In the Herald...

Check out my op-ed in today's Miami Herald..

http://www.miamiherald.com/opinion/other-views/story/1398667.html



Posted on Sat, Dec. 26, 2009
Give fish populations a safety margin

BY JORGE P. GUTIERREZ JR.
jpg2esq@gmail.com

As an angler and father, I want to see vulnerable fish populations managed conservatively.
The South Atlantic Fishery Management Council, which sets fishing policies from North Carolina to Florida, approved sweeping new rules this month to help end overfishing of nine imperiled species.

The council also worked out some details of a long-term red snapper recovery plan, which includes a ban on red snapper fishing and closing some areas of the ocean to all bottom fishing.

During the contentious debates over these proposals, there's been too much arguing over the validity of the data and not enough about how to manage these fish sustainably for the future.

At the heart of the matter is whether to manage populations for ``maximum sustainable yield'' vs. ``optimum yield.''

The former allows commercial fishers and anglers to stress populations to the very limits of their abilities to reproduce themselves. The latter leaves a ``buffer'' or ``insurance policy'' in case scientific studies and predictions are overly optimistic or an unexpected event occurs, such as a major red tide and attendant large-scale fish kills. It also ensures healthy populations in the face of new threats such as invasive lionfish that could seriously affect the region's fish populations.

Meanwhile, there's never been more pressure put on these fish populations thanks to a booming human population in coastal zones. This wave of baby boomers and others has led to large-scale and wholly unsustainable development in sensitive areas. I shudder to think about how much essential fish habitat has been destroyed along the southeastern Atlantic by coastal construction and about the impacts to water quality from sources of pollution, including sedimentation by unsustainable construction practices and nutrient loading from fertilizers and other sources. As you lose habitat, you get a related drop in fish populations.

At the same time, the crush of folks moving to the coasts has heavily increased the demand for fresh seafood.

Many of these people are well off and can afford to invest in a well-equipped fishing boat. Outboard technology has made fishing offshore in smaller boats a safe thing to do. Global Positioning Systems and incredible sonar sensitivity, among other advances, make it relatively easy to learn where to fish for long-lived species such as snappers and groupers.

Look, we're not talking about something as relatively straightforward as waterfowl management. As an avid duck hunter, I appreciate the challenges that waterfowl biologists face in counting birds. But they're not working under water. They have a highly reliable data collection program. Sophisticated computer modeling allows managers to react immediately, prior to hunting season if the harvest strategy looks too aggressive.

With fish-population assessments, managers face real challenges. The amount of commercial fishing has reached industrial levels. It is challenging to conduct independent studies on fish life cycles under water. And it is difficult to keep accurate track of how much fish recreational anglers harvest.

You could argue that these challenges make the data suspect, but you would then have to proceed with the reckless assumption that everything is OK even when the data overwhelmingly show a massive imbalance in the population's age range -- trending strongly toward younger, less fertile fish.

Sportsmen should be by definition conservationists, and I encourage our community to stay at the table through these closures and beyond.

The South Atlantic Council needs to be reminded of our conservation legacy and guided through ways to achieve a more real-time data collection system so that no more heavy-handed surprise punishments pop up.

It's also a great time for the Council to reflect on the economic and social values of sportfishing -- before the fishery is reopened and allotments of fish are cautiously doled out in a truly sustainable formula.

Jorge Gutierrez is a Miami-based attorney who is actively involved in wildlife management issues.