"FLOATER MONTH" IN THE NEW YORK BIGHT

 

Twenty-five or so years ago, striped bass anglers around New York Harbor used to talk about “floater week.”  That was the week, sometime in April, when the water temperatures rose high enough that the bodies of all of the people who ended up in the harbor—voluntarily or involuntarily—over the winter began to decay and produce enough gasses to rise off the bottom at begin floating around the harbor.

It so happened that the same rising water temperatures triggered the spring striped bass bite in the Harbor, so the human “floaters” were a sign that a new fishing season was getting underway.

We don’t hear many people talking about floater week anymore.

But perhaps we should be hearing a lot more talk about what, for lack of a better name, I’ll call “floater month,” that time between late October and maybe Thanksgiving, when anglers fishing in the New York Bight frequently sight the bodies of big striped bass floating across the water’s surface and washing up on the beach.

Sometimes, you see it written up in social media, accompanied by photos of dead striped bass in all conditions from freshly deceased to gull-picked and decaying.  Often, the photos are accompanied by the narrative that the fish washed ashore by gill netters, or maybe by trawlers that caught them as bycatch while fishing for something else, and then dumped them, dead, into the sea.

And, sometimes, that might be what happened.

But what anglers often refuse to admit is how many of those dead bass are killed by recreational fishermen.

Intellectually, we know that, according to the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission and the stock assessments that they regularly produce, about 9% of all released striped bass die soon after being returned to the water (although recent research suggests that the 9% figure may be too high).  And we know that, in a typical year, the number of bass that succumb to release mortality is supposedly about the same as the number of bass that are intentionally landed.

But knowing and accepting are two different things, so we often tend to be surprised when the evidence of release mortality floats right in front of our eyes.  In November, in the New York Bight, that happens quite often.

The reason for those floaters isn’t hard to understand.

Big schools of menhaden, and sometimes other species of baitfish, migrate south and west along the coast in he fall, and sort of stall when they reach New York Harbor, where the shoreline, which had been running mostly east/west, makes a 90 degree turn and begins to run in a north/south direction.

Typically, the schools of bait extend east for a few miles, often as far as Fire Island Inlet, and extend south along the northern New Jersey shore as well.  The menhaden attract predators, and the entire area can become a sort of National Geographic show, with bass blitzing on bunker, gannets dropping out of the sky, humpback whales lunge-feeding, thresher sharks attracted to the packed baitfish, and the occasional giant bluefin tuna making a cameo appearance.

And there are plenty of those other predators, too, the ones that arrive in boats and add to the confusion, running all over the ocean chasing the bass, and sometimes bumping into some of the other species as well.  On any given day, particularly on the weekends, there can be fleets of boats stretching for miles, all of them fishing for, and often catching, striped bass, and many of those bass will be large.

Larger than 31 inches, which is the top end of the recreational slot size limit. 

Thus, we see a high percentage of those bass—this year, a substantial majority of them—being released.  Not all of those released fish survive, but we know that there are ways to increase the survival rate. 

Anglers should be using circle hooks when they fish with live bait—it’s legally required—to  lessen the number of striped bass that are fatally hooked in their gills or gut.  

Replacing treble hooks on lures with in-line single hooks will also help, so much so that the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation has created the “Trade A Treble Program,” which invites anglers to present a surf plug to DEC representatives at certain scheduled events, and have the lure’s tail treble replaced with either a single hook or a hookless bucktail “flag,” to reduce the number of potentially injurious hook points on the lure.

And it’s important to minimize the time that a bass spends out of the water.  The Maryland Department of Natural Resources advises that

“Fisheries managers urge anglers to be prepared to remove the hook and if they want a picture, take it quickly—in less than a minute—before releasing the fish.  However, the best option is to not remove striped bass from the water at all.

“That’s because another major risk factor for caught-and-released fish is simply the exposure to the air.  When a fish—which may be exhausted from fighting the line—is pulled into the air, it’s a shock to their system that can cause shock and respiratory distress.

“A 2025 University of Massachusetts Amherst study that analyzed the post-release activity of hundreds of striped bass caught off the coast of Massachusetts found the amount of air exposure was the most significant influence on the recovery of striped bass.  The scientists recommended limiting fight time to less than 2 minutes, handling time to less than 2 minutes, and air exposure to less than 1 minute.

“In that study, all 521 fish survived within 20 minutes of release…although the scientists did not monitor the fish after that time and biologists note that fish may suffer from effects in hours or days after a catch.  The fish removed from the water for two minutes or longer in the study did not fully recover during the monitoring time.  These negative effects were worsened for larger fish and higher water temperatures.  [emphasis added]”

Unfortunately, a lot of anglers—I hate to say “most,” although that’s how it too often seems—don’t really follow those rules in the Bight during the fall run.

Take circle hooks. 

Addendum VI to Amendment 6 to the Atlantic Striped Bass Interstate Fishery Management Plan, which required the use of circle hooks when fishing for striped bass with bait, was adopted on October 30, 2019, and went into effect for the 2020 season.  It led to a fair bit of whining from some striped bass anglers, although the folks who fish bait from the beach, for the most part, bit the bullet and complied with the law.

That wasn’t the case for boat fishermen in the Bight, who had long favored a technique called “snag-and-drop,” which involved casting a large, weighted treble hook into a school of menhaden, snagging one of the baitfish, and then allowing it to sink beneath the school, where striped bass were often waiting to pick off injured prey.  The technique was an effective way to catch big striped bass, but under Addendum VI, anglers were required to immediately reel in any menhaden that they snagged, and re-hook them on a circle hook before allowing them to swim back into the school.

Unfortunately, most anglers simply ignored that new rule.  An article written by Capt. John McMurray, who frequently pursues fall striped bass in the New York Bight, described fishing there during the 2023 season this way:

“While sure there were guys throwing plugs or dropping flutter-spoons, it was pretty clear that most of the fleet were ‘snag-and-drop’ fishing.  In other words, ripping a weighted treble hook through a menhaden school, sticking one, letting it swim and waiting for a striped bass to eat it.  What do I mean by most?  I dunno, I guess about 80-90%?

“If you’re up on your regs, which you should be, that’s illegal in New York, and, well, everywhere else.  In fact, fishing any live or dead bait on a treble is prohibited.  The only thing you can use is an in-line circle hook, meaning the point of the hook is not only bent in, it’s in line with the shank.  Which I suppose makes sense, as it’s more likely that you’re going to gut-hook a striper on a treble than if your were using an in-line circle hook.  A solid regulation intended to reduce dead discards.  IF…it were at all enforceable.

“The problem is, it’s efficient, and unless there are repercussions, there’s no reason for anglers NOT to do it…”

It is extremely unlikely that anyone is going to get caught, and ultimately cited, for engaging in snag-and-drop, and even if they were, the excuses that they could provide to the court—that they were fishing for bluefish, and not striped bass; that they intended to reel in the bait and put it on a circle hook, but the bass hit the menhaden on its way to the boat; etc.—make it even more unlikely that they would face any penalty for breaking the law.

Thus, although snag-and-drop was illegal, it was widely practiced in 2023 and, as Capt. McMurray observed,

“In case you haven’t already drawn the conclusion on your own, there were a LOT of dead discards this October.  Every day we’d see several floaters, plus a LOT of fish that came over boats’ gunnels pretty darn bloody.”

Snag-and-drop appears to be just about as popular today as it was three years ago, and so the tradition of floater month continues.

Yes, it’s possible that dead bass floating past your boat died in a gill net or in a trawl, but it’s far more likely that a recreational fisherman caused its demise.

And treble-hooked plugs only add to the problem.

It’s not usually a matter of the bass taking the plugs deep, although I’ve seen plenty of cases where a bass will take a big lure—in one case a bunker spoon bigger than my shoe—so deep into its mouth that it can’t even be seen, with only the leader stretching out past the fish’s jaws.  The real problem is that bass usually strike toward the head of a lure, so the forward treble gets hooked in their jaw, while the rear treble whips around during the fight and not infrequently impales an eye, gets under the gill plate, or otherwise causes serious harm to be fish.

Sometimes, that harm is bad enough that the fish dies, even if the angler swears that “it swam away strong.”  A couple of seasons ago, a friend, who happens to be a very experienced and very capable surfcaster, came across a bass of about 30 pounds dead in the wash.  He described the fish as “pristine,” and said that it must have been unintentionally killed by an angler just minutes before, since it was in too good a condition to have floated in from one of the boats fishing farther offshore.  My friend was so offended by the sight that he picked the bass off the wet sand and took it home, knowing that it was illegal to do so, but also saying that if the DEC wanted to ticket him for it they could, but he wasn’t going to let the fish go to waste.

And then there’s the big killer—probably the biggest killer of all—that far too many anglers are guilty of, bad, or overly delayed, release.

The sad fact is that cameras kill—or, at least, the delay too often involved when striped bass are photographed prior to release proves fatal. 

It’s a particular problem with large bass, which have already been fought for an extended period—very likely longer than the two minutes that scientists recommend as a maximum fight time—and are then kept out of water while someone digs out a camera and takes multiple shots before the bass is finally returned to the sea.,

Often, the angler makes no effort to revive the fish after it is released, even though it is clearly showing signs of distress.  One day last season, a couple of friends were fishing in the Bight when they saw that sort of scenario play out, with a good-sized striped bass dropped back into the water to just float away, exhausted but clearly still alive. 

While one of them told the irresponsible anglers, loudly and at length, just what he thought about their approach to catch-and-release, the other—who, formally trained as a biologist, regularly revives and releases striped bass as a part of his job—managed to get hold of the floating fish and began to revive it, a process that took close to half and hour.  Whether the fish ultimately survived is difficult to say, but it certainly had a better chance than the multitude of bass that are dropped back over the side without any revival efforts at all.

And how far those fish are dropped might also make a difference. 

One of the things we’ve seen in the Bight in recent years is an expansion of catch-and-release fishing for oversize (that is, longer than the 28- to 31-inch recreational slot size limit) striped bass from party boats.  While such boats used to primarily target legal-sized fish that their customers could take home and eat, the relative dearth of smaller bass, and the preponderance of large ones, has led to the boats targeting “overs” when slot-sized fish aren’t around. 

As a practical matter, a party boat’s deck is too far off the water to allow anyone on the boat to even try to revive it.  Add in the facts that, when the bite is hot, a fish might be languishing in the water, waiting for a mate to net it, for an extended time, then might sit on the deck for a while before the mate can unhook it, and then is held out of the water for photographs before one of the boat’s crew finally drops it back into the ocean, and it’s easy to understand why floaters occur—although, to be fair, the party boats’ contribution to the floater problem is probably far less than that of the private boat fleet, just because the private boats are responsible for far more striped bass trips.

That doesn’t mean that anglers fishing the New York Bight’s fall run are any less responsible than anglers elsewhere.  Release mortality occurs throughout the bass’ range, from the St. Lawrence River all the way to Virginia and, in the rare cases when the fish come close enough to shore, even North Carolina.  It happens throughout the year.

It’s just that, during the fall, the New York Bight, bordered by the densely-populated New York City metropolitan area, probably sees a convergence of striped bass, bait, and striped bass anglers that is greater than anything seen elsewhere on the coast.  So, it sees the greatest concentration of floaters as well.

But floaters occur everywhere along the striper coast and, wherever they occur, they remain a problem.

Right now, fishery managers estimate that about 9% of all released striped bass die, although recent research suggests that might be an overestimate, and that the actual release mortality rate is somewhere in the 4% to 5% range.  But all of those estimates are an overall average of release mortality, regardless of the size of the bass or where or how it was caught.

It is entirely possible that if managers and researchers focused on only the larger fish—say, striped bass at least 40 inches in length—and handled them in the same way that bass are handled in the real world, by engaging in snag-and-drop, and/or dragging bass up on the sand for photos, or bringing them aboard boats for extended photo sessions there, then tossing many of them back into the water without making any effort to revise them, basically, exposing them to the same sort of handling that they face every fall in the New York Bight—that they would find a mortality rate far above the currently accepted 9%.

And that’s a concern, because the last strong striped bass year class was spawned in 2018, and the eight years since then have seen, on average, the weakest spawning ever recorded.  That means that the best chance of rebuilding the stock over the next 10 or 15 years resides with the bass that are already a part of the spawning stock biomass.

The same bass that are regularly seen floating each fall in the New York Bight.

 

MARINE FISHERIES AND THE MID-TERMS

 

Two days from now, voters across the United States will have the chance to vote on—if they haven’t already taken advantage of early voting opportunities—who will fill all 435 seats in the House of Representatives.  Voters in 33 of the 50 states will also have the chance to decide on who will hold one of their states’ seats in the United States Senate.

In many states, newcomers are mounting strong challenges to incumbents.  Currently, the Republican Party controls both houses of Congress, with a 219 to 214 majority in the House (there are also two vacant seats, one formerly Republican, one formerly Democratic) and a 53 to 47 majority in the Senate.  Based on current polling, it seems extremely likely that Democrats will gain control of the House of Representatives, with professional election experts saying that there is anywhere between an 80 and a 95.1 percent chance of that happening.  The outcome for the Senate is a lot cloudier, with a number of races still being considered “tossups,” even though the polls are showing Democratic candidates leading by a narrow margin in most of those; still, predictions somewhat favor the Democrats, with the experts pegging their chances at anywhere between 60 and 77.7 percent.

The prediction markets are suggesting a similar outcome, with Kalshi giving the Democrats a 93.8% chance of controlling the House and a 72% chance of taking over the Senate; Polymarket giving them a 95% chance of controlling the House and concurs with Kalshi on their chances of Senate control.

Of course, the polls have been wrong before, but should control of the House and/or the Senate shift, there will be implications for marine fisheries management.  And there will be implications in the unlikely event that no change of control occurs.

That being said, even if the Democrats win control of both the House and the Senate, we shouldn’t expect any big steps forward in marine conservation.  Any Senate legislation is still going to need 60 votes to advance, and even the most wildly optimistic estimates only predict that—if every close election breaks Democratic, which is probably a highly unlikely outcome—the Democrats would only control 57 seats.  If the same close elections all break Republican, the Republican Party will retain its current 53-47 majority.

Any way the election shakes out, the Democrats would need at least some Republican votes to move marine conservation legislation forward, and those votes might be hard to find in a Senate that has just been through one of the more bitterly fought mid-term elections in recent history.  That would be particularly true if the Democrats win more than a token majority of the Senate seats, begin holding oversight hearings targeting various administration policy and officials, and so alienate the few Republican senators who have, in the past, been willing to reach across the aisle to pass bipartisan legislation.

Even if enough senators from both parties come together to pass fisheries conservation bills, those bills would still have to be signed by President Trump who, given the language of Executive Order 14276, Restoring American Seafood Competitiveness, and Executive Order 14430, Restoring American Saltwater Angling and Recreation, clearly prioritizes deregulation of marine fisheries, and monetizing marine resources in a way that maximizes short-term economic returns, over conservation efforts that promote long-term sustainability.  That being the case, it is likely that any legislation that proposed meaningful fisheries conservation initiatives would face a Presidential veto, and anyone who believes that there would be enough Republican senators and representatives willing to join with Democrats to override any such veto is certainly far more optimistic than I am.

But that doesn’t mean that a change of control, in the House in particular, would be meaningless.  It just means that any successful Democratic efforts would probably be defensive in nature, keeping bad legislation from passing rather than moving good legislation forward.

Perhaps the best example of that would be funding the National Marine Fisheries Service’s scientific efforts. 

In 2014, NMFS discretionary funding was $950 million.  Although the agency’s funding increased steadily through most of those years, when that funding is measured in constant 2014 dollars, it actually fell below 2014 levels until 2023 and 2024, when it increased to $966 million and $963 million in 2014 dollars ($1,198 million and $1,225 million in current-year dollars), respectively.  After the current administration took over the White House, and the Republicans controlled both houses of Congress, NMFS funding was cut to $1,143 million ($878 million in 2014 dollars) in 2025 and $1,239 million ($930 million in 2014 dollars) in 2026.

President Trump’s budget would cut NMFS funding to a mere $712 million in 2027, while the House would budget a somewhat better, but still meager, $946 million for next year.

Fortunately, the Senate better understands the value of fisheries science and management, and senators from both parties could be expected to insist on higher levels of funding for the agency, just as they did in 2025 and 2026.  Democratic control of the House, even if the Senate remains Republican, would eliminate recent House efforts to shortchange the National Marine Fisheries Service, and might hopefully lead to restoring past levels of funding to NMFS’ regional fisheries science centers and other important agency functions.

A change of control in the House and/or Senate would also make it less likely that problematic fisheries bills would be enacted into law.  Currently, legislation such as H.R. 207/S. 2314, the so-called “SHARKED Act,” sponsored by Rep. Robert Wittman (R-VA) and Sen. Rick Scott (R-FL), respectively, which would create a panel to study why sharks attack fish already hooked by anglers and could potentially lead to efforts to reduce shark populations, might well pass in a Republican-controlled Congress. 

The same could be said for a bill like H.R. 5699, the “Fisheries Data Modernization and Accuracy Act,” sponsored by Rep. John Rutherford, which would undercut the federal Marine Recreational Information Program used to estimate recreational catch, landings, and effort along the entire East Coast and in multiple states in the Gulf of Mexico, and replace it with a patchwork of state programs that would have to be calibrated to a single “common currency” before they could be used to manage and assess a single fish stock, or H.R. 470/S. 111, the “Red Snapper Act,” sponsored by Rep. Rutherford and Sen. Scott, which would prohibit NMFS from imposing a seasonal bottom closure in the South Atlantic to prevent anglers from killing and discarding hundreds of thousands of red snapper annually, unless and until a particular study is completed and the results of such study incorporated into the South Atlantic red snapper stock assessment, whether or not the study passes peer review or whether biologists conducting the stock assessment or the Scientific and Statistical Committee of the South Atlantic Fishery Management Council consider it scientifically appropriate to use the results of the study in that manner.

As suggested by the identity of the legislators who sponsored the abovementioned bills, most such legislation is introduced by Republican lawmakers, located almost exclusively in the Southeast, at the request of the same recreational fishing industry organizations that lauded Executive Order 14430, which repeatedly subordinate conservation concerns to the economic concerns of the industry. 

A change of control in the House and/or Senate would go a long way toward restoring fisheries conservation as a legislative priority.  Should control not change, bills favoring the industry’s economic concerns over the long-term health of the nation’s fisheries will likely continue to be introduced, with those that manage to be enacted almost certain to weaken the conservation and management provisions of the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act.

About six years ago, I wrote an essay for this blog titled “Elections:  The Sportsman’s Dilemma,” which acknowledged the different forces that pull anglers and hunters toward and away from particular candidates and political parties.  While that essay was written ahead of a presidential election, and addressed a number of issues that don’t apply today, it closed with the following words.

“And thus, the Sportsman’s Dilemma.

“Do you vote for the party that will protect natural resources, but might restrict your ability to access them?  Our do you vote for the party that might guarantee gas and guns, but by supporting extractive industry, take away your reason for wanting them in the first place?

“Everyone must make their own choice, but for me, it always comes down to the resource.  Not only our chosen sport, but our very quality of life, depend on clean air and water, on abundant fish and wildlife, and on extensive and available public lands and waters where we, and the rest of nature, can wander.

“Without healthy, abundant, and accessible populations of wildfowl, upland birds, and game, my rifles and shotguns will stay in the safe, for I’ll have no reason to use, or even own, them.

“Without healthy oceans, that support an abundance of marine resources, there’s no reason for me to own a boat.

“Without clean air and water, and wild places where beauty remains unsullied by drill rigs and unscarred by mines, I don’t have much need for my truck or canoe, because I can find plenty that’s polluted and ugly very close to home.

“So, come next Tuesday, I’ll be voting for clean air and clean water.  I’ll be voting for science-based management of natural resources.  I’ll be voting for national monuments, and undrilled, unmined, and unfracked public lands.  I’ll be voting for beauty and life.

“I’ve solved my own Sportsman’s Dilemma.

“You may find a different solution.

“Although to be honest, I hope that you don’t”

 

 

 

 

STRIPED BASS: THE "M" WORD

 

As striped bass recruitment remains low, and as anglers note a distinct decline in the number of bass swimming past their shores, we hear more and more conversations turning toward the stock collapse of the late 1970s and 1980s, the subsequent recovery, and the role that a harvest moratorium played in rebuilding the stock.

There seems to be some support for a new moratorium, from a growing minority of anglers, who feel that the striped bass is in dire enough straits that conventional management measures won’t be enough to rebuild the stock or, in the worst case, avoid stock collapse.  The interesting thing is that a lot of those anglers, although certainly not all of them, are too young to remember what the past stock collapse, and the subsequent recovery, looked like, and they get a lot of things about the moratorium wrong.

Perhaps the biggest thing they get wrong is believing that there was a single, coastwide moratorium that prohibited striped bass harvest, both commercial and recreational. 

That was never the case.

For a long time, the states fumbled around, some adopting half-measures, some doing nothing at all, with most afraid to take decisive action that might disadvantage their fishermen compared to those in neighboring states.  That didn’t change until Congress passed the Atlantic Striped Bass Conservation Act in 1984, which gave the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission the authority to require all member states to adopt the ASMFC’s striped bass management plan, and put non-complying states at risk of having their entire striped bass fishery shut down by the Secretary of Commerce and Secretary of the Interior until the offending states decided that compliance with the ASMFC plan was the most acceptable of all their limited options.

Once the ASMFC had that authority, it prepared Amendment 3 to the Interstate Fishery Management Plan for Atlantic Striped Bass, which was released in 1985.  Amendment 3 was intended to protect the 1982 year class of striped bass, which was the only relatively strong year class remaining in the population, and all subsequent year classes as well.  It did that by imposing a minimum size limit that increased steadily through the years, always remaining high enough to ensure that no more than 5% of the bass spawned in 1982 and subsequent years would be removed from the population in any given fishing season.

Notably, it did not include a coastwide moratorium.

Instead, the various moratoriums were imposed by individual states, at different times and for different purposes, not all of which were the conservation of the striped bass stock.

Maryland, perhaps hoping to improve on Amendment 3, adopted a moratorium in 1985 that remained in place until 1989.  But on the other side of the Chesapeake Bay, Virginia didn’t impose a moratorium until June 1989, and lifted it less than a year and a half later, in November 1990, after a strong 1989 year class of striped bass led the ASMFC to adopt Amendment 4 to the Interstate Fishery Management Plan for Atlantic Striped Bass, which began to relax management measures.

Delaware emulated Maryland, and imposed a moratorium from 1985 to 1989, but most other states opted for shorter closures.  Connecticut and Rhode Island both imposed moratoriums in 1986.  New York did, too, but in New York’s case, the moratorium was imposed for health reasons, to keep people from eating PCB-laden striped bass from the Hudson River, and only lasted for a single year.  Two important striped bass states, Massachusetts and New Jersey, never imposed moratoriums at all.

In the case of all state moratoriums, anglers were still permitted to target striped bass in catch-and-release fisheries, leading to some level of release mortality, although with only an estimated 797,325 directed striped bass trips taken in 1985, compared to about 11,600,000 such trips in 2025, the number of bass that succumbed to release mortality during the Amendment 3 years would have been far fewer than die from the same cause today.

So, the question in at least some anglers’ minds is, if the striped bass stock continues to decline, might a moratorium be considered as a viable management measure, and if so, what would such a moratorium look like?

As early as 2021, Stripers Forever, a group of recreational fishermen that advocate for striped bass conservation, called for the ASMFC to put a 10-year moratorium in place.  Mike Spinney, one of the organization’s directors, argued that

“We are 18 years into a ten-year management plan that has utterly failed in its objective to rebuild striped bass stocks.  Now the ASMFC is preparing to embark on yet another ten-year plan of compromise and half-measures and stripers may not survive.  Bold, decisive action is needed to prevent a collapse of the fishery like we saw in the late 1970s.  An emergency moratorium was adopted in 1984 and is the only approach proven to work.  We are calling on recreational anglers, conservationists, and anyone who depends on a healthy coastal ecosystem for their economic well-being to stand with us and demand that a moratorium be adopted now.”

As we now know, the ASMFC did not listen to Stripers Forever, or to any other striped bass anglers who might have called for a moratorium five years ago, when managers were debating the shape of Amendment 7 to the Interstate Fishery Management Plan for Atlantic Striped Bass. 

But while Mr. Spinney might have gotten some of the details wrong—in 2021, we were not in the midst of a rebuilding plan that was initiated 18 years before, an apparent reference to Amendment 6 to the Interstate Fishery Management Plan for Atlantic Striped Bass, adopted in 2003, for at the time Amendment 6 was adopted, and for much of its duration, the striped bass stock was deemed to be in good shape, neither overfished nor experiencing overfishing; in addition, as noted before, there was never a unitary “emergency moratorium” adopted in 1984, but rather a patchwork of state moratoriums adopted at various times—but he wasn’t much off the mark when he noted that the ASMFC’s recent management efforts could be characterized as “compromise and half-measures,” such as the Atlantic Striped Bass Management Board’s failure to impose the 12% harvest reduction, to better ensure that the stock will fully rebuild by the 2029 deadline imposed by the management plan, at its October 2025 meeting.

And there is no doubt that the striped bass stock is in a worse position than it was when Mr. Spinney made those comments five years ago.

Even so, it’s a safe bet that the Management Board will try to avoid imposing a coastwide moratorium, which could prove the kiss of death for many commercial fishing operations, as well as for traditional “six-pack” charter boats that have long maintained business plans built around their customers killing and keeping a limit of striped bass rather than catch-and-release.  Commercial and for-hire interests, probably joined by the fishing tackle and boating industries and more harvest-oriented recreational fishermen, would undoubtedly raise strong objections and mount a fierce opposition should any such moratorium be proposed.

Still, should striped bass spawns continue to result in starkly below-average recruitment, and should the 2027 benchmark stock assessment predict another stock collapse should management remain unchanged, there is a good chance that, when the next management action is initiated, a moratorium will at least be discussed.

But what would such moratorium look like, and would everyone be affected?  Those are the key questions that might determine whether a moratorium proposal would get any significant support.

The last time a moratorium was considered, in conjunction with Amendment 7, it would have been limited to a moratorium on recreational harvest, and would not have impacted the commercial fishery.  Needless to say, that didn’t go over too well with anglers, with one recreational fishing group, the American Saltwater Guides Association, noting that

“[A moratorium] only works if everyone does it.  So, we save striped bass by allowing only one sector to harvest?  Somehow, this doesn’t pass the smell test.”

And even if such one-sided moratorium might have been justifiable in 2021, when the commercial fishery was thought to account for only 14% of fishing mortality, now that the Marine Recreational Information Program’s estimates of recreational striped bass landings and releases (and thus release mortality) have been revised downward by anywhere between 20.3% and 31.6%, and 21.4% and 31.3%, respectively, over the past five years, the commercial contribution to striped bass mortality will have to be revised substantially upward as a result, making a recreational-only moratorium unthinkable.

But one thing that anglers pursuing a moratorium probably should be thinking about is whether it would allow any recreational striped bass fishing at all.  When the ASMFC proposed Addendum III to Amendment 7 to the Interstate Fishery Management Plan for Atlantic Striped Bass back in 2025, which would have achieved a 12% reduction in coastal recreational removals by imposing a closed season, one of the biggest debates—and the issue that, in my view, doomed the 12% reduction—was whether the closed season would merely be closed to harvest, with catch-and-release fishing allowed, or whether it would be closed to all recreational striped bass fishing, including the recreational release fishery.

At the time, the party boats and “traditional” six-pack charters supported the no-target closure, both because it would have been shorter than a no-harvest closure, and because their business plans emphasized catch-and-kill and had catered to a customer base intent on taking fish home.  They, as well as the commercial sector, argued that it was only “fair” that if they and/or their customers couldn’t catch and kill striped bass, then anglers shouldn’t be allowed to catch and release them during the closed season, either.

Since a moratorium is, in effect, nothing more than a very long closed season, it is very possible that a ban on catch-and-release fishing during any such closure will be a part of the conservation, although it is also very possible that faced with the options of either not booking striped bass charters at all, or booking at least a few charters for anglers willing to release all their bass, the six-packs might be willing to rethink their positions should there be a serious chance that a moratorium will be imposed.

Which brings us to the final question regarding a moratorium, should things ever get so bad that one must be imposed:  What constitutes the best use of the striped bass resource, should the population continue to decline, and extreme measures become necessary to conserve what remains of the spawning stock biomass?

It’s probably not the commercial fishery. 

I try to focus solely on striped bass conservation issues, and do my best to avoid allocation debates; thus, I am not an advocate for “gamefish status” that would outlaw the commercial fishery, as that merely shifts the harvest from the commercial to the recreational sector, and doesn’t conserve any fish at all. 

In fact, it could be argued that, because commercial fishermen are bound by a hard-poundage quota, and must pay back any overages in the following year, while recreational fishermen are neither bound by a quota nor obligated to pay back overages, and may overharvest with impunity (as exemplified by Maryland’s recreational landings from 2015 through 2019, when instead of reducing harvest by 20.5%, as the management plan required, the state’s anglers actually increased harvest, sometimes doubling what their landings should, in theory, have been had the state complied with the letter of the management plan), that the commercial fishery better promotes the conservation of the striped bass stock.

However, while conservation is the ultimate goal, the Management Board is also going to give some consideration to economic concerns; any fishery that leads to over 11 million recreational trips in a single year is clearly an important driver of coastal economies.  In that regard, we have to consider the comparable economic benefits of the commercial and recreational fisheries.

There have been some studies produced in that regard.  The advocacy group Stripers Forever commissioned Southwick Associates, a firm specializing in performing economic analyses of various outdoor activities, including striped bass fishing, to produce economic analyses comparing the economic value of the commercial and recreational striped bass fisheries.  The studies determined that the striped bass produced far more economic value as a recreational species, although the fact that Stripers Forever has long advocated for making the striped bass a “gamefish,” and paid for the studies, has led some to question the studies’ conclusions.

A study produced by the presumably unbiased Virginia Institute of Marine Sciences in 2000 came to the same conclusion, finding that allocating the entire striped bass harvest to the recreational sector generated the greatest economic benefits, although it was careful to note that social and cultural concerns might militate against such a one-sided allocation.  Unfortunately, such study is now difficult to locate on the Internet, and so I cannot make it available to readers of this post.

So while the conservation arguments against shutting down the commercial striped bass fishery remains valid, in a situation where fishing mortality must be very tightly constrained, economic concerns could dictate otherwise.

And economic concerns would certainly dictate against a no-target moratorium, which would deprive coastal businesses of all income now being generated by the recreational striped bass fishery. 

While the need to maintain fishing mortality at or below a particular target might, in the sort of extreme circumstances that would justify a moratorium, require even the catch-and-release fishery to be limited to a particular season, and/or for no-target rules to prevail on striped bass spawning grounds, a moratorium that permitted catch-and-release angling might well produce the greatest economic and social returns from the very restricted fishery.

Hopefully, that’s a decision that managers won’t have to make.

Hopefully, while the striped bass fishery will probably have to be tightly restricted through most or all of the 2030s, when the impact of poor recruitment will be most acutely felt, stock collapse can be avoided, and talk of a moratorium will remain on a strictly theoretical level.

Still, until recruitment improves, a stock collapse, or something close to it, remains a possibility.  So long as that remains true, a moratorium remains a tool that managers might have to reluctantly employ in order to address the situation.

We ought to start giving some thought now to what might justify imposing a moratorium at some point in the future, and just what such moratorium might look like this time around.

 

FROM THE USUAL SUSPECTS: MORE MUDDLED MUSINGS ON MENHADEN

 

Regular readers of this blog know that, about one year ago, an updated assessment of the Atlantic menhaden stock indicated that previous estimates of the menhaden’s natural mortality rate were too high, and that when that overestimate was corrected, the spawning stock biomass was found to be about 37% smaller than previously believed.  As a result, in order to have at least a 50% chance of constraining fishing mortality to or below the target level, 2026 menhaden landings would have had to have been reduced by a little over 50%.

And regular readers of this blog will also know that, at the October 2025 meeting of the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission’s Atlantic Menhaden Management Board, the Board chose to reduce the annual catch limit for 2026 by only 20%, a decision that had no real impact on menhaden landings, as such landings had only come in at about 80% of the catch limit in the immediately preceding year.

Preliminary indications are that, in order to have a 50% chance of achieving that fishing mortality target in 2027, and probably 2028 and 2029 as well, fishing mortality is going to have to be reduced by 39%, and the annual catch limit reduced from the current 186,400 metric tons to something like 114,200 metric tons.  Those numbers are real, and anyone concerned with menhaden conservation and the long-term sustainability of the stock ought to be out shaking the trees, and letting their state representatives on the Management Board know just how they feel.

Unfortunately, we’re talking about menhaden, one of the most politicized fish on the East Coast, and about a lot of people who throw around numbers, and make impassioned statements, that aren’t very real at all.  Some of it comes from being uninformed—an issue I addressed, with suggestions how to fix it—about ten days ago, and some of it comes from a desire to spin the menhaden issue in a particular direction, whether or not all the spin is necessarily true, something that I wrote about last June.

Unfortunately, the latter sort of advocacy seems to be taking up a lot of space in the news, with the latest example being a petition that was recently sent to Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick, asking him to promulgate emergency regulations to shut down the menhaden reduction fishery in federal waters off the New York Bight.

It’s not completely clear where the petition came from. 

The Forage Fish Campaign, a group that I’ve cited before for distributing dubious information, provides links to the petition on its website, but its name doesn’t appear anywhere in the petition itself, except as a cited reference in four of the footnotes.  The sponsors listed in the petition include the Jersey Coast Anglers Association; the Hudson River Fishermen’s Association; the New Jersey-based Hi-Mar Striped Bass Club; the Tackle Box Fishing Company (a fishing tackle retailer); two New York charter boats, the Jamaica Bay-based Karen Ann Charters and the Montauk-based My Joyce Fishing Charters; Capt. Ron’s Fishermen (an Atlantic Highlands, New Jersey party boat); and Moran’s Dockside (an Avalon, New Jersey tackle shop).  Whether those sponsors conceived of the petition on their own initiative or, as seems more likely, were recruited by The Forage Fish Campaign or some other entity, cannot be determined with absolute certainty.

The petition’s entreaty to Secretary Lutnick seems to depend on provisions of the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act, specifically 16 U.S.C. 1855 (c), which provides

“(c) EMERGENCY ACTIONS AND INTERIM MEASURES

(1)             If the Secretary finds that an emergency or overfishing exists or that interim measures are needed to avoid overfishing for any fishery, he may promulgate emergency measures or interim regulations necessary to address the emergency or overfishing, without regard to whether a fishery management plan exists for such fishery…

(3) Any…emergency regulation or interim measure promulgated under this subsection—

(A) shall be published in the Federal Register together with the reasons therefore;

(B) shall…remain in effect for not more than 180 days after the date of publication, and may be extended by publication in the Federal Register for one additional period of not more than 186 days; provided the public has had an opportunity to comment on the emergency regulations or interim measure…”

The problem with using that provision as justification for asking the Secretary to promulgate emergency regulations is threefold.  First, the Atlantic menhaden stock assessment update, which sets out the current state of the stock, came out a little over one year ago, so it is difficult to argue that anything contained in that assessment update constitutes an “emergency,” for if it did, why didn’t the petitioners seek Secretarial action a year ago, rather than waiting until now?  Second, the stock assessment update made it clear that the Atlantic menhaden stock is neither overfished nor experiencing overfishing.  Finally, material released to the Management Board along with the 2025 stock assessment stated that, at the current annual catch limit, there was absolutely no chance—a 0% probability—of overfishing occurring in 2026, 2027, or 2028, so it is very clear that there is no need for the Secretary to promulgate “interim measures…to avoid overfishing.”

In  addition, the Management Board is going to meet on November 10 and 11 to address 2027, 2028, and 2029 management measures, so it seems a little premature to petition the Secretary before the ASMFC, which has managed menhaden for decades, has had a chance to do its job.

Given all of that, it would seem that menhaden don’t qualify for emergency treatment and, even if they did, that the Secretary should give the ASMFC a chance to act before declaring an emergency.

Still, it might be worth taking a look at some of the petitioners’ arguments to understand how and why those arguments are legally and factually faulty.  That examination should probably focus on the petitioners’ claim that emergency action was justified by key provisions of Magnuson-Stevens, in the form of National Standards for Fishery Conservation and Management 1, 2, 8, and 9.

National Standard 1 states that

“Conservation and management measures shall prevent overfishing while achieving, on a continuing basis, the optimum yield from each fishery for the United States fishing industry.”*

A definition contained in an earlier section of Magnuson-Stevens explains that

“The term ‘optimum,’ with respect to the yield from a fishery, means the amount of fish which—

(A) will provide the greatest overall benefit to the Nation, particularly with respect to food production and recreational opportunities, and taking into account the protection of marine ecosystems;

(B) is prescribed as such on the basis of maximum sustainable yield from the fishery, as reduced by any relevant economic, social, or ecological factor; and

(C) in the case of an overfished fishery, provides for rebuilding to a level consistent with producing the maximum sustainable yield in such fishery.”

National Standard 1 might appear to provide the best support for the emergency regulations, as an argument can easily be made, based on the 2025 stock assessment update, that menhaden landings need to be reduced substantially if the species is to be able to fulfill its ecological role; in fact, the target fishing mortality level is based on ecosystem reference points intended to allow the menhaden to do just that.

As noted above, materials provided to the Management Board ahead of its October 2025 meeting make it clear that current management measures are already adequate to prevent overfishing—a 0% probability of overfishing occurring is as much prevention as anyone can ever hope to achieve—so the only remaining question is whether the current management measures achieve optimum yield.

That analysis would begin with the question raised in subparagraph A:  Do the current menhaden management measures provide the greatest overall benefit to the Nation?  Menhaden aren’t typically eaten, and aren’t targeted for sport or food by recreational fishermen, so the usual valuations of food production and recreational opportunity cannot be applied.  

One might argue that the menhaden fisheries contribute to both food and recreation indirectly as the fish caught by the reduction fleet are used, in large part, for agricultural and aquacultural feeds, nutrition for the chicken, salmon, and other foods that land on Americans’ plates, while menhaden caught by the bait fishery are used as bait for crab and lobster, and also as bait and chum in the recreational fishery.  So the current regulations don’t seem to conflict with that portion of subparagraph A.

Having said that, we might still question whether the current menhaden management measures “take into account the protection of marine ecosystems,” and whether, with respect to subparagraph B, such management measures are designed to achieve maximum sustainable yield, “as reduced by any relevant…ecological factor.”

It is easy to argue that they do not.

However, as noted at the start of this essay, all that is needed to achieve the various ecological goals for Atlantic menhaden is to reduce menhaden landings by 39% coastwide.  That can be accomplished by cutting both reduction and bait landings by 39%, and/or by cutting every state’s quota by 39%.  There is no indication that shutting down only the reduction fishery, while leaving the bait fishery completely intact, and doing so only in the New York Bight, is necessary to ensure that menhaden fulfill their ecological role.

In fact, the petition unintentionally argues against itself in this regard.  It complains that the reduction fleet removed 13 million pounds of menhaden from the waters off New Jersey over the course of two days, although it never offers an estimate of the total poundage of menhaden removed from the New York Bight over the course of a season.  However, the petition states very clearly that

“The Bight’s menhaden play a key role [in New Jersey’s fishing industry], with the commercial bait fishery based in New Jersey catching over 80 million pounds of menhaden annually…  [emphasis added]”

So, given that the reduction fleet is only in the New York Bight for a relatively short period—or periods—each year, does it really catch significantly more menhaden in Bight waters than the bait fishery does?  And if petitioners truly believe that the removal of menhaden from the waters of the New York Bight is causing ecological harm sufficient to invoke the provisions of National Standard 1, why does it not object to the bait fishery, which it acknowledges removes more than 80 million pounds of menhaden—very possibly as much as, if not more than, the amount of menhaden removed by the reduction fleet—from the New York Bight each year?

The answer might be as simple as the fact that the reduction fleet uses big boats, while the bait fishery uses small ones, and the petitioners like the latter boats better, even if they collectively kill the same numbers of fish.

National Standard 2 requires that

“Conservation and management measures shall be based on the best scientific information available.”

Right now, the best scientific information available with respect to Atlantic menhaden is the 2025 stock assessment update, which found that the stock is neither overfished nor experiencing overfishing.

And if the stock is neither overfished nor experiencing overfishing, it’s hard to argue that any emergency management measures are needed.

The petitioners try to get around that simple truth by making statements such as

“The most recent stock assessment science concluded Atlantic menhaden are so critical to the striped bass diet that to rebuild striped bass populations [which are currently overfished], significant reductions in the catch of menhaden are required so more are left in the water as food for striped bass growth, survival, and reproduction,”

citing the 2025 Ecological Reference Point Benchmark Assessment and Peer Review Report as support for that statement, or claiming that

“NOAA and ASMFC ecosystem science concluded that more menhaden must be left in the water as bait to help striped bass grow, survive, and achieve healthy population levels,”

citing an ASMFC press release from about one year ago.

However, when one actually looks at the referenced documents, one finds that the plain language of the documents doesn’t quite say what the petitioners claim.

The 2025 Ecological Reference Point Benchmark Assessment, for example, never states that

“Atlantic menhaden are so critical to the striped bass diet that to rebuild striped bass populations, significant reductions in the catch of menhaden are required.”

In reality, it states that

“When fished at their current [fishing mortality] rate, striped bass do not reach their biomass target under any menhaden [fishing mortality] scenarios,”

and that

“the ability of striped bass to reach their biomass target under their [fishing mortality] target in the single-species stock assessment depends on the recruitment regime assumed for future years; striped bass did not reach their spawning stock biomass target under the current [fishing mortality target] if recruitment remains at the very low levels observed since 2019”

even if menhaden are abundant.

While striped bass are the most sensitive species to menhaden abundance included in the ecosystem model,

“striped bass biomass declined by 61% in the extreme [fishing mortality] scenario where menhaden were effectively extirpated from the system, and striped bass biomass increased by 6% if menhaden fishing ceased.”

If ending all fishing for menhaden, along the entire coast, only caused striped bass biomass to increase by a mere 6%, it’s hard to argue that just shutting down the reduction fishery in the New York Bight is going to have a significant impact on the striped bass population, particularly if squid, sand eels, or other forage species not included in the ecosystem model used to assess Atlantic menhaden are present in large numbers.

Similarly, the October 31, 2025 ASMFC press release referenced in the petition never comes close to saying that “NOAA and ASMFC ecosystem science concluded that more menhaden must be left in the water as bait to help striped bass grow, survive, and achieve healthy population levels,” but merely notes that

“the goal of the [ecological reference points] is to maximize Atlantic menhaden fishing mortality while also accounting for the forage needs of Atlantic striped bass.  [emphasis added]”

The fact that petitioners so badly distort the message of the documents that they cite is convincing evidence that the petition is not supported by the best scientific information available.

National Standard 8 states that

“Conservation and management measures shall, consistent with the conservation provisions of this Act (including the prevention of overfishing and rebuilding of overfished stocks), take into account the importance of fishery resources to fishing communities by using economic and social data that meet the requirements of [National Standard 2], in order to (A) provide for the sustained participation of such communities, and (B) to the extent practicable, minimize adverse economic impacts on such communities.”

 The petitioners themselves admit that

“Omega Protein Corporation and its vessel operators, Ocean Harvesters, are estimated to provide a total of about 500 part-time and full-time jobs as part of its entire reduction fishery operation based in Reedville, Virginia…These estimates also suggest the company accounts for as much as $29 million in annual payroll and benefits.”

That would certainly seem to make Reedville one of the “fishing communities” contemplated by National Standard 8, which would entitle it to “sustained participation” in the menhaden fishery, and oblige regulators to “minimize adverse economic impacts” of its management decisions.

The petitioners argue that

“this benefit comes at significant cost to the Bight Region, Atlantic Coast, and national economies supported by the recreational fishing industry,”

but offer no data, much less data meeting the “best scientific information available” standard of National Standard 2, demonstrating that the reduction fishery is causing any significant harm to fishing communities in the New York Bight.

Thus, far from supporting petitioners’ call for emergency regulations prohibiting reduction fishing for menhaden in the New York Bight, National Standard 8 provides reason to minimize adverse economic impacts on Reedville, and to reject the petition’s request for such emergency regulations.

Finally, National Standard 9 reads,

“Conservation and management measures shall, to the extent practicable, (A) minimize bycatch and (B) to the extent bycatch cannot be avoided, minimize the mortality of such bycatch.”

While every fishery, including the recreational fishery, has some level of bycatch and discard mortality, the petitioners have made no effort to document or quantify bycatch in the reduction fishery, but rather merely assume that such bycatch is significant enough to justify citing National Standard 9 as support for their request for emergency regulations.

There is no question that the reduction fishery generates some level of bycatch, but the best evidence available to date suggests that such bycatch represents only a small percentage of the overall catch, and that the level of bycatch has remained consistent for over a century.  It is entirely possible, although very far from certain, that new studies could find that the reduction fishery creates a more severe bycatch problem than uncovered in past research, but until such studies emerge, the best scientific information available indicates that nothing in National Standard 9 provides any support for petitioners’ request.

Thus, once again, we see the menhaden debate muddied by advocates making untenable claims, and seeking to shut down a fishery for no better reason than they don’t like its ownership or the fact that it operates on a larger scale than most fishing businesses.

The problems facing Atlantic menhaden are real, and need to be addressed when the Management Board meets in November.

The last thing that the menhaden needs is to have those real problems obscured, and the debate muddled, by trumped-up claims made by advocates and advocacy groups more interested in knocking down a particular industry than in building up menhaden abundance.

 

 

 

 

 

LET'S NOT GIVE UP ON STRIPED BASS

 

By now, many—probably most—serious striped bass anglers have heard that Maryland has released its juvenile abundance index for 2026, and that such index recorded a very uninspiring 5.5.  

While that is the best Maryland JAI since 2018, it is still barely above the long-term average of 10.8, and helps entrench the period 2019 through 2026 as the eight years with the lowest average JAI, 3.15, in the 70-year history of the Maryland juvenile abundance survey.  The next-lowest eight-year average, 3.57, occurred in the period 1979-1986; the fact that those years encompassed most of the stock collapse of the late 1970s and 1980s provides some context as to just how dire the current striped bass recruitment situation really is.

Virginia also released its juvenile abundance index for 2026, and at 9.52, it was above that state’s long-term average JAI of 7.77.  However, it’s important to note that the calculation of Virginia’s long-term average began in the late 1960s, and that from the late 1960s through 1986 or so, recruitment was atypically low.  

To put that in perspective, if we replaced the period used to calculate Virginia’s long-term average JAI with the years 1992 through 2006, which the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission uses to determine whether the “recruitment trigger” in the fishery management plan is tripped, we’d find that the 2026 JAI was just a bit over Virginia’s recruitment trigger value of 8.22.  We’d also find that such recruitment trigger, which marks the 25^th percentile of all JAIs in the 1992-2006 period, is already above the long-term average of 7.77, so the simple fact that Virginia’s 2026 JAI is above the state’s long-term average doesn’t provide much reason to celebrate.

At the same time, there were some mildly hopeful details underlying the overall bad news.  The Maryland press release that announced the 2026 JAI also noted that, although

“the fish were more widely distributed than in recent years,”

“[t]he highest performing areas were the upper Bay and Choptank River.”

No explanation was given as to why there was a greater concentration of juvenile striped bass in the upper Bay.  It is very possible that higher water flows and lower water temperatures, attributable to snowmelt and runoff in the Susquehanna River watershed, particularly those portions of the watershed located in Pennsylvania and New York, made conditions in the upper Bay more favorable for juvenile survival.  If that was, in fact, the case, the greater number of fish in the upper Bay might portend greater numbers of juvenile bass throughout the Bay in the future, should winter and early spring bring conditions—including water flows, temperatures, and zooplankton availability—more favorable to striped bass reproduction.

While such favorable conditions might occur as early as this upcoming winter—right now, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is predicting that, at least during December, January, and February, the Chesapeake Bay region will see above-normal temperatures, above-normal precipitation, and no drought conditions at all—that’s not guaranteed, and might not even be likely.  When the striped bass population last collapsed in the late 1970s and 1980s, it took 14 years, from 1975, when the JAI began its decline at 6.69, until 1989’s dominant year class, with a JAI of 25.20, was produced; during those 14 consecutive years, the JAI averaged 4.35.

It’s not at all impossible that we might have to again wait that long before we see another dominant year class emerge.

Unfortunately, it appears that some fisheries managers are already growing impatient, and might not want to give the striped bass time to find a way out of its current troubles.  The website Maryland Matters reports that Carrie Kennedy, the Tidal and Coastal Monitoring and Assessment Division director for the Maryland Department of Natural Resources, is already suggesting that the current low JAIs may represent “the new normal” for striped bass recruitment, and that

“Maybe we need to have a conversation about new reference points and new expectations.  I don’t think that we should expect the population to be where it was in the early 2000s.  We have a different Chesapeake Bay.  We have a different planet than we had in the early 2000s.”

And maybe she’s right.

Maybe climate change has seriously wounded the Chesapeake Bay, and rendered it physically incapable of producing the sort of big striped bass year classes that it produced as recently as 2011, 2015, 2017, and 2018, the sort of year classes that, with proper conservation and management, might help to rebuild the striped bass stock to the current spawning stock biomass target.

However, we ought not to forget that, as early as October 2016, Michael Luisi, who represents the Maryland Department of Natural Resources on the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission’s Atlantic Striped Bass Management Board, complained about the supposed “severe and tremendous” impacts that the landings reductions imposed by Addendum IV to Amendment 6 to the Interstate Fishery Management Plan for Atlantic Striped Bass had on Maryland’s fishermen, and tried to immediately increase striped bass landings, even though Maryland’s recreational fishermen never achieved the reductions required by Addendum IV, and actually substantially increased their harvest instead.

Mr. Luisi’s efforts to increase striped bass landings has been a consistent feature of Management Board meetings ever since then.  So has his continuing effort to change the reference points used to gauge the health of the striped bass stock, so that the spawning stock biomass target would be lower, which would allow for higher annual landings.  As early as October 2017, he argued that

“I’ve always been one who has thought that the current targets that are set for spawning stock biomass, or [sic] set to a point where they’re unachievable.  They may be achievable, but we’re unable to maintain them.

“It sets a false expectation for fishermen along the coast…”

It sounds like a good argument, until one looks at historical fishing mortality rates, and realizes that one of the biggest reasons that spawning stock biomass rarely approached the target is because the striped bass stock was experiencing overfishing in 14 of the 22 years between 1996 and 2017, and that when fishing mortality did manage to stay below threshold—maybe it didn’t get all the way down to its target level, but at least overfishing wasn’t occurring—in the years between 1997 and 2003, the spawning stock biomass had no problem rising to and above its target level in multiple years.

It seems that the only reason that the spawning stock biomass target appeared “unachievable” or that managers were “unable to maintain” it was that the same managers never made a serious effort to get overfishing under control.

Even so, Mr. Luisi again tried very hard to include reduced spawning stock biomass reference points in the draft Amendment 7 to the Interstate Fishery Management Plan for Atlantic Striped Bass.  When a motion to remove such reference points from the draft Amendment was made, he attempted to argue that

“I do not support the removal of reference points as a discussion point.  I think 1, I think fishery goals and objectives is the fundamental basis for what we do.

“If you don’t have the appropriate goals and objectives, none of the other elements and the other components make any difference.  I would like to see us go forward with goals and objectives, reference points, triggers, stock rebuilding and schedule…”

Mr. Luisi lost the debate back then, but we would be foolish to believe that he has given up trying to skew the fishery management plan toward greater exploitation.

Thus, when we hear a Maryland fisheries manager talk about revisiting the reference points, and about how we shouldn’t expect to see the spawning stock biomass reach the level it did in the early 2000s—another way to say that the current SSB reference point is unrealistically high—it is only reasonable to wonder whether that manager is expressing a legitimate concern about changing conditions in the Chesapeake Bay, or whether that manager is merely setting the stage for another attempt to increase striped bass landings.

Whatever the motivation, giving up on striped bass rebuilding right now—or, more precisely, immediately after the 2027 benchmark stock assessment is released--would be a serious mistake.

Right now, the stated goal of the striped bass management plan is

“to perpetuate, through cooperative interstate fishery management, migratory stocks of striped bass; to allow commercial and recreational fisheries consistent with the long-term maintenance of a broad age structure, a self-sustaining spawning stock; and also to provide for the restoration and maintenance of their essential habitat.”

In order to achieve that goal, the management plan’s objectives include, among a number of other things, to

“Manage fishing mortality to maintain an age structure that provides adequate spawning potential to sustain long-term abundance of striped bass populations,”

and

“Establish a fishing mortality target that will result in a net increase in the abundance (pounds) of age 15 and older striped bass in the population, relative to the 2000 estimate.”

The current reference points are, at least in part, calculated to achieve such goal and the objectives of sustaining long-term abundance and a broad age structure that includes a reasonable abundance of fish that are at least 15 years old.

Changing the goals and objectives, and so the reference points, to allow higher landings, at the cost of reduced abundance, increased long-term risk, and fewer older, larger females, would be a mistake, particularly in the face of current poor recruitment, as it may well be those older, larger females that hold the key to rebuilding the stock. 

Over 25 years ago, Dr. David Secor published a paper, “Spawning in the nick of time?  Effect of adult demographics on spawning behavior and recruitment in Chesapeake Bay striped bass,” in the ICES Journal of Marine Science.  In that paper, Dr. Secor concluded that

“Through a moratorium on Maryland State harvests in the Chesapeake Bay the 1982 year-class [which was the key to rebuilding the striped bass stock after it had collapsed] was effectively protected and became a dominant one.  Ironically, most egg production in 1982 was attributed to striped bass >10 years in age.  Old remnant females produced during the 1960s were a hedge against a long period of recruitment overfishing which occurred during the 1970s.  Striped bass epitomize periodic strategists, spreading risk of failed replacement through variability in spawning behavior over many spawning seasons.  This life history tactic indicates that a truncated age structure would result in stock abundance being more closely linked to annual changes in year-class strength.”

In other words, doing what Mr. Luisi has suggested in the past—changing the goals, objectives, and reference points to allow higher annual landings, while compromising a broad age structure, reducing the number of age 15+ fish, and reducing long-term abundance—could remove the very old fish from the population that might be needed to spearhead the current recovery of the striped bass stock, as older fish spearheaded the recovery forty-plus years ago, and so make that recovery much harder to achieve.

As I noted before, it’s possible that Ms. Kennedy is right, and that long-term changes in the Chesapeake Bay will make rebuilding to the current spawning stock biomass target impossible.  But that has not yet been established, and there is no reason to hurry to change the reference points now.

If changes in the Bay have truly made the current spawning stock biomass target unachievable, that will be revealed to be true over time, but it would be a serious mistake to rush to give up on the striped bass’ recovery, and change the reference points before the data conclusively demonstrates that such recovery cannot and will not occur.

To give up too soon would potentially deprive striped bass fishermen, recreational and commercial, of the benefits that accrue from a healthy and abundant stock, and put the long-term sustainability of the striped bass population at risk.

We can, and without a doubt should, wait at least another decade or so before condemning the bass to such fate.