The February release of annual state-by-state and port-by-port commercial fisheries landings for 2005 by the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) indicated a significant growth in the value of fish and shellfish harvested by New Jersey’s commercial fishing industry. As gratifying as those figures are on their own, to get the true picture of how the industry is doing, it’s important to consider them in an historical context.

Thanks to NMFS, doing that is a fairly simple matter. To the agency’s credit, on its website http://www.st.nmfs.gov/st1/index.html extensive databases of both commercial (back to 1950) and recreational (back to 1981) landings are available. Expressed as either weight or value, national commercial landings can be readily accessed, as can those for individual states or regions, by single species or in aggregate.

Using the NMFS data, I looked at New Jersey’s annual commercial landings at 5 year intervals starting in 1950 and extending through 2005, the last year for which data is available. Over those years, annual commercial landings ranged from a high of 191 thousand metric tons in 1955 to a low of 44,000 metric tons in 1970. The average was 89 thousand metric tons per year. 2005 landings were just over 71 thousand metric tons, well under the average.

The total value of those landings, which were converted to 2003 dollars using values from a table provided by Oregon State University  (available at http://oregonstate.edu/Dept/pol_sci/fac/sahr/cv2003.pdf), ranged from an adjusted low of $59 million in 1970 to an adjusted record $150 million in 2005. The average was $95 million per year.

Sea scallop landings in 2005 were extraordinarily high, reaching almost 12 million pounds, and the ex-vessel price per pound was at extraordinarily high levels as well. While 2004 scallop landings were higher, approaching 14 million pounds, the average price per pound was significantly lower. In 2005 the combination of high production levels and high prices meant that scallop landings amounted to over $88 million, 60% of the value of all of the fish and shellfish produced by New Jersey’s commercial fishermen that year. This is unprecedented. In 2000 and 1995, sea scallops made up 35% of the value of the landings, 29% in 1990, 15% in 1985 and below 10% in the years prior.

Since 1950, the average annual sea scallop landings have been approximately 2.6 million pounds, just under 25% of the 2005 landings. If sea scallop landings had been average in 2005, total New Jersey landings would have been valued at around $93 million.

The tremendous boost to the New Jersey commercial fishing statistics in 2005 was due totally to the harvest of a bumper crop of sea scallops. Minus this, the value of the 2005 landings would have been somewhere around the average of the previous 45 years. So, while one segment – historically one of the most important – did exceedingly well, to the rest of the commercial fishing industry it was more or less business as usual.

The good fortune the sea scallop industry has been experiencing, however, provides a sterling example of how successful fisheries – and how successful fisheries management – should operate. Like other species, the reproductive success of sea scallops is dependent on a host of oceanographic factors. Occasionally, when conditions are just right, more than the usual numbers of adults will spawn, more than the usual number of eggs will hatch and more than usual number of larvae will survive. They will form one or several extremely strong year classes. That is what the scallop fleet is and has been fishing on for the last several years, and the landings are a reflection of this.

Having enough “excess capacity,” the scallop fleet has been able to take advantage of this high level of production, but this ability is considered anathema by some so-called conservationists. They think, and they want everyone else to think, that successful fisheries management is as simple as bringing the harvest capacity in line with some hypothetical “sustainable” and stable harvest level. Fishermen recognized generations ago that nature didn’t work this way, that in the real world the populations of the different species of finfish and shellfish varied dramatically. They knew that most practical way to fish was to catch what you could when it was there to catch.

Of course, today our boats are much too efficient to allow unlimited fishing on any stock, but the goal of fisheries management shouldn’t be to whittle away at fleet capacity and/or efficiency to the point where we were unable to take advantage of the good years. Had that been the case in the sea scallop fishery, uncaught scallops in 2004 and 2005 would have cost New Jersey’s coastal communities, assuming that each dollar of landed seafood generates six dollars of economic activity, on the order of a billion dollars in lost revenues.

A careful consideration of the landings data provides other interesting facts about New Jersey’s commercial fisheries. For instance, in 1950 the ten most valuable fisheries were, in descending order, eastern oysters, hardshell clams, menhaden, sea scallops, porgies, sea bass, surf clams, summer flounder, American shad and blue crabs. In 2005 they were sea scallops, surf clams, hard shell clams, blue crabs, ocean quahogs, summer flounder, monkfish, Atlantic mackerel, longfin squid and “shellfish.” Five of the most valuable fisheries in 1950 were still in the top ten in 2005, two of them (oysters and American shad) weren’t there because of environmental degradation and habitat loss, and one (menhaden) wasn’t there due to a State legislative action that closed most of the fishery. Of the ten most valuable fisheries in 2005, one that wasn’t there in 1950 (monkfish) was added because of changing seafood consumption patterns in the U.S. and two (squid and mackerel) were added due to vastly increased export opportunities. ( I haven’t been able to figure out what the addition of “shellfish” signifies.) Characteristic of the landings in all of these fisheries, and in fact in just about every fishery, are wide fluctuations.

What this means is that New Jersey’s commercial landings, and by implication New Jersey’s commercial fishing industry and the fisheries resources it depends upon, have remained surprisingly stable for over half a century. That’s the good news.

The bad news is that, based on a lot of questionable information and inference – if the performance of New Jersey’s commercial fishermen over the last half a century means anything – fisheries regulations are becoming increasingly onerous and it’s becoming increasingly difficult for fishermen to fish to capacity in the boom years to allow them to get thru the bust years.