Donate Now »
Be a hero for the ocean! Become an Ocean Partner.

• Who We Are
• Where We Work
• Issues
• Fish & Wildlife
• Take Action
• Support Us
• News Room

Overfishing Scorecard

We all benefit from abundant, healthy fish populations, not just for seafood and jobs, but to help maintain the balance and health of ocean ecosystems. But recently, numerous scientific studies including the President’s own U.S. Commission on Ocean Policy, and the independent Pew Oceans Commission concluded that we have thrown our most productive ocean ecosystems out of balance, and that one of the primary causes behind failing ocean health is overfishing. (Read the reports and learn more about the Joint Ocean Commission Initiative.)

For over a decade, The Ocean Conservancy has worked with regional fishery councils as well as officials in Washington, D.C. to find responsible ways to manage America’s fisheries. We are working toward solutions that allow us to meet current needs without jeopardizing the opportunities for future generations—solutions that allow us to leave a legacy of wild, healthy oceans and sustainable American fisheries.

A part of this effort is our Overfishing Scorecard. The Scorecard uses data supplied annually from the National Marine Fisheries Service to Congress in a report called The Status of the Stocks. This report summarizes the known data from each of the eight regional fish councils and reports on their progress toward ending overfishing and rebuilding overfished stocks as mandated by the 1996 Sustainable Fisheries Act.

The goal of The Ocean Conservancy’s Overfishing Scorecard is to highlight the activities of the regional fish councils that are helping to end overfishing and rebuild overfished fish stocks. By finding and highlighting strategies that work— we intend to:

• share solutions;
• provide important perspective by comparing management across regions;
• highlight progress—or problems—in areas that might not be readily apparent;
• encourage best practices;
• and advance the dialogue about how to achieve sustainable fisheries throughout U.S. waters.

The Scorecard was first introduced at the annual Managing Our Nation’s Fisheries (http://www.managingfisheries.org/) conference in Washington, D.C. in March 2005. We intend to update the report card each year upon the release of the annual Status of the Stocks report.

Overfishing Scorecard

Results

Some regions and some fisheries are close to achieving the goal of ending overfishing and rebuilding depleted fish stocks, but persistent overfishing continues in many important U.S. fisheries. Using status determinations from the most recent report to Congress by the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS), scores for ending overfishing and rebuilding depleted stocks are as follows for the major stocks in each region. Note that management in each region is not the sole responsibility of the Management Councils. Jurisdiction is typically shared among the Councils, NMFS, states, and in some cases, international entities. Thus, scores should be interpreted as an evaluation of overall management success for federal fishery management in a region.

The scores measure success at avoiding or ending overfishing and rebuilding depleted (overfished) stocks. Scores are reported for all of the "major" stocks with a single Management Council responsible for federal management. These scores are derived from table 1, pages 7-8 of The Status of U. S. Fisheries, 2003, the annual report that is provided to Congress by NMFS. The "% change" column reports the change in the score since the first report on stock status in 1997. The data used to calculate these scores are presented in table 1. The scores reported in table 1 were calculated as described below (Methods).

Best Management Practices

Progress in ending overfishing and rebuilding depleted fish stocks has been limited by the failure of managers to end persistent overfishing in a number of important fisheries, including some that have experienced overfishing every year since reporting began in 1997. Further progress will require concerted efforts to end overfishing in these problematic fisheries where overfishing is a long-term problem. How can these problems be corrected?

One useful approach is to identify the best management practices that have produced success where it currently exists and to begin to utilize these approaches where management has been less successful. To identify the best management practices that produce success, we applied the scoring method developed for table 1 to compare the success of individual Fishery Management Plans at ending overfishing and rebuilding depleted stocks. This comparison should allow us to identify the management practices that produce success. These results, presented in table 2, show that some regions have generally higher scores, but success rates do vary within each region. Thus, management performance and success cannot be solely attributed to regional factors.

What is the basis for success at the fishery level? To address this question, we developed a list of candidate "best management practices" that we expected might be responsible for success where it exists. To identify which fisheries use these candidate best practices, we developed the following list of questions:

1. Are target stocks assessed?
2. Has overcapacity been prevented or eliminated?
3. In general, are catch levels constrained by quota-type limits on landings?
4. Are catch limits adequately monitored and enforced?
5. In general, are catches below targets or quotas?
6. Is bycatch monitoring routine and reliable?
7. Are fish stocks protected by bycatch caps or limits?
8. Is MSY established, or are MSY proxies established?
9. Are target fishing rates established at levels below MSY or MSY proxies?

The questions are "yes" or "no" questions, and the range of answers include "yes," "no," and "partial yes." For complex situations, "yes" is reasonable even if the answer is not "100% yes." For example, if a fishery has most target stocks assessed, then "target stocks assessed" could be answered "yes" even if a few minor stocks have not been assessed. The goal is to determine the general character of each fishery. "Yes" or "no" were used where answers were clearly yes or no, and also where some exceptions may exist, but where "yes" or "no" seemed to describe best the general approach used in a fishery. Management of some fisheries was clearly intermediate between "yes" or "no" answers for some questions, so an answer of "partial yes" was used (indicated by a "P" in table 3). Improvement in the answers to these questions and expansion to other fisheries is an important area where we expect to improve this scorecard following review and comment of this draft.

We applied these questions to a wide range of fisheries for which we had adequate information to answer the questions (table 3). We welcome review and comment on the answers, and help in expanding this matrix to other fisheries not yet included. The fisheries included in this analysis include examples from most regions as well as fisheries with a wide variety of target stocks and fishing methods. Expansion to other fisheries will probably provide further insight, but we believe that the conclusions of the analysis are useful with the present list of fisheries.

In general, the most successful fisheries tend to have catch limits on total mortality that are established below MSY and enforced, and the most successful fisheries also tend to have avoided or solved problems with excess fishing capacity (column 2). This is shown by the grouping of "yes," "partial yes," and "no" answers to questions 2 (overcapacity prevented), 5 (catches below limits), and 9 (target fishing rates below MSY). None of the questions shows perfect trends, but success rates tend to be higher for fisheries that do a better job of implementing these three best management practices.

These best management practices can also be validated by trends within a single fishery. For example, the New England groundfish fishery shows better success for individual stocks that utilize one of the best management practices, mortality constrained below MSY fishing rates (see figure 1).

Criteria for Success

The annual Status of the Stocks report to Congress contains the information that was used in evaluating success in ending overfishing and preventing and reversing the depletion of fish populations. Status determination criteria for "overfishing" and "overfished" have been established by the Councils, based on guidelines prepared by NMFS¹. This evaluation scores each Council for how many major stocks² managed by that Council are above and below thresholds for overfishing and overfished (depleted), and how many major stocks lack sufficient information for status determinations.

Methods

Overfishing is defined as a rate of fishing that exceeds a maximum fishing mortality rate (MFMR), and overfished is defined as stock abundance that falls below the stock’s minimum stock size threshold (MSST). To avoid confusion between the terms "overfishing" and "overfished," the term "depleted" will sometimes be used to refer to stocks defined as overfished.

Scores for success at ending overfishing and rebuilding depleted stocks were obtained as follows. First, data were obtained from NMFS’ annual report to Congress on the status of U. S. fisheries. For each fish stock, a score of 1 was assigned for stocks with overfishing not occurring, a score of 0 was assigned for stocks with identified overfishing, and a score of 0.5 was assigned for stocks "at risk" because of insufficient information for status determination or no status determination criteria. This "at risk" category is necessary because substantial risk of overfishing and depletion exists when major fisheries exist on stocks of unknown status. Similarly, each stock received a score of 1 for not overfished, 0 for overfished, and 0.5 for unknown or undefined status for overfished.

Each stock was scored separately for overfishing status and overfished status and the results averaged. Thus, a single stock would score an average of 1 for no overfishing (score=1) and not overfished (score=1), 0.5 for overfishing (score=0) and not overfished (score=1), 0.5 for no overfishing (score=1) and overfished (score=0), 0 for overfishing (score=0) and overfished (score=0), and 0.75 for no overfishing (score=1) and overfished status unknown (score=0.5). Scores for more than one fish stock were combined by averaging the scores obtained for each stock. All scores were converted to % by multiplying by 100 to yield a scale of 0-100%. This scoring method can be used for any number of stocks, and it will produce a range of 0-100% success, with 100% indicating all stocks with no overfishing and not overfished status, 0% indicating all stocks with overfishing and overfished status.

Table 1: Regional scores for success in ending overfishing and rebuilding depleted fish stocks Region overfishing overfished overall score Yes No Unk/ND # stocks overfishing score Yes No Unk/ND # stocks overfished score North Pacific 82% 0 49 10 59 92% 1 28 30 59 73% Western Pacific 77% 1 7 5 13 73% 0 8 5 13 81% Pacific 75% 2 34 17 53 80% 7 27 19 53 69% Mid Atlantic 70% 3 8 0 11 73% 3 7 1 11 68% New England 58% 8 12 7 27 57% 10 15 2 27 59% Gulf Mexico 58% 4 8 11 23 59% 4 7 12 23 57% South Atlantic 57% 8 10 6 24 54% 6 11 7 24 60% Caribbean 50% 1 1 2 4 50% 1 1 2 4 50%

Table 2: Success scores for selected Fishery Management Plans ( FMPs were included if enough information was available for The Ocean Conservancy to answer the questions in table 3.) fishery overall overall overfishing overfishing overfished overfished yes no unk/und score yes no unk/und score yes no unk/und score NE multispecies 18 21 3 54% 8 10 3 55% 10 11 0 52% Pacific groundfish 9 27 26 65% 2 16 13 73% 7 11 13 56% Pacific coastal pelagics 0 6 6 75% 0 4 2 83% 0 2 4 67% Gulf of AK groundfish 0 33 15 84% 0 24 0 100% 0 9 15 69% W. Pacific pelagics 1 15 10 77% 1 7 5 73% 0 8 5 81% Gulf of Mexico reef fish 6 6 16 50% 3 3 8 50% 3 3 8 50% Coastal pelagic Gulf & SA 1 9 4 79% 0 5 2 86% 1 4 2 71% S Atlantic snapper grouper 11 13 8 53% 6 6 4 50% 5 7 4 56% Mid Atl s fl, scup, b s bass 3 3 0 50% 2 1 0 33% 1 2 0 67% Mid Atl mack, squid, bfish 2 7 1 75% 1 4 0 80% 1 3 1 70% Bering, Aleutians gndfish 0 29 19 80% 0 17 7 85% 0 12 12 75% Bering, Aleutians crab 1 5 6 67% 0 3 3 75% 1 2 3 58% Atl. surf clam, quohog 0 4 0 100% 0 2 0 100% 0 2 0 100% Mid Atl golden tilefish 2 0 0 0% 1 0 0 0% 1 0 0 0% Atlantic sea scallop 0 2 0 100% 0 1 0 100% 0 1 0 100% Atlantic herring 0 2 0 100% 0 1 0 100% 0 1 0 100% Western Pacific pelagics 1 15 10 77% 1 7 5 73% 0 8 5 81%

Table 3: Success scores and use of candidate best management practices in Fishery Management Plans success, % 1-stocks assessed 2-overcapacity prevented 3-quotas exist 4-limits enforced 5-catches below targets/quotas 6-bycatch monitoring 7-bycatch limits 8-MSY or proxy 9-targets/quotas < MSY Fishery                     Atlantic surf clam, quohog 100% Y Y Y Y Y N N Y Y Atlantic sea herring (NEFMC) 100% Y Y Y Y Y P N Y Y NE sea scallops (NEFMC) 100% Y N P P Y P P Y Y Gulf of AK groundfish 84% Y P Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Bering, Aleutians groundfish 80% Y P Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Coastal pelagics, GM & SA 79% P Y P P Y N N P Y Western Pacific pelagics 77% P Y N N Y Y N N N Pacific coastal pelagics 75% P Y P P P P N Y Y Mid Atl mack, squid, butterfish 75% Y P Y Y P Y P Y N Bering, Aleutians crab 67% Y N Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Pacific groundfish 65% Y N Y Y P Y P Y Y New England multispecies 54% Y N N N P N N Y N S Atlantic snapper grouper 53% Y N Y Y P N N Y Y Gulf of Mexico reef fish 50% P N P P P P N P Y Mid Atl s fl, scup, b s bass 50% Y P Y Y P Y N Y N Mid Atl golden tilefish 0% Y N Y Y Y Y N Y Y

 

 

 

© Copyright 2010 Ocean Conservancy
The Ocean Conservancy, International Coastal Cleanup and Ocean Action Network are registered trademarks of Ocean Conservancy.

Visit www.oceanconservancy.org/contactus for regional office addresses and email information.

Printed on , © Copyright 2010 Ocean Conservancy
The Ocean Conservancy, International Coastal Cleanup and Ocean Action Network are registered trademarks of Ocean Conservancy.

1300 19th Street, NW,
8th Floor
Washington, DC 20036
800.519.1541
202.429.5609