Restoring an Ecosystem

“Here is your country. Cherish these natural wonders, cherish the natural resources, cherish the history and romance as a sacred heritage, for your children and your children's children. Do not let selfish men or greedy interests skin your country of its beauty, its riches or its romance.” Theodore Roosevelt

Over the past month, I've tried to understand the reason why shorebirds, horseshoe crabs, weakfish, loggerhead turtles -- nearly all marine life on Delaware Bay -- suffer. It makes no sense.

The Bayshore, which includes some of the most productive marshes in the U.S., is practically all in public ownership. Its robust tide swing, verdant tidal marshes, and fertile drainage basin have historically provided abundant fish and shellfish and attracted sport-fishers from all over the region filling marinas throughout the bay. 

Only two decades ago, horseshoe crabs laid so many eggs they piled a foot deep on some beaches. Forage fish like mummichogs and the young of gamefish, like weakfish, gorged on crab eggs. Adult weakfish and striped bass also ate fat-rich crab eggs churning in the surf.

At the same time, millions of migrating shorebirds came to Delaware Bay to gain weight, lost during northward migration, before continuing to Arctic breeding areas. They rapidly doubled body weight with the nutritious eggs. Birders from around the world flocked to see the spectacle.

Fortescue, NJ, once boasted it was the "Weakfish Capital of the World." The Western Hemisphere Shorebird Reserve Network (WHSRN) declared the Delaware Bay a site of "Hemispheric Importance." The Delaware Bay estuary became a RAMSAR site, as a saltwater wetland of "International Importance".

Not worn well

These distinctions have not worn well. Saltmarsh erodes at rates higher than climate change impacts would suggest. Agencies allow fishers to take only one weakfish a day -- little justification for putting a boat in the water. Just this month, The Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission (ASFMC) declared the striped bass fishery as "Overfished". Most anglers have given up. Dead or dying marinas tackle shops and restaurants litter the Bayshore, desperately trying to replace the anglers who have gone elsewhere.

Horseshoe crabs never recovered from the unregulated bait harvests of the late 1990s. When the agencies finally started to require reporting of landings, they found commercial operations were taking over 2,000,000 crabs each year, up from less than 100,000. Now, after more than 20 years of harvest reductions and cessation of female bait harvest (NJ & DE in 2006; MD & VA in 2013), female horseshoe crabs have improved little. 

A regulatory machine

Besides living in Delaware Bay, these species have one thing in common. a giant regulatory machine. Although each species occur as one population they fall in between two regulatory groups, The Atlantic States Marine Fish Commission (ASFMC) and the Mid-Atlantic Council. Each holds open meetings and views public input as necessary but in reality, public involvement is only an appendix to the routine business of ensuring business commands the power to shape fisheries harvest regulations.

The story of the horseshoe crab describes the problem. The horseshoe crab feeds fish populations with its ecosystem-supporting, annual spawn. This provides abundant fisheries resources for the businesses of the rural community. The fast recovery of a depleted horseshoe crab population would be best for the public. A recent study shows it can happen in less than a decade. 

Instead, horseshoe crabs are maintained at a low level to provide maximum bait for conch and American eel -- both overfished fisheries. Meanwhile, international biomedical corporations extract blood from a half-million horseshoe crabs each year fueling an investor-driven enterprise worth $285 - $400 million per year, by their own estimates. Crab blood is used to produce Limulus Amebocyte Lysate; the Delaware Bay supports the largest population of horseshoe crabs in the world, by far.  

And these companies do nothing to speed crab recovery. They just make money.

Having a say

So what gives? Why don't the users of these resources -- fishers, birders, community business people, local officials -- have a greater say? 

Because in truth, natural resources do not belong to businesses and international investor-driven companies simply because they say so. Natural resources belong to all of us. The legal framework is known as the Public Trust Doctrine, and no one could have explained it better than Theodore Roosevelt in 1916.  

"Defenders of the short-sighted men who in their greed and selfishness will, if permitted, rob our country of half its charm by their reckless extermination of all useful and beautiful wild things sometimes seek to champion them by saying that "the game belongs to the people." So it does; and not merely to the people now alive, but to the unborn people. The "greatest good for the great- est number" applies to the number within the womb of time, compared to which those now alive form but an insignificant fraction. Our duty to the whole, including the unborn generations, bids us restrain an unprincipled present-day minority from wasting the heritage of these unborn generations. The movement for the conservation of wildlife and the broader movement for the conservation of all our natural resources are essentially democratic in spirit, purpose, and method." 

Theodore Roosevelt (1916) Theodore Roosevelt and party, 1903. Photo by Joseph LaConti

In other words, the fish, the horseshoe crabs, and the birds all belong to the Public, and we rely on government and regulatory agencies to fulfill Public Trust Doctrine mandates. In the case of Delaware Bay, agencies are adhering to the letter of the Doctrine but miss the goal. The agencies keep horseshoe crabs stable but at levels too low to support a thriving ecosystem. The same could be said for weakfish and stripers. Why? Because businesses have greater influence than the public. Natural resources might belong to everyone, but businesses dominate the Commission's deliberations (see pgs. 44-45, (Pew Oceans Commission 2003). 

Overexploitation: an old American battleground

Controlling corporations from overexploiting natural resources didn't start with horseshoe crabs. So it worth the time to put it into perspective. 

In Teddy Roosevelt's time, industries using our valuable natural resources for profit ran amok. All things wild and natural suffered in the early 20th century as everyone from wealthy industrialists to good ole boys pillaged our wildlife, virgin forests, minerals, and farms in the name of God and profit. T.R. forced many changes, but the agriculture and forestry industry never really got the message until after the environmental calamities of the 1930s. 

The Dust Bowl of the '30s destroyed millions of farmed acres, many unsuitable for agriculture in the first place. The '30s also saw the sad end of a long-running savaging of old-age forests where companies chopped away all the ancient giants leaving behind clearcuts with no viable future. Millions of previously-forested acres joined overworked farmland acres in an ecological cataclysm that never really ended until after the WWII.

Ironically, Teddy Roosevelt's nephew, Franklin Roosevelt, led the nation toward long-term restoration. Volunteer and low paid Civilian Conservation Corp replanted forests and built windbreaks on damaged farms. New agencies sprung to life, and existing ones repurposed, to meet the challenge of restoring our depleted natural resources. The US Forest Service, the U.S. Fish, and Wildlife Service, the Soil Conservation Service, all enjoyed a heyday that lasted well into the present era. 

A new era of ecological destruction 

But now we suffer a new kind of ecological destruction. No longer just national but international corporations have joined in the raid on our natural treasures. This corporate consumption without responsibility happens everywhere, including Delaware Bay, where both national and international companies feast on valuable resources. Like ecological shoplifters, they take all they can to enrich owners and investors while slipping away without paying the bill.  

It's happening in all places where valuable resources remain. Most recently, the Trump administration promised to open up the Tongass National Forest in Alaska to logging. Soon one of the last great forests of this world will be lost forever unless principled people step into the breach which Trump gleefully created. Except for the idyllic natural places that draw tourism and pay for themselves, most of the rural American groans under the same oppressive force. 

I can't help seeing the irony of it all. My biologist's eyes see expansive natural wealth. Vast and fertile farmlands and forests, blessed with life-giving rain, surrounded by productive fresh and marine waters. Yet our nation suffers an epidemic of poverty in rural America leaving much of the area stricken with many social ills and little money. Economically, most of rural America falls well behind cities and suburbs. The pundit wisdom explains this with everything from the lack of education and skills to inadequate access to new technology.  

But I wonder where goes all the natural wealth, if not to the people who live there. 

Follow the money

It's a rhetorical question, we all know where it goes. The money bypasses the communities and goes straight to corporate headquarters and investors. 

Corporations don't manage forests to provide high-end or value-added wood products, that would benefit community economies. Instead, most turn them into barren, pulp-production machines for ravenous paper and composite wood products corporations. Companies, like the Koch Brother's Georgia Pacific, pay the locals the least amount possible to maintain these forests while banking the rest. 

What do companies do with the money besides lavish displays of wealth? The Koch brothers brag about their ability to shower politicians with a tidal wave of money. What do they pay for? Limiting the regulatory actions of agencies responsible for natural resource management. In my eyes, they steal value that could go to the public good.

Farmers indebted to corporations

Agriculture has fallen into the heavy hand of corporate America but in a different way. At one time, farmers grew their seed while fertilizer came from leaving fields fallow and recycling farm animal waste. A modest size family farm could earn enough for the children to go to college and more.  

Below a graph demonstrating that the greatest number of farms are small and the majority of the acreage farmed is small and medium farms but the majority of money goes to large farms and corporations.  

No longer. Now farmers find themselves corporation managers with an everpresent need to grow larger. Why? Because they rely on chemically-resistant seeds that require an enormous amount of chemicals, all of which must be applied and worked by gargantuan machines on thousands of acres. Farms must grow in size to suit the corporations they serve.  

All of this requires a lot of cash and environmental damage. Huge machines cost big money. Farmers pay over half a million dollars for new tractors and combines. Chemicals and treated seeds for thousands of acres combined with the cost of the machines, force many farmers into constant debt and fear of bankruptcy. 

The struggle leaves them unconcerned about how they infiltrate groundwater with nitrogen fertilizers, herbicides, pesticides. Or contaminant surface waters with a cocktail of dangerous compounds like glyphosate -- the herbicide named Roundup. Glyphosate is a known carcinogen soon to be banned by the European Union.  Manufacturers, like Monsanto, obscure the danger in much the same way as the tobacco industry masked the dangers of nicotine. How many farmers will find out the truth with their own lives? Unfortunately, farmers use many powerful chemicals like roundup with little understanding of long term impacts or the cumulative effects.  

In the end, farmers suffer more than most people. My neighbor, a long-time mayor of our small community of Bayshore farmers, remembered six farm families that raised kids to graduate college. Now, one farmer does all the work and barely meets that same standard of wealth. The age-old values of agriculture no longer enriches family farmers.  The pressure kills.

A new path comes into view.

Eventually, climate change will put all of this into perspective. Carbon will be taxed, or new regulations will create markets for storing or sequestrating carbon. Sequestration will offer new ways for forest owners and farmers to generate income, weaning them away from low-profit grains and the shackles imposed by the industries they support. 

But we cannot be certain of this and we need to act now. Why? Because the pace of destruction quickens every day and defies common sense from any perspective. The whole scheme relies on our pretending that short-term exploitation is good business while fast-tracking recovery is not. Politicians say our need for jobs forces agencies to serve the interests of corporations, who rain cash into our political system. We conservationists must defy this way of thinking. But how?

Depleted and unrecovered fisheries destroy jobs

First, we should give little value to this industry trope -- that we need to exploit natural resources recklessly because we need the jobs. On Delaware Bay, the opposite occurred. For a short period in the early 1990s, small horseshoe crab harvests provided some wealth directly to local fishers as bait for small fisheries. But most of the jobs came from the vibrant sport fishery that abundant horseshoe eggs and larvae supported.

Weakfish, flounder, stripers, and blue claw crabs consume abundant crab eggs and larvae at the same time they are reproducing. This natural fish-production system drew sport fishers who filled the marinas and restaurants of Bayshore communities like Fortescue or Matt's landing. 

Those fisheries collapsed roughly the same time as horseshoe crabs. Large numbers of people lost jobs, but government agencies and regulators have yet to link these outcomes. Why, when it seems so obvious?

Partly because modern fishery management focuses on one species at a time and religiously follows rigid and complex concepts like Maximum Sustainable Yield (MSY). Despite its many problems, MSY helps fisheries scientists answer the question of how many fish can be taken from a population without damage. Fair enough, we need to know this to ensure the fish populations remain productive. 

The danger comes with the jiggling-of-the-dials by industry-friendly management boards who want to take as many fish as they can. In the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission, this stacks the odds against being cautious. Management Boards can overrule scientist recommendations, which forces scientists to propose weaker management recommendations. The law protects the Commission from being sued. Even though ecosystem productivity (i.e., the prey base) defines fisheries production, few prevail in the fight for ecosystem productivity or fast-tracking recovery of damaged fish populations.  

A struggle to prevent overfishing

Instead, Commission meetings fill with eager business representatives. They lurk in every meeting of scientists, who gather to discuss science and recommendations that may make businesses either richer or poorer. 

Theoretically, non-business folk can take part, but the cost and time associated with attending Commission meetings winnow out most, and the rigid rules of public involvement seem constructed to discourage input. No wonder the ASMFC struggles to prevent overfishing. 

This poor record should force the Commission to rethink its approach, but it may be less unwilling than unable. The story of Striped Bass tells it all. The fish prospered after a complete harvest moratorium in the 1980s that ended when the ASMFC declared the fishery restored in 1996. The success reshaped the ASMFC -- from a group advising states to one mandating regulations agreed upon by all Atlantic coast states. 

Maybe that decision should be rethought. Just this month, the ASMFC dodged recommending overfished status for striped bass despite the breached mortality thresholds that should trigger the declaration. It's as though ignoring it will make it go away. One can't imagine the number of jobs lost from this failure. Was it good sense to destroy a productive fishery for the sake of business that depend on the fishery?

Below is an infographic developed by the American Saltwater Guides Association showing how the ASMFC and its federal waters counterpart, the Mid Atlantic Council, compare in their approach to striped bass management. Stripers swim in both jurisdictions and so these two agencies manage the same fish, depending on if they are within the 3-mile limit of the coast, which are state waters or outside, which are federal waters. In itself, this makes little sense, but rules are rules. The industry reps want the Mid Atlantic Council to be more like the ASMFC because of its business-first approach and stripers proved their point. Despite clear evidence of overfishing the commission voted to decrease the size of the breeding population thus ensuring continued over fishing.

Long-term perspective and a stick with what works

My point is, even for those who care only about jobs, Teddy Roosevelt's advice still rings true. Good management, with an eye to future generations, achieves the most gain. Similarly, for those who care about the ecology of the Delaware Bay, or any similar natural system, we must take a long-term perspective. Short-term perspectives only enrich a greedy few, while the long view includes the welfare of local communities. More importantly, it includes our children and their children, so they too can experience the productivity and natural wonder of an ecosystem in full flower.

Solutions should be bold and known to perform. When wildlife suffers over-harvest, half measures offered by resource agencies to placate industry rarely restore damaged populations. The harvest of horseshoe crabs should have ended once fishers took too many for the species to sustain ecosystems and fisheries which depend on them. State agencies should have closed the bait harvest until horseshoe crabs recovered.

Someone will always try to steal valuable product

But harvests arent decided by legal quotas alone. Leaving any harvest open, no matter how scientifically justified, allows the creepy underbelly of the fish industry to steal. Any fishery regulator will tell you that decades of rule-making have made commercial fishers, and the corporations behind them, masters of avoiding the consequences of regulations. For the disbelieving, the story of the so-called Codfather of New Bedford, MA, will bring home this point. Better to assume there will always be cheaters in the system -- with any marine species of value, somebody will steal.

 In this Oct. 14, 2014 photo, Carlos Rafael talks on the phone at Homer's Wharf near his herring boat F/V Voyager in New Bedford, Mass. Rafael, a U.S. fishing magnate known as "The Codfather," pleaded guilty Thursday, March 30, 2017, in federal court in Boston on charges of evading fishing quotas and smuggling money to Portugal. (John Sladewski / Standard Times)[/caption]

 Horseshoe crabs command great value, and taking them is lucrative even when authorities catch the thieves red-handed. A modest fine against thousands in income won't stop the greedy. Boats from N.Y., where fishers have already damaged horseshoe crab populations, can harvest from other populations in New England or Delaware Bay outside of the 3-mile limit of state waters. Landed in NY they won't be counted against the quota for the source populations in other states. Meanwhile, scallop and clam boats scour the ocean floor with nets that virtually plow the bottom and incidentally "bycatch" horseshoe crabs. What happens to all the crabs coming up in nets and dredges? How many die? How many are landed in another region or transferred at sea to another vessel?

Only God knows what the Biomedical Companies do to crabs. These companies have almost no restriction on the number of crabs taken or the amount of blood that can be extracted, there is little agency oversight, and companies may keep their actions and information hidden from public review. 

In fact, fisheries information is protected from public scrutiny under Magnusen-Stevens Act "Confidentiality Requirement".  This provision was expanded in 2006 to cover nearly all types of "fisheries information", including harvest metrics needed for fisheries management against objections from fishery managers. Efforts by NOAA to reverse this have failed -  we can only guess why.  

Small groups cannot reform the system

Rules exist, and good people put them into play. The rules, however, don't work for the majority of people. After 20+ years of wrestling with the ASMFC, I have to say the people who defend birds and horseshoe crabs cannot reform this system. It's a Quixotic endeavor even for the most influential constituent group, let alone those without any seats at the table. But we share the same goal with others. 

Menhaden Defenders fights to protect forage fish, like Menhaden, against the common practice of vacuuming up whole schools of this precious marine resource for cat food, omega-three oils, and fish pellets for foreign aquaculture operations. Does it make any sense to waste valuable prey which supports sport-fish populations struggling from over-harvest? 

Groups like the American Saltwater Guides Association fight to protect striped bass. In their recent post, they called on their members to oppose ASMFC rule changes that would lock-in harvest levels known to forestall restoration.  

Finding a common cause and a more productive view

Separately these groups face uncertain odds. Those odds change dramatically if all join forces. A union of groups could fight for a long-term perspective on management, the rapid recovery of overfished species including stripers, weakfish, and horseshoe crabs. The group could create a new focus on ecosystem productivity in Delaware Bay. 

For the first time, we can link the harvest of sportfishing to the base of production at the lower end of the food chain. Working fishers, guides, and sport fishers could join forces with organizations seeking the protection of horseshoe crabs and migratory shorebirds.  

In 1986 we had horseshoe crabs eggs piling up along the Delaware Bayshore, in many places a foot deep. Forage fish relied on eggs and larvae as did bigger fish which eat both eggs and forage fish. Sportfish prospered. Migratory birds came to the bay and left in good condition. Fishers, birders and other tourists came from all over the country and world.

It could be that way again. The united interests of the conservation public can turn this around in 10 years. One decade of not killing horseshoe crabs, saving forage fish from low-profit exploitation, better control of finfish harvest, and restoring marsh and beach habitats would restore this rich legacy.

But can we cross the partisan divide that separates conservationists into liberal and conservative, democrat and republican?  If ever we can, it should be for this.

To read more about Delaware Bay, shorebirds and horseshoe crabs follow this link.