A Policy for Oceans

"I still believe the cod fishery. . . . and probably all the great sea-fisheries are inexhaustible; that is to say that nothing we can do seriously affects the number of fish." Thus wrote the eminent British marine biologist, Thomas Huxley. The year was 1883. Barely more than a decade later Atlantic halibut were commercially extinct in North American waters, and Eastern markets were importing Pacific halibut from the Northwest. The demise of other highly-sought species followed quickly. These days marine biology is a far more sophisticated enterprise; and no one believes Huxley. We just act like we do.

US oceans policy for state, federal and international waters-particularly as it pertains to the management of marine fish-makes the IRS tax code look as if it were dictated by Calvin Coolidge. At this writing, that policy is determined by six frequently squabbling departments representing different or conflicting interests in three geographical jurisdictions under 140 statutes. In those rare cases where commercial fish quotas are prudent and science-based they are set by federal judges in spite of managers. Basically, marine fish management in the United states (and most everywhere else, for that matter) is an oxymoron.

For readers of Fly Rod & Reel this is hardly news. What is news, however, is that the public is starting to ask why, and Congress and the private sectors are starting to provide answers. By the time you read this a US Commission on Ocean Policy, established and funded three years ago under the Oceans Act, will have sent a draft of its study to the governor of each state. The governors get 30 days to comment, then the final draft goes to the administration and Congress. The administration gets 90 days to formulate an oceans policy. Then it's up to Congress to hatch some laws that work.

Current laws don't work. Take the Magnuson Fishery Conservation and Management Act of 1976 that extended our territorial waters out to 200 miles and set up eight regional fisheries management councils. It succeeded in stopping foreign vessels from killing off the last of our mackerel, herring, billfish, sharks, tunas and groundfish. It also assured the continued depletion of these stocks by subsidizing the US commercial fleet, which doubled in size from 1977 to 1983, and by requiring the councils to be staffed largely by people who profit from commercial fishing. This system has been about as effective as asking 5th graders to write their scholastic curricula. On all three coasts the result has been entire school years of lunch and recess.

On June 4, 2003 the Pew Charitable Trusts primed the oceans policy process by releasing a lavish, four-color, 144-page report entitled America's Living Oceans, researched and written by 18 politically prominent but eminently qualified "ocean commissioners" over three years with a $3.5 million Pew grant. The strategy was to provide governors, Congress, administration and public a cogent outline of what ails the oceans and what we need to do to make them healthy again. The hope is by the time they read the federal study they'll understand the issues. Especially impressive are the fisheries sections of the Pew report. Frankly, I was expecting popcorn; I got ribeye. You can read the report by logging onto www.pewoceans.org.

A month earlier the Marine Conservation Biology Institute (MCBI) released another Pew-funded study called "Shifting Gears." This document, too, was valuable in pushing the nation toward an oceans policy process because it examined how we fish instead of just how many fish we extract from the sea. All but two percent of the 235,000 known sea animals live in or on the bottom. So it may be less hurtful to a fish stock to kill four times the quota with longlines than a quarter of the quota with bottom trawls that clearcut or crush habitat, leveling all structure including cobles, rocks, corals, sponges, sea fans, mussels, seagrass and kelp. The report substantiated what recreational fishermen have been saying all along-that the gear most harmful to marine ecosystems are: bottom trawls, dredges, bottom gillnets and midwater gillnets, while some of the least harmful (except when used to excess) were midwater trawls, purse seines and hook-and-line.

The Pew Oceans Commission, which also addressed the issue of fishing gear, suggested a zoning program. Bottom trawls for squid over sand bottoms might be okay, for example. But they should be banned on bottoms with significant structure-i.e. most bottoms. While some areas escape trawls because they are relatively fishless, on average each square foot of the world's continental shelves gets razed by bottom trawls every two years. Clearcuts via bottom trawl have been estimated by MCBI's Dr. Elliott Norse (the guy who coined the word "biodiversity") to exceed the area of forest clearcuts by a factor of 150.

Both the commission and MCBI examine bycatch, or "bykill," as it is more accurately called. Currently about a quarter of all fish caught by commercial fishermen everywhere in the world are dumped at sea. There's virtually no live release when you haul fish up in a big, tight ball and they throw up their air bladders or when they soak three days on a longline with hooks in their gills and gullets.

While longlines are easy on habitat, they're murder on bykill. Marlin (especially whites) and sea turtles (especially Pacific leatherbacks) are being critically depressed by tuna and swordfish longlines. The Cape Cod Commercial Hook Fishermen's Association-which targets mostly groundfish and dogfish-doesn't destroy habitat and uses relatively short longlines easy on seabirds and turtles. Therefore it is gushed over by environmentalists. The association, along with groups like the Ocean Conservancy, is even a member of the Marine Conservation Network, and it is funded by many of the same environmental foundations, including the Pew Charitable Trusts. But last year dogfish bykill in the groundfish-directed hook fishery was about 40 times worse than for gillnetters.

Smalltooth sawfish-a species that used to range from the Gulf of Mexico to New York-are now restricted to isolated areas in the Everglades and keys. Only a couple thousand survive, and on April 1, 2003 they became the first non-anadromous marine fish to be federally listed as endangered. They face extinction primarily because they've been caught in nets by accident; in fact, without Florida's gillnet ban they might already be extinct. Barndoor skates-nearly as big as their namesakes-and thorny skates aren't listed yet, but they face extinction, too. No one fishes for them; they're bottom-trawl bykill.