Oceana, Inc. v. Coggins
| Decision Date | 13 June 2022 |
| Docket Number | Case No. 21-cv-00736-VC |
| Citation | 606 F.Supp.3d 920 |
| Parties | OCEANA, INC., Plaintiff, v. Wynn COGGINS, et al., Defendants. |
| Court | U.S. District Court — Northern District of California |
Stephen Mashuda, Stephen D. Mashuda, Earthjustice, Seattle, WA, Andrea A. Treece, Earthjustice, San Francisco, CA, for Plaintiff.
Clifford Eugene Stevens, Jr., United States Department of Justice, Environment & Natural Resources Division, Washington, DC, for Defendants.
ORDER GRANTING DEFENDANTS’ MOTION FOR SUMMARY JUDGMENT AND DENYING PLAINTIFF'S MOTION FOR SUMMARY JUDGMENT
Re: Dkt. Nos. 32, 35
In regulating fishing, the National Marine Fisheries Service performs a congressionally mandated balancing act—too much fishing and the fish may die out; too little fishing and jobs and food are sacrificed. In 2020, the agency promulgated a rule limiting the amount of anchovy that may be caught each year off the California coast. Oceana, an environmental nonprofit focused on ocean advocacy, thinks the agency's catch limit is too high. It filed this lawsuit with the goal of requiring the agency to take a more conservative approach that it believes will better protect anchovy and the predators that rely on them for food.
This is not the first time Oceana has challenged the agency's regulations for this subpopulation of anchovy. Twice, the agency promulgated rules setting the catch limit. Twice, Oceana sued. And twice, a court vacated the agency's regulation and ordered it to try again. Now, on the third go-round, the agency prevails.
The heart of Oceana's challenge is that when the agency set the catch limit, it unlawfully disregarded two recent studies, each of which found that the anchovy population collapsed between 2009 and 2014. But in adopting the most recent rule, the agency adequately explained why the population estimates from these studies were too unreliable to use. Similarly, the agency sufficiently justified its decision to use other estimates when setting the anchovy catch limit. And ultimately, the agency's conclusion that its catch limit will prevent overfishing was well within the range of reasonableness. The regulation is therefore valid, and the agency is entitled to summary judgment.
Fish are valuable renewable resources, contributing to our nation's food supply, creating jobs, and providing recreational opportunities. But certain populations are at risk, whether due to too much fishing, environmental changes, or both. Recognizing this danger, Congress enacted the Magnuson-Stevens Act "to take immediate action to conserve and manage the fishery resources found off the coasts of the United States." 16 U.S.C. § 1801(b)(1).
At the outset, it's worth clarifying one piece of terminology used in the Act: "fishery." For the most part, the word "fishery" refers to a particular group of fish within a specific geographic area (for example, anchovy located off specified parts of the California coast). The Act accordingly defines a "fishery" as "one or more stocks of fish which can be treated as a unit for purposes of conservation and management and which are identified on the basis of geographical, scientific, technical, recreational, and economic characteristics." § 1802(13)(A). Somewhat confusingly, the term "fishery" can also sometimes refer to the entity or industry that engages in fishing. § 1802(13)(B). In this ruling, "fishery" is always used in the former sense, referring to a particular group of fish.
The Act sets up a distributed system of governance. Eight Regional Councils are tasked with protecting fisheries within their jurisdictions under the oversight of the National Marine Fisheries Service. See § 1852(h)(1); § 1801(b)(4) ; § 1854(a)(3). Their mission is "to prevent overfishing, to rebuild overfished stocks, to insure conservation, to facilitate long-term protection of essential fish habitats, and to realize the full potential of the Nation's fishery resources." § 1801(a)(6).1
Fishery management occurs in two stages. First, a Council creates a "fishery management plan" that describes in general terms how the fisheries within its jurisdiction will be governed. Fishery management plans do not have any regulatory effect on their own—"implementing regulations must also be enacted in order to effectuate them." North Carolina Fisheries Association, Inc. v. Gutierrez , 550 F.3d 16, 17 (D.C. Cir. 2008). Accordingly, at the second stage, a Council promulgates regulations implementing its plan. See § 1853(c)(1). These regulations impact fishing activity by, for example, limiting the number of fish that can be caught each year. "Plans and implementing regulations are both subject to public notice and comment rulemaking prior to approval by the Service." North Carolina Fisheries Association , 550 F.3d at 17. Fishery management plans can be (and frequently are) amended through this same process. See § 1854(a)(1).2
All fishery management plans and their implementing regulations must comply with ten "national standards for fishery conservation and management." § 1851(a). Two of these national standards are relevant in this case. Beginning with the simpler standard, National Standard Two requires plans and regulations to be "based upon the best scientific information available." § 1851(a)(2). National Standard One specifies that the agency shall "prevent overfishing," while also achieving, on an ongoing basis, "the optimum yield from each fishery." § 1851(a)(1). "Overfishing" is a rate of fishing mortality that "jeopardizes the capacity of a fishery to produce the maximum sustainable yield on a continuing basis." § 1802(34). The "optimum yield" of a fishery is "the amount of fish" that "will provide the greatest overall benefit to the Nation, particularly with respect to food production and recreational opportunities," while "taking into account the protection of marine ecosystems." § 1802(33)(A). The optimum yield "is prescribed on the basis of the maximum sustainable yield from the fishery, as reduced by any relevant social, economic, or ecological factor." § 1802(33)(B). Finally, the "maximum sustainable yield" is "the largest long-term average catch" that can be taken from a stock "under prevailing ecological, environmental conditions and fishery technological characteristics." 50 C.F.R. § 600.310(b)(i), (e)(1)(i)(A). Under all that jargon, the principle is simple: Agency regulations must permit as much fishing as they can without putting the future of the fishery at risk.
One of the primary management tools available under the Act is the "annual catch limit"—the quantity of fish that may be removed from a stock via fishing each year. Catch limits are high stakes; a limit set too high may put the future of the fish stock at risk, while a limit too low may stymie food production and economic activity. Because of the importance of these regulations and the difficulty of getting it right, catch limits are set through a three-step process. First, the agency sets the "overfishing limit." As already noted, the overfishing limit is the agency's best estimate of the maximum quantity of fish that can be caught per year without jeopardizing the ability of the fishery to produce at its maximum sustainable level—in other words, the quantity above which overfishing occurs. 50 C.F.R. § 600.310(e)(2)(i)(B), (C), (D). Next, the agency identifies the "acceptable biological catch"—a figure "that accounts for the scientific uncertainty in the estimate of [the overfishing limit], any other scientific uncertainty, and the Council's risk policy," usually by adjusting the overfishing limit downward by some factor. § 600.310(f)(1)(ii). Finally, the agency sets the "annual catch limit," or the actual amount of the fishery's stock that may be caught annually. The annual catch limit may equal the acceptable biological catch, but it may not exceed it. See § 600.310(f)(1)(iii).
To use an example that hits close to home in this case: If the agency calculates an overfishing limit of 100,000 metric tons (mt) of a particular stock of fish, the acceptable biological catch would be some fraction of this figure, perhaps 25% (25,000 mt), to hedge the risk inherent in calculating the overfishing limit. The agency could then set an annual catch limit of 25,000 mt or less.
This case concerns the northern anchovy—a small fish off the west coast of the United States that serves as "an important source of forage to local predators." 2016 AR 30:924 [hereinafter Fishery Management Plan]. For management purposes, the northern anchovy population is divided into two subpopulations, each of which is managed as its own fishery. The central subpopulation ranges from San Francisco, California, south to Punta Baja, Mexico, while the northern subpopulation ranges from San Francisco north to British Columbia. Id. In this lawsuit, Oceana has challenged the agency's management of the central subpopulation.
The framework for anchovy management is laid out in the Coastal Pelagic Species Fishery Management Plan, which also governs the management of pacific sardine, pacific (chub) mackerel, market squid, jack mackerel, and krill. Id. at 892. The Plan divides these species into three categories of management: "prohibited harvest," "active," and "monitored." Id. Species within the prohibited harvest category, unsurprisingly, cannot be fished at all. Id. at 893. Next comes active management, which is reserved for fisheries "requiring relatively intense harvest management procedures." Id. at 892. Catch limits for actively managed fisheries are reassessed on a periodic basis (usually yearly). Id. at 892–93. Monitored management, by contrast, is more hands off. The fisheries are not ignored—the agency still "track[s] trends" in abundance levels, for example—but there is no requirement that catch limits be reevaluated on a regular basis. Id. Instead, the catch limits for species within the monitored category are "specified for multiple years until such time as the...
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