ENCOURAGING NEWS FOR STRIPED BASS

 

Striped bass are overfished, and a rebuilding plan is long overdue.  The Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission’s adoption of Amendment 7 to the Interstate Fishery Management Plan for Atlantic Striped Bass seems to have lifted the final roadblock to putting a rebuilding plan in place; the new amendment authorizes the ASMFC’s Atlantic Striped Bass Management Board to fast-track such plan’s adoption, without the need for public hearings and similar process, if an upcoming stock assessment update indicates that such action is needed.

The assessment update won’t be completed until October, but preliminary information is currently being developed.  Last Wednesday, the ASMFC’s Atlantic Striped Bass Technical Committee held its first meeting to review the data that has been developed so far.  While I wasn’t able to listen in, a few folks who did briefed me on what occurred, and the news so far seems good:  There will be a fast-tracked rebuilding plan, and rebuilding by 2029 appears to be feasible.

Although both those outcomes were more or less expected, neither had been certain prior to last Wednesday’s meeting.  Amendment 7 only authorizes the Management Board to fast-track the rebuilding plan if the stock assessment update indicates that there is at least a 50% chance that the stock won’t rebuild by 2029 under the current management measures, and that a fishing mortality reduction of at least 5% will be needed to achieve rebuilding by that deadline.  While just about everyone familiar with the fishery assumed that both of those criteria would be met, data can sometimes surprise us; however, the data reviewed at the recent meeting suggested that, in order to rebuild by 2029, fishing mortality would have to be reduced by approximately 25%.

Thus, the two criteria for fast-tracking rebuilding appear to have been met.

A 25% reduction in fishing mortality is not an insignificant cut.  However, it is a reduction that managers should be able to achieve by traditional management means, such as adjusting the current slot limit, perhaps adding a no-harvest season, and reducing commercial quotas.  Thus, rebuilding by the 2029 deadline is very doable, and it can be achieved without the imposition of extreme management measures, such as the harvest moratorium that has frequently been discussed within the striped bass fishing community.

Additionally, because striped bass recruitment in the Maryland portion of Chesapeake Bay fell below the 25^th percentile of recent recruitment in 2019, 2020, and 2021, striped bass managers must incorporate a low recruitment assumption into all management measures.  The 25% reduction requirement does not rely on optimistic projections that can be frustrated if recruitment stays low.  Instead, it incorporates the assumption that lower recruitment levels will be the norm, and so increases the likelihood that managers will successfully rebuild the stock.

Still, a 25% reduction in fishing mortality is going to impose some real pain on both the commercial and recreational fisheries.  While the striped bass fishery is predominantly recreational, and while the great majority of recreationally caught fish are released, most striped bass fishermen end up keeping a bass or two over the course of the year, and many for-hire operators still emphasize harvest in their business models.  In order to reduce fishing mortality by 25%, the number of striped bass retained by anglers will have to be reduced by more than such amount, to also account for the presumably increased level of releases and the resultant release mortality.

It's hard to predict just what the new recreational regulations will look like.  I suspect that the current 28- to 35-inch slot limit will be narrowed; instead of its current 7-inch span, the slot will probably only include a 3- or 4-inch range.  While I believe that such slot will probably fall somewhere within the current 28 to 35 inches, that may not prove to be the case; it is entirely possible that the Technical Committee will recommend a slot spanning a higher or even a lower range of sizes.

I also suspect that, in order to keep the slot wide enough to be practical, the required fishing mortality reduction will include some kind of closed season, although I expect that any such closure will be relatively short.

It’s hard to predict what any season will look like, although discussion at the August Management Board meeting made it clear that any mandated season will only prohibit striped bass harvest, and not catch and release.  Because striped bass engage in long coastal migrations, there will probably not be a single coastwide closure; instead, the seasons will probably be adopted on either a single-state or regional basis, with the latter probably the better approach.

However, predicting the impacts of any new management measures is always a little tricky.

Managers know that some anglers release all of the bass that they catch, some keep every fish that they may legally retain, and many restrict their harvest to just a few fish over the course of the year.  Managers also recognize that the single largest cause of striped bass fishing mortality are the bass that die after being released, which accounted for somewhere between 47% and 54% of all such fishing mortality in each of the past five years.  What managers can’t know with any real certainty is how a tightened slot and perhaps a closed season will impact release mortality.

It's possible that a tightened slot, which makes it more difficult to take a fish home, will discourage some catch-and-keep anglers from striped bass fishing, but whether such anglers will stop pursuing striped bass altogether, and shift their effort to a species that they can more easily retain, or whether they will merely fish less is unknown.  It’s also possible that such anglers will continue fishing, and just grind through more under- and over-slot fish until they can finally put a legal bass in the box. 

In the former scenarios, release mortality would probably go down, while in the latter, which probably describes much of the for-hire fishery, such mortality would increase.  In the real world, where anglers will demonstrate some combination of such behaviors, it’s impossible to make a definitive call on what the overall impact on release mortality would be.  Thus, the Technical Committee will probably chart a conservative course, assume that effort will remain unchanged, and that a more restrictive size limit will cause some increase in the level—but not the rate—of dead releases.

A closed season poses the same sort of problem.  How many anglers will stop fishing during a closure, when they can’t keep a bass?  How many catch-and-keep anglers will engage in catch and release for the duration of the season, just to have something to do?  Again, there’s no way to know, making it likely that the Technical Committee will assume constant fishing effort, and adjust the release mortality estimate accordingly.

In the end, such a conservative approach to management will be good for the bass.

When we start looking at possible commercial restrictions, things get a little more complex.

If the upcoming fishing mortality cuts are addressed as they were in the past, the Management Board will reduce the commercial quota by about 25%.  It’s important to note that’s a reduction in quota, not in actual landings, because the commercial sector never lands it’s entire quota; a 25% quota cut does not equate to a 25% reduction in the level of fishing mortality attributable to the commercial fishery.  But that’s the way things have always been done, and a switch to reducing actual landings is probably not in the cards.

Having said that, there is a real possibility that the commercial quota will be cut by far less than 25%, and that, to compensate, recreational fishing mortality will be reduced to a somewhat greater extent.  There was some talk at the August Management Board meeting that equal cuts to commercial and recreational fishing mortality could result in a situation in which the commercial quota is reduced so far that the commercial fishery was no longer viable, and that to keep that from happening, a disproportionate share of the burden of rebuilding the stock should be placed on the shoulders of recreational fishermen.

The Technical Committee will thus be preparing two sets of management measures for both the coastal fishery and for the fishery within the Chesapeake Bay, one of which will assume equal reductions, one of which will impose greater reductions on the recreational sector than it does on the commercial fishery.

Both approaches will have about the same impact on the bass, and so, from a conservation standpoint,  should be of equal value.  However, imposing different reductions on the two sectors of the fishery would constitute a de facto reallocation of the resource that would warp the shape of the fishery out of the pattern that has naturally developed over time.

My personal opinion—and others will certainly disagree—is that the Management Board should focus solely on rebuilding the striped bass stock, and allow the market to sort out the effects of the management measures.

While that might sound a little harsh, I’m not at all convinced that a lower quota spells the doom of the commercial striped bass fishery, although it may favor some commercial fishermen over others.  For example, here in New York, the commercial striped bass fishery is shifting from a fishery dominated by hook-and-line fishermen, with a minority of pound net and gillnet operators, to a gillnet-dominated fishery, as older hook-and-liners, no longer able to fish on their own, share their allocation of striped bass tags with gillnetters, either legally, by crewing on gillnet boats, or illegally, by merely handing over their tags in return for a share of the landings.

From what some of the remaining hook-and-liners have told me, gillnetters have a big impact on the market because they tend to sell large quantities of bass at one time, which frequently drives down prices.  One individual described how he checked the price that the market was paying for bass in the morning and, learning that it was over $4.00 per pound, went out and caught a few hundred pounds of fish on rod and reel, only to find that, when he returned to the market to unload his catch, the price had fallen by $2.00 per pound after a gillnetter dropped off a big load of bass.

Such market dynamics currently favor the gillnetters, who find their profit in volume, but harm other members of the commercial fishing community.

The quality of the striped bass provided by gillnetters, which may have hung in the nets, in fairly warm water, for many hours, can be inferior to the quality of the product provided by hook-and-line or pound net fishermen, who generally handle smaller volumes of fish that are typically in better condition when brought into the boat and, if carefully handled, can command premium prices when sold directly to restaurants and high-end markets.

In such a situation, a lower quota might disadvantage the gillnetter, and others who follow a business plan based on high volume and potentially lower prices, while favoring the fishermen who land lower volumes of higher-quality fish, that yield a significantly higher price per pound.

Despite such shifting advantage, the commercial fishery, as a sector, would remain.

It’s not the Management Board’s responsibility to pick winners and losers in the marketplace; it’s the Board’s job to increase the number of bass available to everyone.  For that reason, and for reasons of equity, we ought to try to convince the Management Board to impose equal reductions on everyone.

But that gets ahead of the story.

The data discussed at last Wednesday’s meetings may be subject to further analysis, and the final conclusions of the Technical Committee will probably be somewhat different from what was discussed last week.  But they are unlikely to change enough to alter the most important facts:  There is going to be a rebuilding plan.  And if the Management Board remains resolute, there’s a good chance that such plan can succeed.