RECRUITMENT MATTERS: YOU CAN'T CATCH STRIPED BASS THAT AREN'T THERE

“It’s a big ocean.”

“Fish have tails, and they use them.”

“There are plenty of fish, they just went somewhere else.”

I’ve heard it said so many times, in so many ways, but it always boils down to the same thing:  When fish aren’t around, people often want to believe that stocks are still healthy, and the fish have merely abandoned some spots on the coast.

Sometimes, that happens. 

But if you’ve got the right water temperature, bait is reasonably abundant, and you’re fishing at the time of year when the the fish in question are usually caught, yet you’re still not having much success, there’s a good chance that it’s not a matter of a fish being “somewhere else.”   You're probably dealing with a depleted stock made up of too few individuals to occupy all of its typical range.

That’s something that people, particularly people who profit in any way from the harvest of fish, often try to deny.  They go to great pains to explain why fish aren’t being caught, arguing that fish remain abundant, but are merely sojourning in some distant, ill-defined place where neither fishermen nor scientists can manage to find them.

But there is usually a much simpler explanation for a species’ absence.  

Fish, for various reasons, often experience periods when spawning success falls well below average, and fewer young individuals recruit into the population.  That poor recruitment translates into poorer fishing a few years down the road.

Striped bass may be the best example of that phenomenon. 

Tell me what the Maryland Juvenile Abundance Index is for 

any year, and I will tell you what the fishing will look like for many years into the future, as each year class moves through the population and through the coastal fishery.

Let's take a look at how that works.

The Maryland index hit 30.52 in 1970, which at the time was the highest point that it had ever attained.  In a couple of years, immature striped bass were swarming everywhere along the coast, but something else was happening, too:  After more-or-less average recruitment in 1971 and 1972, when the index was over 11, the numbers started to slide, falling to 6.69 in 1975, 4.91 a year later, and then staying low for well over a decade, bottoming out at 1.22 in 1981.  ‘

A very few striped bass fishermen, most notably including Bob Pond, creator of the Atom line of striped bass fishing lures, understood what that meant for the future, and urged fishery managers to adopt stricter regulations in order to avoid a future crash.  But most fishermen, and just about all of the fishery managers, weren’t listening.  There were still plenty of big bass around due to good recruitment during the 1950s and '60s, and no one wanted to think about what the more recent poor recruitment meant for the stock.

When fishing pressure wasn’t relaxed, even the big 1970 year class was quickly decimated.  By 1980, with few new fish entering the population, the stock had collapsed.  

Eventually, thanks to passage of the Atlantic Striped Bass Conservation Act in 1984, managers finally got their act together and took meaningful action to rebuild the stock. 

In 1989, the Maryland index reached 25.2, the most successful recruitment since 1970.  Much of that year class reached 28 inches in length, and recruited into the coastal fishery, in 1995, the year that the striped bass stock was deemed to be fully recovered, and Amendment 5 to the Interstate Management Plan for Atlantic Striped Bass led to liberalized size and bag limits along the coast and in the so-called “producer areas.”

Those liberalized regulations put a lot of pressure on the ’89 year class.  Striped bass seemed to be abundant again, and many anglers and for-hire vessels spent less time targeting depleted summer flounder, scup and black sea bass populations, and focused more of their efforts on bass.  That led to a push-back by conservation-minded striped bass anglers, who pointed to the dearth of larger, older fish in the population, and called for more conservative management.

Those anglers acknowledged biologists’ findings that the striped bass stock had been restored to abundance, but argued that abundance, by itself, wasn’t enough.  They declared that

“The job’s not done until we bring back the big bass,”

and called for more restrictive management measures, that would allow more older fish to survive and so expand the age and size structure of the spawning stock.  They met with mixed success in Amendment 6 to the Interstate Fishery Management Plan for Atlantic Striped Bass, which made increasing the number of older females in the spawning stock one of its goals, but didn’t reduce the fishing mortality target enough to make that happen.

Even so, it was clear that the striped bass was doing well, producing large year classes in 1993 (39.76), 1996 (59.39), 2001 (50.75) and 2003 (25.75).  For a while during the late 2000s, striped bass fishermen could enjoy the best of all worlds, catching large bass from the 1989 and 1993 year classes, and also enjoying abundant school and low-20s fish from ’96, ’01 and ’03.

The problem is that some fishermen, and most fishery managers, failed to learn from the past.

When the Maryland index started sliding again, producing mostly below-average numbers for the period 2004-2010, those managers sat on their hands even though anglers, along with some of the people who sat on the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission’s Atlantic Striped Bass Management Board, urged action to prevent stock decline.  

Even after a 2011 stock assessment update warned that the stock would become overfished by 2017, the Management Board declared striped bass to be

“a green light fishery”

and did nothing.

Perhaps that’s because they felt free to ignore all of the years of sub-par recruitment, but noted that the 2011 Maryland index was a very good 34.58, and so hoped that would turn things around.  

But if we learned anything from the prior collapse, it was that one good year class, such as the 1970, can’t salvage a stock on its own, if managers do nothing to help.  When managers chose to ignore the clear language of Amendment 6, and so failed to take action to rebuild the spawning stock biomass within ten years, even though a 2013 benchmark stock assessment showed it heading the wrong way, they set themselves on a path to more problems.

That path was probably set in stone after the 2011 year class didn't appear in expected numbers along the coast, perhaps because the same Management Board allowed Maryland recreational landings to increase by more than 50 percent and stay at that level for years, despite the fact that Addendum IV to Amendment 6 to the Atlantic Striped Bass Interstate Fishery Management Plan, adopted in late 2014, supposedly required such mortality to be reduced by 20.5 percent.

The fact that the Maryland index for 2012, at 0.89, which was the lowest ever recorded in the 60-plus-year-long time series, brought no management comment at all revealed the bias of a Management Board that was more than willing to liberalize rules, or at least defer needed restrictions, upon hearing good news, but which was reluctant to restrict landings even when the bad news was clear.

So now we’re dealing with an overfished stock, but also with a decent 2015 year class (24.20) that is pushing a bunch of barely sub-legal fish up the coast, bracketed by more-or-less average year classes in 2014 (11.02), 2017 (13.19) and 2018 (14.78), which could provide some fish for the future—provided that they’re properly managed.

But, as always, there are some in the fishing community—both fishermen and fishery managers—who still haven’t learned, and are trying to argue that everything’s fine, that are plenty of bass, and that they have merely gone elsewhere once again.

The current favorite destination, for those allegedly still-abundant bass, is the federal exclusive economic zone, where striped bass fishing is not allowed.

But if that’s the case, where did those fish come from?

Ideally, striped bass can live for more than 30 years, but as a practical matter, individuals in a fished population—and remember that bass have not only been fished, but overfished for most recent years—are killed before they reach their maximum age, making that 30-year figure somewhat irrelevant.  

Looking at the Maryland data, it’s likely that there are still some big fish—50 pounds plus—surviving from the 1996 year class, some 40s and perhaps low 50s spawned in 2001 and 2003, and not much else until we get to whatever fish from the big 2011 year class are still around.  They should be pushing the upper limit of the 28 to 35-inch slot size that was adopted by most, but not all, coastal states this spring.

The low recruitment between 2004 and 2010 suggests that we won’t see many fish between 20 and 40 pounds, while the solid 2015 year class, buffered on both sides by the about-average 2014s, 2017s and 2018s, should be reflected in quite a few bass that exceed the lower end of the slot limit next year, more trickling over the minimum through 2024, and some 2014s big enough to recruit into the fishery this year.

And when you stop to think about it, that’s exactly what people are seeing.  A handful of big bass, a few high teens and barely-legal fish, and quite a few shorts that fall just below the slot.

Pretending that there are more, unseen striped bass swimming around in the EEZ, and that the stock is healthy as a result, just gives life to a pipe dream.

There are a lot of uncertainties surrounding fisheries management, but we know at least one thing for sure:  Fish that were never spawned, and never recruited into the population, just can't be swimming around in the EEZ today.