[CWitek]

Originally Posted by MakoMike

Several points I'd like to further explore, but first, welcome aboard Charlie.
Lets talk about the way the system is set up right now, as opposed to history before the current versions of the Magnesson-Steven act was passed. I'll agree that many of your criticisms were valid before the act was revised.

Yes, things have improved since Magnuson was revised in the waning hours of 2006, but just looking at the last few months, we see Councils unwilling to do their job to manage the fishery. After the updated Gulf of Maine cod assessment, the Council refused to adopt interim management measures that addressed the collapse--instead, they did nothing and shifted the burden onto the Regional Administrator.

And earlier this month in the Mid-Atlantic, the Council voted unanimously to request the SSC to reconsideer black sea bass management, because they were unwilling to adopt measures consistent with current data and the current management plan.

Maybe the latter action was justified by the big 2011 year class of black sea bass; we'll see what the SSC decides. But up in New England, the Council just lacked the moral courage to do what was necessary. As has ever been the case.

As far as people willing to expand to restrict the harvests. That we already have. The SSCs set ACLs, Target SSBs and most of the other specs for any given fishery. The councils have to follow those recommendations.

The point is, this should not have been necessary. I once held a seat on the Mid-Atlantic Council. Before you can cast your first vote, you're sworn in, and part of that oath is that you will uphold the law and act in the best interests of the nation at large. If Council members had any honor at all, they would have stood true to that oath, and wouldn't have needed the 2006 reauthorization, which gave the SSC's decisions on such matters binding effect. [/QUOTE]

]QUOTE]Where the councils have some discretion is in how those parameters can be met, and that IMHO is appropriate. The folks who sit on the councils are the ones with the best insights on how to meet the SSCs goal without causing undue pain to the industry (both recreational and commercial) [/QUOTE]

I actually don't believe that is true. Too often, Council members react as if ANY pain is "undue" pain and try to avoid it completely, particularly if it affects their business. They lack the necessary distance to make objective judgments. Recreational reps are more than willing to cut commercial harvest, for-hires try to get a leg up on the private boat recreationals and the commercial boats continue to fight for their share.

Later in your post, you reference the Gulf of Mexico red snapper fishery, and that is a classic example of the situation. The recreational side was clearly overfishing, but worked within their organizations (and I was a member of one of those organizations for a very long time, and so know for a fact that this is true) to maximize recreational kill and remove any buffers (20% was the one most often proposed) that might allow for management uncertainty. As a result, they never stopped overfishing, and so kept getting tighter and tighter regulations aimed at ending the overage, which just fueled more efforts to frustrate the rules among the recreational community and their representatives on the Council. The commercials finally got tired of seeing their allocation cut as part of a general quota reduction, so the big boats got together to put in a chatch share plan, which made it difficult for the smaller commercials to operate, but made the big boats happy because they could now buy the small boats' quotas and do pretty well. The next step was for the for-hires to carve their own quota out of the overall rec quota, which pleased them, but pretty well screwed the provate boats who want to fish in federal waters, which now are carrying most of the conservation burden there (but are not without fault, as they have been fighting for more liberal rules in the states, where NMFS has no say, but the for-hires with federal permits can't fish when the federal season is closed). Bottom line is that everyone is concerned with their own pain, and could care less about the pain of others and of their duties to the general public. It would have been far better to have the matter resolved by wildlife managers with no direct personal connection with the fishery.

Lets not forget that most (all?) of the councils have representatives from the commercial and recreational sectors and also representative from various "green" NGOs so all users and some non-users are represented. This IMHO ensures that there is a somewhat balanced representation oh to meet the parameters set out by the SSCs.

Your statement "so all users and some non-users are represented" sets forth a lot of the problem. Natural resources, including fish, are a public resource, and should be managed for the overall public good, and not primarily for the good of the users (although, in many cases, that may be the same thing). Forage fish are the best example. Perhaps we shouldn't be allowing species such as Atlantic herring and menhaden to be harvested at the current industrial scale. Perhaps they should be managed for "ecosystem services" first and foremost, not merely as forage for other popular fish, but for their role in supporting everything from mergansers, gannets and osprey to humpback whales, porpoises and seals. That is the sort of decision that could better be made if folks who owned the mid-water trawlers did not have a seat at the mangement table.

And the NGO reps are very few and far between. I know that there was one up in New England, representing Connecticut; don't recall if she is still there. None on the Mid-Atlantic. I don't think that there are any in the South Atlantic, and I'm pretty sure that there are none in the Gulf. So we basically still have the fox watching the henhouse, although the SSC and, on a larger scale, the Magnuson Act restrict just how far those foxes can go.

You and I agree that the ASMFC and all the state compacts that manage fisheries in state waters should also be subject to the MSA. But given the conflicts over red snapper in the Gulf of Mexico I hold little hope of that being enacted as part of the current reauthorization of the MSA. Again IMHO we could easily fix the problems at the ASMFC by using the same approach to divided management as used by the councils.

This time, we're going to be lucky to get out of the Magnuson reauthorization process with the key parts of the law intact, much less extend anything to ASMFC. As you point out, the red snapper anglers are willing to throw away the best fisheries law in the world if it means that they'll be able to kill a couple more fish. But yes, the fix to ASMFC would be simple; all we need to do is make ASMFC's management plans subject to the same conservation and rebuilding requirements as currently apply to federal plans--prohibiting overfishing, requiring overfished stocks to be rebuilt within a time certain and requiring the best available science to guide management decisions--along with a provision clearly permitting judicial review of final ASMFC actions.

Any analogy to wildlife management on land is flawed, since there is little to no commercial component in those species' harvest.

Merry Christmas!

But there was extensive commercial harvest at one time, and determining whether that is appropriate is part of the management process.

Given that all but a small percentage of the fish now eaten in America is imported, part of the public debate should be whether it is still appropriate to commercialize wild stocks for sale, or whether the better public policy would be to promote the artificial culture of appropriate species. Those would be species which could be farmed on a large scale in dry-land facilities that do not threaten the health of wild stocks, and most likely species that could be fed on manufactured feeds that do not require the large-scale harvest of forage fish stocks. It would strictly limit what is available to consumers, but that is what we face today with other products--basically, if you want meat, you get beef, chicken, lamb, pork and turkey, with some things such as goose, duck, rabbit and quail, altong with exotics, sold as specialty food. Anything else, you have to go out and harvest for yourself.

Remember that we once had significant commercial operations taking bison, ducks, geese, passenger pigeons, various shorebirds (including the Eskimo curlew), elk, etc. There is a wonderful piece written by Mark Twain, discussing all of the wild game that could be purchased in New York markets during, I think, the 1880s. But you can't buy it any more. So just because a large commercial fishery exists TODAY doesn't mean that it should exist TOMORROW.

Instead, it may make sense to maintain commercial fisheries for certain species, such as monkfish, swordfish, tilefish, etc.--cod, too, if we can ever restore reasonable levels of abundance--that can be properly managed for sustainable commercial harvest after the public's personal-use harvest has been considered, just as we have freshwater commercial fisheries for yellow perch in places such as Lake Erie, and for fish such as catfish, buffalo, carp, etc. throughout much of the south and midwest, and sharply restrict commercial harvest of other species that are less abundant in absolute numbers or which are so popular in the personal-use fishery that there is little sustainable harvest remaining that can safely be privatized and sold.

One of the big problems of fisheries management is that we spend too much time worrying about keeping things the way that they were in the past--catch histories, historic harvest allocations, etc.--and don't spend anywhere near enough time thinking about what makes sense in the future, which is what we reallty should be thinking about. And in the future, every option should remain on the table.

And yes, a belated Merry Christmas to you, and to all reading this post.