THE ASMFC MOVES FORWARD--SLOWLY--TO REBUILD STRIPED BASS

 

By any objective measure, the coastal migratory population of Atlantic striped bass has fallen on hard times.

In Maryland, the juvenile abundance index (JAI), which has gauged the success of each year’s spawn since 1957, was 2.0 in 2024, far below its long-term average of 11.0. It was the sixth consecutive year of spawning failure in the Maryland portion of the Chesapeake Bay, while the average JAI for the six years between 2019 and 2024 was the lowest average for any six-year period in the 67-year history of the Maryland juvenile abundance survey.

Things were no better on the Virginia side of the Chesapeake Bay, where the preliminary 2024 JAI was 3.43, and marked the fourth consecutive year when the JAI fell below the 25th percentile (a JAI of 8.22) of the Virginia survey’s time series; previously, the Virginia survey yielded JAIs of 6.3 in 2021, 7.95 in 2022, and 4.26 in 2023.

A stock assessment update, released in October 2024, suggested that, under current management measures, the still-overfished striped bass stock was unlikely to fully rebuild by the 2029 deadline established by the management plan, but there was so much uncertainty in the underlying data that, depending upon the assumptions that biologists made, the landings reductions needed to achieve a 50 percent probability of timely rebuilding might be anywhere between 4 and 46 percent.

Thus, when the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission’s (ASMFC) Atlantic Striped Bass Management Board (Management Board) met on October 23, 2024, most of its members seemed to realize that they had to do something to restore the striped bass stock, but just what they had to do was a bit of a mystery.

Uncertainty Reigns

The biggest problem they faced was that Addendum II to Amendment 7 to the Interstate Fishery Management Plan for Atlantic Striped Bass (Addendum II) had just been adopted in January 2024, and its provisions—a one-fish bag limit for recreational fishermen, paired with a 28- to 31-inch slot limit for the ocean fishery and a 19- to 24-inch slot in the Chesapeake Bay, along with a seven percent reduction in the commercial quota—had been in place for less than a year, making it impossible for the scientists on the Atlantic Striped Bass Technical Committee (Technical Committee) to know how Addendum II’s provisions impacted the striped bass fishery.

If the Technical Committee assumed that Addendum II had little effect, and that 2024 landings would approximate those of 2023, no less than a 46 percent reduction would be needed to rebuild the stock by 2029. However, that level of landings appeared unlikely, as recreational striped bass landings for March through June of 2024 were substantially lower than landings in the corresponding months of 2023; if landings for the rest of the year matched those four months’ pace, 2025 landings would only have to be reduced by four percent to make rebuilding probable.

But that latter scenario was also unlikely.

By 2024, the big 2015 striped bass year class had mostly grown out of the coastal slot size limit, while the next, slightly above average year class, the 2018s, was just below the slot size. In 2025, the 2018s would enter the slot, and be vulnerable to recreational harvest. If past patterns held true, that would increase recreational landings for 2025, but those landings would probably decrease in 2026, as the 2018 year class grew out of the slot.

But how much landings would increase in 2025, or decrease in 2026, is difficult to calculate, as there is too little information available to predict angler behavior or the availability of fish to the fishermen who pursue them. The Technical Committee believed that, in the most likely scenario of a landings increase in 2025, followed by a return to 2024 landings levels thereafter, a 14.5 percent reduction would be needed to rebuild the stock by 2029.

Clinging to the Status Quo

The data seemed to call for some sort of management response, but not everybody attending the meeting agreed. Three Maryland charter boat captains called on the Management Board to maintain the current recreational regulations, with the speakers claiming that their business was down between 30 and 80 percent, and that customers were cancelling Maryland charters and going elsewhere to fish.

On the Management Board itself, two primary opponents of new conservation measures emerged. One was Adam Nowalsky, the Legislative Proxy from New Jersey, who attempted to discredit the data that suggested additional restrictions were needed.

He asked:

Could you explain to me why the juvenile abundance indices graph shape does not match the Year 1 shapes as we see them for Maryland and New York? My expectation would be that the Age 1 would have a similar shape just lagging by a year, but what I see for Maryland is a higher period of juvenile abundance followed by a lower period followed by what appears to be a steadily declining period of juvenile abundance, whereas the Age 1 appears to be something somewhat steady with a few spikes in it. New York [Year 1 recruitment], on the other hand, looks like something with just a high degree of variability bouncing up and down around some midpoint, while more recently it seems to be a downward trending bell curve. So could you provide some insight why the Age 1 charts don’t match the juvenile abundance indices?

His intent was clearly to cast doubt on the relationship between juvenile abundance and the recruitment of Year 1 fish into the population, and so minimize the impact of recent low JAIs on the health of the stock.

However, Technical Committee members quickly reaffirmed that there was a clear correlation between JAI and Year 1 recruitment. Dr. Gary Nelson of the Massachusetts Division of Marine Fisheries dismissed much of the difference in the graphs’ shapes as the result of mere “noise” in the data, attributable to the much smaller number of Year 1 fish encountered when compared to the number of juveniles, although he also noted that the juvenile bass could occasionally experience a mortality event that reduced survival during their first year. Dr. Katie Drew, an ASMFC stock assessment scientist, offered an even simpler explanation, saying that one very large Year 1 recruitment event early in the time series could have distorted the shape of the recruitment graph, and so concealed the actual degree of year-to-year variation.

Unable to discredit the data with his first line of attack, Mr. Nowalsky then tried to impeach just the Year 1 recruitment information, asking the Technical Committee whether they could ignore the strongest year classes, which helped sustain the spawning stock biomass through periods of low recruitment, in order to make overall recruitment in the past appear weaker, and less of a contrast to the low recruitment that the stock is experiencing today.

Mr. Nowalsky made no secret of his motives and admitted:

What I was just looking for is some other way to possibly interpret this information that would indicate that there is perhaps more stability in the fishery with regard to recruitment…I see a recruitment chart there that sees some periods of very high recruitment but in fact, if you didn’t have some of these super-high years, that recruitment mean would be lower and maybe you would have a different interpretation of recruitment. When I look at the juvenile index, abundance index graphs and the Year 1s, juveniles, Year 0s, are not spawning. Year 1s are not spawning, but you have to have Year 1s to have spawning fish. So when I see particularly the Maryland Age 1s somewhat having a more static line, it just gives me pause to think about what we are really seeing here…If I took out some of these outliers of recruitment, is recruitment necessarily on the precipice of disaster?

Dr. Nelson then explained the statistical approach that the Technical Committee used to analyze the recruitment data, and how such application of what he referred to as “Change Point Analysis” indicated that striped bass recruitment experienced something that might be termed “regime change” around 2008, when recruitment dropped below earlier norms.

Thus, Mr. Nowalsky’s efforts to skew the data, and de-emphasize the recent sharp drop in recruitment, failed to gain traction.

The other aggressive opponent of new conservation measures, Delaware fishery manager John Clark, then rose to set forth his opposition to additional management measures, using language that some might find surprising, coming from an experienced fisheries professional:

We’ve been cutting now, this is the 10th anniversary of when we started cutting back, that was that 25% cut, followed by an 18% cut, followed by what, another 15? I mean, it’s just been a bunch of cuts, and one thing that you see when you look at the [spawning stock biomass], that it seems to be following a natural population cycle going up and down. I’m just curious, I mean we have this arbitrary goal of keeping it at a certain level, yet the boom in the population began when the population was what? Maybe a quarter of what it is now? No, I mean, we can’t guarantee anything by just keeping the spawning population at a very high level, because we’re still not sure of all the factors that lead to big year classes, correct? I mean, it just seems like management has to weigh both sides of this. Of course, we want to be cautious, but there is a point when we might be foregoing fish that could be caught in the pursuit of trying to keep the stock at a level that you think is necessary. But in the meantime, as you’ve heard, people are going out of business and we’re seeing a lot of people I know that are hurting, and I know we hear it from our commercial guys all the time, they’ve taken since 2014, this quota has been cut almost in half, and you know that comes out of their pockets, and the question that I have is do we have any sense of whether the stock will recover if indeed it did, [spawning stock biomass] went down even further than it is now? I mean, it seems like it’s still very possible that, based on these cycles, that it could be coming back, right?

Mr. Clark seemed to have no concerns about allowing an already overfished stock, which is experiencing spawning failure in multiple nursery areas and has experienced consecutive years of low recruitment, to fall to even lower levels of abundance, in the expectation, or at least the hope, that some undefined “cycle” will eventually allow it to return to health on its own.

To Rebuild the Bass Stock

But that was not the majority opinion. That opinion might have best been expressed by Dennis Abbott, New Hampshire’s Legislative Proxy, a long-time member of the Management Board who called the last six years of poor recruitment “the gorilla in the room,” opined that “We’re in one of the most difficult positions we’ve been in with striped bass,” and proclaimed that “My job first is to protect the resource, and if we protect the resource, we’ll protect the fishermen.”

Mr. Nowalsky, perhaps not liking the direction that the debate was taking, soon asked, “As we sit here today, does the rebuilding plan mandate a reduction for 2025, as we sit here today and, if the answer is yes, what would that reduction be?”

He was promptly informed that no, the rebuilding plan didn’t mandate a reduction, and that any decision about making a reduction was within the discretion of the Management Board, but he was also reminded that the rebuilding plan did mandate that the stock be rebuilt by 2029, so that failure to take action in 2025 might very well mean that more restrictive management measures would have to be taken in later years.

Roy Miller, the Governor’s Appointee from Delaware, then put the rebuilding issue in a historical perspective:

In the 1980s, there were concerns like we heard from our fishing audience today, over contaminants in the nursery areas. There were concerns over too much rainfall or not enough rainfall, colder than normal temperatures or warmer than normal temperatures; all these things which were beyond our control in the 1980s. So what could we control? We finally settled on fishing mortality, so that we could maximize the number of eggs laid in our ecosystems so that when conditions were favorable, a dominant year class would eventually be produced. And that’s exactly what happened…When you look at those years from ’85 to ’89, that’s when we provided maximum protection…By providing protection for those eggs laid in the system, making sure there were enough spawners to lay those eggs, conditions were eventually favorable and the ’89 year class was the result. I see us entering a similar sort of situation now, when we have poor reproduction for six years…I do think there are enough parallels with what happened in the 1980s, that we need to keep that in mind and keep our focus on maximizing the number of eggs laid in our estuary systems, so we can again support some larger than average year classes.

The rub was that, even if the Management Board wanted to take action that might spur rebuilding, it wasn’t sure what action would be needed, as the Technical Committee had not yet informed them of what sort of changes to size limits, seasons, or any other management measures, would be needed. That wasn’t the Management Board’s fault; before it could propose a suite of possible management measures, it needed to know which specific scenario—the one requiring a 4 percent reduction, or a 46 percent reduction, or something in-between—the Management Board felt was most likely. Once the magnitude of the reduction was decided, the Technical Committee could calculate the measures needed to attain it.

Thus, Nichola Meserve of the Massachusetts Division of Marine Fisheries rose to move the process forward. Declaring that, “The only error I see is doing nothing…some type of action is necessary,” she placed a motion on the table: “Move to schedule a special Striped Bass Management Board meeting in December 2024 to consider Board Action in response to the 2024 Stock Assessment Update. The Board will consider action to revise the 2025 recreational seasons or size limits and 2025 commercial quotas to achieve a 50% probability of rebuilding by 2029 under the ‘low 2024 removals with F increase in 2025 only’ projection.”

The motion was seconded by Martin Gary, the Director of the New York Department of Environmental Conservation’s Marine Division.

Mr. Clark immediately spoke in opposition, arguing that:

The reference points are exceptionally high, and even though we don’t have…on the current projections, it seems, we have a 43 percent chance of hitting the target, the target is 125% of the 1995 rebuilt [spawning stock biomass]. But it has a very good chance of hitting the threshold. I know that isn’t what we said in the plan, but it’s still a bigger stock than we have now. In the meantime, we’re talking about some…we’re just further regulating, making things more difficult. I think…a basic concept in finance is net present value, and I would transfer that to a fishery, and that a fish today is worth more than a fish four years from now. We already heard the hardships, that what we have currently done is putting on our recreational fishermen [sic] industry—the for-hires, that is—and our commercial fishermen, and I think this is just, you know, another almost gratuitous cut at this point, because it is something else that is going to make life more difficult for them…You know, we cut the quotas on weakfish back, we did everything we could, they haven’t come back…

It was another remarkable speech from a professional fisheries manager, who was calling for the Management Board to ignore the explicit terms of the striped bass management plan, because even without fully rebuilding the stock, the stock would, in a few years still be “a bigger stock than we have now;” who was willing to risk the future health of the striped bass stock in return for catching more fish today because “a fish today is worth more than a fish four years from now;” and who questioned the worth of trying to rebuild striped bass, because managers haven’t had much success rebuilding weakfish.

But it was also the last concerted effort to derail the rebuilding effort. While the meeting had a long way to go, everything else constituted unsuccessful attempts to just cause delay.

Attempts at Delay

The first attempt to stall needed management measures came from Maryland fisheries manager Michael Luisi, who called the provision in Addendum II, which allowed the Management Board to adopt rebuilding measures on their own, without first drafting a new addendum and taking it out for public hearings, “an experiment” that could not, as a practical matter, be carried out in what was left of 2024. He said that he was “concerned about the longevity and the durability of the actions that we take,” and wanted to see consistent rules, that would not be changed after a short time, put in place. Thus, proposed a substitute motion that would replace the original motion made by Ms. Meserve, which read:

Move to substitute and initiate an addendum to address reducing total removals (harvest and discard mortality/recreational and commercial) in the coastwide striped bass fishery using the technical committee’s most likely projection scenario (F2024-Low Removals, F increases in 2025 Only and Returns to 2024 Low Levels) and a 50% probability of achieving the spawning stock biomass (SSB) target level by 2029. The intent of this addendum is to provide the Board with coastwide and regional alternatives for the regional and commercial fishery for implementation on January 1, 2026.

Not surprisingly, the motion was seconded by Mr. Clark.

Mr. Luisi argued that “we owe it to the public to be heavily involved in the addendum process,” implying that the public would prefer to see the longer addendum process used to adopt management measures, rather than fast-tracking such measures through Management Board action even though, when the public had a chance to comment on the question during the development of Addendum II, 2,150 out of the 2,240 comments received—96 percent—favored the fast-track process to get needed catch restrictions in place.

There was substantial opposition to Mr. Luisi’s substitute motion, which would have left the 2018 year class vulnerable to harvest as they entered the coastal recreational slot limit in 2025.

Chris Batsavage, a North Carolina fisheries manager, noted that the Management Board was running out of time to rebuild the striped bass stock, and that it needed to move faster with respect to protecting the 2018 year class from harvest in 2018. He noted that North Carolina no longer has an ocean striped bass fishery, in part because, “There aren’t a lot of fish out there.”

David Sikorski, Maryland’s Legislative Proxy, opined that “It’s more responsible to act more quickly,” noting that past management efforts often failed because the Management Board did not impose the full reductions recommended by the Technical Committee. He said that it was time to “stop playing games” with the management process and do what was needed to rebuild the stock.

Mr. Abbott said that the Management Board shouldn’t “sacrifice” the 2018s, and said that adoption of the substitute motion would amount to “a dereliction of our duty to protect the 2018 year class,” while David Borden, the Governor’s Appointee from Rhode Island, observed that “We’re in a unique position…If we allow the 2018 year class to be fished down, we’ve lost an opportunity and painted ourselves into a corner.”

Yet other Management Board members supported the motion for various reasons. Max Appelman, representing NOAA Fisheries, feeling that fast-tracking management measures provided no opportunity for “robust public comment,” supported the substitute motion. Pat Geer, a Virginia fisheries manager, also supported the substitute, largely for administrative reasons; the process of getting bass tags out to Virginia’s commercial fishermen begins in August, and so was already underway when the October meeting was held. It could not be interrupted to accommodate any management measures that were put into place for the 2025 season.

Thus, after Mr. Luisi’s substitute motion failed on a vote of 6 in favor, 9 opposed, with a single abstention, Mr. Geer made his own motion to substitute and delay the implementation of needed harvest cuts. His motion read, “Move to substitute to schedule a special Striped Bass Management Board meeting in December 2024 to consider Board Action in response to the Stock Assessment Update. The Board MAY consider action to revise the 2025 recreational seasons and/or size limits and 2026 commercial measures with an addendum for 2026 and beyond to achieve a 50% probability of rebuilding by 2029 under the low 2024 removals with F increase in 2025 only projection.”

Once again, Mr. Clark seconded the motion, which sought to delay the implementation of commercial management measures.

There were comments supporting and opposing the motion, although the most notable came from Ms. Meserve, who had grown exasperated with the repeated attempts at delay, and declared that “I remain disappointed and frustrated that the states with writing on the wall,” meaning the Chesapeake Bay states where JAIs had plummeted, were trying to stall needed management measures. Mr. Batsavage admitted that he was “sharing Nichola’s frustration” and, with respect to Mr. Geer’s administrative problems, that “we shouldn’t let process get in the way of conservation of striped bass.”

Still, Mr. Geer’s motion nearly passed, failing on the narrow vote of 7 in favor, 7 opposed, and 2 abstentions.

At that point, Mr. Clark moved to amend Ms. Meserve’s original motion, seeking to substitute the phrase “commercial quotas” with “commercial measures,” in order to allow the consideration of other commercial management measures, most particularly a requirement that bass must be tagged at the point of capture rather than the point of sale to a wholesale buyer, in addition to or in lieu of a quota reduction.

Mr. Sikorski seconded the motion only so that it might be discussed, but the resulting discussion was short. Ms. Meserve voiced her opposition to the amendment, saying that it would add additional, unnecessary issues to the proposed December meeting, when the Technical Committee would already be challenged to calculate the needed size and season alternatives. She also noted that a 10-year review of commercial bass tagging measures had already been scheduled, and that there was no need to address the issue in December.

Mr. Gary felt that Mr. Clark’s motion could be seen as a way to avoid a commercial quota reduction, at a time when recreational catch would be subject to additional cuts, and said, “I think we’re at a point with this stock when no one is getting a pass. We’re all in this together. All the sectors have to work together with what we have left, in the absence of reproductive success.”

With those words said, the vote was taken and the motion failed, on a close vote of 8 in favor and 8 opposed.

Resolved to Move Forward

And with no further discussion, Ms. Meserve’s original motion passed easily, with 14 votes in favor, and only New Jersey opposed. With Mr. Clark and Mr. Miller unable to agree, Delaware cast a “null vote,” which had no impact on the outcome.

With that done, the Management Board still had to decide what management measures they would consider at the December meeting, and what work the Technical Committee would have to do. They eventually agreed that they wanted the Technical Committee to update the 2024 landings projection with recreational data from July and August, which had just become available, and use that in calculating recreational management options. They also agreed that the Technical Committee should provide options for no-harvest season closures, and also provide information on closed seasons when even catch-and-release fishing was prohibited. And they agreed that the Technical Committee should look into the benefits of setting a new slot limit that did not allow fish over 28 inches to be landed, in order to protect the 2018 year class.

It’s not entirely clear that the Technical Committee will be able to get all of that done before the December Management Board meeting, and it’s certainly not clear what management measures will be in place for 2025. However, it does seem pretty certain that the Management Board will do something to protect the 2018 year class and make it more likely that the stock will rebuild by 2029.

Whatever that something is, we can only hope that it will be enough.

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This essay first appeared in “From the Waterfront,” the blog of the Marine Fish Conservation Network, which can be found at http://conservefish.org/blog/