Asbury Park Press 12/21
Flawed science puts fluke in jeopardy
By JOHN GEISER • CORRESPONDENT • December 21, 2007
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The future of the recreational fluke fishery is in danger and anglers are getting no sympathy from the leadership of the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission.
John V. O'Shea, executive director of the ASMFC, has been especially critical of the recreational sector and that community is responding.
Tony Bogan, a former member of the Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council and president of the United Boatmen of New Jersey and New York, articulated the widespread recreational dissatisfaction with O'Shea's comments.
"Nine or 10 times a year, O'Shea expresses his thoughts and feelings in the ASMFC periodical, "Fisheries Focus," in a column, "From the Executive Director's Desk,' " Bogan said.
"While undoubtedly a bureaucratic position such as the one held by him requires someone who is jack-of-all-trades, so to speak, unfortunately his column in the most recent edition proves once again that he is, apparently, a master of none," Bogan continued.
"Perhaps the executive director of the ASMFC should spend a little less time trying to be a scientist and a little more time trying to "direct' the ASMFC toward improving the way it manages our fisheries," he added.
Bogan bristles at the first sentence of this month's column from the executive director, pointing out that it "demonstrates that he truly lacks a grasp of what has recently transpired with summer flounder."
"Summer flounder, also known as fluke, were propelled into the national spotlight last year when recreational fishermen convinced Congress to make a one-species exception to the law requiring federal fishery management plans to rebuild stocks within a specific time period, generally within 10 years," O'Shea wrote.
"In reality, both commercial and recreational fishermen were involved in the changes to the Magnuson-Stevens Reauthorization Act, and the goal was to build flexibility into the management of all species," Bogan stressed.
"That was rejected, and what we got was a three-year extension of the fluke rebuilding time frame only, which was supported by all aspects of the fishery, not solely recreational fishermen," he added.
"O'Shea continues with comments that read as if Lee Crockett of the Pew Foundation had written them, extolling the virtues of summer flounder fisheries science as if the lead scientist was enthroned on Mt. Olympus," Bogan said.
"The quality of the scientific data on fluke is among the best for mid-Atlantic species," O'Shea wrote. "State and federal scientists work together to prepare fluke assessments. Their results and the current modeling approach have been peer-reviewed by independent fisheries scientists 16 times in the last 23 years (Most species are peer-reviewed every five years)."
Bogan counters: "What O'Shea, like Crockett, fails to mention is that the rebuilding targets have been repeatedly revised, each time lower and lower.
"In the most recent review, in 2005, the peer-reviewers made changes that drastically increased what the scientists had estimated as the current level of spawning stock biomass — a figure the scientists had generated using this "best science,' " Bogan stressed.
O'Shea claimed that the fact that stock rebuilding appears stalled recently can be explained straightforwardly by science:
"Management action, first implemented in the 1990s, reduced fishing mortality (F) and allowed the stock to improve, while several years of high recruitment (an infrequent event for fluke) further aided progress.
"But while managers have succeeded in lowering F from the levels of the 1980s, F has yet to be lowered to the level determined necessary to rebuild the stock," O'Shea went on.
"Simply put, removals due to commercial and recreational landings, discards and unreported landings exceed the capacity of the stock to rebuild," he contended. "The fact that the stock appears stalled while F is high is consistent with what scientists would expect to see ..."
Bogan pointed out that one of the steps being taken by the new organization Save the Summer Flounder Fishery Fund is the hiring of independent scientists to review the current scientific data used to manage the summer flounder fishery as well as review the conclusions derived from that data.
"The "science' that O'Shea refers to is only as good as the data put into the models," Bogan emphasized. "One significant part of the data that he refers to is the "recreational landings and discards.'
"This data, as most fishermen are aware, is based solely and exclusively on the Marine Recreational Fisheries Statistics Survey (MRFSS)," Bogan continued. "And MRFSS was declared to be "fatally flawed' by scientific review done in 2005 by the National Academy of Science, at the behest of the National Marine Fisheries Service.
"While MRFSS may well be the "best available' data since it is currently the only data used by scientists and fisheries managers, it is certainly not the only data available," Bogan stressed.
"For years, fishermen have been asking ... no, begging ... the ASMFC and NMFS to look at hard, factual data avilable to augment the poor and woefully inadequate data that come from MRFSS.
"Data such as log books from party and charter boats (which must be kept under federal fisheries permit rules); marine fuel sales, marina splash numbers of boats hauled and launched each year; even state boat registrations and National Weather Service data (generated by the same government body that controls NMFS, namely the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration," he added.
"All of this information has continuously refuted MRFSS data that has claimed ever-increasing effort and participation in the recreational sector," Bogan noted.
"Instead of using this information, both NMFS and the ASMFC continue to ignore it as "anecdotal,' while hiding behind their "fatally flawed' data system known as MRFSS."
"As a member of the Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council for three years, I asked O'Shea if he was aware of the first review of MRFSS done in 2000. He stated he was.
"However, I have yet to hear O'Shea discuss the changes that review suggested or the problems it found, let alone even mention the possibility of using any other data to prop up the shaky foundation named MRFSS," Bogan added.
"O'Shea is quick to sing the praises of the data, but conveniently falls silent when the shortcomings of that same data are brought up," Bogan concluded.
It just shows you "a Fish like ASMFC stinks from the head down"
