Over the past day or two, a couple of press releases crossed
my desk. Both were issued by state
fishery management departments, and both dealt with striped bass. But the story they told, and the way that
they addressed management of the overfished striped bass stock, couldn’t have
been more different.
Their differences largely define today’s striped bass
debate.
The first release came from the Commonwealth of
Massachusetts.
Massachusetts has the largest commercial striped bass quota
of any coastal state, and usually, that quota is caught fairly quickly. But in
2018, commercial fishermen began having trouble finding enough bass, and
Massachusetts opened additional commercial fishing days (the state’s commercial
fishermen are only allowed to target striped bass on certain days of the week)
in an effort to fill the state’s entire quota. Because of the state of the striped bass
stock, even with those extra days, part of the quota remained uncaught.
The decision was purportedly driven largely
by a recent increase in commercial landings, although Massachusetts also said
that public comment played a role in its decision. However, what was really notable in Massachusetts' press release was the fact that Massachusetts has apparently decided to limit its
2019 commercial bass landings to just 713,000 pounds, and not to the 869,813
pounds that the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission has authorized its
fishermen to land.
In other words, Massachusetts is voluntarily cutting its
landings a year before it has to, in order to have a positive impact on the
striped bass stock, which is overfished and experiencing overfishing. That's not a common occurrence in the fisheries management arena, where the Tragedy of the Commons seems to recur again and again.
It would be nice if all states responded to fisheries
problems that way.
But there’s always a New Jersey, which recently announced
that its striped bass “bonus tag” program for 2019 will be getting underway on
September 1.
For those unfamiliar with the program, it is unique to New
Jersey, and allows fishermen in that state, who obtain a so-called “bonus tag,”
to take a third striped bass in addition to the two fish already permitted by
New Jersey Law.
New Jersey is one of
only two coastal states that allow anglers to keep more than one striped bass
on any trip, although New Jersey is the only state on the entire east coast
that has created a way to let recreational fishermen kill three at a time.
To add just a bit more frosting to the cake, that so-called
“bonus” fish must measure somewhere between 24 and less than 28 inches in
length. Since
fewer than half of all female striped bass have matured by the time they’re six
years old, and since recent data
compiled in New York indicate that most bass in the 24-28 inch range are six
years old or less, the New Jersey bonus tag program seems designed to
target immature females, and remove them from the stock before they have a
chance to spawn even once.
The same New York
publication even notes that
“Length-at-age also becomes an important contributor to
adjusting regulations, particularly when the sexual maturity of a species is
based on age, and therefore size. For
example, if length-at-age data showed that anglers are catching legal-sized
fish that are below ages when they mature, regulations would have to be changed
so the fish could have the opportunity to spawn before being removed from the
population.”
At least, regulations would have to be changed in states
other than New Jersey…
In nearly all of the other coastal states, regulators try to prevent anglers from killing
immature fish, even when the stock is healthy. Allowing those immature females to recruit into the spawning stock is even more important now, when the stock has suffered from a
steep decline, and has become overfished.
Yet to some, putting more dead fish on the dock today is
more important than the future health of the bass population. New Jersey’s recreational regulations are one
example, but the same sort of pernicious thinking has plagued discussions at
the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission’s Atlantic Striped Bass
Management Board for a very long time.
In recent years, the
State of Maryland has probably been the biggest opponent of conservative
management, and the loudest advocate for a bigger kill, although New
Jersey, Delaware and individual management board members from other
jurisdictions have provided support.
On the other hand, the New England states (and I’ll append
neighboring New York to them, as the New York
Department of Environmental Conservation has been an important and influential
striped bass advocate over the past four or five years), along with
Pennsylvania, often North Carolina, and most recently Virginia, have been
consistent voices for striped bass conservation.
Virginia,
like Massachusetts, took unilateral action to reduce its striped bass kill this
year, while representatives from the other states have spoken out for
appropriate and needed management measures.
As the debate over ending overfishing comes to a head in
October, we can expect to see those two sides engage in a clash of values, with
the northeastern states, along with their allies in the Mid-Atlantic, working
hard to give the striped bass the protection it needs, while representatives
from Maryland, New Jersey and Delaware, and perhaps some others, do their best
to undercut such protections.
Such efforts to minimize harvest reductions almost certainly
won’t take the form of direct opposition to the proposed addendum, which is
almost certain to pass, but rather by wheedling around with the
consept of “conservation equivalency,” which allows states to adopt alternative
measures that have supposedly the same conservation impact as the measures
adopted by the management board.
It was conservation equivalency that gave New Jersey and
Delaware their two-fish bag limits, it is conservation equivalency that gives
New Jersey its third “bonus” fish, and it was a badly botched conservationequivalency calculation, and a complete lack of accountability for such failedmanagement measures, that allowed Maryland anglers to increase their fishingmortality by more than 50 percent, when a 20.5 percent reduction was called forin the management plan.
It is no coincidence that, when
the management board adopted its last set of management measures in 2014, Adam
Nowalsky, New Jersey’s legislative proxy, said on the record that
“I think we just need to be very clear on the record for the
audience that the options we select today may not be the options that
individual states implement and that phrase ‘all jurisdictions would implement’
really only means in the absence of them bringing forward a conservation
equivalent proposal, and I just want confirmation of that,”
because there was no way that New Jersey was willing to
settle for one 28-inch bass when it might find a way to increase its kill.
Although that motion ultimately failed by a wide margin it,
like the Massachusetts decision to limit its commercial fishery in 2019,
showcased the difference between the states that support conservation and those
with other agendas.
Such states will clash again before the
final vote on the proposed Addendum VI.
But that fight will only be a precursor for the bigger
battle for the striped bass’ future, which will probably begin next May, when
the management board decides whether to begin a new, wide-ranging amendment of the
management plan.
Should they move forward, everything will be on the table,
and the fight will really begin.
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