STRIPED BASS ADDENDUM III: ITS OUTLINE IS CLEAR

 

About ten days ago, I noted that the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission’s Striped Bass Plan Development Team was moving forward with the proposed Addendum III to Amendment 7 to the Interstate Fishery Management Plan for Atlantic Striped Bass.  After holding four meetings over the past two weeks, the PDT has now hashed out the basic outline of the proposed Addendum.

While there is still more work to be done before the first draft of Addendum III is finalized and presented to the Atlantic Striped Bass Management Board ahead of its May 6 meeting, that work will consist of fine-tuning, rather than merely roughing-out the Addendum’s core issues.

As I noted in the April 3 essay, the Atlantic Striped Bass Technical Committee has recommended that the Plan Development Team, as well as the Management Board, assume that fishing mortality for the years 2026 through 2029 will be the same as it was in 2024.  Based on that assumption, there is a 48.7 percent probability that the striped bass spawning stock biomass will be fully rebuild by the end of 2029, even if no changes are made to the existing management measures.

However, if the Management Board would like to proceed more cautiously, and adopt a 60 percent chance of rebuilding by the 2029 deadline, a 7 percent reduction in striped bass removals will be required.

There are many ways that such reduction could be achieved, including cutting both recreational fishing mortality and the commercial quota by 7 percent, leaving the commercial quota unchanged and cutting recreational removals by 8 percent, and using some very flawed logic to decide that, since the commercial fishery is responsible for only 11 percent of the fishing mortality, the 7 percent commercial reduction should be multiplied by that sector’s 11 percent share of overall removals, so that recreational fishermen will be forced to cut back by 8 percent, while the commercial quota is reduced by a trivial 0.8 percent. 

All but the first approach obviously places all, or nearly all, of the conservation burden on the shoulders of the recreational fishery.

The next question is how any reduction might be achieved.  In discussing the possible options, the Plan Development Team only considered an equal, 7 percent reduction for both sectors, although the draft Addendum III presented to the Management Board will very probably present options for 8 percent reductions as well.

It seems easy on the commercial side, where the quota would simply be cut by 7 percent.  However, appearances can be deceiving, for although it comes close in some years, the commercial sector rarely, if ever, lands its entire quota.  A 7 percent quota reduction doesn’t typically equate to a 7 percent reduction in removals, but instead to something less.  Thus, even the seemingly “equal” reductions achieved by a 7 percent commercial quota cut and a 7 percent reduction in recreational removals aren’t equal in fact; the recreational sector is giving up just a little more.

On the recreational side, managers have three tools that they might, in theory, use to manage the fishery:  bag limits, size limits, and seasons.  As a practical matter, the bag limit, already set at a single fish per day in both the Chesapeake Bay and on the coast, can’t be reduced any further.  And on the coast, even size limits prove problematic, as the only size limit that would—barely—achieve a 7 percent reduction is a 37- to 40-inch slot, a size limit that, the Plan Development Team fears, might make it difficult for shore-based anglers to take home a legal fish, and would also make the big 2015 year class, which the current slot size is intended to protect, vulnerable to recreational harvest once again.

Which pretty much leaves us with a coastal season.

When the Management Board met last December, it chose not to change management measures for 2025, in part because the seasons proposed by the Technical Committee were perceived as unfair to anglers in certain states.  

The Plan Development Team tried to address that problem during its deliberations.

If seasons were set on a coastwide basis, the equity issue might be solved by adopting two short closure periods, one of which would have a greater impact on anglers in southern states, while the other would primarily affect those in the north.  Perhaps the most equitable of those split seasons would either impose a two-week no-target closure sometime in May and/or June (actually, such season need only run for 12 days, but the Management Board had previously decided that 14 days should be the minimum closure length) and another such closure sometime in November/December, or impose 18-day no-harvest closures (when catch-and-release would still be allowed) during the same two two-month periods.

The Plan Development Team also considered the possibility of regional management. 

Creating a small northern region, that only ran from Maine to Massachusetts, seemed workable although, due to their shorter seasons, Maine and New Hampshire anglers would be impacted more than those in Massachusetts.  Even so, a season that closed either 22 (no-target) or 23 (no-harvest) days in July and/or August would be enough to achieve the needed 7 percent cut in recreational removals.  

Another option, which would add Rhode Island to the northern region, would require a slightly longer July/August closure of 23 (no-target) or 25 (no-harvest) days.

States to the south posed thornier problems.  No single closure could serve them equally well.  Breaking the closure down into two smaller closed seasons, one earlier in the year, one later, could prove more equitable.  

But that wouldn’t solve a separate issue that came up when three regions were considered—the ocean fishery south of Delaware Bay is very, very small, so small, that if the coast was broken up into three regions, with the southern region ranging from Delaware to North Carolina, even closing an entire two-month "wave" wouldn’t come close to achieving the needed 7 percent reduction.  In fact, unless one assumed that, if a no-target closure was imposed, anglers would either stay home, play golf, or fish in fresh water, and not engage in any sort of angling where a striped bass might, accidentally, be caught, even closing multiple waves would not achieve the needed cut in removals.  Thus, in the end, the Plan Development Team decided that a three-region approach was not a practical alternative.

Of course, creating only two regions brought up the equity issue again.  A season that might work for New York and New Jersey probably wouldn't work for Maryland and Virginia.  However, as in the case of the proposed coastwide option, splitting the overall closure into two smaller closed seasons offered some attractive options.

Assuming that the southern region would extend from Rhode Island to North Carolina, the 7 percent reduction could be achieved by either 1) one 8-day closure in May/June and another in November/December (each, a no-target closure, coupled with an assumption that anglers won’t switch from striped bass to another species while the season is closed), 2) two 10-day closures, occurring during the same two-month periods (a no-target closure, coupled with an assumption that anglers will fish for something else while the striped bass season is closed, resulting in some bass being incidentally caught), or 3) two 15-day no-harvest closures, one in May/June and one in November/December, when catch-and-release is allowed. 

While a number of other options were proposed, the foregoing provided the shortest possible closed seasons.

Of course, nothing is quite that easy.

In this case, the problem is largely created by New York, which may not open its saltwater striped bass fishing season before April 15, nor keep it open after December 15 (other seasons prevail on the Hudson River).  Because those closures are already figured into the needed harvest reductions, any November/December closure imposed by New York would have to fully occur before December 15.  And because all of the states in a region are supposed to occur at the same time, that means that every other state would have to adopt, for example, a 15-day no-harvest closure on December 1, and would then be allowed to reopen their seasons on December 16, to run for the rest of the year.

That didn’t go over to well with some Plan Development Team members from other states, so the PDT ultimately decided that New York’s late-season closure might have to occur at a different time than the closures in other states.

And that revealed yet another potential problem.

The calculations made with respect to closed season length assume that every day during a two month “wave” sees the same number of fish caught and landed, but everyone recognizes that doesn’t reflect reality.  Instead, particularly near the beginning and end of the season, the typical number of fish caught at the start of a wave many be very different from what is caught at that wave’s end; there is certainly a big difference between the number of bass caught and landed during, say, the first week of November than the number caught and landed between Christmas and New Year’s Eve, but the calculation treats those weeks in the same way. 

Thus, a comment made by New Jersey’s representative on the Plan Development Team should have set off warning bells, when he noted that if New Jersey tried to accommodate New York, and closed its season from December 1 through December 15, it might make no sense for the state to reopen for the rest of the year, because there weren’t many boats in the water in late December, and striped bass fishing would be pretty much over by then.

Yet, assuming that New Jersey could set part of its closed season at any time during November/December, it would be completely within its rights to begin that closure on December 17 and end it on New Year's Eve, a time when there wouldn’t be many boats in the water and the striped bass season was, already, pretty much over. 

It’s hard to imagine such a late closure contributing much to a landings reduction.

That, then, is an issue that might deserve a very close look by the Management Board, and maybe some reconsideration.

The Plan Development Team also developed options for the Chesapeake Bay recreational fishery, but they had more flexibility there, with multiple ways to achieve a 7 percent reduction by changing the size limit alone, along with ways to achieve such reduction through seasons.

The next big question was whether the size limits and seasons should apply to everyone, or whether anglers fishing from for-hire vessels should get special privileges not allowed to anyone else.

The Management Board directed the Plan Development Team to look at the issue, and the PDT took the time to get back to the states for advice on what the for-hire boats might be looking for.  Since the Management Board had already decided that the bag limits for everyone would remain at one fish, once again, size limits and seasons were the only possible variables.

Since there are only so many bass available for harvest, if the for-hire fleet was gifted with more liberal regulations, the shore-based and private boat anglers would need to pay for that gift by having more restrictive management measures imposed on them.  The Plan Development Team calculated that if the slot limit for anglers on for-hire boats was widened from the current 28 to 31 inches to 28 to 33 inches, the reduction on landings for all of the other recreational fishermen would have to be increased from 7 percent to 8 percent; that additional one percent might not seem like much, but it amounts to a 14 percent increase in the number of fish that would no longer be available to the shore-based and private-boat sectors.  And if commercial fishermen are also allowed to escape with either no quota reduction or the trivial 0.8 percent reduction that some have proposed, the shore-based and private-boat anglers will have to give up even more, even though they are responsible for about 98 percent of all recreational trips that primarily target striped bass.

Hopefully, the Management Board won’t let things go that far.

On the other hand, the Plan Development Team also investigated an approach, akin to the ASMFC’s policy of conservation equivalency, that would make the adoption of different regulations for for-hire anglers far more palatable.  Under that approach, if for-hire anglers were allowed to retain bass that fell into a wider, 28- to 33-inch slot, then the for-hire fishing season on the coast would have to be shortened by 27 percent.  Thus, while shore-based and private boat anglers might have to experience a 23-day no-harvest closure during July and August in the northern region, for-hire anglers in the same region would need to accept a longer, 38-day closure in exchange for the wider slot.  The same wider slot, adopted in the southern region, could result in all of November and December being closed to for-hire harvest. 

Such an approach, if adopted by the Management Board, would ensure that equity between anglers is maintained in the coastal fishery.

In the Chesapeake Bay, where a 19- to 24-inch slot limit currently prevails, allowing for-hire anglers an extra inch—a 18- to 25-inch slot—would also result in shore-based and private-boat anglers having to take an 8 percent reduction, rather than the currently-proposed 7 percent cut, to compensate for the for-hire’s higher removals.  If the Management Board invoked conservation equivalency to maintain equity between anglers and offset the impacts of higher for-hire landings, the for-hire season in the Bay would have to be reduced by 13 percent.

Once the question of “mode splits” for the for-hire season was thoroughly examined, the Plan Development Team touched upon a few other issues.

One was the question of how to address recreational fisheries in the Hudson River, Delaware River, and Delaware Bay, which permit anglers to take smaller, presumably male, striped bass at certain times of the year.  Such fisheries were given special recognition in Amendment 7 to the Interstate Fishery Management Plan for Atlantic Striped Bass, which also exempted them from the prohibition on using conservation equivalency when the striped bass fishery was overfished, as it is today.

The discussion was somewhat involved, given that this is the first time seasons, rather than bag or size limits, might be used to achieve the needed reduction in removals, and given that the fisheries in question might not even be open when the nearby ocean striped bass season is closed.  It’s possible that the discussion grew too involved, as it’s not quite clear why simple conservation equivalency couldn’t be used to achieve the required reductions.  But that is one of the issues still to be worked out, by both the Plan Development team and then, ultimately, by the Management Board.

Other than that, the PDT discussed the question of whether commercially-caught striped bass ought to be tagged as soon as they’re caught, or need not be tagged until they are first sold to a buyer.  All states, with the exception of Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and North Carolina, currently require fish to be tagged on the water, and a majority of the ASMFC’s Law Enforcement Committee believes that such tagging makes it more difficult to sell fish illegally.  However, Rhode Island, which does not require its commercial fishermen to obtain special striped bass permits, feels that such on-water tagging will be a substantial administrative burden, which will require the state to send out an impractically high number of bass tags to all of its commercial fishermen. 

It is an issue that the PDT could not, and should not, resolve on its own.

The final question was whether the ASMFC should adopt a standard methodology for measuring striped bass.  A majority of states require that bass be measured lying flat, with the fisherman pinching the tail to obtain the longest possible length measurement.  However, some states, including Massachusetts, have no such requirement, which allows fishermen to fan out a bass’s tail, in order to make the fish as short as possible, and so fit into the slot limit, when the same fish, with its tail pinched, would be deemed oversized.

The practicality of that measure was debated by some PDT members, who questioned whether anglers would always have a convenient, flat place to measure their fish, or whether many would use a tape to measure fish over its curved side, and so obtain a longer measured length.  The issue is particularly relevant to shore-based anglers, who might be fishing from jetty rocks or similar irregular structure, where finding a flat place to lay a fish might prove difficult.

Again, this is a point that the Management Board will have to resolve.

But perhaps the biggest issue that the Management Board will need to resolve is whether to move forward with Addendum III at all.

The Plan Development Team has now largely completed its job.  It will soon have finished drafting the initial version of Addendum III, and then will pass it on to the Management Board for formal discussion at its May meeting.  In May, the Management Board will be confronted with a complex document, that will receive substantial public comment once it’s released, and which will require substantial staff time and effort to complete.  So the threshold question is, when there is already almost a 50 percent chance that the stock will rebuild with no further action, is Addendum III worth all of the time and effort that it will require?

I believe that it is, not because of the rebuilding itself, but because, once rebuilding is or isn’t achieved, managers will have to face the impacts of at least six years of historically poor recruitment.  Beginning in 2026 and 2027, anglers and for-hires alike are going to find few slot-sized striped bass along the coast, and that absence will continue for at least six years; the dearth of legal fish has already made itself felt in the Chesapeake Bay.

Reducing striped bass removals now, rather than two or three years down the road, will slow the attrition of the spawning stock, and make it more likely that the stock will remain abundant enough to avoid the sort of collapse we experienced a generation ago.

If the Management Board decides to move forward with Addendum III, it might approve a draft of that Addendum at its May meeting, and send it out for public comment over the summer.  However, it is more likely to recommend significant  revisions, and send the draft back to the Plan Development Team for additional work.  Should that be the case, the revised draft will be reviewed at the August Management Board meeting, and almost certainly released for public comment in August and September.  Final approval, if it occurs, will most likely occur in October.

Should that happen, the management measures included in Addendum III would become effective on January 1, 2026.

Thus, there is a long way to go before Addendum III impacts the striped bass fishery.  Hopefully, whatever the final version of the Addendum looks like, it will help set the striped bass stock on a path toward long-term health and sustainability.