deep water corals - South Atlantic U.S.; Photo by Dr. Steve RossAlthough corals from deepwaters of the U.S. Southeast were first reported way back in the 1880’s, more than a century passed before research revealed the breathtaking scale of the deepwater coral reef ecosystems in the region.  Dr. Steve Ross (UNC-Wilmington) and Dr. John Reed (Harbor Branch) have actively partnered with the South Atlantic Fishery Management Council over the past decade to ensure that cutting-edge science is translated into strong protection for these world class reefs.

These deepwater reef ecosystems include a dizzying array of mounds and pinnacles covering nearly 25,000 square miles from North Carolina to Florida at depths of 1,000 feet and greater on the Blake Plateau and similar geologic contexts, extending into waters managed by the Bahamas and probably Cuba as well. 

Deep water corals - South Atlantic; Photo by Dr. Steve RossThese reefs are home to tremendous biological diversity, including many species new to science, and including species of potential economic value, both for fishing and for pharmaceutical prospecting.  Individual colonies may be thousands of years old, and some mounds likely exceed a million years in age, creating a record of changing conditions in the deep ocean.

The Council’s Habitat and Environmental Protection Advisory Panel (which I chair) and Coral Advisory Panel have worked tirelessly with scientists, the Council, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and fishermen to create proposed protection zones called “Habitat Areas of Particular Concern,” that will protect these treasures against fishing and other threats.  In particular, EDF negotiated “allowable gear zones,” where traditional fisheries for deepwater animals (golden crab and royal red shrimp) would be allowed, away from vulnerable tall pinnacles.  The Council stands ready to finalize these protection zones at its next meeting in September.

Photos by Dr. Steve Ross

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