South Atlantic Fishery Management Council

Habitat is Essential to Healthy Fisheries – and at Risk

Fish swim over an artificial reef on the ocean's bottom.

Offshore fishermen consistently look for structure. Find that certain reef patch, ledge, or weed line, and the odds of finding fish there increase. Habitat, whether an offshore reef, a nearshore hardbottom area, a mangrove patch, or an expansive salt marsh, is key to having healthy fisheries. There is an interconnection that is better understood by those who personally experience these various areas, whether with a rod in hand or simply watching the incoming tide along a coastal shoreline.

Many species found offshore and targeted by fishermen are dependent on that connectivity. For example, Gag grouper spawn from mid-January to early May in the South Atlantic, forming groups along the continental shelf where females spawn multiple times during the season. Following the spawning season, juvenile Gag live in estuaries in structured habitats, including seagrass beds and oyster reefs. As they mature, the fish move back offshore to hardbottom habitats including reefs and wrecks, live bottom, and ledges, where adult fish can live up to 30 years.

Gag Life Cycle. Credit: Science Direct

Fishery managers have long been aware of the importance of habitat. The 1996 reauthorization of the Magnuson Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act, the guiding legislation for federally managed species, required that the eight regional fishery management councils in the U.S. identify and describe Essential Fish Habitat (EFH). EFH is defined as “those waters and substrate necessary to fish for spawning, breeding, feeding, or growth to maturity.” The Council is also tasked with minimizing harmful effects to EFH caused by fishing and identifying other actions to encourage habitat protection. Maintaining healthy habitats is more important than ever, as risks associated with climate change, coastal development, energy exploration, and other factors are changing the way managers identify and approach these challenges.

Approaches

The South Atlantic Fishery Management Council has been a leader in habitat protection. In 1998, the Comprehensive Essential Fish Habitat Amendment identified EFH and Habitat Areas of Particular Concern (HAPC) for each of the Council’s fishery management plans. The latter include locations that are of unique importance to managed species, such as areas where fish are known to aggregate to spawn. Managers can thus focus conservation efforts on these important areas. Since 1998, the Council has continued to champion habitat protection for managed species. For example, in 2011 the Council designated several Deepwater Coral HAPCs encompassing over 23,000 square miles of ocean bottom, an area roughly the size of the state of West Virginia.

The Council has also put in place two habitat-based fishery management plans: the Coral Reefs and Live Hard Bottom Habitat FMP and the Pelagic Sargassum FMP. Implemented in 1984, the Coral Fishery Management Plan was developed jointly with the Gulf of Mexico Fishery Management Council to optimize benefits generated from coral habitats while conserving the coral and coral reefs. The Sargassum Fishery Management Plan provided protection against the harvest of this floating brown seaweed, often referred to as “weed lines” by fishermen. Sargassum is designated as EFH for economically important species like Dolphin fish and provides food, refuge, and breeding grounds for a variety of fishes, sea turtles, marine birds, crabs, shrimp, and other marine species. It was once harvested commercially in the South Atlantic to be used as a fertilizer additive and in other commercial applications. The Sargassum FMP put strict harvest restrictions in place to protect these floating nurseries. Several decades later, due to warming waters and shifting wind patterns, Sargassum mats have become a nuisance in some areas of the Southern U.S. and Caribbean.

Sargassum floats on the surface.
Pelagic Sargassum floating on the ocean surface.
Mutton Snapper swimming over hard bottom habitat.
Mutton Snapper swimming over hard bottom habitat. Credit: John Hunt

To address non-fishing activities that may impact EFH, the Council has developed policy statements on energy exploration and development, beach dredging and filling, artificial reefs, and other non-fishing activities. These policies are developed and updated with input from the Council’s Habitat and Ecosystem Advisory Panel, and are often used in EFH consultations.

Habitat Blueprint

In 2023, the Council approved a Habitat Program Evaluation and Blueprint (Blueprint) to better define the goals and objectives of its habitat program, describe how the requirements of the Magnuson-Stevens Act relative to habitat are being met and help guide habitat program activities. The Blueprint also modified the Council’s Habitat and Ecosystem Advisory Panel, changing its structure and specifying a charge to primarily provide guidance and recommendations to the Council to address habitat-related obligations.

Designed to be a guidance document for the Council, the Habitat Blueprint also outlines the process the Council follows to comment on EFH issues, addresses the process for future EFH policy revision and development, and includes habitat-related outreach and communication in the planning process.

Challenges

Threats to marine habitats keep growing and becoming more unpredictable. Habitat continues to be at risk as coastal development, pollution, habitat loss, and climate change impact not just our region, but habitats across the globe.

In the U.S. South Atlantic region, we’re all reminded of the risks to habitat caused by climate change as hurricane season continues. Warmer waters not only increase the frequency and intensity of storms, but are a threat to shallow-water corals, and influence the distribution of species along the Atlantic coast. Recognizing the need for collaboration as conditions change, the three regional fishery management councils along the Atlantic Coast and NOAA Fisheries are overseeing the implementation of the East Coast Climate Change Scenario Planning Initiative, looking to the future of fisheries management along the US East Coast in a rapidly changing climate.

Understanding the risks to habitat and remaining flexible in a changing environment is key. The South Atlantic Fishery Management Council continues to work on the protection and conservation of EFH though collaboration, sharing of scientific data, having clearly defined goals, objectives, and policies, and utilizing recommendations from its advisory panel. Something to think about the next time you’re looking at your plotter to find a good bottom or watching the sun set across the marsh.