WILL NEW JERSEY GO OUT OF COMPLIANCE WITH STRIPED BASS ADDENDUM III?

 

Because I write this blog, and am fairly involved in the fisheries management process, people often tip me off when something interesting, controversial, or newsworthy is going on somewhere along the coast.

Thus, about 10 days ago, I received a text and a follow-up phone call telling me that “New Jersey”—it wasn’t exactly clear who, just “New Jersey”—had decided that, if the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission’s Atlantic Striped Bass Management Board approves Addendum III to Amendment 7 to the Interstate Fishery Management Plan for Atlantic Striped Bass when it meets later this month, the state would not comply with its management measures, or at least, not with those imposing a closed season on the ocean fishery.

The rumor went on to say that there was some sort of meeting of New Jersey fishing clubs, perhaps under the aegis of the Jersey Coast Anglers Association, but whether that meeting involved New Jersey regulators, and whether those regulators had committed to noncompliance, or just failed to discount the possibility, was unknown.

As any state’s noncompliance with a fisheries management measure can have a serious negative impact on the affected stock all along the coast, a threat of noncompliance is a significant management issue, so I began trying to chase the rumor down, reaching out to contacts in the New Jersey recreational fishing community in an effort to root out the truth.  For a while, my efforts did not yield results, but finally a friend in the Garden State, who happens to be a charter boat captain committed to fisheries conservation, whom I had not contacted in my initial round of inquiries, reached out to me and provided some of the details.

I was told that the decision to go out of compliance with Addendum III was made by the New Jersey Marine Fisheries Council, which had met, in part to discuss that issue, on September 10.  

The New Jersey Marine Fisheries Council was established by the state legislature.  It is composed of 11 individuals, nine of whom are appointed by the state’s governor, and must be confirmed by the state Senate.  Four of the nine persons subject to Senate confirmation must represent the recreational fishery, two must be active commercial fishermen, one an active fish processor, and two shall represent the general public; the other two Council members are the chairmen of the two sections of the state’s Shellfisheries Council.

The Council neither promulgates regulations nor drafts fisheries management plans, although it advises the Commissioner of the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection on such issues and contributes to the development of management plans.  However, what makes the Council’s decision to go out of compliance with Addendum III very significant is its power to

“disapprove, within 60 days of the proposal thereof and the submittal thereto, any rule or regulation or any amendment thereto proposed by the commissioner pursuant to this act except for any rule or regulation adopted pursuant to subsection (c) of section 4 of the ‘Administrative Procedures Act.’”

Thus, even if New Jersey’s fisheries management professionals want to comply with the ASMFC’s decision on Addendum III, the Council has the authority to veto that decision and force the state into noncompliance.

And from what I was told occurred at the September 10 meeting, the Council intends to do just that.  No minutes of that meeting are yet available, but my contact is knowledgeable enough, and tuned in enough, that I feel comfortable taking him at his word.

I was also told that, of all the fishing clubs and other organizations that belong to the Jersey Coast Anglers Association, all but two—the Berkley Striper Club and Menhaden Defenders—voted to either support the JCAA encouraging the Council to promote noncompliance or endorsing its decision not to comply (the sequence of events isn’t completely clear).

Thus, if the ASMFC ultimately adopts Addendum III, and additional striped bass management measures, at its Annual Meeting, which is scheduled for later this month, there is a very good chance that the Council will either convince state regulators to go out of compliance, or disapprove any compliant regulations.

Either way, New Jersey would not adopt any new and necessary restrictions included in the new addendum.

Technically, even given the Council decision, New Jersey would not be out of compliance with the ASMFC’s striped bass management plan at any time this year, as it is all but certain that, if Addendum III is adopted, it will include a January 1, 2026 compliance date.  Assuming that is the case, all of the states with a declared interest in striped bass will have until then to put the required measures in place.

Thus, the ASMFC and its Atlantic Striped Bass Management Board is going to face a number of decisions, two at its October meeting and, depending on what it decides then, as many as three when it meets again in February 2026.

In October, it will have to decide whether it really believes that New Jersey will go out of compliance and, if it thinks that it will do so, whether to adopt Addendum III and risk a confrontation that it might very well lose, or whether it should either delay the vote or decide to discontinue work on the addendum altogether, in order to avoid a bad outcome.

Right now, it’s impossible to say what path it would take, given the strong fishing tackle industry opposition to Addendum III, coupled with similarly strong opposition from the for-hire and commercial sectors, might be enough to convince some Management Board members that if adopting the addendum, in the face of such opposition, will lead to a compliance battle that it might very well lose, then abandoning Addendum III is the wiser course.

We saw the American Lobster Management Board make such a decision at last February’s ASMFC meeting.

But if the Atlantic Striped Bass Management Board adopts Addendum III in October, and the New Jersey Marine Fisheries Council makes good on its threat to go out of compliance, then the ASMFC will face as many as three decisions in February 2026.

The first is whether the Management Board should move forward with a noncompliance vote, or whether to refrain, tolerate New Jersey’s noncompliance, at least for a while, and not risk undercutting the Commission’s authority by losing a noncompliance fight.

If it decides to find New Jersey out of compliance, and the ASMFC’s Interstate Fishery Management Plan Policy Board endorses its decision, an additional decision arises:  Which law should govern the noncompliance finding?

To date, as far as I know, all of the ASMFC’s noncompliance findings have been made pursuant to the Atlantic Coastal Fisheries Cooperative Management Act, which provides, in relevant part,

“The Commission shall determine that a State is not in compliance with the provisions of a coastal fishery management plan if it finds that the State has not implemented and enforced such plan within the timeframes established under the plan…

“After making a determination [that a State is not in compliance] the Commission shall within 10 working days notify the [Secretary of Commerce] of such determination.  Such notification shall include the reasons for making the determination and an explicit list of actions that the affected State must take to comply with the coastal fishery management plan.  The Commission shall provide a copy of the notification to the affected State…

“Within 30 days after receiving a notice from the Commission…and after review of the Commission’s determination of noncompliance, the Secretary shall make a finding on (1) whether the State in question as failed to carry out its responsibility under [the fishery management plan]; and (2) if so, whether the measures that the State has failed to implement and enforce are necessary for the conservation of the fishery in question…

“Upon making a finding…that a State has failed to carry out its responsibility under [the fishery management plan] and that the measures it failed to implement and enforce are necessary for conservation, the Secretary shall declare a moratorium on fishing in the fishery in question within the waters of the noncomplying State.  The Secretary shall specify the moratorium’s effective date, which shall be any date within 6 months after declaration of the moratorium.  [formatting omitted]”

The Atlantic Coastal Fisheries Act became law in 1993, and for the first 24 years of its existence, the Secretary of Commerce routinely endorsed the ASMFC’s noncompliance findings, and used the moratorium as an incentive to bring states into compliance with the ASMFC’s management plans.

But that all changed during the first Trump administrationwhen, in 2017, the State of New Jersey (yes, them again) decided to go out ofcompliance with the ASMFC’s summer flounder management plan, betting thatpolitical connections (its then-governor, Chris Christie, was an early Trumpsupporter, and so had some political influence within that administration)would trump good science and lead to a favorable decision.

The gamble paid off, as Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross became the first Commerce Secretary in history to override the ASMFC’s finding of noncompliance and excuse a noncompliant state’s actions.

It is not at all unlikely that, if New Jersey went out of compliance with striped bass and a noncompliance finding was made under the Atlantic Coastal Fisheries Act, the same thing would happen again, if for different political reasons.

Thus, the ASMFC might well be reluctant to initiate noncompliance proceedings under that law.

But it may have another, more viable alternative.

In 1984, Congress passed the Atlantic Striped Bass Conservation Act, which actually provided a template for the later law, but differed in an important respect.  Under the Striped Bass Act, if a state went out of compliance with the ASMFC’s striped bass management plan,

“The Commission shall immediately notify the Secretaries [of Commerce and the Interior] of each negative determination made by it…

“Upon receiving notice by the Commission…of a negative determination regarding a coastal State, the Secretaries shall determine jointly, within 30 days, whether the coastal State is in compliance with the Plan and, if the State is not in compliance, the Secretaries shall declare jointly a moratorium on fishing for Atlantic striped bass within the coastal waters of that coastal State…  [formatting omitted]”

The Striped Bass Act has fallen into obscurity since the passage of the Atlantic Coastal Fisheries Act, as the latter addresses all ASMFC-managed fisheries, including that for striped bass.  But the Striped Bass Act was never repealed by Congress, and remains on the books, and it may offer the ASMFC a far better chance of enforcing its noncompliance finding, because it does not require that the Secretary of Commerce (or the Interior) determine whether the provisions that as state has not complied with are “necessary for conservation.”  A mere finding that a state is not in compliance with the striped bass management plan is enough to require that a moratorium be imposed.

Of course, things probably wouldn’t go that smoothly.  The secretaries might well try to impose a “necessary to conservation” standard for political reasons, even though it wasn’t explicitly stated in the statute, and New Jersey might well choose to litigate if the secretaries imposed a moratorium without addressing the necessity of the management measures in question. 

Still, the best evidence of Congressional intent is the plain language of the statute, and “if the State is not in compliance, the Secretaries shall declare jointly a moratorium” is pretty plain and clear.  There’s not much room for interpretation.  If Congress really wanted a “necessary to conservation” standard to apply to the Striped Bass Act, all they would have had to do was write one in--which, after all, they did it in the Atlantic Coastal Fisheries Act.  The fact that they didn’t include similar language in the Striped Bass Act surely suggests that they chose not to do so.

Hopefully, things won’t get that far.

Hopefully, the New Jersey Marine Fisheries Council isn’t quite as determined to go out of compliance as the stories I’m hearing suggest, and hopefully, New Jersey will choose to be a responsible member of the ASMFC that respects the Commission’s decisions, even if they don’t go New Jersey’s way.

But history suggests that expecting New Jersey to act responsibly is expecting too much, and that the state might well choose to place its own short-term interests ahead of the interests of the striped bass resource and all of the anglers, commercial fishermen, and fishing-related businesses lining the coast between Maine and Virginia, that depend on a healthy striped bass stock.

2017 isn’t that far in the past, a Trump administration is again in the White House, and there isn’t any reason to believe that New Jersey doesn’t hope that history will repeat itself if it goes out of compliance again.

So, should New Jersey again decide to act irresponsibly, it’s nice to know that the ASMFC might have an option that could see the latest round of noncompliance, should it occur, bring the consequences such actions deserve.

 

 

HAS THE STRIPED BASS FISHERY REACHED A NEW INFLECTION POINT?

 

In 2022, the big 2015 year class of striped bass entered the 28- to 35-inch ocean slot limit, and recreational landings soared.  For that one year, driven by those recreational landings, the fishing mortality rate exceeded the fishing mortality threshold, and overfishing occurred.

Fishing effort also showed the impact of the 2015s entering the slot, rising from nearly 15.7 million trips in 2021 to slightly over 20.4 million trips in 2022.

But at the same time that was happening, something else was happening, too.  The number of striped bass caught on each trip was beginning to go down, falling from 1.95 bass per trip in 2021 to 1.62 bass per trip in 2022.  And the decline didn’t stop there.  In each subsequent year, the average number of bass caught per trip continued to fall, to 1.61 fish in 2023 and 1.33 in 2024.

There’s still a lot of 2025 to go, and we only have catch and effort data available through the end of June, but so far this year, the average number of bass caught per trip has fallen even farther, to just 0.82—less than a single fish for each trip taken.

That doesn’t mean that such a low success rate will continue throughout the year.  Over the past few seasons, we have seen bass migrating down from New England and eastern Long Island stall off western New York and northern New Jersey late in the season, providing very fast fishing that might—if it recurs again—push the success rate over the one-fish-per-trip mark for the entire season, although it’s probably unlikely that the rate will come close to equalling last year’s 1.33 bass per trip.

But the other thing that we need to think about is that the number of directed striped bass trips taken in the first six months of 2025 is also the lowest in the past five years—by far.  Trips during that six-month period peaked at 7.93 million in 2022, but by the time 2025 rolled around, they had fallen to slightly less than 4.75 million, which was a substantial reduction in angling effort.

2023 and 2024 effort in the first half of the year had declined modestly, to 6.79 and 6.34 million trips, respectively.  But the sharp drop in 2025 effort seems to signal that something new is going on, that is causing anglers to lose interest in the striped bass fishery. 

Some angling industry and “anglers’ rights” advocates will undoubtedly argue that anglers are losing interest in striped bass fishing because more restrictive regulations are making it more and more difficult for anglers to catch a legal-sized fish. 

While that may have contributed to the declining effort in 2023 and 2024, when the new, 28- to 31-inch slot size in the ocean fishery put many of the fish in the 2015 year class off-limits to catch-and-keep anglers, in 2025, the above-average 2018 year class entered the ocean slot limit in large numbers, and should have spurred increased angling activity, just as the larger 2015 year class spurred increased activity in 2022.

In making the projections needed to rebuild the stock, the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission’s Striped Bass Technical Committee predicted that the availability of the 2018s would lead to more fishing effort, and cause 2025 recreational removals—landings and release mortality combined—to increase by 17 percent compared to 2024.

But that didn’t happen—at least not yet.  Instead, recreational effort for the first half of the year is down by 25 percent, while total catch is down even more, having fallen about 48 percent from 2024 levels.

Why?

While no one can say for sure, it is very possible that we have finally reached the point where the declining availability of striped bass is discouraging anglers from going fishing.

Although some members of the recreational fishing industry continue to deny it, striped bass are largely pursued as a sport fish, rather than merely for food.  Saltwater fisheries managers still have problems making such distinctions, and still tend to focus on yield when managing fisheries, employing the same philosophies whether managing striped bass or scup, bluefish or black sea bass.  They have yet to learn what their freshwater counterparts learned years ago--that most anglers who seek sport fish such as muskellunge or native brook trout have different attitudes and different motivations from those who target bluegills and bullheads.  Unlike marine fisheries managers, inland managers understand why it is wrong to apply the same management approaches to every species, without first considering the motivations of the anglers who pursue them.

The data is clear that striped bass are not primarily pursued for food.  The ASMFC notes on its website that

“The recreational fishery is predominantly prosecuted as catch and release, meaning the majority of striped bass caught are released alive either due to angler preference or regulation (e.g., undersized, or the angler already harvested the daily bag limit).  Since 1990, roughly 90% of the total annual striped bass catch is released alive…”

When managing a catch and release fishery, one should not manage for yield, but for abundance, as the ability to find and catch fish, rather than the ability to kill fish and bring them home, is the primary driver of angler effort.

That is illustrated by the recreational striped bass effort data for the years 1995 through 2014.  During all of that time, recreational regulations were relatively stable along the coast.  Most states adopted a two-fish bag limit and 28-inch minimum size, and even those states that did not—for example, Maine’s regulations allowed anglers to retain only one fish, that either fell within a 20- to 26-inch slot or measured over 40 inches in length—remained relatively consistent during that time, so changing regulations had no impact on angler behavior.  Yet angler effort varied during that time.

In 1995, when striped bass abundance was, by definition, right at the biomass threshold, anglers took about 13.0 million directed striped bass trips.  By the time that spawning stock biomass peaked in 2002, trips had increased to 20.8 million, although they didn’t peak, at 24.8 million, until 2006, when a combination of larger fish from 1989, 1993, and 1996, along with numerous undersized bass from the very strong 2001 year class, provided anglers with both quality bass and fast action.  But then, as the stock’s decline became more noticeable, effort declined as well, falling to 19.3 million in 2014, the last year of the coastwide 2@28 inches rule.

Now, we’ve reached the point where first-half effort has fallen well below 5 million trips.  Given that, for the years 2021-2024, directed striped bass effort through June 30 accounted for roughly 40 percent of all directed trips for they year, we should expect total directed striped bass effort to fall below 12 million trips in 2025, the lowest number of directed trips in over 30 years.

So we must ask hether the striped bass fishery has finally reached an inflection point.  

That is, have we reached the place where anglers have decided that a fishery that only sees them catch, on average, a mere eight-tenths of one striped bass per day is a fishery that they no longer want to be a part of?  

Have we gotten to the point that anglers have decided that fishing in a largely empty ocean—at least, an ocean largely empty of striped bass—in not a particularly enjoyable activity, and not an activity that they want to engage iny?

Right now, we can't answer that question with any certainty, but I strongly suspect that the answer is yes.  People whom I know—some hardcase surfcasters, others anglers old enough to have fished through the last stock collapse, the sort of diehards who refused to stop hunting unicorns throughout the early 1980s—are saying that they just aren’t bass fishing as much as they did just a few years ago.

Some have stopped fishing because the fish just aren’t there.  Others fish less often out of a sense of responsibility to the resource, feeling that if the striped bass stock is not doing well, they shouldn’t be adding to its troubles by heading out to kill fish, even if the fish that they kill are only some of the estimated 9 percent of striped bass that die after being released.

Another factor that might be coming into play is that, as striped bass become less abundant, their distribution begins to get spotty.  

The center of striped bass abundance during the summer months seems to extend from, perhaps, the East End of Long Island, New York to Cape Cod, including Cape Cod Bay.  When striped bass abundance is high, competitive pressure causes quite a few fish to spend their summers outside of that core range.  At those times, anglers are able to find a few summer holdovers on the New Jersey shore, and some wide-ranging fish up in northern Maine.  There aren’t as many fish out on the fringes as there are in the core range, but there are enough to provide a worthwhile angling experience, at least for those who know where to find the fish and how to catch them.

But when striped bass abundance declines far enough, the population contracts into the core range.  There is less competition between individuals, and so less need for fish to spread into adjacent waters.  As abundance declines further, even fishing in the core areas gets spotty, with good fishing in a few areas—maybe the Montauk rips, Block Island, the outer Cape, and/or Boston Harbor--but hit-and-(largely) miss everywhere else.

At that point, anglers who don’t live and fish near the productive areas tend to turn to other species--provided that other species are available, which is not always the case—or just stop fishing until the spring and fall migrations bring a temporary abundance of striped bass to their section of coast.  And even those spring and fall runs become shorter and less productive as the population shrinks.

2025’s sharp drop in directed striped bass trips may be the first real signs that significant numbers of anglers are leaving the fishery.

Some will doubtless leap upon the decline in effort as an excuse to maintain the status quo, and take no further action to rebuild the striped bass population.  The American Sportfishing Association—the largest recreational fishing industry trade group—has already argued that

“Additional seasonal closures are not necessary.  Strict recreational fishery management using a narrow slot limit has effectively lowered fishing mortality to a 30-year low which is well below the target and threshold needed for rebuilding,”

while Michael Waine, the American Sportfishing Association’s East Coast spokesman, called in to a recent ASMFC hearing held in New York, to speak against a 12 percent reduction in striped bass removals, arguing that the striped bass catch for the first six months of 2025 was only half what it was for the same period in 2024, and so no further reductions in landings were needed.

But maybe the ASA, along with the rest of the recreational fishing industry, ought to take a long, hard look at what they’re asking for.  For as the American Sportfishing Association has already noted,

“The recreational striped bass fishery drives billions of dollars in economic activity, supports tens of thousands of jobs, and sustains countless small businesses up and down the Atlantic coast.”

If the decline in striped bass catch is occurring not because of more stringent management measures—and management measures have now been unchanged since the spring of 2024—but rather because anglers are losing interest in a fishery where, due to declining abundance, they are often unable to catch even a single fish over the course of a trip, it’s not going to be very long before those “billions of dollars in economic activity” begin to dry up, those “tens of thousands of jobs” are put at risk, and many of those “countless small business up and down the Atlantic coast” are forced to close their doors.

If 2025 truly marks an inflection point, where many anglers are beginning to walk away from a badly deteriorating striped bass fishery, then the economic benefits of the striped bass fishery will also wane, and the very people and businesses that the American Sportfishing Association was formed to support will suffer as a result.

If 2025 truly marks an inflection point, we can expect fishing effort to continue its slide, and the businesses that the striped bass fishery to decline in harmony with the reduced number of striped bass trips.

The only remedy for the woes of striped bass-related businesses is the same remedy that will aid the striped bass itself:  Reduce fishing mortality to whatever level is needed to rebuild the stock, so that renewed abundance will convince estranged anglers to rejoin the fishery, and entice anglers who have been fishing less, due to reduced striped bass abundance, to increase their efforts in response to increased opportunities to encounter fish.

A failure to adopt such remedy is likely to push the striped bass stock into further decline, and to condemn many striped bass-dependent businesses to a slow but still avoidable death.

 

 

 

 

 

 

HERE WE GO AGAIN: LOUISIANA SABOTAGING GULF AMBERJACK MANAGEMENT

 

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote a piece about the National Marine Fisheries Service failing to close the recreational amberjack season in the Gulf of Mexico, despite anglers catching more than 200 percent of their annual catch limit last year and having to pay back the overage—which is larger than the entire annual catch target for the recreational sector in 2025.

Although NMFS never provided any reason for keeping the 2025 season open despite such a massive payback requirement, rumors from generally reliable sources suggested that the cause didn’t arise within NMFS, but higher up in the Department of Commerce hierarchy, where someone apparently convinced an influential bureaucrat that recreational fishermen needed something to fish for, the amberjack population wasn’t in bad shape (although the most recent stock assessment found it to still be overfished), and that the season could remain open without doing serious harm.

As noted in my recent piece, the Gulf Fishery Management Council disagreed, and wrote a letter to NMFS decrying its failure to enforce the provisions of the management plan.  That letter, and other public comment in favor of closing the season, apparently convinced the agency (or someone higher up in the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration or Commerce) to at least close the season early.

As a result, the 2025 recreational season for Gulf amberjack closed yesterday, September 27, and will not open again until September 1, 2026.

Most states are conforming their seasons to the federal action, and shutting down as well.  Florida recently shut down its season by executive order, and will keep its season closed through August 31, 2026.

However, Louisiana is refusing to join the National Marine Fisheries Service and the other Gulf states in their efforts to conserve the amberjack resource.  Instead, it issued a release that read,

“NOAA is closing the federal waters of the Gulf of America to Greater Amberjack recreational harvest at 12:01 a.m., local time, Saturday September 27, 2025.

“NOAA states that the 2024/2025 Gulf greater amberjack recreational landings data indicate 882,451 lb were harvested, 478,451 lb greater than the 2024/2025 annual catch limit of 404,000 lb.

“Recreational harvest of Greater Amberjack in Louisiana state waters (out to 9 nautical miles) will remain open until October 31.

“’Prior to state management of Red Snapper, anglers were faced with shortened seasons and reduced access.  This untimely closure of federal waters for Greater Amberjack is another prime example of the need for state management using state data programs,’ said [Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries] Secretary Tyler Bosworth.

“Governor Jeff Landry and Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries (LDWF) Secretary Tyler Bosworth sent a letter to NOAA Fisheries earlier this month, requesting that management of Greater Amberjack be transferred to the state level.  Seasonal landings at the state management level would be conducted through LDFW’s more precise recreational saltwater landings data collection program, LA Creel.  The use of LA Creel has been crucial in developing state management of Louisiana’s recreational Red Snapper season.  The near real-time data provides Louisiana the ability to set flexible fishing seasons that allow anglers to take full advantage of available fishery resources.  State management of Greater Amberjack would provide more flexibility in setting seasons and regulations, allowing greater ability to tailor state-specific management.  [emphasis in original]”

Anyone reading that, who can also recall the red snapper debates of a dozen or so years ago, can only think, “Here we go again.”

The red snapper situation was similar in many respects.

Anglers were grossly overfishing their annual catch limit (a meaningful annual catch target had not yet been put in place).  Paybacks were an annual occurrence—although red snapper overages never exceeded a year’s ACL—and seasons were shortened in an effort to keep the recreational landings within the catch limit.

Anglers weren’t happy with the situation, and convinced state fisheries managers to ignore the federal red snapper season and allow longer seasons in state waters, where federal recreational regulations did not apply to anyone except federally permitted party and charter boats.  So when federal waters closed, anglers could still land red snapper that were allegedly caught within state waters (although it was an open secret that plenty of anglers, knowing that federal law enforcement resources were stretched very thin, often ventured out past the state line).

The longer state seasons assured that recreational fishermen would chronically exceed their annual catch limit.  And because Gulf red snapper—just like Gulf greater amberjack—are managed on a Gulf-wide basis, with a single catch limit in force from southwest Florida around to the Rio Grande, if more red snapper were being caught in state waters, the federal season would have to be shortened in order to compensate for those higher landings.

At one point, the federal season only lasted three days.

And that might have been fine, as far as it went, if everyone was honest and aboveboard about what the problem was and why it existed.  But that would be asking too much, as the various recreational fishing industry and angling rights organizations put their own spin on the situation.  Instead of placing the blame where it belonged, on the state fishery managers who decided to take their states out of compliance with the federal red snapper regulations—and on themselves, who encouraged the state managers to do so—they blamed federal fisheries managers and the federal management system for imposing unnecessarily short seasons, while holding up the state managers, and the longer state seasons, as paragons of the management system, who could provide more “access”—their euphemism for more dead fish in anglers’ coolers—for the recreational sector.

Thus began the drive to take the authority to manage the recreational red snapper fishery away from federal fisheries managers, who were bound by the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act to base their decisions on the best available scientific information, and hand it over to state managers who were able to base their decisions on whatever political considerations were most important at the time, regardless of what the scientists advised.

Louisiana’s latest action certainly makes it appear that the same game will play out with Gulf amberjack.

Although there’s little hard information out there, it’s hard not to suspect that the same people who drove the effort to take red snapper away from federal managers are behind the effort to hand amberjack management to the states.  The Louisiana release even uses similar language to that used by the anglers’ rights crowd the last time around, talking about the superiority of state recreational data programs compared to the Marine Recreational Information Program used by NMFS.

But when we look at the red snapper data provided by MRIP, and compare it to that used by LA Creel, we don’t find a lot of difference.  In 2022, NMFS published regulations intended to calibrate state recreational data programs so that their estimates could be compared to one another and to estimates produced by MRIP.  It turned out that the MRIP and LA Creel red snapper estimates were almost identical, although LA Creel landings estimates were just slightly higher.  Thus, Louisiana’s claim that LA Creel is “more precise” than MRIP lacks objective support.

What LA Creel can do is provide landings estimates somewhat sooner than MRIP can.  But when we already know that a stock is overfished, and that required paybacks are large enough to cancel out the entire 2025 fishing season, the speed with which estimates can be produced is completely irrelevant.

In the end, the only relevant issue is the fact that, pursuant to the fishery management plan governing greater amberjack in the Gulf of Mexico, anglers exceeded their annual catch limit so badly in 2024 that they were required to pay back 478,451 pounds in 2024, an amount well in excess of their 404,000 pound annual catch target.

Thus, Louisiana is completely unjustified in calling the September shutdown of the 2025 recreational amberjack season in federal waters an “untimely closure,” blaming such closure on federal fisheries data, and keeping the state season open through October 31 when, in reality, the 2025 recreational amberjack season should never have been opened at all.

The sad reality is that, in keeping its state waters amberjack season open, Louisiana is setting the stage for the same sort of debacle that occurred with red snapper a decade ago.

Louisiana anglers will continue to catch amberjack through October 31, 2025.  Since the 2025 annual catch limit was already landed—in 2024—those Louisiana amberjack will constitute an overage for the 2025 season, which will have to be paid back in 2026, resulting in a shortened 2026 Gulf amberjack season.  Anglers, almost certainly encouraged by the various anglers’ rights organizations, will complain that federal managers are unreasonably shortening—perhaps, if enough Louisiana amberjack are combined with those landed during the abbreviated 2025 federal season, even completely closing—the 2026 recreational season, at which point the various organizations will begin to issue shrill press releases and point their fingers at federal managers, who were only following the dictates of the fishery management plan, and blame them for preventing anglers from fishing, while never blaming, and most likely lauding, the real culprits behind the shortened season, the Louisiana state managers who, in failing to close the state waters season, caused the overage to balloon.

At that point, the same angling industry, boating industry, and anglers’ rights groups that excoriated NMFS over red snapper management will again bludgeon the agency of its management of Gulf amberjack, thus furthering their goal of weakening the federal fisheries management system and moving the management of important recreational species to the states, where politics, rather than science, governs management outcomes.

Thus, by failing to close its state waters season to prevent further excess landings, Louisiana has committed a significant act of sabotage against both federal amberjack management and the federal fishery management system itself.

It is very hard to believe that Louisiana wasn’t aware of that fact when it chose not to close its amberjack season.

 

DO WE REALLY WANT POLITICIANS TO MANAGE OUR FISHERIES?

 

Many years ago, all fish were managed by politicians.  The basic rule was that you could catch whatever you wanted, in whatever numbers that you wanted, of whatever size that you wanted, and you could do what you wanted with the fish—eat them, sell them, give them away, feed them to the tomatoes, or dump them back in the bay—because no law said otherwise.

Sometimes, someone would start to worry that a stock of fish wasn’t doing too well, or decided that some sort of net was killing too many fish (or, perhaps, interfering with another sort of net), or maybe one group of people decided that another group of people were killing fish that the first group wanted for themselves.  Whatever the issue, and whoever the concerned group might be, the only way to change the status quo was to go to the state (or very, very rarely federal) legislature, and convince the politicians to pass a law imposing a bag limit and/or a minimum size, or outlawing a particular gear, or to have a species declared a “gamefish” so that commercial fishermen couldn’t kill any of them anymore, and anglers could kill all of them instead.

It was a difficult, time-consuming process, and the results often weren’t very good, because laws were too often passed based on emotion, or because a particular group of fishermen wanted all of the fish for themselves, rather than being based on sound science and a coherent fisheries management policy.

Even the legislators eventually recognized that, although they held the ultimate management authority, they generally didn’t know all that much about fish, and both the public and the resource were usually better off if they delegated management authority to fisheries professionals who had the expertise needed to conserve and manage fish stocks.

That didn’t mean that the politicians were completely out of the picture—they still could legislate management measures if they wanted to—but it did mean that fisheries management measures were generally based on something more than largely uninformed opinion, and that any regulations that were put in place had to be based on facts, and were not merely “arbitrary and capricious” actions based on some people’s whim.

For the most part, and for most people, the administrative approach to fisheries management works a lot better than the legislative one, but for those who are trying to do something that’s a little outside the mainstream, and maybe unsupported by any sort of data or objective facts, management by politician rather than by professional fisheries experts is still the preferred way to go.

One of the latest examples of that is a proposed executiveorder that’s being shopped around the White House, largely by a coalition of anglingorganizations which want to shut down the menhaden reduction fishery but,perhaps due to the input of some environmental organizations, is also seekingto sharply restrict that harvest of some forage fish, and so, in one broadaction, would harshly regulate, and in some cases shut down, fisheries foreverything from menhaden off Louisiana to squid off New England.

From a biological perspective, it doesn’t make a lot of sense, as the affected species are, in large part, unrelated, and have very different life histories that should be considered in the management process.

From a management perspective, it doesn’t make much sense either, as some of the impacted fish stocks are already very healthy, some are overfished, and others are somewhere in between those extremes.

Trying to cram them all into a one-size-fits-all executive order doesn’t make very much sense, which is why the proponents are seeking a purely political solution, knowing that professional fisheries managers wouldn’t give such a scattershot approach even passing consideration. 

The executive order that they’re seeking would reportedly 1) ban the use of midwater trawls for forage fish species, 2) end the reduction fishery for menhaden and other forage fish, 3) direct the National Marine Fisheries Service to manage forage fish for ecosystem health, and 4) set science based catch targets for forage fish to protect predator species.  Forage fish would have to be managed to a biomass target that is 75% of the unfished biomass for each managed species.

Not surprisingly, the commercial fishing industry is taking exception to the proposed executive order.  It is asking fishermen to write a letter to President Donald Trump, members of his cabinet, and the fishermen’s members of Congress, opposing the issuance of the executive order.  While there is certainly a big dose of self-interest in that industry opposition, the commercial industry isn’t wrong when it argues that the proponents of the executive order

“misrepresent the science and seek to shut down menhaden harvests through lawsuits, media pressure, and unilateral federal action—bypassing the state and interstate regulatory bodies that have successfully managed the fishery for decades.

“These efforts are often driven by ideology or competing commercial interests, not by genuine concerns for science-based conservation.  Our fisheries are sustainable, with robust management frameworks ensuring ecological balance and long-term viability.”

A look at the fisheries potentially affected by the requested executive order demonstrates where it parts from good science and good management principles—and sometimes from reality as well.

In the case of Illex and longfin squid, both species have lifespans of less than one year, which exempts them from the annual catch limit and accountability measures requirements of the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act.  The existing fishery management plan allows both species to be harvested at rates higher than those that would be permissible under the proposed executive order, while maintaining a sustainable fishery.  Reducing the fishing mortality rate in order to achieve a biomass at least 75% as large as an unfished stock would unnecessarily reduce landings without providing appreciable offsetting benefits.

In addition, squid are generally harvested with bottom trawls, not mid-water trawls, which renders the remainder of the executive order irrelevant to them.

Atlantic herring are overfished, but a rebuilding plan is in place.  Because there is regional variation in the stock, it isn’t managed as a monolith, as the proposed executive order would do.  Instead,

“The [annual catch limit] is divided into sub-[annual catch limits] for management areas in a manner to prevent overfishing on individual stock components,”

a smaller-scale management approach that it more sensitive to such regional differences.  

While Atlantic herring are caught in mid-water trawls, it’s not clear whether a court would support efforts to ban the trawl fishery, for after the New England Fishery Management Council adopted an amendment to the herring management plan that would ban mid-water trawling in some inshore areas to prevent alleged regional depletion of herring, the United States District Court for the District of Massachusetts invalidated the resulting regulation, finding that it was “arbitrary and capricious” because there was no evidence linking the mid-water trawls with localized depletion.

If a court found that there was no grounds for banning mid-water herring trawls in even a relatively small expanse of ocean, it is difficult to believe that there is any factual justification to ban them in all federal waters of the East Coast.

The story of Atlantic mackerel is similar.  The stock is overfished, but already subject to a rebuilding plan.  And the mackerel are often caught in mid-water trawls.  However, NMFS notes that

“The stock is overfished, but the fishing rate established under a rebuilding plan promotes population growth,”

“Fishing gears used to harvest Atlantic mackerel have minimal impacts on habitat,”

and

“Regulations are in place to minimize bycatch,”

which makes it appear that mackerel are being appropriately managed, and are in little need of the proposed executive order’s protections.

And, finally, we get to menhaden, the fish that was undoubtedly the primary driver behind the proposed executive order, and the fish that, more than the others, illustrates why the proposed executive order is more a bit of political theater than a legitimate management measure.

Taking the primary features of the proposed executive order, we find:

1)     The executive order would ban the use of mid-water trawls for forage fish.  But the largest percentage of menhaden, by far, are caught in purse seines, making that provision irrelevant.

2)     The executive order would ban the reduction fishery for menhaden.  This is a purely ideological issue.  Atlantic menhaden are neither overfished nor experiencing overfishing.  If the stock is healthy and the fishery sustainable, why does it matter what vessels and gear catch the fish, and why does it matter what the fish are used for once they’ve been killed?  The next stock assessment could well tell us that menhaden need further management measures, but it may also tell us that the current fishery is completely sustainable.  So until the science tells us that new management measures are needed, the fact that someone doesn’t like the reduction industry is hardly a reason to end the fishery.

3)     The executive order would require NMFS to manage forage fish for ecosystem health.  But as Atlantic menhaden are managed by the ASMFC, this point would, like the first, be irrelevant.

4)     Finally, the executive order would require forage fish to be managed with science-based catch limits that protect predator species.  In the case of menhaden, that’s already done.  The ASMFC tells us that

 

“The [ecological reference point] assessment evaluates the health of the stock in an ecosystem context, and indicates that the fishing mortality (F) reference points for menhaden should be lower to account for menhaden’s role as a forage fish…[It uses] an ecosystem model that focuses on four key predator species (striped bass, bluefish, weakfish, and spiny dogfish) and three key prey species (Atlantic menhaden, Atlantic herring, and bay anchovy).”

Thus, it is clear that the proposed executive order constitutes a political statement rather than a bona fide fisheries management action.  It is an ideology-driven appeal to the politicians in the Executive Branch that would accomplish nothing that is not already being done, and done more efficiently, by means of conventional fisheries management—except, of course, shutting down the reduction fishery, which is the whole point of the exercise.

But that is hardly a management measure.  The menhaden stock seems to be doing just fine, even with that fishery in place.  And should the menhaden stock falter, a reduction in quota, rather than shutting down an entire fishery, would be a far more justifiable measure.

Because there’s a problem when you turn to politicians to shut down a fishery that you don’t like:  If you can use politics that way, other people can, too.

And the fishery that they don’t like might very well be yours.

 

 

 

 

 

FACING THE CONSEQUENCES, WHEN FISHERIES MANAGEMENT FAILS

 

I’ve been attending fisheries meetings for nearly 50 years, ever since the striped bass began to collapse and people started making their first halting efforts to address the problem.  By and large, well thought-out management measures have usually worked, often despite the efforts of some fishermen, and much of the recreational and commercial fishing industries, who remained firmly focused on the short term, and what they can harvest today, and never spent enough time contemplating the future or what might happen should a fish stock collapse.

I was reminded of that once again last Wednesday evening, when I attended an Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission hearing on striped bass, and heard almost every industry representative oppose conservation measures—at least for their sector—and insist on maintaining the status quo.  

The ASMFC’s Atlantic Striped Bass Management Board could well decide to heed those industry calls when it meets again in October, and opt not to reduce striped bass fishing mortality.  

And, if that happens, some folks might be pleased.

But decisions have consequences, and just as the decision to reduce landings by 12 percent might result in commercial fishermen making less money, charter boats booking fewer trips, and the tackle industry selling less merchandise, the decision NOT to reduce landings could result in fewer striped bass in the ocean, and cause longer-lasting harm to the same people who are fighting the proposed landings cuts.

Striped bass are at the forefront of the fisheries debate right now, and everyone is talking about them, but it might make more sense to leave bass alone for a while, and look at what happened in some other fisheries where managers were less than successful in averting a population crash.

Just this week, I came across an article on the Canadian Broadcasting Company website that declared,

“Plunging salmon pool prices highlight stock’s decline, anglers say.

“Most minimum bids in province’s once-a-decade Crown angling lease auction drop 40 to 75 percent.”

The gist of the article was pretty simple:  The number of Atlantic salmon returning to rivers in the Province of New Brunswick, rivers that once were among the most productive and most esteemed salmon waters in Maritime Canada--rivers like the Restigouche and Miramichi--has fallen so low that well-heeled fishermen and lodge owners are no longer willing to pay high prices to lease a section of river where they would hold exclusive fishing rights.

The New Brunswick government reportedly refused to explain why the leases had lost so much value, but only said that the minimum bids were set by an unidentified third party, and that the relevant appraisals

"considered a range of factors, including comparable private land transactions, Atlantic salmon returns, and catch statistics."

But while government spokesman might provide oblique answers, the big, underlying truth can’t be denied:  There are so few salmon left that people aren’t willing to pay as much as they once did to fish on New Brunswick’s waters.

That was the truth expressed by Bradford Burns, a guide and angler who believes that the loss of lease value tracks directly back to the fact that the rivers’ populations of Atlantic salmon have declined by 90 percent over the past 15 years.  He went on to note,

“I wouldn’t be surprised if they have great difficulty even getting bids on many of the properties.

“It isn’t like you went out and instead of catching 10 fish, you caught one fish.  It may be that you go days and days and not catch any at all, or even see any because there aren’t any there.”

Canadian fisheries managers have tried to stem the Atlantic salmon’s decline.  Last March, the Canadian government announced the nation’s

“first ever conservation strategy to restore and rebuild wild Atlantic salmon populations and their habitats.”

In doing so, Canada admitted that

“Atlantic salmon populations face many threats linked to human activity, including loss of natural habitat, decreased water quality, invasive species, legal and illegal fishing, pollution and challenges linked to climate change.”

Some of those threats, such as water quality and legal and illegal fishing, are arguably things that managers can control.  But other factors, most particularly climate change, are not.

Salmon fishermen argue that Canadian fisheries managers are overlooking another big cause of the salmon’s decline, the restoration of the striped bass population in the salmon rivers, and the resulting striped bass predation on juvenile salmon on their way out to sea, but stomach contents studies conducted by Canada’s Department of Fisheries and Oceans have failed to find significant evidence of such predation.

So, right now, New Brunswick’s Atlantic salmon are facing something that looks very much like a stock collapse.  The population seems to be in free fall, while fisheries managers strive, so far unsuccessfully, to find ways to stem the decline as the economic value of the fishery begins to tank.  

The situation is, in those respects, very similar to the striped bass stock collapse of the very late 1970s and early 1980s.  To anyone who fished for striped bass during those years, Mr. Burns’ comment that, “It may be that you go days and days and not catch any at all, or even see any because there aren’t any there,” sounds uncomfortably familiar.

But we don’t need to go to distant Canadian waters, or turn to fish as exotic and celebrated as the Atlantic salmon, to see what happens when managers fail to respond quickly enough and forcefully enough to a species’ decline.  We need only look in our local creeks, bays, and sounds, at the collapse of the humble winter flounder.

At one time, not all that long ago, the winter flounder was the bread and butter fish for inshore anglers, the party boat fleet, and northeastern tackle shops.  Although it ranged south to the Chesapeake Bay, the heart of the recreational fishery resided in waters between New Jersey and Massachusetts, where anglers, fishing from private and for-hire boats, from docks, piers, and bulkheads, and from the shore caught the little flatfish by the millions, at any time of year when the waters weren’t bound up in ice.

In 1981, Massachusetts anglers harvested approximately 16.5 million winter flounder, while New York, at 12.4 million fish landed, sat in second place.  By 1984, New York had taken over the lead, with just under 14.5 million flounder landed.  In the same year, anglers harvested about 8.5 million flounder in New Jersey, 4.8 million in Massachusetts, 2.7 million in Connecticut, and 1.6 million in Rhode Island.  By any measure, just 40 years ago, there were a lot of flounder around.

But there were also signs that the flounder population was under stress, and managers were slow to respond.  As is the case with striped bass today, winter flounder were such an important component of the recreational fishery that the industry—party boats, charter boats, and tackle dealers—fought to maintain the status quo, actively opposing any regulation that might cause their incomes to decline.

So management measures tended to be too little, too late, andlandings never declined as much as necessary; the winter flounder population declined instead.  In 1984, anglers caught flounder by the millions, but by the time 2024 rolled around, landings had collapsed along with the population.

Massachusetts still had the most landings, but at a mere 29,000, they had fallen by 99.8 percent from their 1981 peak, and by 99.4 percent from what they were in 1984.

Other states saw similar declines from their 1984 landings.  In New York, 2024 winter flounder landings were so minimal that a meaningful comparison is nearly impossible; they had fallen by 99.994 percent.  In New Jersey, landings declined by 99.98 percent, and by 99.99 percent in Connecticut and Rhode Island.

In terms of trips, that translates to Massachusetts anglers making around 2.0 million winter flounder trips in 1981 and 940,000 in 1984, but only 71,200 in 2024.  New York’s recreational winter flounder effort fell from 3.5 million trips in 1984 to 8,500 in 2024, as New Jersey’s effort went from 2.1 million trips to 40,500.  Connecticut and Rhode Island, where anglers made 920,00 and 510,00 directed winter flounder trips, respectively, in 1984, seemingly had no directed trips at all last year (although some such trips undoubtedly occurred, but were so few that they never appeared on the surveys).

As a practical matter, from a recreational standpoint, winter flounder are all but economically extinct, a victim of failed fisheries management.  

A fishery that once provided anglers with millions of pounds of valued food fish, and kicked off the fishing season well before the start of spring, is now effectively dead.

Yet the lesson of the flounder still seems lost in the fishing industry.

And so we come back to striped bass.

Striped bass is a fishery driven by abundance, which has far more to do with how often people go striped bass fishing than do restrictive regulations, a fact that is easily demonstrated by effort data from the years 1995 through 2014, a time when regulations were generally consistent at a 2-fish bag limit and 28-inch minimum size in the ocean fishery (although some states varied from 2 @ 28 inches, they didn’t change those regulations much, either), but striped bass abundance changed substantially, both up and down.

In 1995, striped bass abundance was, by definition, right at the level we now consider the biomass threshold, supporting 13.0 million striped bass trips.  Biomass peaked around 2002, at which point trips had increased to 20.8 million.  After that, biomass declined a little and then leveled off, with enough  larger fish available from the big 1989 and 1993 year classes to keep angler interest up, leading to trips peaking at 24.8 million trips in 2006 and 24.4 million trips in 2007.

But after that, striped bass abundance, and directed striped bass trips, fell into a noticeable decline.  By 2011, trips had dropped a bit, to 22.7 million, and by 2014, the last year of the consistent regulations, to 19.3 million.  Since then, bass abundance declined while regulations grew more restrictive, making any correlation harder to draw.  In 2024, with striped bass abundance down and a one-fish bag limit and 28- to 31-inch slot size limit in place, the number of directed striped bass trips had fallen to 15.4 million, nearly as few as were taken 30 years ago.

And there are indications that trips will decline again in 2025.

So, where do we go next?

In 1986, after the striped bass stock collapsed, the spawning stock biomass bottomed out.  Anglers took just  540,000 directed striped bass trips, roughly 3.5 percent of the number of trips that they took last year.  

Of course, back then, there were still plenty of winter flounder, tautog (“blackfish”) were still unregulated, the cod stocks had not yet collapsed, teen-sized bluefish were common, charter boats were still bringing home mako sharks on a regular basis, and the size limit for fluke was still 14 inches, so there was plenty to take up the slack.

We don’t have those fallbacks anymore.

So, do we urge the ASMFC’s striped bass management board to do nothing, in an effort to maintain striped bass landings--and industry profits--in the short term, knowing that by doing so, we might be greasing the skids for a future stock collapse—and knowing that, if a stock collapse occurs, the economic benefits of today’s striped bass fishery might disappear, seemingly overnight, with little to take their place?

Or do we take a more prudent road, forsaking some short-term gain, knowing that, in the end, we’re building the foundation for a striped bass fishery that is healthy, sustainable and—for those in the business—profitable in the long term?

We can look at Atlantic salmon and winter flounder, and get a pretty good idea what can happen when fishery management fails.

The big question is, are we willing to let striped bass management fail as well?

 

 

 

 

STRIPED BASS: WHEN THE BOAT GOES DOWN, WE ALL GET WET

 

Last night, the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission held a hearing on the Draft Addendum III to Amendment 7 to the Interstate Fishery Management Plan for Atlantic Striped Bass for Public Comment at the headquarters of the Marine Division of the New York Department of Environmental Conservation which is in King’s Park, New York.

I would guess that somewhere between 60 and 75 people attended in person, with others attending via a webinar set up by the DEC.  Most of those in the hearing room represented the for-hire fleet, with the remainder split between commercial and recreational fishermen.  It was a congenial hearing as these things go, for although the people in attendance had widely differing views, no one cursed out the ASMFC rep or the hearing officer, no one engaged in personal attacks against other attendees, and no one invited anyone outside to settle their differences in the parking lot, which made it a lot better hearing than many that I’ve attended over the years.

There were a number of comments made, most sincere, a few fatuous, a few somewhat pointed and spiteful.  But of all the comments I heard last night, one will stand out in my mind:

“I struggle with any proposal that doesn’t put us all in the same goddamn boat…[because] when the boat goes down, we all get wet.”

I’ve never heard what may be the most basic truth in fisheries management expressed in such simple, commonsense terms.

No one benefits from a collapsing stock, and it’s in everyone’s interest to maintain fish stocks at healthy and sustainable levels.

Yet that is the one thing that I rarely hear people agree on, at any fisheries meeting.

Instead, everyone present tends to get into their particular corners, fight to hold on to what they have, and try to get more from everyone else in the room.  The commercial fishermen fight for more quota—or at least no quota reductions—in the face of a troubled stock.  Recreational fishermen—particularly in the case of striped bass—call for “gamefish status,” that would take the commercials off the water and leave all the fish for themselves.  For-hire boats stride somewhere in-between, seeking more fish for themselves, and often special privileges that elevate their customers above the rest of the angling hoi-polloi, but not always supporting the commercials’ efforts to maintain an undiminished quota.

Last night’s hearing was no exception in that regard, with most in the room primarily concerned with themselves, and a minority, at best, expressing their concern for the future—whether short- or long-term—or the striped bass stock, the resource that, for one reason or another, brought them into the room in the first place.

The case for Addendum III is both simple and compelling.

The striped bass stock has been overfished since at least 2017, and pursuant to the terms of the ASMFC’s management plan, it must be fully rebuilt by the close of 2029.  In order to have a 50 percent probability of rebuilding the stock, removals must be reduced by at least 12 percent.

In addition, the striped bass stock has been experiencing historically poor recruitment, with the Maryland juvenile abundance index, which has proven to be the single best predictor of future striped bass abundance, for the past six years indicating the worst recruitment for any six-year period in the 67-year history of the Maryland juvenile abundance survey.

So even though the striped bass biomass may increase somewhat over the next few years, it will begin declining again if recruitment doesn’t improve.

In other words, the boat is already low in the water, it’s starting to leak, and its prospects of staying afloat aren’t too good unless those leaks are plugged and everyone begins bailing.

But somehow, that message isn’t getting through to a lot of people.  They all seem to want to go for a boat ride, but expect someone else to do the bailing while they all sit on a cushion, soaking in the sun.  Some just choose to ignore the leaks, and believe that there’s no need to start bailing at all.  A few see the water pooling around their ankles, but deny that they boat’s leaking at all, and appear to expect the water to dry up on its own.

And all of those folks were sitting in last night’s hearing room.

There weren’t too many commercial fishermen attending the hearing, and only a couple spoke.  They didn’t in the room itself didn’t have too much problem with recreational removals being reduced by 12 percent, so long as the same reduction wasn’t applied to the commercial quotas.

Even though the Draft Addendum would reduce both commercial and recreational removals by 12 percent, Bonnie Brady, who heads up the Long Island Commercial Fishing Association, complained that

“It’s the commercial fleet that takes the cut,”

argued that neither the commercial sector’s removals—10 percent of all striped bass fishing mortality in recent years, which increased to 15 percent in 2024—nor those of the party and charter boats were contributing to the striped bass’ distress, and blamed everything on recreational release mortality.  She argued that shore-based and private boat anglers should be required to reduce removals by 13 percent—increased from 12 so that the for-hire fleet could increase its landings—and bear all of the responsibility for striped bass rebuilding, because

“Commercial and for-hire fishermen did not cause this problem,”

which is a dubious statement at the best of times—the combined commercial and for-hire sectors were responsible for nearly 20 percent of all striped bass removals in 2024, and so certainly contributed to whatever problem exists—but is also somewhat irrelevant to the problems at hand.

When a boat starts taking on water, if all aboard spend their time arguing about who caused the leak, instead of helping each other get the holes patched, everyone is going to get very, very wet very, very soon.

One of the commercial speakers, Edwin Chiofolo, asked a question that deserves further thought.

He noted that New York’s commercial fishermen are currently governed by a 26- to 38-inch slot size limit, and asked whether, if New York increased its minimum commercial size, it might receive a larger quota. 

Because New York actually had to accept a somewhat smaller quota in exchange for reducing its minimum size from 28 to 26 inches a few years ago, as a result of lost spawning potential attributable to the size decrease, it might very well be able to regain some of that quota with a size increase, and so offset some of the 12 percent reduction.

But other than that, the commercial speakers seemed to have little intention of helping the bass stock rebuild.

Much the same was true of the for-hire industry, although that sector probably exhibited the greatest diversity of opinion. 

Some implicitly or explicitly challenged the data underlying the stock assessments and so the need for any reduction at all.  For example, Capt. James Schneider, a party boat operator from the North Shore of New York’s Long Island, kept trying to argue that striped bass experienced senescence, and that they weren’t as fecund as younger fish.  He cracked that

“You’re putting Betty White and Angela Lansbury out to spawn,”

trying to compare striped bass fertility to that of humans and other mammals, even as Emilie Franke, the ASMFC’s Fishery Management Plan Coordinator, tried to tell him that studies found the older, larger bass to be the most valuable spawners.

Another speaker, who introduced himself only as “Rick” from the Captree charter boat Capt. Whittaker, said that he was disappointed in the data collection because state biologists always go to the same places to conduct their surveys (which, in fact, is how you create statistically valid data sets that create an index of relative abundance that can be compared from year to year—changing the sampling sites to chase local abundance would render the data useless), and that he wouldn’t support any landings reductions

“until there’s an improvement in data collection and science gathering.”

Most of the for-hire fleet opposed any harvest reductions, often without saying why, although a few expressed concerns not about the reductions themselves, but about the timing of the closed seasons needed to achieve them.  

New York’s striped bass fishery peaks at different times in different places.  New York Harbor and most of the South Shore of Long Island could tolerate a midsummer closure fairly well, but vessels operating there would be hurt very badly by one put in place during October and early November.  On the other hand, Montauk and other East End ports would be hurt badly by a midsummer close, but would hardly feel the impact if November and December were shut down.  To some, then, making no changes until the details of a closure could be figured out seemed like the best course.

And, of course, there were those who actively blamed the shore-based and private boat fishermen for the fact that reductions were being considered at all.  One Captree boat captain blamed “special interests”—meaning anglers concerned with conservation, who often released their fish—for the Draft Addendum, while another Captree boatman referred to

“The holier than thou crowd that is here.”

Yet none of the for-hires opposed the option known as O2, which would gift them with a broader, 28- to 33-inch slot, and allow their customers to land more bass than they currently can, while at the same time forcing shore-based and private boat anglers to pay for that boon by extending their reduction from 12 to 13 percent. 

Even though New York’s for-hire fleet accounted for only 0.94 percent of all directed striped bass trips in 2024, the fact that they were probably the most special of all special interests, and were seeking special harvesting privileges denied to everyone else, seemingly never entered their minds, as they tacked the "special interests" tag on others.

Far more nuanced comments were made by Capt. Jill Maganza-Ruiz, the President of the Montauk Boatmen and Captains Association, and a captain of the November Rain charter boat.  

She understood that not reducing striped bass removals could have bad long-term implications, including even larger reductions in landings in the future, and so opposed the status quo.  At the same time, she supported giving the for-hire fleet a special, wider slot size limit that would increase its landings while everyone else was cutting back—even as she argued that the for-hire fleet “should be held to the same standards” as everyone else.  But she was clearly concerned that for-hire bookings were down, allegedly by 20 percent, and did her best to advocate for her association’s members.

While the for-hire industry seemed to be have the widest representation of any user group, the fishing tackle industry had few people in attendance.  One was Nuna DeCosta, representing Tyalure Tackle of Rye, New York, who had relatively little to say about the striped bass itself, but rather made general complaints about overregulation threatening the fishing industry and impacting people’s lives, and so opposed harvest reductions on those grounds.

The other industry rep who spoke was Michael Wayne, a representative of the American Sportfishing Association, the big fishing tackle industry trade association, who attended the webinar.  He noted that the recreational striped bass catch for March through June 2025 was about 50 percent below that of 2024, and based on that figure, questioned whether any reductions needed to be imposed on the recreational fishery to achieve rebuilding by the 2029 deadline.  His question was laced with irony, as the American Sportfishing Association recently made a public announcement asking anglers to oppose the harvest reductions.  In the announcement, it complained that

“ASMFC is reacting to short-term swings in recreational catch estimates from the Marine Recreational Information Program,  [emphasis added]”

yet Waine, in basing his comments on a mere four months of MRIP data, engaged in an even more extreme form of the same sort of conduct that his employer had recently condemned.

Finally, there were the recreational fishermen, who made up the largest minority of the groups represented at the hearing.  With the exception of one woman who fished from the surf and preferred status quo, the anglers expressed real concern with the health of the striped bass stock, and unanimously supported the status quo.

I know a lot of the people involved, and so know that their concern for the resource is legitimate.  Nonetheless, they have been criticized for their opposition to no-target closures, with members of the for-hire fleet, in particular, suggesting that their opposition arises from a selfish desire to have the bass to themselves.  As I said before, I know these folks, and also know that their opposition comes largely from the fact that no-target closures are unenforceable, but I have to admit that they probably like the idea of catching and releasing fish during the closure, too.

Yet I have a hard time criticizing them if that’s the case, because, out of all the stakeholder groups, the anglers are the only ones who have come out in force to do what’s right for the resource, and not just themselves.  The fact that they want everyone to do the same does not diminish their intent to do right by the bass.

The bottom line is that, commercial or recreational fisherman, and shore-based, private boat, or for-hire angler, we’re all in the striped bass boat together, and if we can’t find a way to work together, and keep the boat afloat, it’s going to take us all down with it when it goes under.

The only difference—and it’s somewhat ironic—is that if the boat sinks, the anglers, who have been trying the hardest to keep it afloat, might become wet and unhappy, but they’ll survive.

It’s the businesses, which have been doing so little to plug up the leaks, that are going to drown.