On Wednesday, August 14, the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission’s (ASMFC) Summer Flounder, Scup, and Black Sea Bass Management Board voted to ignore the results of the Black Sea Bass 2024 Management Track Stock Assessment Report (Management Track Assessment), and leave the acceptable biological catch (ABC) and annual catch limit (ACL) for 2025 unchanged from those set in 2024.

A New, Improved Stock Assessment

The Management Track Assessment represents a significant improvement over the Black Sea Bass Operational Assessment for 2021 (Operational Assessment) that was previously used to gauge the health of the stock. It utilizes a new population modeling approach first described in the peer-reviewed Report of the Black Sea Bass (Centropristis striata) Research Track Stock Assessment Working Group (Research Track Assessment), which was released by the National Marine Fisheries Service’s (NMFS) Northeast Fisheries Science Center in November 2023.

At the August 14 meeting, the science center’s Dr. Jon Hare explained to the Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council and the management board that the methodology used in the Management Track Assessment has eliminated much of the uncertainty inherent in the Operational Assessment’s estimates. Unlike the Operational Assessment, it considers age- and time-dependent variability in black sea bass survival and the size selectivity of the black sea bass fishery, the latter consideration being particularly important in the recreational fishery in New York and New England, which has seen significant changes in the minimum size of the fish that may legally be retained. It also reduces estimates of the number of young sea bass that have recruited into the population in recent years.

The Management Track Assessment found that spawning stock biomass was 24,572 metric tons (mt), 20 percent below the 30,774 mt estimate of the Operational Assessment. The Management Track Assessment also determined that maximum sustainable yield for the black sea bass stock was about 24 percent below, and target biomass about 23 percent below, the Operational Assessment’s estimates.

Dr. Hare assured the managers at the meeting that the Management Track Assessment represented a “significant improvement” over the Operational Assessment and other previous attempts to gauge the health of the black sea bass stock.

In accordance with established council procedure, the Management Track Assessment, once released, was reviewed by the council’s Scientific and Statistical Committee (SSC), which determined that it represents the best scientific information available regarding the black sea bass resource. In accordance with the Management Track Assessment’s findings, the SSC then recommended that the ABC be reduced by 20 percent, from 7,557 mt in 2024 to 6,027 mt in 2025.

Neither the Management Track Assessment’s findings nor the SSC’s recommendation went over well with stakeholders or with state fishery managers.

The Science, Rejected

A summary of comments made at the August 5, 2024 meeting of the Summer Flounder, Scup, and Black Sea Bass Advisory Panel, which was provided to the council and management board, noted that “Advisors were very frustrated with the 20% decline in the 2025 black sea bass acceptable biological catch (ABC) limit recommended by the Council’s Scientific and Statistical Committee (SSC), compared to the 2024 ABC. Advisors did not understand the need for a decrease in the catch limits when the most recent assessment shows biomass is 219% of the target level.”

In making their comments, the advisors also did not seem (or, perhaps, just did not want) to understand that, because the Management Track Assessment’s estimates of spawning stock biomass, target biomass, and maximum sustainable yield were somewhere between 20 and 24 percent below the Operational Assessment’s estimates, the SSC’s decision to reduce the ABC by 20 percent was perfectly in line with the updated data.

But the advisory panel is composed of laymen, not scientists, and many are members of the fishing industry. Thus, their dismay at the new ABC, and their rejection of the SSC’s findings, are arguably understandable. The reaction of the Summer Flounder, Scup, and Black Sea Bass Monitoring Committee, which is made up of state, ASMFC, and federal fisheries professionals, was somewhat more surprising.

A summary of the monitoring committee’s August 1, 2024 meeting, which was also provided to the council and management board, reported that

While it is true that, despite earlier projections, black sea bass abundance continued to increase despite high levels of removals, and the reason for such seemingly anomalous behavior deserves further attention, the monitoring committee, like the advisory panel, seemed to overlook the fact that the 20 percent reduction in the ABC reflected a similar reduction in the estimate of current spawning stock biomass and the related reference points.

When the August 14 meeting began, council and management board members raised the same questions, and the same objections, raised by the monitoring committee and advisory panel. In response, Dr. Paul Rago, who serves as chairman of the SSC, reminded everyone in the room that the Management Track Assessment reduced the biomass target by 23 percent and the estimate of maximum sustainable yield by 24 percent, and told them that those were “really important pieces to keep in mind when considering the proper changes” to the 2025 black sea bass specifications.

However, management board members seemed more concerned with placating stakeholders than with following scientific advice and, realizing that there would be stakeholder pushback if the recreational landings limit was reduced, gave little heed to Dr. Rago’s advice.

Such pushback was evident in comments made by Michael Wayne, an advisory panel member who is on the payroll of the American Sportfishing Association, the angling industry’s biggest trade organization, when he asked that additional analysis be conducted, which might alter the findings of the Management Track Assessment. After being told that such assessment, having been completed, having passed peer review, and having been accepted by the SSC, would not be reopened due to other scheduled demands on the science center’s time, Wayne responded that it was “difficult to carry that message back to the industry…It’s just an unacceptable answer.”

Management board members clearly wanted to avoid provoking the angling industry. Emerson Hasbrouck, New York’s legislative appointee, asked how managers could go back to stakeholders and tell them that their landings would be cut, when the monitoring committee couldn’t understand why such cuts were necessary. John Manascalco, a New York fishery manager, expressed concern that managers were “at great risk of alienating our many stakeholders.” Other managers representing New Jersey and Maryland expressed concern that more restrictive regulations would result in more dead discards.

Federal Managers’ Strict Discipline

Yet, regardless of advisory panel, monitoring committee, and stakeholder discontent, the course that the council had to take was clear. The Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act (Magnuson-Stevens) requires that each regional fishery management council “develop annual catch limits for each of its managed fisheries that may not exceed the fishing level recommendations of its scientific and statistical committee.”

Michael Pentony, NMFS regional administrator for the Greater Atlantic Region Fisheries Office, which includes the mid-Atlantic, read that provision to the council and warned that if the council took any action inconsistent with the dictates of Magnuson-Stevens, such action would be rejected by the regional office.

Thus, the council had no choice but to adopt the SSC’s recommended ABC, and adopt corresponding ACLs, commercial quotas, and recreational harvest limits for the 2025 season. Such actions illustrated the greatest strengths of the federal fishery management system, where Magnuson-Stevens legally obligates fisheries managers to adopt management measures based on the best available science, which are unlikely to lead to overfishing.

The ASMFC’s Broad Discretion

However, the ASMFC isn’t governed by Magnuson-Stevens; there is no federal statute to impose the same level of discipline on the management board. Although the ASMFC’s Interstate Fisheries Management Program Charter (Charter) clearly states that “Conservation programs and management measures shall be based on the best scientific information available,” such Charter also states that “an effective fishery management program must be carefully designed in order to reflect the varying values and other considerations that are important to the various interest groups that are involved in coastal fisheries. Social and economic impacts and benefits must be taken into account.”

Thus, the management board is effectively in the same place as federal managers were prior to the passage of the Sustainable Fisheries Act of 1996; they are free to exercise virtually unlimited discretion, which allows them to adopt management measures based not on science, but on short-term economic, social, and political concerns, even if such regulations lead to, and effectively condone, overfishing.

For many years, such imprudent management measures were never adopted, because the council and the ASMFC’s various management boards held joint meetings, and agreed that neither management body would adopt measures inconsistent with those adopted by the other. Because the council was obligated to adhere to the provisions of Magnuson-Stevens, that arrangement effectively, if unofficially, bound the management board to adhere to such provisions as well. It also assured that, whether anglers and commercial fishermen fished in state or federal waters, they would be governed by a consistent set of rules.

So long as that joint management policy remained in effect, there was no chance that mid-Atlantic fisheries would experience the sort of chaos that occurred in the Gulf of Mexico red snapper fishery after states bowed to angling industry-imposed pressure and went go out of compliance with federal fisheries managers, adopting regulations that were less restrictive than those that prevailed in federal waters. Such concessions on the part of the five Gulf states ultimately led to severe recreational overfishing, very restrictive federal regulations on anglers, and a bitter dispute that has continued for well over a decade.

But joint management of mid-Atlantic black sea bass ended on August 14th when James Gilmore, New York’s legislative proxy, rose to “move to suspend the joint management process rules for the Board to take action on the 2025 black sea bass regulations.” John Clark, the Delaware fishery manager, seconded the motion.

It was clear from the outset that most, if not all, of the people sitting around the management table were expecting the motion, and that most of them, particularly the state fisheries managers, lent it their strong support, for it allowed them to keep their constituents happy while remaining within the letter, if perhaps not the spirit, of the law.

There was only one strong objection, which came from Chris Batsavage, North Carolina’s fishery manager, who recognized that abandoning the joint management process was risky, and “we need to be careful when we take [such action] and not make a habit of it.” He acknowledged that “Jon Hare and Paul Rago did an excellent job of” explaining the Management Track Assessment, and was one of the few people at the meeting, perhaps the only one on the council or management board, who publicly recognized that the reduced ABC was a direct result of the “rescaled biomass estimate,” and did not try to find ways to undermine the SSC’s decision. While he said that “I understand that the advice coming from the assessment is a tough sell for the stakeholders and the managers,” he also made it clear that such difficulty did not justify ignoring the scientific advice.

In the end, the motion to abandon joint management passed in a lopsided vote, with only North Carolina in opposition and Michael Pentony, as NMFS’ representative, abstaining.

At that point, Gilmore and Clark teamed up on a new motion, this one to maintain status quo black sea bass specifications in 2025.

Although Michael Pentony abstained on the motion to suspend joint management, he was not as indifferent to the motion for status quo, saying, “I do caution the Board that I will vote against it for the agency.” He was concerned that, by adopting specifications different from those adopted by the council and NMFS, the management board would set the stage for divergent quotas in state and federal waters, and noted that existing regulations governing the black sea bass fishery authorized his office to take administrative action to prevent such divergence, although he wasn’t quite certain what such action might be.

Otherwise, there was little debate, and the motion passed with broad support, although North Carolina, Rhode Island, and NMFS did vote against.

The Consequences of Doing Nothing

In adopting the motion for status quo, the management board created a rift between the specifications that will govern black sea bass fishing in federal waters, more than three miles from shore, and those that will govern fishing in inshore waters that are under the jurisdiction of the states.

It’s difficult to predict exactly where that rift will lead.

Absent some sort of remedial action by the regional office, it will almost certainly force federally-permitted commercial fishermen to fish under smaller quotas than those enjoyed by their state-licensed counterparts, but the impact on the recreational fishery is less clear.

In recent years, the council has adopted a “non-preferred” set of coastwide recreational regulations, then granted the ASMFC the authority to manage each state’s recreational fishery by using regulations that might be different, but still have the same conservation impact, as the coastwide rules. For the 2024 season, the council carried forward the non-preferred measures from 2023, which included a 15-inch minimum size, 5-fish bag limit, and a season that ran from May 15 through September 8.

However, after the management board applied its policy of “conservation equivalency,” the final state rules looked much different. States between New York and New Hampshire adopted 16 or 16 ½-inch size limits; bag limits that varied by state and season, but ran somewhere between two and seven fish; and, with the exception of Massachusetts, seasons that began sometime in May or June and ran through the end of the year. New Jersey adopted a 12 ½-inch minimum size, a patchwork of open and closed seasons that began on May 17 and ended on December 31, and a bag limit of between one and 15 fish, which changed with each open season. Between Delaware and Cape Hatteras, North Carolina, a 13-inch size limit and 15-inch minimum size prevailed, along with seasons that began in mid-May and ended on December 31, but generally included a brief mid-season hiatus.

The council agreed that all such state regulations would also govern anglers fishing in federal waters.

Such state regulations are probably going to remain unchanged in 2025, although it is possible that when the council and management board meet in December, the “Percent Change Approach” used to set management measures will call for a small adjustment.

But even if state angling regulations remain unchanged, the 20 percent reduction in the ABC makes it virtually certain that federal recreational management measures will be more restrictive in 2025, while the decision to abandon the joint management process probably means that conservation equivalency is no longer an option, and that a single set of coastwide management measures will govern the federal waters fishery.

Anglers would be bound to follow federal rules when fishing more than three miles offshore, even if those rules were more restrictive than those prevailing in state waters. (It’s probably important to note that in the northern states, where very restrictive state regulations prevail, federal regulations might be more lenient than the state rules.)

That will create a serious law enforcement problem. Poaching has long been rife in the black sea bass fishery, particularly in the party boat fleet, where captains and crew often turn a blind eye to illegal activities.

For example, one notable incident that occurred off the New Jersey coast saw fishermen retain hundreds of illegal black sea bass, but the captain dismissed any obligation to police such conduct, saying “I’m not getting paid by the state of New Jersey to take fish out of people’s buckets.” In another well-publicized case, customers of a Montauk, New York party boat were cited for taking many illegal black sea bass, and about 1,800 additional fish were left on board by customers who abandoned their loaded coolers rather than face stiff fines for taking scores of fish above and beyond the 3-fish bag limit.

Those incidents occurred a few years ago, but the September 2024 newsletter of the Suffolk [County, New York] Alliance of Sportsman carried a report authored by Capt. Tom Gadomski of the Department of Environmental Conservation’s police unit, who described environmental conservation officers’ recent boarding of another Montauk party boat, writing, “Once the officers started to board the vessel, passengers started throwing illegal fish, from their coolers, into the water. The officers ordered all the passengers to not dump their fish. The officers observed many individuals in possession of mostly over limit and undersized Black Sea Bass…Multiple tickets were issued, for unlawful take or possession of fish not of legal size, unlawful take or possession of species over limit and one individual was charged with dumping, upon signal to stop.”

Given the limited resources available to enforce fisheries laws, and also given the lawless attitudes that prevail in some segments of the angling community, it is all too easy to envision vessels sneaking across the three-mile line into federal waters to take advantage of their abundance of fish, landing many sea bass that don’t comply with federal regulations, and then, if boarded back at the dock, claiming that all of the fish were taken legally in state waters and in compliance with all applicable state rules.

Because black sea bass are managed as a single stock, with no distinction made between state and federal waters landings, the disparate regulations could see high landings in state waters resulting in extremely restrictive federal waters regulations that place traditionally productive offshore wrecks and rockpiles off-limits to anglers for almost all of the year.

But perhaps the greatest threat posed by the decision to abandon joint management of the black sea bass resource is that it set a precedent that the management board, or other ASMFC species management boards, will fall back on in the future when confronted by a difficult and potentially unpopular decision.

Many members of the management board were conscious of that issue when they cast their votes, and made comments that expressed their concern. Michael Luisi spoke about the importance of joint management, and noted that “the outcome can be chaotic” if such management was abandoned, but voted to suspend the joint management process anyway. Joseph Cimino, the New Jersey fisheries manager, recognized the potential issues, but opined that “the pros outweigh the cons.”

Even James Gilmore, who made the motion to abandon joint management, acknowledged that “Our jobs are to serve the resource,” and admitted that “If we don’t follow the rules…it would just be chaotic.” But in the end, if a person tries hard enough, they can always find a good reason to do the wrong thing and so, in reference to the stock assessment, the SSC’s advice, or perhaps to both, he declared that “this one, it doesn’t make any sense,” and moved to sever the skein of cooperation between the council and management board, thus greasing an already slippery slope and making it that much easier to do the wrong thing the next time a difficult decision looms.

Now, managers, stakeholders, and the black sea bass resource can only wait to find out what long-term consequences his decision might bring.