July 31, 2012 — Last fall, you helped in the historical process of beginning to change the way this fishery works. The ASMFC voted to set a new overfishing threshold and target in order to create a sustainable fishery. Now the time has come for the ASMFC to set the rules for the 2013 season and beyond. This is the first time in the history of this fishery that there will be an actual limit placed upon the amount of bunker that can be removed from the waters.
Starting with August 8ths meeting, the ASMFC will be meeting to revise management goals and implement new rules for the commercial harvest of menhaden. As we get closer to the final decision in October, you will begin to hear rumblings from many different angles all in an effort to delay the decision and to avoid catch reduction of any kind. This rhetoric will undoubtedly try to sway public opinion and attempt to derail the management process and utilize the usual “bad science” and “faulty data collection” talk.
We as recreational fisherman and concerned citizens, have had ENOUGH of this talk. We are tired of the future of our waters being determined by commercial financial interests. We are tired of the needs of a few benefiting at the expense of the masses. The ASMFC must not delay in any way and move forward so these fish can rebound NOW.
The facts are in and current data has made it very clear that overfishing has occurred 52 out of the past 54 years. Population levels of this species have dwindled from 200 billion fish down 88% to an all time, century low of 20 billion fish. Older, egg laden adult fish continue to be taken out of our waters in very large numbers and the overall biomass of menhaden has shrunk. Historically, there were evenly distributed schools, with millions of fish of many different ages spread from Florida to Maine and all points in between.
Even in areas such as Raritan Bay, New Jersey, where the bunker are plentiful, the fish are smaller. Yes, there are still some nice size schools present, but the absence of the larger, older adult fish is obvious. Clearly, we need to say goodbye to the large scale, industrialized methods that are strip mining our coastal waters daily.
Read the full story on Stripers Online
Analysis: The article “East Coast: Increase the Population of Menhaden” from Stripers Online states that the issues raised with the validity of recent menhaden stock assessments are, “an attempt to derail the management process” and have only been deployed to prevent regulation of the commercial fishery. This view ignores the many people outside of the menhaden fishery that have concluded that the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission (ASMFC) does not have the best available science to make management decisions.
The ASMFC’s own Menhaden Technical Committee has pointed out several critical flaws in the 2012 menhaden update stock assessment and the stock assessment model, indicating that it might not be suitable for management advice. At their May 29th meeting, the Committee observed that the update assessment revealed a retrospective pattern, meaning that the estimates in previous population assessments contradicted the population estimates in the current assessment, and needed to be revised in order to fit the more current data. The appearance of retrospective patterns in stock assessments is a sign that a particular assessment model may not be working and that the data being produced is not reliable.
Other issues included inconsistencies between the abundance predictions of adults and juveniles, and using the wrong shaped graphical representation of age distribution caught by the fishery. These issues have led the Technical Committee and Stock the Assessment Subcommittee to consider the recommendation that the ASMFC Menhaden Management Board conduct a new benchmark assessment as soon as possible, rather than using the critically flawed 2012 update to inform the regulatory process.
The menhaden committees of Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission are not the only ones who believe that better science is needed to make good management decisions. In April 2012 several members of Congress wrote to the ASMFC and asked that changes be made to the assessment, such as the inclusion aerial survey data, to ensure more scientifically sound assessments before using them as the basis of management decisions.
The article also states, “current data has made it very clear that overfishing has occurred 52 out of the past 54 years.” However, this is highly inaccurate. According to the last peer reviewed stock assessment in 2010, the occurrences of overfishing have been decreasing. In fact, overfishing has only occurred in two of the last fifteen years.