Fish Story

uring her first three weeks as head of the National Marine Fisheries Service, Penelope Dalton got a rude introduction to running a federal agency. A former congressional staffer accustomed to acting anonymously behind the scenes rather than in the public spotlight, Dalton had to give a speech and sign a memorandum of understanding on marine education (a subject she then knew little about), oversee a review of 58 new management plans developed by regional fishery councils, and approve controversial new rules for Pacific Northwest salmon and for migratory Atlantic fish such as marlin and tuna. Dalton also had to explain the new rules to members of Congress, fishermen, environmentalists and the press.

"It was slightly terrifying," admits Dalton, NMFS director and assistant administrator of its parent agency, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, a unit of the Commerce Department. "I wasn't always very sure where I was, but [the NMFS staff and my audiences] were very nice to me. They knew I was a beginner, even though I had been working on these issues for years."

The subjects Dalton addressed those first weeks on the job last year symbolize the controversial nature of the issues facing the National Marine Fisheries Service. They also illustrate NMFS' historical dual mission of promoting fishing as an important part of the U.S. economy while preserving and restoring dwindling numbers of fish, shellfish and other marine animals. And they demonstrate the changing nature of NMFS' function on the high seas.

NMFS was once a relatively little-known science agency that collected data and conducted studies, but played only a minor role in overseeing day-to-day fishing. Today, it issues more than 400 rules a year-fourth-highest among federal agencies-governing where, when and how fishermen can fish. And NMFS is growing. President Clinton has requested $657 million for the agency in fiscal 2001, up from $383 million this year. The agency, which has 2,200 employees, regulates an annual commercial harvest that totaled 9.6 billion pounds of fish and shellfish worth an estimated $3.7 billion in 1998. Deep-sea recreational fishing, also regulated by NMFS, added 312 million fish caught and 135 million kept, weighing 195 million pounds.

Moreover, NMFS has changed its outlook. The agency once promoted the U.S. fishing industry, helping it locate prime fishing areas and develop new markets and products. It also enforced the 200-mile coastal zone created by Congress to keep foreign fishing vessels out of U.S. waters and loaned money to help American fishermen buy new boats and equipment. NMFS still aids the fishing industry to some extent, but now devotes considerably more attention and money to conserving marine resources and the coastal and sea floor habitats that fish, shellfish and other seagoing critters need to survive.

Becoming Conservationists

In part, NMFS' changed role is due to pressure by an increasingly vocal conservation community that itself only recently has come to recognize the importance of marine life. Agency officials "have listened and responded to conservationists, albeit often grudgingly," says Elliott Norse, president of the Marine Conservation Biology Institute, a Redmond, Wash., environmental group. Several laws enacted since 1972 have also given NMFS more responsibility for conserving marine resources.

NMFS officials have come to realize that the oceans' living resources, like those on shore, are finite. "We were woefully late in recognizing the importance of the health of the resource and the habitat," admits Rolland Schmitten, Dalton's predecessor as NMFS director, who is now the Commerce Department's deputy assistant secretary for international affairs. "We've shifted our thrust to protect all fisheries. We know that conserving the resource is our first job."

In attempting to make that shift, however, NMFS has opened itself up to controversy on all sides. "NMFS has a mission that doesn't work," Norse says. "Promoting fishing conflicts with conservation. They often promote and manage fisheries as if that is the only thing that counts. NMFS sees fishermen as their primary constituency. They've allowed themselves to become captives of the fishing industry. They've got few people with unorthodox opinions or approaches."

But James O'Malley, executive director of the East Coast Fisheries Association, which represents owner-operators of small New England and mid-Atlantic vessels, makes exactly the opposite argument. NMFS officials "no longer promote seafood consumption," he charges. "I can't think of a single thing they have done to promote fisheries in years. They are solely concerned with protecting the resource. At one time [NMFS employees] came from fishing families. Most today have never been near a fishing boat."

Actually, says Andrew Rosenberg, NMFS' deputy director, neither the fishing industry nor the conservation community represent the agency's true constituency. "They are our vocal constituencies," Rosenberg says. "Our true constituency is the general public. We manage marine resources for the entire nation. I take that responsibility very seriously and so does the agency. Our job is to do the science that enables fishing to happen."

"We are both a natural resources agency and an agency that assists the seafood industry," Dalton says. "In recent years, we have focused most on natural resources, but we have to do a better job of finding a balance between using and protecting those resources. Our task is to help the fishing industry better recognize the need to participate in resource protection. We have to make them contributors to conservation."

Too Few Fish

That marine resources need conservation few would argue. In all, Rosenberg says, 40 percent of U.S. fisheries are over-harvested. Of the 300 species on which NMFS has reliable data, 90 are fished at levels above what agency scientists and outside experts believe their population can sustain. Another 10 are approaching an overfished condition. Those numbers are expected to rise next year as NMFS applies tougher definitions mandated by the 1996 Sustainable Fisheries Act. Worldwide, a 1994 United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization report estimated that 30 percent of important species are being overfished.

The number of Atlantic cod, once a mainstay of New England fisheries, is at one-fourth the level NMFS scientists believe it should be. The number of cod caught that are 10 years or older dropped from 86,000 in 1985 to 3,000 in 1997. The swordfish catch has declined by one-fourth in the last four years. The haddock take today is but 2 percent of past levels. Too few Atlantic halibut remain for fishermen to actively target.

"The fish aren't there to catch any more," says William Amaru, a South Orleans, Mass., fisherman and a member of the New England Fishery Management Council. "I've suffered more from the lack of fish than from any [NMFS] restrictions on fishing. We have to figure out how to bring the fish back without harming thousands of people."

Beyond overfishing, there is also what fishermen call "bycatch." About one of every four fish caught by commercial fisherman is thrown back because it is too small, not the species sought or caught at the wrong time or place. Many discarded fish die. Some 27 million tons of fish are lost globally as bycatch, the 1994 United Nations report said. Although no figures exist yet on the amount of bycatch by U.S. fishermen, NMFS says the highest discard-to-retain ratios result from shrimp trawling in the Gulf of Mexico.

"We have a responsibility to the future," says Hilda Diaz-Soltero, former director of NMFS' Protected Resources Office, who is now with the U.S. Forest Service. "If we do not conserve the resource and make it sustainable, the resource will be destroyed. We have to err on the side of the fish. We are the stewards of the resource."

Until the Sustainable Fisheries Act, NMFS was severely limited in how it could protect fish and their habitats. The agency is still hampered by the fact that the fishing industry is extremely diverse. Issues, problems and outlooks among fishermen change from species to species, from fishery to fishery, from commercial to recreational fishing, from single-boat to fleet operators, from coast to coast and even from port to port, Schmitten says.

Even now, NMFS does not directly regulate fishing. That key task is largely left to eight regional fishery councils, created under the 1976 Fishery Conservation and Management Act, popularly known as the Magnuson Act after then-Sen. Warren Magnuson, D-Wash. The regional councils draw up plans for when, where, how and how many of each fish or related group of fish and shellfish can be caught each year. The councils' plans are advisory only. NMFS, acting through the Secretary of Commerce, can reject a council's plan in whole or in part, can send the plan back to the council for revision or can substitute its own plan.

But until this year, NMFS rarely rejected the regional councils' plans. The agency returned about one-fourth of the 58 plans submitted in 1998 and 1999. None was rejected in full, says Gary Matlock, director of NMFS' Office of Sustainable Fisheries, but certain portions were sent back for revision. Nevertheless, the agency usually relies on the councils, which have their own directors and staffs, but get a total of $13 million in funding from NMFS. "We go to extremes to make the council process work," Matlock adds. "We do not want to unilaterally substitute our actions for theirs."

Restriction and Recovery

At one time, the regional councils were dominated by fishermen and representatives of fishing companies, processors and trade associations. Not surprisingly, their plans emphasized harvests, not conservation. That began to change in the early 1990s. "We wanted people who would take the long-term perspective," says William Fox Jr., NMFS' director of science and technology. As NMFS director from 1990 to 1993, Fox insisted that state governors, who nominate most council members, submit several names for each vacancy. "We wanted people who were more interested in recovery of fish stocks than in pointing fingers," he adds. Now the councils' members include fishermen, academic experts, conservationists, heads of state fishery agencies and NMFS regional directors.

Recently, some fish whose numbers were depleted have begun to recover. Nowhere is the change more evident than in New England, where a fishermen-dominated council once fought NMFS tooth and nail. Cod, yellowtail flounder, haddock and other groundfish numbers have increased steadily since NMFS closed one-third of the Georges Bank in the Atlantic Ocean off Cape Cod to fishing in 1996 and reduced the number of days open for fishing by one-half, says Paul Howard, executive director of the New England Fishery Management Council.

Earlier this year, the New England council proposed restricting fishing in the Gulf of Maine, closing some areas altogether and others for specific times while reducing the quota for cod caught in the gulf by 85 percent. "We probably put 700 people out of work," Howard says. He estimates lost revenues will total $7 million to $20 million. "If we didn't protect those [cod] stocks now, they would have eventually collapsed," he explains.

Likewise, in Alaska, the North Pacific Fishery Management Council has set strict harvest limits for each species, and has declared that total takes in the Bering Sea cannot top 2 million metric tons. "We fish conservatively," says Clarence Pautzke, the North Pacific Council's executive director. "We have very good control over how much is caught. We count and weigh everything. We close down fisheries when limits are reached. Our fishermen may bellyache, but they go home."

The North Pacific Fishery Management Council has also adopted a controversial management tool for reducing overfishing of declining species. Most observers agree that too many fishermen are chasing too few fish. "Anyone with a boat and a license can fish," notes Michael Weber, a former special assistant to the NMFS director. The solution: Regulate the number of fish caught for specific species by assigning a limited number of licenses to individual fishermen or boats based on the number currently fishing and the allowable take.

Now "individual fishing quotas" (known as "individual transferable quotas" if holders can sell or transfer them to others) are being used to replace licenses issued for specific species with no limit on the number of fishermen or boats. The latter system encourages fishermen to go to sea no matter the weather or condition of their boats in order to harvest as much as they can as fast as they can, lest those fish be lost to other fishermen. Such "derby fishing," has helped make fishing an even riskier job than it traditionally has been. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration ranks fishing as the nation's most dangerous vocation, killing 131 people a year per 100,000 employees.

NMFS approved the regional council's plans to set individual fishing quotas for halibut and sablefish in Alaska in 1995 after a four-year debate. Already, Pautzke credits the quotas with improving safety while ensuring fishermen access to the fish. "You can go out anytime during the season to fish," he says. "The derby nature is gone, safety is up, less [fishing] gear is lost, fishermen are getting a higher price and customers are getting fish of higher quality."

Nationwide, NMFS has adopted similar quotas for wreckfish, surf clams and quahogs (a large clam with a hard shell) in the Atlantic, and Atlantic bluefin tuna caught in purse seine nets. Responding to some fishermen's concerns that quotas allow fleet operators to dominate fishing, Congress voted a four-year moratorium on their use in 1996. "We aggressively campaigned for [quotas] before," Schmitten says. "I will ask Congress to remove the moratorium and allow the choice to rest with the fishing community and councils."

Such a request may run into opposition, though. Individual fishing quotas "create another piece of paper that is worth money," says Sen. Ted Stevens, R-Alaska, author of the 1996 Sustainable Fishing Act, which included the congressional ban. "That's bad. It requires fishermen to acquire paper as well as a boat. It would erect a barrier to future generations of fishermen and hinder modernization. It's another way for investors and big banks to get into what has traditionally been a mom-and-pop business."

Not if you do it right, says the North Pacific Council's Pautzke. "We put limits on how much fish an individual boat or company could possess," he says. "We wanted an owner-operated fleet. We adopted rules that require owners to operate their own boats." Still, Pautzke acknowledges, however quotas are done, they will reduce the number of fishermen, some who of whom will complain to their congressional representatives.

Indeed, angry fishermen can alter even the best-laid plans of NMFS and the regional councils. To reduce overfishing for flounder, the New England Council closed trawling for scallops in some portions of Georges Bank in 1995. Bottom-dwelling flounder are often accidentally caught in scallop trawls. Scallopers complained to the Massachusetts congressional delegation that they use highly specialized boats and cannot easily switch to other fish. After four years of political pressure, a joint NMFS-fishermen study found growing numbers of flounder. As a result, NMFS agreed to allow each scallop fishermen to take three trips total from June to December with a 10,000-pound limit.

On the Hook

Unlike the National Park Service and other federal land management agencies, NMFS does not own any of the areas it seeks to protect, notes Garry Mayer, director of NMFS' Office of Habitat Conservation. "Our job is to help identify and facilitate the acquisition of areas that need protection," Mayer adds.

As part of that effort, NMFS is helping restore coastal habitats damaged by oil spills, development or other human activities. In Narragansett Bay in Rhode Island, for example, NMFS is using $500,000 in money obtained in a court settlement following a diesel spill to plant sea grass, restore coastal marshes that are home to small fish and other marine animals, and rebuild a lobster reef. Altogether, Mayer says, NMFS is restoring fish habitats at more than 50 sites.

NMFS also helps local communities restore coastal habitats. The agency awards grants of $250,000 or more, plus "whatever other money we can beg or steal," Mayer says. In one such case, NMFS and the American Sport Fishing Association combined to help build culverts under a road in northeastern Massachusetts that had cut off a coastal salt-water marsh from the sea. The culverts allow sea water to flow in and out of the marsh, thus keeping it salty and available to fish and shellfish for spawning.

Whether the programs and management plans NMFS and the regional fishery councils have adopted are sufficient to protect coastal habitats, prevent overfishing and rebuild fish stocks remains to be seen. A number of conservationists are skeptical, however. A 1998 report by the Marine Conservation Fish Network, a Washington-based consortium, said the 58 plans submitted by the councils did not go far enough or fast enough in proposing specific ways to protect marine ecosystems, minimize the effects of overfishing and reduce bycatch.

"The plans won't achieve the goals of the [1996 Sustainable Fisheries] Act," says Lee Crockett, the Marine Conservation Fish Network's executive director. NMFS "is on the hook for overfishing. They should step in and write their own plans if the councils don't act" to correct the
deficiencies.

Some of the criticisms are fair, NMFS' Dalton acknowledges. "We have not done enough to stop overfishing and rebuild stocks," she says. These are complicated issues with a lot of legal requirements and different participants and interests to balance. We've made a lot of mistakes, but we'll get better as we learn what works."

Jeffrey P. Cohn is a Washington-area journalist who writes frequently for Government Executive.