Although both the Hudson River and Delaware River
make meaningful contributions to the coastal migratory stock, which even
contains some fish from the more sedentary Albemarle/Roanoke (North Carolina)
population, the effects of low recruitment in Chesapeake Bay will eventually be
felt along the entire coast, from Maine to North Carolina.
It’s probably appropriate, then, that at this time, when the
striped bass stock is again overfished and subject to overfishing, that the two
Chesapeake Bay states, Virginia and Maryland, have placed themselves on
opposite sides of the striped bass debate, and that all of the arguments for
and against striped bass conservation can be heard on the shores of Chesapeake
Bay.
Virginia has emerged as one of the leaders in the effort to
end overfishing and rebuild the striped bass population.
Although the
Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission is already working on Addendum VI
to Amendment 6 to the Interstate Fishery Management Plan for Atlantic Striped
Bass, which if adopted as currently written will reduce fishing mortality by 18
percent and hopefully reduce such mortality to the target level in the 2020
fishing year, Virginia decided to act on its own, reduce fishing mortality
this year, and not wait for ASMFC to decide on new management measures.
The spring trophy season was closed to preserve older,
larger females in the spawning stock biomass, which are important to the future
of the stock. Virginia’s
recreational striped bass landings have fallen precipitously over the past
decade, dropping from 368,000 fish in 2010 to just 52,000 in 2018. Facing such a decline, the state’s fishery
managers realized that it was time to take action to rebuild the stock, with
Marine Resources Commissioner Steven Bowman saying,
“Virginia has always been a conservation leader, and this is
a time to step up.”
In August, Virginia announced additional emergency
regulations that would further restrict both anglers and commercial fishermen.
The recreational changes would mirror those made in the
spring; in the past, Virginia anglers were allowed to keep two striped bass per
day during the fall season, one between 20 and 28 inches, and one at least 20
inches long, with no maximum size. The
emergency regulations, if they are confirmed in a permanent rule, would prohibit
the harvest of bass more than 28 inches long. On the commercial side, gill netters would, for
the first time, face maximum mesh-size restrictions, with an upper limit of
9-inch mesh on the coast and 7-inch mesh in Chesapeake Bay.
“This is a bitter pill to swallow. What would be worse for captains would be no
rockfish.”
“Poor management of striped bass over the past decade has
caused significant economic harm to Virginians who depend on healthy fisheries
for their livelihoods and has reduced opportunities for recreational anglers.”
He then added
“We need other states to follow our example and help rebuild
the striped bass population starting immediately. Delay is unacceptable and the Atlantic States
Marine Fisheries Commission must take decisive action that will restore
restoration of this fishery up and down the coast.”
But if Mr. Strickler was including neighboring Maryland in
the list of “other states” that he expected to help, he’s going to be
disappointed, because in Maryland, the overfished striped bass stock is not
viewed as a critical issue.
“Some people are reacting to this as if the sky is falling. We do understand the need for change. We have the trend of a decade-long decline we
have to turn around.
“We’re not in panic mode.
We believe that we’re still okay.
We know we have the ability to correct for the problem that we see.”
The problem is, Maryland doesn’t seem to be doing too much
to correct anything.
In
2014, ASMFC adopted Addendum IV to Amendment 6 to the Interstate Fishery
Management Plan for Atlantic Striped Bass.
It required fishing mortality to be reduced by 25% on the coast, and
by 20.5% in the Chesapeake Bay. Commercial
fishermen, both on the coast and in the Bay, achieved the required
reductions. So did coastal anglers. But anglers in Chesapeake Bay not only
failed to reduce landings by 20.5%, they actually increased their contribution
to fishing mortality by about 58%.
Despite that fact, the State of Maryland did nothing to
reduce recreational fishing mortality and made no further attempt to meet its
obligations under Addendum IV. In fact, when
the issue arose at the October 2016 Atlantic Striped Bass Management Board
Meeting, Mr. Luisi showed no remorse for his state’s overharvest, and instead
blustered that all was fine, saying
“When we see numbers, an increase in harvest of 58.4 percent
in the Chesapeake Bay, it kind of leads I think, board members to believe that
Maryland and Virginia, Potomac River may not have contributed to the successful
management. I stress the word success.”
Later in the meeting, he expanded
on that theme, and tried to justify Maryland’s overharvest by pointing out that
“The actual written report that we have in
our briefing materials speaks to the emergence of the 2011 year class. It reads that ‘the harvest in the Bay in 2015
was undoubtedly lower than it would have been, had regulations remained status
quo.’ I just wanted to make that
comment, because I believe it strengthens what was reported as kind of a likely
reduction.”
But he was just blowing smoke in
what turned out to be a successful attempt to conceal the real issue. For Addendum IV didn’t merely require
Maryland, and the rest of the Chesapeake Bay fishery, to reduce recreational
landings below what they “would have been, had regulations remained status quo.” Maryland and the other Chesapeake
jurisdictions were obligated to reduce fishing mortality by 20.5% compared to what
it was in 2012.
And that, Maryland completely
failed to do. In 2015, and again in 2016, 2017, and 2018,
Maryland’s recreational landings were at least 150%, and in at least one year
more than 200%, of what they should have been should the state have met its obligation
to reduce recreational fishing mortality by 20.5%.
And still, Maryland shows no
remorse.
Mr.
Luisi was still reiterating his position at the Management Board’s February
2018 meeting, saying
“I don’t think it was ever anybody’s
expectation that we would maintain some form of a constant harvest strategy;
while we have the influence of year class strengths that we do. It would suggest to me that this conversation
about finding or maintaining a harvest level at or below the 2012 harvest, it
wasn’t something that was going to happen.
We had a 2011 year class expanding into the Bay to the degree that it
did. While we may not have met the
letter of the Plan, I believe that our potential harvest was reduced
dramatically, as a result of those increases that we took. I think that we all made a really solid good faith
effort in putting together the regulations that we did as a result of Addendum
IV, and I’ll leave it at that Mr. Chairman, thanks.”
Given that it’s a basic tenet of
statutory or regulatory construction that you look first to the plain language
of the law or regulation, and if the plain language is clear and unambiguous, it
should be interpreted to mean exactly what it says, the argument
that on one really expected Maryland anglers to reduce their harvest below that
of 2012 is ludicrous on its face. After
all, the commercial fishermen in the Bay managed to deal with the 2011 year
class and still meet their mandated reductions.
The recreational fishermen could have done the same, if Maryland really
wanted them to do so.
Cutting the bag limit from two
fish to one, and closing the Bay season during mid-summer, when release
mortality soars—as
Virginia has already done—are just two approaches that come to mind.
But Maryland was already getting
away with piscine murder, and apparently saw no reason to change. At
the April 2019 Management Board meeting, Mr. Luisi made his strongest pitch yet
for increasing the harvest and permanently decreasing the size of the spawning
stock, when he said
“We’ve had concerns over the reference
points for quite some time. In our mind
they’re a bit too high. I think they
provide for an unrealistic expectation to the public that we’re going to be
able to achieve that level.
“You know, currently the threshold
reference point is 91,000 metric tons and 125 percent of that puts us at a
target value, and when you look at the estimates of spawning stock biomass that
came out of the benchmark. We have never
achieved the target in all of that time as we’re evaluating that.”
Of course, what he doesn’t
mention is that, “in all of that time,” managers have never reduced fishing
mortality to the target, either, and doing so is a prerequisite for achieving
and maintaining the target biomass.
He also doesn’t mention that
allowing Maryland anglers to overfish doesn’t help rebuild the biomass to the target—or
even to the threshold.
“The way the Department [of Natural
Resources] has been making adjustments over the years has not been good for fishing
itself, for the fish,”
making it clear that he
understands that what’s good for the fish is also, in the long term, good for
his fishing business.
He observed, with
respect to Maryland’s spring trophy season, that
“When you go a whole entire month and a
whole fleet doesn’t catch a fish, that’s not good. It was bad, bad.”
“Early on it was pretty poor, if not
terrible. I just think the biomass is
depleted. There’s a lot of overfishing.”
So fishermen in Maryland get it, even
if some of those who are supposedly representing their interests don’t.
But, in the end, that’s the
striped bass debate in a nutshell. Many
fishermen, responsible for-hire captains and concerned fishery managers are
working to end overfishing and, in time, recover the stock.
On the other side stand those who
are more concerned with larger harvests in the short term, and feel no strong
compulsion to build the stock back to a point where the public can enjoy its
true potential.
The two sides face off over
Chesapeake Bay, and elsewhere along the coast.
We can only hope that the right
side prevails.
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