BLOWING SMOKE: "FAIRNESS" AND "EQUITY" IN STRIPED BASS MANAGEMENT

 

When any major fisheries management measure comes up for debate, we can always be sure that we will hear someone bring up the concepts of “fairness” and “equity.”

And most people, hearing that, would think, “Of course,” because everyone wants to be fair. 

At least in theory.

Even the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act has decreed, as part of its National Standard 4, that

“If it becomes necessary to allocate or assign fishing privileges among various United States fishermen, such allocation shall be fair and equitable to all such fishermen…  [formatting omitted]”

But once we get away from Magnuson-Stevens, we find that concepts of “fairness” and “equity” have no fixed meaning.  For in fisheries, as in kindergartens, geopolitics, and corporate management suites, if I get more than you, then things are perfectly fair and equitable.  I you get more than me, everything is completely unfair, and corrective measures are needed.

Striped bass management may provide the starkest illustration of that truth.

Soon after the adoption of Amendment 7 to the Interstate Fishery Management Plan for Atlantic Striped Bass, the fairness argument became weaponized by sectors and their advocates on the Management Board, who began slinging it around indiscriminately and without a solid logical basis, solely to gain advantage for themselves at the expense of everyone else—and of the striped bass.

As strange as it sounds, special treatment for particular sectors of the striped bass fishery is now being justified by some twisted concept of “fairness.”

Thus, in August 2023, when the Atlantic Striped Bass Management Board began discussing a motion that would extend the emergency action for another year, unless an addendum to Amendment 7 was adopted sooner, Adam Nowalsky, the Legislative Proxy from New Jersey, rose to oppose the motion on what were essentially equitable grounds, saying

“if the concern of this body is the health of the resource, and in five of the last six years removals have exceeded, the majority of the removals have come from release mortality and not harvest, and this emergency action focuses only on harvest.

“How could we in good conscience say we’re doing this purely for the resource?  We are doing this as a de facto reallocation from the harvest fishery to the release fishery.  The reallocation of such has a dramatic impact on the demographics of the users of this resource.  They are very different users.  They come from very different backgrounds.

“They have a very different purpose.  Not only is this not in the overall best interest of the resource, but it severely impacts one demographic group over another…”

It was a somewhat puzzling argument, given that the purpose of the emergency action was to protect the majority of the large 2015 year class of striped bass, which was expected to be instrumental in rebuilding the overfished striped bass stock, and also given that it kept everyone on the same, level playing field, able to harvest the same, 28- to 31-inch fish.  But to Nowalsky, the motion was somehow unfair, because it didn’t let one group of anglers to kill as many bass as they wanted to.

But that is how the “fairness” argument typically goes.  And most of the Management Board seemed to understand that, so the motion Nowalsky opposed passed by a substantial margin.

Yet the debate over granting special privileges to the commercial and for-hire fleets, and placing the greatest conservation burden on shore-based and for-hire anglers—all in the name of “fairness”—was just gaining steam.

For along with the effort to grant special privileges to the for-hire fleet came the effort to prohibit catch-and-release angling during the closed season, a prohibition that was never before put in place on a coastwide basis, not even during the 1980s, when harvest moratoriums in most coastal states helped fully restore what had been a collapsed striped bass stock.  But the for-hire fleet—or, at least, that portion of the fleet that specialized in serving up dead striped bass to its customers—liked the idea, because such “no-target” closures, which theoretically reduced or eliminated release mortality, would allow for a shorter closed season, and let them get back to their business of killing striped bass that much sooner.

Thus, at the same August 2023 Management Board meeting, we saw New York’s Governor’s Appointee, Emerson Hasbrouck, speak in favor of such no-target closures, saying

“Harvest and discard mortality have been pretty much evenly split, in terms of which one comprised the majority of recreational removals over the past 10 years.  I don’t know why we would not want to help address this high level of discard mortality by implementing no targeting…

“I know there are enforcement issues…I have to think that there will be compliance with no targeting, even if enforcement is problematic…

“I also understand that we can’t actually calculate what the reduction in fishing mortality will be with a no-targeting closure.  But we couldn’t calculate that for some of the other things that we’ve implemented, circle hooks and no gaffing, but we know that they are going to reduce mortality.  Similarly, with a no targeting closure it is going to reduce that discard mortality.”

Hasbrouck didn’t play the “fairness” card at that point, but it was only a matter of time before he became a leading advocate of reducing recreational (but not commercial or for-hire) effort in the name of regulatory “fairness.”

Later on in the same meeting, he seconded a motion that would include options granting special privileges to the for-hire fleet, not enjoyed by other anglers, in the draft Addendum II to Amendment 7, which was going out for public comment.

He rose yet again, to put a motion on the table that would have removed a 14.5 percent reduction in the commercial striped bass quota from the draft Addendum II, and so place all of the burden of rebuilding the striped bass stock on the shoulders of recreational fishermen. 

Apparently, neither granting the for-hire fleet special privileges not enjoyed by other anglers, nor placing the entire responsibility for rebuilding the striped bass stock on the shoulders of anglers offended his notions of “fairness,” which seems more than a little absurd after we look at his comments at subsequent meetings.

The absurdity—for both Hasbrouck and others—began early when the Management Board met in January 2024, to approve the final version of Addendum II to Amendment 7 to the Interstate Fishery Management Plan for Atlantic Striped Bass, as Hasbrouck implicitly questioned the validity of the public comment when he asked

“…For most of the written comments and comments received at then public hearing.  The majority of those commenters, again written and again at the public meetings, were recreational fishermen, primarily?  Is that correct?...”

Upon learning that his assumption was true, he went on,

“However, our own [Advisory Panel] we have a more balanced representation between recreational anglers, the for-hire industry and commercial fishermen, so that provides us with a more balanced representation.  As I recall from your presentation, the [Advisory Panel] and the majority, actually twice as many, I think, members of the [Advisory Panel] supported Option C [granting special privileges to the for-hire fleet] for the ocean fishery.  There was also overwhelming support for Option, I think it was Option A, status quo for the commercial reduction.”

Thus, his comments suggested, the great majority of the public comment should be discounted, and the sector that generated about 90 percent of all striped bass removals, and the vast majority of the social and economic benefits gleaned from the fishery largely ignored, to the benefit of two special interest groups, the for-hire fleet, which accounted for less then two percent of all recreational trips primarily targeting striped bass, and the commercial sector, which was only responsible for about 10 percent of striped bass removals, and which, from a purely economic perspective, probably shouldn’t exist at all.

Yet Hasbrouck seems to see nothing “unfair” about his anti-angler bias, as soon after making his comment, he seconded an ultimately unsuccessful motion that would have allowed the for-hire fleet to retain striped bass that must be released by the rest of the angling community.

Shortly thereafter, Maryland’s Luisi made not one, but three different motions attempting to grant for-hire boats in the Chesapeake Bay a two-fish bag limit, when the rest of the anglers could keep only one.  In justifying his efforts, he said

“Fairness has been brought up, it has been discussed, and in my opinion it’s very difficult for me to have two different sectors of the same group.  You have your…sport angler, your catch and release angler and your for-hire captain, who is taking trips for parties for the purpose of business.  It’s very difficult for me to look at those two individuals and believe that they are one and the same.”

The problem with that argument, of course, is that the striped bass bag limit isn’t intended to regulate for-hire captains—or to regulate tackle shops, fuel docks, or any other angling-related business, all of which are affected to some degree by striped bass regulations.  The bag limit is applied to the individual angler, and it is hard to argue that it is “unfair” for all anglers to be governed by the same rules. 

Although Luisi, in his efforts to aid the for-hire fleet, fell back on the “fairness” argument anyway, even using it in support of what would have been, from the anglers’ perspective, a very unfair rule that favored one small group of anglers over everyone else.  His efforts finally raised the ire of a member of his own delegation, Legislative Proxy David Sikorski, who fumed,

“Let’s stop trying to define people by the way they choose to participate in the fishery, or what their opinion might be at the time you talk to them.  Stop this—sportsmen versus clients versus these people or those people.  It is the general public, and I cannot support giving some people in the general public two fish, when other people get one…”

He was talking about real “fairness”—creating a level playing field for everyone—and enough people agreed that all of Luisi’s efforts went for nought.

But that didn’t stop some Board members efforts to create special rules and exemptions for a privileged group of stakeholders.  Once the recreational sizes and bag limits were addressed, John Clark, the Delaware fisheries manager, made a motion to leave the commercial quota unchanged, a motion which would have, again, placed the entire burden of striped bass recovery on the recreational sector.  He seemed to reject the “fairness” argument, saying

“I understand how there is a concern that if the recreational side has to do something, then the commercial side has to do it.  But once again, I said when we first started this addendum process, we weren’t even talking about taking anything away from the commercial, because we recognized what a small part of reduction in the striped bass numbers were out there.”

Why the commercial sector shouldn’t, in “fairness,” make an equally small contribution to the bass’ recovery wasn’t quite clear.

Hasbrouck seconded Clark’s motion, justifying has action by arguing

“everyone will benefit from an increase in the population of striped bass.  But we’re trying to deal right now with this large increase in recreational removals.  Again, I think it’s disingenuous for us to put a lot of that onus on the commercial fishery, when they haven’t been part of the problem that we’re looking to address.”

Apparently, in his mind, the 10 percent of striped bass removals attributable to the commercial fishery didn’t contribute to the present, depleted condition of the striped bass stock.  Thus, it was apparently “fair” for the commercial sector to share fully in any increase in the striped bass population, but “disingenuous”—that is, dishonest or duplicitous, and so even worse than “unfair”—to make the commercial sector responsible for 10 percent of the species’ recovery.

Maybe, if you’re biased against the recreational sector—or biased in favor of the commercials and for-hires, which amounts to about the same thing—that makes some sort of sense although, if you believe that everyone should share the burdens and the benefits of a striped bass recovery equally, the logic is pretty hard to see.

The shenanigans continued after the effort to leave the commercial quota untouched had failed.  That’s when Luisi moved to cut the commercial reduction by seven percent, as opposed to the 14 percent reduction faced by the recreational sector.  Jeff Kaelin, the Governor’s Appointee from New Jersey, seconded.  The motion then passed by a narrow majority, which apparently saw nothing “unfair” about the disparate conservation burdens.

Then, the “fairness” issue festered, until the next management action—or, more accurately, non-action—that occurred at the December 2024 Board meeting.

The Board was deciding whether to take any action to protect the slightly above-average 2018 year class of striped bass, which would have grown into the slot by 2025 or, in the alternative, take no action for the 2025 season, but instead initiate a new addendum that would go into effect in 2026. 

In the ocean fishery, the only practical way to achieve the needed harvest reduction was a season, and there was a legitimate discussion about what season would be fair to all—that is, the season that would require everyone to give up something, without placing too much of a burden on anyone, or letting any state get away without making a significant contribution to the recovery of the striped bass stock.

Once again, the issue of no harvest versus no target closures arose, and it came in a pair of hypocritical statements extreme enough to define the entire striped bass “fairness” debate.  And once again, they were made by New York’s Governor’s Appointee, Emerson Hasbrouck, who said

“As a Commissioner in New York, representing all citizens of the state of New York, one of the things that I’m concerned about is equity.  A couple of things that I’ve heard through a lot of the public comment, is that a lot of people say we should take some action here today, and that all sectors need to participate in that reduction.  However, there seems to be an exception being made by the public, an exception for catch and release.

“Some of the language is that many anglers could still participate in the fishery if catch and release is allowed.  But if we’re reducing removals, don’t we want to reduce all removals?..

“Perhaps in the [Advisory Panel] or public comment about how are we going to be equitable here with telling some components of the recreational fishery, you can’t go fishing, and perhaps a reduction in the commercial fishery, and at the same time saying, oh, but it’s okay if we continue to allow a segment of the recreational fishery to keep catching fish and discarding and applying that 9 percent mortality…”

Later on in the meeting, he continued expounding on the same theme:

“This motion [to consider no target closures] an issue that has been concerning me, and that issue is equity and inequity.  You know reading through the public comment, the public comment summary, the [Advisory Panel] report, speaking with fishermen, and as a Commissioner representing all citizens in the state of New York, I see that there is an inequity here in not addressing catch and release.

“We know that catch and release doesn’t remove as many fish, and when I say remove, I don’t mean just harvest, I mean dead discards as well.  But a lot of the comment is that everybody needs to sacrifice, because everybody will benefit.  But then there is always the caveat, except we can’t have no targeting, because by not having no targeting it provides an opportunity for anglers to continue fishing.

“To me that is somewhat disingenuous, and I know that no targeting is difficult to enforce.  But we’ve been ignoring the removals by people who continue to target striped bass during closed seasons and otherwise…”

It’s hard to know where to start when dissecting those comments, although the first thing that sticks out is Hasbrouck’s claim that he is “representing all citizens of the state of New York,” a claim that is patently false because, as much as one might read through the transcripts of Management Board meetings, one will never find a time when Hasbrouck represented the most populous group of New York participants in the striped bass fishery—the recreational fishermen. 

Instead, we will find times, as described above, when he tried to discount the public comments submitted by thousands of anglers, in favor of those made by a handful of commercial fishermen and for-hire operators. 

We will find multiple occasions when he actively supported leaving commercial quotas untouched, so that those same anglers will have to bear the entire burden of bass conservation (something that he did later in the December meeting, when he seconded a motion to cut the commercial quota reduction from nine to a trivial one percent and, when that motion failed, made another motion to cut the quota reduction from nine percent to five), and times when he supported increasing for-hire landings at the same time that shore-based and private boat landings was reduced.

But we will not find a single time that he supported New York’s recreational striped bass fishermen, whom he always cast in a subordinate role.

We will find him asking “don’t we want to reduce all removals?” in an effort to burden the recreational catch-and-release fishery, at the same time that he seeks to minimize, or even eliminate, cuts to the commercial quota, and seeks to increase the for-hire kill.

Worse, we find him misrepresenting the nature of the recreational fishery by pretending that there are two separate components—one catch-and-release, one catch-and-kill—when the reality is that most striped bass anglers keep some of their fish while intentionally releasing others, with some emphasizing harvest and some emphasizing sport, but with most engaging in both activities.  So, when he said that allowing catch-and-release in the closed season would be “telling some components of the recreational fishery, you can’t go fishing,” he was telling a blatant lie, because all components of the recreational fishery could go fishing during such a closure, just as no component of the recreational fishery could harvest a fish during that time.  Such a situation represents true equity, with all components of the recreational fishery treated the same, something that Hasbrouck, with his apparent dislike for catch-and-release angling, refuses to admit—perhaps even to himself.

In the end, what is truly disingenuous is a Management Board member who is willing to give commercial fishermen a pass when it comes to reducing their quota, and is willing to increase the for-hires’ kill, but then focuses on limiting catch-and-release angling as a necessary component of any rebuilding plan.

In the end, that abject hypocrisy might sum up the “fairness” argument better than anything else.

“Fairness” isn’t about treating everyone equally.  It isn’t about expecting everyone to do their share to recover the fishery.

Instead, it’s about indulging your personal biases, and labeling everything you don’t like as “unfair.”

A MISSIVE FROM MRIP

 

A few days ago, I got a big envelope in the mail.

The return address was from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, c/o Gallup [the polling firm] in Lynbrook, New York.  I was a little curious, because although it’s not unusual for me to get some mail originating at NOAA, the packaging, and the fact that it was not addressed to me but to “NEW YORK RESIDENT” at my address, seemed a little strange.

The enclosed letter was hardly enlightening, reading, in part,

“I am writing to ask for your help in a study that the Gallup Poll is conducting on behalf of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).  This survey asks questions about severe weather and outdoor activities.  The results will be used to learn more about the environment and help improve the quality of marine and coastal resources.

“For this study to be accurate, we need all households who receive this short survey to compete it and send it back.  Your address was randomly picked from a list of addresses in New York, and we can’t replace you with someone else.  Your responses will help all residents of New York have their voices heard.

“This survey asks about many outdoor activities.  Some people enjoy many of these activities, while others aren’t interested in these activities.  It is very important that your household complete the survey, even in no one participates in these activities.

“This survey should be completed by an adult limit at this address.  We have included a small gift as a way of saying thank you for your help…”

The letter was signed by John Foster, Chief, Recreational Fisheries Statistics Branch, NOAA Fisheries Office of Science and Technology.  About the same time as I noticed that, two crisp new dollar bills slipped out from between the letter and the enclosed survey form.

At that point, things began to make a little more sense.  Once I started to take the survey, and got a look at the questions, everything made itself clear.

The package that I had received was part of the Fishing Effort Survey, that portion of the Marine Recreational Information Program that is mailed to households in coastal states, in an effort to gauge how many recreational fishing trips were taken in each two-month “wave.”

The Fishing Effort Survey is built around two so-called “frames” that are used to collect effort data.  The first frame is composed of addresses collected from each state’s saltwater fishing license (or registration), which guarantees that the surveys will reach saltwater anglers.  The second frame consists of surveys mailed to random addresses within the state, which is intended to reach anglers who, for whatever reason, never purchased a license. 

Although I have an up-to-date saltwater registration, my survey seemingly came from the frame that was sent to random residents.

Regardless of which frame a survey recipient belongs to, the two dollars that were enclosed were carefully calculated to maximize the chance that the survey would be completed and returned.  Apparently, studies have shown that amounts less than two dollars lead to fewer returned surveys, while higher amounts don’t materially improve the response.  Two dollars apparently sits at the Goldilocks point, where it is just right to encourage cooperation without adding undue cost.

A lot of thought goes into the surveys.  But sometimes, the thought processes backfire a bit.

Two years ago, a pilot study sponsored by the National Marine Fisheries Service discovered that there was an apparent flaw in the design of the Fishing Effort Survey, which might have resulted in fishing effort being overestimated by 30 to 40 percent (comments made at yesterday’s Highly Migratory Species Advisory Panel meeting suggested that the actual overage is much smaller, at least with respect to anglers fishing from private boats).  Further research revealed that the overestimate seems to have arisen out of two questions asked of every angler covered by a survey:  How many times did they fish in the past two months, and how many times did they fish in the past calendar year?

It seems that a substantial number of anglers reported that they had fished more in the immediately preceding two months than they had in the previous year, which was an obvious impossibility.

The pilot study looked considered issue, and determined that such misreporting was the result of something called “telescoping error,” which occurs when

“a respondent misplaces an event in time, usually placing the event more recently in time than it actually occurred.”

There was also a suggestion that some anglers were reluctant to provide a negative response, saying that they either didn’t fish much or did not fish at all, and so exaggerated the number of trips taken rather than enter a zero.

The problem seemed to revolve around the order of the two questions.  Typically, in constructing a survey, designers ask the simplest and most easily-answered questions first, and then move on to questions of greater complexity.  Thus, the Fishing Effort Survey first asks each respondent how many times they have fished in the past two months, and then goes on to ask how many times they have fished in the previous year.

But somehow, many anglers were providing the seemingly the “wrong” answer—the higher number—in response to how many times they fished in the past two months, while entering a lower number in response to the question about how many times they fished over the last year.  That’s where the explanations of “telescoping error” as similar things came in.

I’m neither a statistician nor a designer of surveys, so I have to believe the experts when they tell us that’s where the Fishing Effort Survey went wrong.  But I have to believe that at least some of the error might have been due to something that we can call carelessness, or inadvertent error, or maybe just dumb mistakes.  Because I’ll confess right here—I never try to hide the truth from my readers—that I screwed up when answering my own questionnaire.

Maybe it happened because I’m a lawyer, and when faced with a series of questions, I tend to read all of them first, before answering any, because I’m trying to figure out if the questions are set out in a pattern designed to take me to a particular place. 

Maybe it was just a simple brain fart.

But whatever the cause, when I answered the questions about how much I fished, I found myself writing down my annual trip total first, even though the question actually asked me how many trips I had taken over the past two months.  I knew that both questions were being asked, but somehow my mind decided to answer them in the wrong sequence.

In my case, I happened to catch—and correct—the error, but it led me to wonder how many people might have done the same thing that I had.  No telescoping error, no reporting of trips never made, but instead just a moment of mental lapse that led them to put the right numbers in the wrong boxes.

In the end, I sent the survey back with the answers all as right as I could get them, recognizing that, after a lifetime of salt water fishing, I had just participated in the Fishing Effort Survey for the first time.

Which led to another question:  How many other people, here in New York and elsewhere on the coast, have received a similar survey and, not knowing what it was, either pocketed the two bucks and tossed the rest in the trash or, hopefully, dutifully filled out the form and put it in the mail, without ever knowing that they were contributing to the MRIP data pool.

Because one thing we constantly hear, whether at fisheries meetings, in conversations, or on Internet chats, is anglers arguing that the Marine Recreational Information Programs data must be invalid, because such anglers have never been surveyed, and no one they know has been surveyed, so how can the information be any good?

Leaving aside the statistical side of things, which tells us that, so long as a survey reaches a representative sample of the population, it doesn’t need a very large number of responses to reach a reasonably accurate result, being the recipient of what I belatedly recognized as a Fishing Effort Survey questionnaire made me wonder how many anglers who received such a questionnaire never realized that they were being surveyed by MRIP at all.

After all, it’s easy for an angler to know whether they’re part of the Access Point Angler Intercept Survey—that portion of MRIP where surveyors make personal contact with anglers at marinas, piers, and shore access spots, speak with them, and physically count and measure their fish.  That can’t really be mistaken for anything else.

But a seemingly random bit of mail, that asks whether a person has had any recent experiences with severe weather conditions, whether they engage in outdoor activities, go to the beach, fish in fresh water and—after all that—whether they went salt water fishing, and how many times, and whether anyone else in the household might have done the same, might not leave as clear an impression.

I suspect that more than a few people might have responded to the Fishing Effort Survey without ever realizing that that’s what they were doing.

And so long as they responded, that’s probably OK.

But as my experience demonstrates, MRIP sometimes comes calling, whether we expect it or not, and I have to wonder whether it might not get a more effusive welcome if people could more easily recognize it for just what it was.

 

TIME FOR COMMENTS: ASMFC RELEASES STRIPED BASS ADDENDUM III

 

The Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission has finally released its Draft Addendum III to Amendment 7 to the Interstate Fishery Management Plan for Atlantic Striped Bass for Public Comment.  It’s a long, information dense document, that doesn't present all of the options as clearly as it might have, but it’s nonetheless important that anglers take the time to attend hearings and/or submit written comments, both for the sake of the striped bass and of themselves.

Public hearings on the Draft Addendum will be held all along the striper coast, beginning with a September 8 hearing in New Hampshire and ending with a September 30 hearing in Massachusetts.  For those who would like to speak, but for some reason can’t attend their local hearing, a general public hearing webinar will be held on September 29.  Hearings here in New York will be held on the evening of September 17, at the Department of Environmental Conservation’s Marine Division headquarters in Kings Park, and on the evening of September 22 at the DEC’s Region 3 Headquarters in New Paltz.

As is typically the case when an important addendum or amendment is out for public comment, this post will take a look at the Draft Addendum, and try to lay out the issues, provide some background, and perhaps answer some questions so that people may better understand the document and make more informed comments on its various options.

The critical issue

The Draft Addendum includes a number of different options, addressing a number of different aspects of striped bass management.  For reasons that aren’t completely clear, although the primary purpose of the proposed Addendum III is

“to support striped bass rebuilding by 2029 in consideration of 2024 recreational and commercial mortality while balancing socioeconomic impacts,”

the first three issues presented in the Draft Addendum have little or nothing to do with the rebuilding process.  Thus, in order to place the primary purpose of the Draft Addendum ahead of subordinate issues, I will begin near the end of Draft Addendum, with Section 3.4, Reduction in Fishery Removals to Support Stock Rebuilding, which begins on page 33.

Section 3.4 includes a suite of related issues, and each issue presents multiple options.  But of all the issues presented, none is more important than the first, when commenters are asked choose between Option A. Status Quo, which would leave both the commercial quota and the recreational management measures unchanged from what they are today—meaning that the striped bass spawning stock biomass will probably not be rebuilt to its target level by 2029—and Option B. Even Sector Reductions:  Commercial -12% and Recreational -12%.

Option B is the only acceptable choice, and it is important that anyone commenting on the Draft Addendum makes it completely clear that, regardless of what else the Management Board decides with respect to the other issues, it must adopt management measures that will have no less than a 50 percent probability of rebuilding the striped bass stock (unfortunately, measures that would have a 60 percent probability of rebuilding were removed at the August Management Board meeting), and must also require everyone, including the commercial sector, the recreational sector, and the for-hire fleet, to equally share the burden of rebuilding the striped bass stock, with none getting special treatment that shifts the burden onto other fishermen’s shoulders.

That last point is important, because even though an option that would have placed the entire burden of rebuilding on the recreational sector, requiring it to reduce fishing mortality by 14 percent while the commercial quota went unchanged, was deleted from the Draft Addendum in August, there is still the possibility that someone will propose reducing the commercial quota by less than 12 percent in the final Addendum III, thus forcing the recreational sector to take on a disproportionate share of the rebuilding, while also dropping the probability of rebuilding below 50 percent.

We saw the same sort of thing happen when Addendum II to Amendment 7 to the Interstate Fishery Management Plan for Atlantic Striped Bass was adopted in January 2024.  We don’t need to see it happen again.

Are some anglers more equal than others?                              

The need for everyone to contribute to rebuilding probably faces its biggest challenge in the next set of options, where two options would require shore-based and private-boat anglers to cut back their fishing mortality by 13 percent, rather than 12, so that the small handful of anglers who fish from for-hire vessels will be able to kill even more striped bass than they do today.

Those options appear in the Draft Addendum as O2 Split For-Hire Exemption in the Option B. Ocean Recreational Fishery -12% table, and CB2 Split For-Hire Exemption in the Option B. Chesapeake Bay Recreational Fishery -12% table.

In the ocean fishery, Option O2 would retain the current 28- to 31-inch slot limit for shore-based and private-boat anglers, while gifting the favored group of anglers, who fish from for-hire vessels, with a new, more relaxed 28- to 33-inch slot. 

Because that would let for-hire anglers kill more striped bass, compared to their landings today, at the same time that the rest of the recreational fishermen, as well as the commercial sector, will be forced to cut back their harvest by at least 12 percent, the closed season for all recreational fishermen would have to be extended to make up for the extra fish granted to the for-hires. 

Forcing the shore-based and private-boat anglers to give up fishing, or at least harvesting, days—depending on whether no-target or no-harvest closures are adopted (we’ll get to those next)—just so the small handful of anglers fishing from for-hire vessels can kill more striped bass hardly seems equitable.  Yet a disconcertingly large number of Management Board members—including some who love to give lip service to “fairness” and “equity”—will undoubtedly support such an action.

Which is one reason why anglers need to come out to oppose it.

Other reasons are 1) that the number of for-hire striped bass trips is extremely small, and thus generate an extremely small proportion of the social and economic benefits gleaned from the fishery, and 2) that for-hire anglers already harvest a disproportionate share of the recreational striped bass landings.

If we look at the Marine Recreational Information Program data for 2024, we find that anglers made an estimated 15,576,673 trips primarily targeting striped bass.  Those trips can further be broken down into 8,037,342 (51.60%) trips made by shore-based anglers, 7,318,472 (46.98%) trips made by private-boat anglers, and just 220,859 (1.42%) trips made by anglers fishing from for-hire vessels.

Shutting down more than 98.5 percent of the fishery for longer than necessary, just to provide the other 1.5 percent a larger harvest, makes no sense at all, whether looking from a social, economic, or fairness perspective.

Nor does it make sense when viewed from the perspective of landings.  In 2024, recreational fishermen harvested an estimated 1,728,743 striped bass, with shore-based anglers landing 201,038 (11.63%), private-boat anglers landing 1,356,008 (78.44%), and anglers on for-hire vessels landing 171,697 (9.93%).  

Not surprisingly, the shore-based component, which faces real handicaps when it comes to finding and catching bass, caught a relatively low proportion of fish—just 11.63 percent of the total--even though it accounted for more than half of all striped bass trips.  Still, it is somewhat startling that the anglers on for-hire vessels harvested nearly as many bass as the surfcasters did, even though the shore-based anglers made more than 35 times as many trips.

To present the data in another way, shore-based anglers averaged just 0.025 striped bass landed for every trip made.  Private-boat anglers, with their greater mobility, had a significantly higher harvest rate, at 0.185 bass per trip.  But anglers fishing from for-hire vessels dwarfed even that, landing an average of 0.777 striped bass per trip, a retention rate 4.2 times greater than that of private boat anglers, and 31.08 times greater than that of shore-based anglers.

Yet the for-hire fleet wants even more.

Clearly, given its relatively low contribution to the social and economic value of the recreational striped bass fishery, coupled with its already disproportionately high share of recreational striped bass landings, granting additional privileges to the for-hire fleet during a time of general sacrifice for everyone else would not be appropriate.

Commenters should explicitly support Sub-option O1 within Option B, which would retain the same size limits for everyone.

In the Chesapeake Bay, things are a little more complicated.  While, in the ocean fishery, there was no realistic size limit could achieve the needed 12 percent reduction, in the Bay, anglers have a choice of either changing the size limit, and leaving the season intact—Sub-option C1—or changing the season and leaving the current size limit in place—Sub-option C3. 

Either Sub-option C1 or Sub-option C3 provides a viable alternative, and anglers should feel free to choose among the two.  However, while doing so, anyone commenting on the Draft Amendment should also clearly and explicitly oppose Sub-option C2, which would, like Sub-option O2, elevate anglers fishing from for-hire vessels above what would then be the second-class recreational fishermen who fish from shore or from private vessels,  holding shore-based and private-boat fishermen to a new, narrow 19- to 22-inch slot, while allowing anglers fishing from for-hire boats to enjoy a much more liberal 19- to 25-inch slot size limit.

Seasons, and should catch and release be allowed when the season is closed?

One thing that everyone needs to understand about Addendum III is that, if it is adopted in any meaningful way, it is going to require a closed season in the recreational ocean fishery for striped bass.  In their long deliberations leading up to the initial draft of the addendum, the Plan Development Team and Striped Bass Technical Committee looked at many possible size limits, including both slot limits and traditional minimum sizes, that might achieve the minimum 12 percent reduction.  None met that goal. 

It quickly became clear that some sort of season was needed.

Just what that season should look like was the next big debate, which could be broken down into three distinct aspects: 1) Should states all adopt the same closures, 2) When should the closures occur, and 3) should catch-and-release striped bass fishing be permitted during the closed season?

All of those issues inspired intense debate.

In a perfect world, every state along the striper coast would have the same set of management measures.  But while that is relatively easy to do in the case of size and bag limits, it is virtually impossible to accomplish, in any meaningful way, with respect to seasons, because the recreational ocean striped bass fishery occurs at different times along different parts of the coast.  A July ocean  closure would be effectively meaningless of the Virginia coast, while a January closure would mean nothing in Maine.  

The trick was to adopt seasons that would effectively reduce recreational fishing mortality by at least 12 percent, while maintaining the benefits of consistent management across state borders, without placing an undue burden on any particular states while allowing others to remain unaffected.

So, to address the first issue, the Management Board decided to split the coast into two separate regions, each with its own closures, although it couldn’t decide where the dividing line ought to be.  The Draft Addendum thus offers two options, the consequences of which are set forth in tables 10 and 11.  One would set the border between Massachusetts and Rhode Island as the dividing line, which makes some sort of sense, because the timing of the Rhode Island fishery is very different from the timing of the fishery up in New Hampshire and Maine.  The other would divide the regions at the Rhode Island/Connecticut border, which also makes sense, since the beginning and end of the Rhode Island fishery bears little resemblance to that in the New York Bight and points south.

Anyone who has strong feelings on the issue ought to make them known to the Management Board, but the debate is likely to be esoteric enough that public comment won’t have too much impact on the outcome.

Much the same can probably be said about the second aspect of the debate: when the closed season—or seasons—should occur.  They need to happen at times when they can achieve the needed reductions, but also at times when they won'[t cause particular pain to one or two states’ anglers, while allowing anglers in other states to experience only a trivial burden. 

Once again, this is an issue that is probably going to be decided by the internal politics of the Management Board, where we will undoubtedly see substantial maneuvering by at least a few managers who will seek to adopt closures that will have a minimum impact on their own states, while shifting the conservation impact to others.  

Public comment will probably have little impact on a debate that will most likely be decided by a relatively slender majority, which will probably pick the option that, in their eyes, will cause their anglers and their angler-related businesses the least amount of pain—and, unfortunately, very possibly the option that allows for the greatest degree of gamesmanship with respect to when a closure occurs (e.g., the last 25 days of December, off the New Jersey shore), even if that gamesmanship impairs the effectiveness of the closed season.

Folks may comment on the issue if they feel compelled to do so, but they will probably have a de minimis impact on the outcome.

But the third and final aspect of the seasons debate is one that demands both anglers’ attention and their response, because it could determine whether Addendum III succeeds or fails.

It is the issue of whether catch-and-release should be allowed during any closed season.

The Management Board, and ultimately the Draft Addendum, has defined the two options in terms of “no-harvest” versus “no-target” closures.

A no-harvest closure is just what its name suggests:  Anglers could engage in a catch-and-release striped bass fishery during the closure, but would have to immediately release any bass caught.  During a no-target closure, even catch-and-release fishing would be outlawed.

A no-target closure might, at first glance, seem attractive to some.  After all, the striped bass stock assessment assumes that nine percent of all released bass die, so a no-target closure would seem to provide a more effective way of reducing fishing mortality, which would lead to a shorter closed season.

And that might be the case, except for a very important real-world truth:  No-target closures just aren’t enforceable.

That’s not just speculation.  It’s the expressed view of the ASMFC’s Law Enforcement Committee, which listed no-target closures dead last on a list of 27 potential enforcement measures, from the point of view of enforceability.  

At the August 6 Management Board meeting, a member of that Committee, Lt. Jeff Mercer of the Rhode Island Department of Environmental Management’s Division of Law Enforcement, explicitly stated that

“We believe that no-targeting closures would be very difficult to enforce,”

and noted that, although targeting striped bass in federal waters has been illegal since the mid-1980s, he was not aware of a single instance in which a violation of the no-target regulation was successfully prosecuted unless the violator also had a striped bass in their possession.

When multiple species of fish can be caught in the same place using the same techniques, it’s practically impossible to convince a judge, beyond reasonable doubt, that someone was illegally fishing for bass. 

Consider these two scenarios, which could take place on any beach between New Jersey and Maine at any time during the striper season:

SCENARIO ONE:  The striped bass season is closed, with a prohibition on targeting in effect.  A surfcaster stands by the shore, tossing a lure—maybe a tin squid, maybe a popper, maybe something else—into the white water foaming around an offshore bar.  As he works his lure through the water, he repeatedly hooks, beaches, and releases bluefish.  A law enforcement officer, seeing the action from afar, stops by and asks, “Any luck?”  The angler responds, “No, it’s been pretty bad.  I’m trying to catch a striped bass, but all I can hook are some bluefish.”  Having heard an explicit admission that the angler is breaking the no-targeting law, the officer hands the angler a summons.

SCENARIO TWO:  The striped bass season is closed, with a prohibition on targeting in effect.  A surfcaster stands by the shore, tossing a lure—maybe a tin squid, maybe a popper, maybe something else—into the white water foaming around an offshore bar.  As he works his lure through the water, he repeatedly hooks, beaches, and releases striped bass.  A law enforcement officer, seeing the action from afar, stops by and asks, “Any luck?”  The angler responds, “No, it’s been pretty bad.  I’m trying to catch a bluefish, but all I can hook are striped bass.”  The officer, understanding that no provable violation has been committed, says “Have a good day,” and walks on.

Ridiculous?

Of course.

But so is adopting no-target closures that will inevitably lead to such results—and worse, provide the illusion of reducing fishing mortality, when the no-target aspect is doing nothing of the sort.  Mistaking such illusion for reality could result in fishing mortality being reduced less than required to rebuild the stock, causing Addendum III to fail.

In addition, adopting a clearly ineffective, unpopular, and unenforceable no-target closure could easily erode anglers’ support for needed management measures, along with their respect for the regulatory process.  

At the August 6 Management Board meeting, Emerson Hasbrouck, New York’s Governor’s Appointee, admitted that no-target closures were unenforceable, then supported their adoption, claiming that 80 percent of anglers would obey the law anyway.  It was an impossibly naïve comment from someone trusted to manage striped bass, for even if many anglers started out honoring no-target closures, after spending some time watching less ethical fishermen illegally catching and releasing striped bass with impunity, many of the initially law-abiding anglers who initially refrained from fishing would begin asking themselves why they were seemingly being punished for doing the right thing, while others enjoyed the fishery, ignoring the no-target rule without any adverse consequences.

They would begin to consider their abstinence foolish.

Yet despite the obvious flaws of a no-target approach, it still has many supporters.  On August 6, Joseph Cimino, a New Jersey fisheries manager, said that he was unhappy that the question of enforceability entered the debate, as it shouldn’t determine whether no-target closures are adopted.  

Worse, Michael Luisi, a Maryland fisheries manager, explicitly suggested that no-target closures might not be needed—if otherwise conservation-minded anglers would only be willing to lower the spawning stock biomass target and settle for a smaller striped bass population, so making “rebuilding” easier to achieve while also allowing larger harvests.

The advocates of no-target closures are going to make them a part of the final version of Addendum III.  Thus, anglers should, in their comments, be adamantly opposed to no-target closures in the ocean fishery, making it clear that they are unenforceable, that their benefits are illusory, and that they would erode respect for the management and regulatory processes.

In the Chesapeake Bay fishery, things aren’t quite so clear.  While no-target closures remain unenforceable, high summer water temperatures, severely reduced dissolved oxygen, and the documented tendency of Bay striped bass to die after release when air temperatures get too high might, arguably, justify managers using such closures as a means to reduce recreational effort.  

It is an issue that Chesapeake Bay striped bass anglers ought to comment on based on their own experiences in the fishery.

The other issues

The other three issues included in the Draft Addendum are only of local application, and don’t directly impact most striped bass anglers.  Still, they do have at least a theoretical effect on the bass population as a whole, and so are deserving of some discussion and comment.

Section 3.1.  Method to Measure Total Length of a Striped Bass, if adopted, would establish the rule that, in every state,

“Total length means the greatest straight line length in inches as measured on a fish (laid flat on its side on top of the measuring device) with its mouth closed from the anterior most tip of the jaw or snout to the farthest extremity of the tail with the upper and lower fork of the tail squeezed together.”

Many states already have a similar rule in place, but others don’t, and a study conducted by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, referenced in the Draft Addendum, revealed that

“while there is a minor difference between a natural and a pinched tail measurement (estimated 0.25”), there is a more substantial difference between a natural and forcibly fanned tail measurement which also depends on fish size (e.g., a 32.8” fish measures 31” when the tail is forcibly fanned, a difference of 1.38”…).  Consequently, loosely defined measures of [total length] measurement or where anglers have discretion whether to forcefully fan the tail to make the fish shorter can effectively allow harvest of striped bass that are over the maximum size limit…”

The Draft Addendum also noted that

“Further review of the states’ regulatory definitions of total length for striped bass demonstrated several other inconsistencies that may be of interest to address.  First, not all states establish that the length measurement be taken in a straight line (as opposed to over the curve of the fish’ [sic] body).  Second, some states specify that the fish needs to be laid on its side and/or be laid as flat as possible.  Third, not all states specify that the mouth of the fish must be closed.”

All of those inconsistencies can allow anglers to expand the slot limit, to allow them to land bass either under or over the 28- to 31-inch slot.  Thus, in the interests of uniformity across states and to avoid the harvest of out-of-slot bass, commenters should support Option B.  Mandatory Elements for Total Length Definition.

The next section is Section 3.2. Commercial Tagging:  Point of Tagging, which would require bass to be tagged either immediately after capture or before offloading the fish/removing the vessel from the water.

The logic behind the proposal is that, if tags don’t have to be applied to commercially-caught fish before the point of first sale—that is, when the fish are sold to a fish house or other licensed buyer—there is an opportunity for the fisherman to divert a portion of the catch to the black market, and so sell fish in excess of the state quota.  Only three states, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and North Carolina, currently allow fishermen to forego tagging until the bass are sold.

The matter was included in the Draft Addendum largely at the behest of Delaware fisheries administrator John Clark, who was trying to convince the Management Board that so many fish were being diverted prior to tagging that banning point-of-sale tagging might serve as an alternative to commercial quota cuts.  While the Management Board didn’t buy his argument, a majority of the Law Enforcement Committee thought that tagging at some point prior to offloading was a good idea, although a minority disagreed.

An interesting aspect to the proposal is that, if it passes, it might well drive major changes to Massachusetts’ commercial striped bass fishery.  Currently, that fishery is open-access, meaning that anyone who can plunk down a modest fee can become a Massachusetts commercial striped bass fisherman, with no limit on how many commercial bass licenses might be issued.  As a result, a lot of the permits are sold to so-called “recremercials,” who want to recover some of their gas, fishing tackle, and beer money by selling striped bass, and perhaps by others looking for a way to sidestep the 1-fish bag limit and/or the 28- to 31-inch slot.  Massachusetts can currently accommodate the resulting large number of supposedly “commercial” bass fishermen, because they only need to issue licenses to a relatively small universe of fish buyers, and not to the many fishermen themselves.  If the tag-before-landing provision was put into place, Massachusetts would almost certainly be unable to provide tags to all of the people who currently hold commercial permits, and would have to limit the number of such permits in some way—perhaps by selling them only to those with reported commercial landings, or to those who make a majority—or at least a specified percentage—of their earnings from commercial fishing, and can prove it with their tax returns.

If for no other reason than to clean up Massachusetts’ commercial fishery, and to limit bass sales to people who really do make a living selling fish, it makes sense to support either Option B.  Commercial Tagging At the Point of Harvest, or Option C. Commercial Tagging By the First Point of Landing.  

If the primary concern is limiting fishermen’s ability to divert fish into the black market, Option B, which would place some restrictions on their ability to make on-water transfers, would be the better choice.

Finally, the Draft Addendum includes Section 3.3.  Maryland Chesapeake Bay Recreational Season Baseline.

The best way to describe Section 3.3 is to say that, over the past decade, Maryland gone so far out of its way to benefit its commercial and for-hire fleets, at the expense of its shore-based and private-boat anglers, that it has had to make all sorts of complicated changes to its recreational season structure to get the job done.  Now, with the likely adoption of Addendum III, which will require still more changes, Maryland finds itself snarled in a web of its own creation, and is trying to untangle things and create a more workable structure.

In the course of doing that, it has eliminated a spring no-target closure and replaced it with a no-harvest closure in April and an open season in the first half of May, while moving the current summer no-target closure from the last two weeks in July to the entire month of August, when the water is warmest and will have its most adverse impact on the survival of released bass. 

While those generally seem like beneficial changes, there is one concern:  Maryland claims that the changes won’t increase fishing effort, and will actually lead to a trivial decrease in recreational fishing mortality, even though it seems very likely that converting a 45-day no-target closure into 30 days of catch-and-release season and 15 days of harvest is going to increase both effort and fishing mortality, and that extending the summer closure from two weeks to 31 days, and pushing back its start from July 16 to August 1, isn’t likely to make up the difference.

The Draft Addendum notes that the scientists on the Atlantic Striped Bass Technical Committee

“could not develop a quantitative assumption about how effort would change when the season is opened from no-targeting to catch-and-release that was any more defensible than the assumption of constant effort, and so it accepted the use of that assumption in this case.”

Thus, even though the Technical Committee recognized the substantial uncertainty inherent in the Maryland proposal, they were unable to come up with any better numbers that could be used to challenge the Maryland assumptions.

To address those concerns, the Plan Development Team originally proposed two alternatives that included “uncertainty buffers” of 10 and 25 percent.  However, the 25 percent option was removed from the Draft Addendum at the August 6 meeting, after at least one recreational representative from Maryland whined that it constituted a “punitive” measure.

Yet, even without the 25 percent uncertainty buffer, the Maryland proposal seems to offer some real benefits, and shouldn’t be rejected out of hand.  The best way to address the issue during the comment period is probably to PROVISIONALLY support Option C. New Chesapeake Bay Recreational Season Baseline Plus 10% Uncertainty Buffer, and then ask that the Management Board consider increasing the buffer to some higher percentage such as 15 or 20 percent.

No, such 15 or 20 percent uncertainty buffers are not now, and never were, in any draft of Addendum III, but that doesn’t mean that they can’t be considered.  After all, at the August 6 Management Board meeting, the Board eliminated the option that would have required recreational fishermen to reduce fishing mortality by 14 percent while the commercial quotas remained unchanged, leaving only the option requiring both recreational and commercial fishermen to face a 12 percent reduction.  Yet right after that was done, Board members acknowledged the possibility of reducing recreational landings by the full 12 percent, while reducing the commercial quota by some lesser amount—even though such action was not included a one of the options in the Draft Addendum.

Thus, if the Management Board can ultimately settle on an management measure that would lead to more dead striped bass and reduce the likelihood that the stock will rebuild by the end of 2029, even though it did not appear in the Draft Addendum, it only follows that the Board can also adopt a 15 or 20 percent buffer for Maryland, even though that was not a published option, in order to keep a few more fish alive and make rebuilding more likely.

The next step

The next step is, quite simply, for people to get out to the hearings, and send in written comments.

For the sake of the striped bass, the Management Board needs to hear an outpouring of support for the 12 percent reduction, and a similar outpouring of opposition toward any suggestion that commercial fishermen, or anyone else, should be allowed to take a lesser landings cut.

For the sake of themselves, anglers must turn out and provide an outpouring of opposition to proposals that would allow anglers patronizing the for-hire fleet to increase their landings, at a time when everyone else--both anglers and commercial fishermen--are going to have to accept a significant landings cut, and make the shore-based and private-boat anglers pay for that increase in the form of a longer closed season.

And, for the sake of themselves, anglers must oppose the senseless support of no-target closures in the ocean fishery, which would deny them the opportunity to catch and release striped bass and deny coastal towns and angling related businesses the economic benefits that the catch-and-release fishery provides, while eking the greatest level of benefits out of a declining fishery. 

It’s not clear what the final version of Addendum III is going to look like.

It will probably contain a substantial harvest reduction, and some or all of the lesser proposals will most likely be approved.  But the fight against special privileges for the for-hire sector, at the expense of everyone else, and the battle against pointless no-target closures, are going to be intense, with the outcome probably decided by just one or two votes.

So while it’s impossible to predict what the final version of Addendum III is going to look like, it’s very easy to predict that it’s going to look a lot worse if anglers fail to show up—in big numbers—to be heard.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

TOO MANY STRIPED BASS

 

Up in Canada, some say, they have a problem.

There are just too many striped bass.  As a result, the Atlantic salmon population is crashing.

At least that’s what Atlantic salmon anglers claim.

The Canadian Maritimes host separate, geneticallyidentifiable striped bass stocks.  The largest spawns in the Miramichi estuary, which is located in the Province of New Brunswick.  The Miramachi has, historically, also hosted a strong run of Atlantic salmon, which has declined substantially in recent years.  Salmon anglers blame a resurgent striped bass population for the salmon’s ills.

The salmon fishermen argue that the bass are eating most of the smolts—the young, recently-hatched salmon that have grown large enough to leave the rivers and head out to sea, where they will spend most of their lives.  They claim that a 20-year study, which found that between 55 and 75 percent of the smolts made it out of the rivers and into the open Atlantic in the early 2000s, but less than five percent did so in 2022 and 2023, demonstrates that the bass are killing off the Atlantic salmon population.

For, in the same Canadian waters, striped bass have staged what, to striped bass fishermen, at least, has been a magnificent recovery. 

In the late 1990s, the Canadian Department of Fisheries and Oceans believed that the entire female striped bass spawning stock biomass was composed of fewer than 5,000 individuals, and closed the commercial and recreational fisheries as a result.  Perhaps in response to that action, female spawning stock biomass quickly increased, and was estimated at about 900,000 fish in 2019. 

The increasing striped bass population led the Department to reopen the recreational fishery in 2013, and to allow some commercial fishing, first by indigenous Tribes, and later by others.  Last year, it increased the Tribal quota from 50,000 to 175,000 bass and also increased the recreational bag limit from three fish to four (there is also a slot size limit of 50 to 65 centimeters, or roughly, 19.7 to 25.6 inches).  Earlier this year, the Department ordered the 43 commercial gaspereau (the regional name for the alewife, Alosa pseudoharengus) fishermen in the region to retain the first 500 striped bass measuring between 50 and 65 centimeters that they incidentally capture this season.

A 2024 stock assessment update suggests that the reopened fisheries may have had a significant impact on the female spawning stock, which had declined to an estimated 334,900 individuals.

That reduction was not enough to satisfy the Atlantic Salmon Federation, an organization of recreational fishermen that argues for salmon conservation, and insists that Canada reduce the female striped bass spawning stock to just 100,000 fish.

But, despite the one study that the salmon advocates quote, the science doesn’t necessarily support the claims of out-of-control striped bass predation on salmon smolts. 

A survey of striped bass stomach contents, conducted in 2022 by the Department of Fisheries and Oceans, found that 68 percent of the bass sampled had nothing in their stomachs at all, suggesting that they didn’t feed heavily when they congregated in the Miramichi estuary to spawn.  Of the bass that did have something in their stomachs, alewives—gaspereau—and some smelt dominated.  Although some salmon smolt were present, they made up a very small proportion of all stomach contents.

A scientific paper, titled "Multi-species Considerations for Defining Fisheries Reference Points for Striped Bass from the Southern Gulf of St. Lawrence,” written by Department of Fisheries and Oceans biologist Gerald Chaput, advised that

“It is not clear from the available studies that reducing striped bass spawner abundance to a level of the mid-2000s, i.e. 100,000 spawners or less (as requested by [the Atlantic Salmon Federation]), would improve the acoustic tagged smolt survival estimates or the population level relative survival rates derived from the cohort model, nor landings of gasereau [sic] and rainbow smelt in the commercial fisheries.”

But the Atlantic salmon anglers were not to be deterred.  When the Department of Fisheries and Oceans declined to cull the bass population back to just 100,000 spawning-age females, they formed an organization, Save Miramichi Salmon Inc., which sued the Department, seeking to compel it to reduce the striped bass population.

A spokesman for the organization alleged that

“DFO mismanagement and bad science over several years are destroying a National and Provincial treasure—the Miramichi Atlantic Salmon—and immediate remedial action is required now.”

The complaint—what in Canadian jurisprudence is known as a “Statement of Claim,”—makes for interesting reading.

For example, when describing the Atlantic salmon, it alleges that

“Atlantic salmon (salmo [sic] salar), referred to as the ‘King of Fish’, are a species of salmon native to waters throughout the North Atlantic Ocean.  Atlantic salmon is endemic to the Miramichi River system.

“Atlantic salmon have frequented the Miramichi River since the end of the last ice age and are of significant cultural and economic importance to Canadians, including, but not limited to, Indigenous Canadians and non-indigenous communities on the Miramichi since European settlement…  [numbering omitted]”

But when describing the striped bass, the allegations are far less fulsome, stating only that

“Atlantic striped bass (Morone saxatilis) are a species of rockfish which live throughout the Atlantic coast of North America, including the Gulf of St. Lawrence.

“Striped bass are commercially and recreationally significant fish, and, historically, were subject to significant commercial harvest.  [numbering omitted]”

No mention of bass being endemic to the Miramichi estuary, and no mention of their long presence and well-established role in the estuary’s ecosystem.  And no mention that Atlantic salmon, too, were “historically…subject to significant commercial harvest.”

The Claim’s language strives to make it clear to the court that while Atlantic salmon are the “King of Fish,” striped bass are nothing but an upstart commoner, and more, a commoner that is committing acts of treason against the crown.

The Claim makes allegations like

“Because of geographical separation and historic numbers, and standing net and sport fisheries, striped bass did not, historically, have a significant impact on the number of Atlantic salmon smolts migrating to the ocean, feeding only on a limited number of smolts during the annual migration, primarily from the Northwest and Little Southwest Miramichi systems.

“In the 1980s, populations of striped bass in the Miramichi River were considered stable and healthy despite being significantly lower than they are today.  [numbering omitted]”

The problem is that the phrase "historic numbers" is vague enough to mean whatever the plaintiff might want it to mean.  It’s a particularly amorphous concept when it comes to natural resources such as salmon and bass, when “historic” conditions, due to intentional and unintentional human manipulation of the environment, may be very different from what the default—the pre-human or, in a North American context, the pre-European—conditions of the resources might have been.

In that regard, it’s not the “historic,” but instead the prehistoric, conditions that should be used as a benchmark.

Applying that benchmark to the Miramichi’s salmon and striped bass, it’s impossible to note that both lived in apparent harmony for many centuries—for millennia—without bass driving down the Atlantic salmon population.  

For thousands of years before there were significant net fisheries—other than those of the Tribes, once they arrived—and before there were any recreational fisheries at all, Atlantic salmon and striped bass both utilized the Miramichi estuary and, given by the numbers of fish the first explorers found, somehow managed to thrive.

Maybe it was because the bass and the salmon were geographically separated, as the plaintiffs contend, although that seems unlikely, as healthy populations tend to expand into all suitable space.  

The fact is that we have no idea what the spatial distribution of either species was when Jacques Cartier first explored what is now the Gulf of St. Lawrence in 1534.  Any allegation that the species were spatially separated at that time is the merest speculation, without supporting facts; it is far more likely that any separation that occurred happened later on, after human influence drove down the region’s salmon and striped bass populations.

In any event, the 1980s hardly define either “historical” times or a healthy striped bass population, and to try to define ecological relationships on the basis of what has occurred in the past 50 years, or even the last century, is a fool’s errand. 

But where things really get interesting is in the Claim section, “Atlantic Salmon—Decline and Cause”, which alleges

“In or around 2010, Atlantic salmon returns to the Miramichi River began to decline rapidly.  Between 2010 and 2024, the river’s salmon population declined by approximately 96%.

“The decline in Atlantic salmon in the Miramichi River corresponds to the rapid growth of striped bass, a known predator of juvenile salmon, in the same areas.

“In 2019, the Standing Committee on Fisheries and Oceans [which is composed of politicians serving in Canada’s Parliament, and not of fisheries scientists] issued a report identifying the rapid increase in the Gulf of St. Lawrence striped bass population as placing strain on struggling Atlantic salmon populations.  The Parliamentary committee recommended [the Department of Fisheries and Oceans] implement management measures that prioritize the long-term balance of fish species in the Miramichi River, including establishing upper and lower limit reference point thresholds which should be adjusted according to justifiable scientific evidence.  [numbering omitted]”

Apparently, the recreational fishing interests bringing the lawsuit are trying to blame the striped bass for the Atlantic salmon’s woes.

But the salmon’s problems, across the entire North Atlantic basin, run deeper than that.

One paper, published in 2022 in Reviews in Fisheries Science & Aquaculture, was titled "The Decline and Impending Collapse of the Atlantic Salmon (Salmo salar)  Population in the North Atlantic Ocean:  A Review of Possible Causes”.  It blames illegal open-ocean fishing for the widepread salmon declines, saying

“Adult returns to many Atlantic salmon wild and hatchery stocks of the North Atlantic have declined or collapsed since 1985.  Enhancement, commercial fishery closures, and angling restrictions have failed to halt the decline…The decline and collapse of stocks has common characteristics:  1) cyclic annual adult returns cease, 2) annual adult returns flatline, 3) adult mean size declines, and 4) stock collapses occurred earliest among watersheds distant from the North Atlantic Sub-polar Gyre (NASpG).  Cyclic annual adult returns were common to all stocks in the past that were not impacted by anthropogenic changes to their natal streams.  A flatline of adult abundance and reduction in adult mean size are common characteristics of many overexploited fish stocks and suggest illegal, unreported, and unregulated (IUU) fisheries exploitation at sea.  Distance from the NASpG causing higher mortality of migrating post-smolts would increase the potential for collapse of these stocks from IUU exploitation…Distribution in time and space of former, legal high-sea fisheries indicated fishers were well-acquainted with the ocean migratory pattern of salmon and combined with a lack of surveillance since 1985 outside Exclusive Economic Zones or in remote northern regions may mean high at-sea mortality occurs because of IUU fisheries.  The problem of IUU ocean fisheries is acute, has collapsed numerous stocks of desired species worldwide, and is probably linked to the decline and impending collapse of the North Atlantic salmon population.”

Whether or not that conclusion is correct, the paper reminds us that the decline in salmon populations isn’t limited to the Miramichi River, and is occurring even in places where there are no striped bass.  A United Kingdom-based conservation group, the Missing Salmon Alliance, notes that

“Wild Atlantic salmon have declined by around 70% across the North Atlantic over the last few decades.  In Great Britain the species was listed as endangered by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) in December 2023, with British salmon having suffered an additional 30-50% decline since 2006 and a projected 50-80% decline between 2010 and 2025.”

The Alliance suggests that changes in the marine environment, which have caused a decline in the zooplankton, have also created food chain issues for juvenile salmon.

The North Atlantic Salmon Fund, an conservation group originally founded in Iceland, to address the steep decline in that nation’s Atlantic salmon population, has now extended its reach to include the entire North Atlantic ocean.  It notes that

“Like elsewhere in the world, Canadian stocks have been in rapid decline for the past 40 years…Human interference, industrial aquaculture included, is the considered the [sic] largest threat to Canadian stocks…

”…While the historic decline of salmon stocks is largely due to low survival rates at sea, there are always larger declines where fish farming is close to wild salmon…”

And climate change also plays a role.  Canada’s Department of Fisheries and Oceans notes that

“Rising water temperatures, lower water levels, and more frequent extreme weather events are all contributing to the decline of salmon populations.”

Specific to the Miramichi, an article authored by a graduate student at the University of New Brunswick—Saint John noted that

“With warmer summers, the water temperatures are beginning to stray away from the Salmon’s optimal temperature (4-12^o C), approaching the upper threshold temperatures in which they can survive (28^o C being lethal, and anything over 20^o C impeding survival).  Over the summer of 2017, the Miramichi River contained periods where water temperature readings exceeded 30^o C!”

The Department of Fisheries and Oceans went on to advise that

“in the Miramichi River, the annual abundance of the past decade have frequently been at record lows, particularly for the earlier maturing one-sea-winter salmon.  Salmon populations in the southern regions are impacted by rapidly changing marine, estuarine and freshwater environments, and by anthropogenic stressors, including land-use and the spread of invasive species.”

So it’s clear that there are many factors causing the decline of the Miramichi’s salmon.  Striped bass do not bear the sole responsibility.

Still, it would be wrong to completely discount striped bass predation.  When any fish is at a very low level of abundance, any removals, regardless of cause, will have an adverse effect on the stock.  As the Department of Fisheries and Oceans observed,

“Migrating smolts face predation from species such as striped bass and cormorants, while adult salmon may be preyed on by seals or other larger predators.  Though natural, predation can exacerbate challenges associated to human activities, climate or ecosystem shifts for Atlantic salmon throughout its range.”

In other words, striped bass predation didn’t cause the Atlantic salmon runs to collapse, but they may be making it more difficult for such runs to be restored.

A similar view was expressed in the 2024 paper, “A Review of Factors Potentially Contributing to the Long-Term Decline of Atlantic Salmon in the Conne River, Newfoundland, Canada”, which appeared in Reviews in Fisheries Science & Aquaculture, where the authors observed that

“Impacts on Atlantic salmon due to predation are more likely to be a result of cumulative effects by a variety of species along with other anthropogenic factors rather than any one individual component.  [One team of researchers] state that predation is a natural phenomenon and one that does not necessarily imply that it is a particular driver of the current population declines of salmon.  [Another team of researchers] have similarly noted that predation impacts on Atlantic salmon are not likely to be the primary cause for population declines in the North Atlantic but as others have noted predation may act to keep depressed populations from recovering.  [citations omitted, emphasis added]”

Another, comprehensive study of the Atlantic salmon’s decline, “The quest for successful Atlantic salmon restoration:  perspectives, priorities, and maxims”, which appeared in the ICES Journal of Marine Science in 2021, even suggested that efforts to control predation could be bad for the salmon, noting that

“Control or removal of predators may have similar counterproductive effects.  Predators often select slow, weak, or sick prey such that predation is compensatory and, in some cases, may allow disease to spread, in instances where predation of diseased animals is more frequent.”

So, taking all of the above into account, it’s clear that the striped bass is not responsible for all of the ills besetting the Miramichi’s Atlantic salmon runs.  But the bigger point of this post is to examine, in detail, why the striped bass ought not to be blamed for the ills besetting any other marine resource, even though the bass might eat a few fish every once and again.

Yet that’s a theme that we hear again and again.

For many years, New York’s striped bass anglers were dismayed to hear one of the state’s representatives on the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission’s Atlantic Striped Bass Management Board repeatedly suggest that striped bass were too abundant, and were driving down the populations of other managed species, saying things like

“is this an attempt by the state to maybe address the concern that the stock of striped bass in Chesapeake Bay is growing much greater than anticipated and is having an additional negative effect on menhaden?..

“…I was concerned about your concern that there are a greater number of larger and older fish within the body—or residing here year after year.  The question is has that increased significantly, to have a detrimental effect on the menhaden that are available, as we heard in the report yesterday that they appear to be under duress.”

And

“I’ve often asked the question as how many more striped bass do we have to have in the ocean and do the surplus, quote-quote, above the threshold—and there are some folks that are not going to like what I say, but the reality is what kind of damage are these fish doing to the sub-species [sic] below them, including the forage fish that other species are feeding on?..

“The bottom line is that they’re opportunists, whatever is there they’re going to eat, so to speak…

“The question that still remains open and unanswered is what are the extra fish above and beyond the threshold doing to the other sub-species?  I’m not trying to start a fight with anybody.  I’m just saying it is a question.  Look at what happened to winter flounder.  We blame weather conditions and water conditions, lack of eelgrass, lack of phytoplankton, zooplankton, et cetera, on that end, and yet what is eating them?”

His answer, of course, to purported declines in the menhaden and winter flounder populations was the same one that the Atlantic salmon anglers have to declines in their favorite fish:  There are too many striped bass.  They’re eating them all.

And far too many other folks also feel that way.

At the October 2014 meeting of ASMFC’s Atlantic Striped Bass Management Board, as the Board debated adopting Addendum IV to Amendment 6 to the Atlantic Striped Bass Interstate Fishery Management Plan, the Board’s first, hesitant effort to address what was a clearly declining striped bass stock, Kelly Place, then the Chair of the Striped Bass Advisory Panel, argued that

“there could be a trophic collapse if the striped bass abundance increases…

“…if you have record young of the year, you’re going to have record competition for the same food resources…we’ve got an amazing abundance in the Chesapeake Bay of channel bass, puppy drum, red fish.

“They are in the same trophic level, they’re eating the same things, they’re eating the same thing all the way up into freshwater and all the way down to the ocean…”

Clearly, there are too many striped bass.

Because, at the same meeting, Russel Dize, Maryland’s Legislative Proxy, complained

“I’ve been a commercial fisherman for 55 years in Maryland.  I’ve watched the striped bass come and go.  At this time, we’ve probably got more striped bass in the bay than I have ever seen in my life.  We’ve got so many striped bass that it’s affected our crab-catching industry.  We are probably down to a low ebb last summer on crabs.

“One of the predators is rockfish, striped bass.  When the charterboats catch the striped bass and they clean them, you can count anywhere from ten to forty striped bass in the belly of a rockfish.”

  Too many striped bass once again.

It’s not overharvest by Maryland’s watermen that’s the problem with the Bay’s blue crab population.  It’s not hypoxia, or the loss of seagrass, or any other possible cause that caused the Bay’s crab population to drop.

It’s too many striped bass.

It’s always too many striped bass.

From Maryland to the Miramichi, too many striped bass are the cause of all our fisheries problems, starting out with Atlantic salmon and ending up with winter flounder. 

They do so much harm that you have to wonder how any fish survived in those thousands of years between the retreat of the Wisconsin Glacier and the arrival of the first European settlers, who came to North American shores and, finally, put out their nets in the spawning rivers and began to save the the continent's marine resources from the ravages of the striped bass.

Or, perhaps, you have to wonder whether some of these folks are getting things backwards, and that the fish didn’t need the Europeans to save them from the striped bass, but rather that the fish needed someone to save them from the rapidly multiplying Europeans and their generations of progeny, who merely find it convenient to blame the striped bass from the consequences of their own actions.