TIME FOR COMMENTS: ASMFC RELEASES STRIPED BASS ADDENDUM III

 

The Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission has finally released its Draft Addendum III to Amendment 7 to the Interstate Fishery Management Plan for Atlantic Striped Bass for Public Comment.  It’s a long, information dense document, that doesn't present all of the options as clearly as it might have, but it’s nonetheless important that anglers take the time to attend hearings and/or submit written comments, both for the sake of the striped bass and of themselves.

Public hearings on the Draft Addendum will be held all along the striper coast, beginning with a September 8 hearing in New Hampshire and ending with a September 30 hearing in Massachusetts.  For those who would like to speak, but for some reason can’t attend their local hearing, a general public hearing webinar will be held on September 29.  Hearings here in New York will be held on the evening of September 17, at the Department of Environmental Conservation’s Marine Division headquarters in Kings Park, and on the evening of September 22 at the DEC’s Region 3 Headquarters in New Paltz.

As is typically the case when an important addendum or amendment is out for public comment, this post will take a look at the Draft Addendum, and try to lay out the issues, provide some background, and perhaps answer some questions so that people may better understand the document and make more informed comments on its various options.

The critical issue

The Draft Addendum includes a number of different options, addressing a number of different aspects of striped bass management.  For reasons that aren’t completely clear, although the primary purpose of the proposed Addendum III is

“to support striped bass rebuilding by 2029 in consideration of 2024 recreational and commercial mortality while balancing socioeconomic impacts,”

the first three issues presented in the Draft Addendum have little or nothing to do with the rebuilding process.  Thus, in order to place the primary purpose of the Draft Addendum ahead of subordinate issues, I will begin near the end of Draft Addendum, with Section 3.4, Reduction in Fishery Removals to Support Stock Rebuilding, which begins on page 33.

Section 3.4 includes a suite of related issues, and each issue presents multiple options.  But of all the issues presented, none is more important than the first, when commenters are asked choose between Option A. Status Quo, which would leave both the commercial quota and the recreational management measures unchanged from what they are today—meaning that the striped bass spawning stock biomass will probably not be rebuilt to its target level by 2029—and Option B. Even Sector Reductions:  Commercial -12% and Recreational -12%.

Option B is the only acceptable choice, and it is important that anyone commenting on the Draft Addendum makes it completely clear that, regardless of what else the Management Board decides with respect to the other issues, it must adopt management measures that will have no less than a 50 percent probability of rebuilding the striped bass stock (unfortunately, measures that would have a 60 percent probability of rebuilding were removed at the August Management Board meeting), and must also require everyone, including the commercial sector, the recreational sector, and the for-hire fleet, to equally share the burden of rebuilding the striped bass stock, with none getting special treatment that shifts the burden onto other fishermen’s shoulders.

That last point is important, because even though an option that would have placed the entire burden of rebuilding on the recreational sector, requiring it to reduce fishing mortality by 14 percent while the commercial quota went unchanged, was deleted from the Draft Addendum in August, there is still the possibility that someone will propose reducing the commercial quota by less than 12 percent in the final Addendum III, thus forcing the recreational sector to take on a disproportionate share of the rebuilding, while also dropping the probability of rebuilding below 50 percent.

We saw the same sort of thing happen when Addendum II to Amendment 7 to the Interstate Fishery Management Plan for Atlantic Striped Bass was adopted in January 2024.  We don’t need to see it happen again.

Are some anglers more equal than others?                              

The need for everyone to contribute to rebuilding probably faces its biggest challenge in the next set of options, where two options would require shore-based and private-boat anglers to cut back their fishing mortality by 13 percent, rather than 12, so that the small handful of anglers who fish from for-hire vessels will be able to kill even more striped bass than they do today.

Those options appear in the Draft Addendum as O2 Split For-Hire Exemption in the Option B. Ocean Recreational Fishery -12% table, and CB2 Split For-Hire Exemption in the Option B. Chesapeake Bay Recreational Fishery -12% table.

In the ocean fishery, Option O2 would retain the current 28- to 31-inch slot limit for shore-based and private-boat anglers, while gifting the favored group of anglers, who fish from for-hire vessels, with a new, more relaxed 28- to 33-inch slot. 

Because that would let for-hire anglers kill more striped bass, compared to their landings today, at the same time that the rest of the recreational fishermen, as well as the commercial sector, will be forced to cut back their harvest by at least 12 percent, the closed season for all recreational fishermen would have to be extended to make up for the extra fish granted to the for-hires. 

Forcing the shore-based and private-boat anglers to give up fishing, or at least harvesting, days—depending on whether no-target or no-harvest closures are adopted (we’ll get to those next)—just so the small handful of anglers fishing from for-hire vessels can kill more striped bass hardly seems equitable.  Yet a disconcertingly large number of Management Board members—including some who love to give lip service to “fairness” and “equity”—will undoubtedly support such an action.

Which is one reason why anglers need to come out to oppose it.

Other reasons are 1) that the number of for-hire striped bass trips is extremely small, and thus generate an extremely small proportion of the social and economic benefits gleaned from the fishery, and 2) that for-hire anglers already harvest a disproportionate share of the recreational striped bass landings.

If we look at the Marine Recreational Information Program data for 2024, we find that anglers made an estimated 15,576,673 trips primarily targeting striped bass.  Those trips can further be broken down into 8,037,342 (51.60%) trips made by shore-based anglers, 7,318,472 (46.98%) trips made by private-boat anglers, and just 220,859 (1.42%) trips made by anglers fishing from for-hire vessels.

Shutting down more than 98.5 percent of the fishery for longer than necessary, just to provide the other 1.5 percent a larger harvest, makes no sense at all, whether looking from a social, economic, or fairness perspective.

Nor does it make sense when viewed from the perspective of landings.  In 2024, recreational fishermen harvested an estimated 1,728,743 striped bass, with shore-based anglers landing 201,038 (11.63%), private-boat anglers landing 1,356,008 (78.44%), and anglers on for-hire vessels landing 171,697 (9.93%).  

Not surprisingly, the shore-based component, which faces real handicaps when it comes to finding and catching bass, caught a relatively low proportion of fish—just 11.63 percent of the total--even though it accounted for more than half of all striped bass trips.  Still, it is somewhat startling that the anglers on for-hire vessels harvested nearly as many bass as the surfcasters did, even though the shore-based anglers made more than 35 times as many trips.

To present the data in another way, shore-based anglers averaged just 0.025 striped bass landed for every trip made.  Private-boat anglers, with their greater mobility, had a significantly higher harvest rate, at 0.185 bass per trip.  But anglers fishing from for-hire vessels dwarfed even that, landing an average of 0.777 striped bass per trip, a retention rate 4.2 times greater than that of private boat anglers, and 31.08 times greater than that of shore-based anglers.

Yet the for-hire fleet wants even more.

Clearly, given its relatively low contribution to the social and economic value of the recreational striped bass fishery, coupled with its already disproportionately high share of recreational striped bass landings, granting additional privileges to the for-hire fleet during a time of general sacrifice for everyone else would not be appropriate.

Commenters should explicitly support Sub-option O1 within Option B, which would retain the same size limits for everyone.

In the Chesapeake Bay, things are a little more complicated.  While, in the ocean fishery, there was no realistic size limit could achieve the needed 12 percent reduction, in the Bay, anglers have a choice of either changing the size limit, and leaving the season intact—Sub-option C1—or changing the season and leaving the current size limit in place—Sub-option C3. 

Either Sub-option C1 or Sub-option C3 provides a viable alternative, and anglers should feel free to choose among the two.  However, while doing so, anyone commenting on the Draft Amendment should also clearly and explicitly oppose Sub-option C2, which would, like Sub-option O2, elevate anglers fishing from for-hire vessels above what would then be the second-class recreational fishermen who fish from shore or from private vessels,  holding shore-based and private-boat fishermen to a new, narrow 19- to 22-inch slot, while allowing anglers fishing from for-hire boats to enjoy a much more liberal 19- to 25-inch slot size limit.

Seasons, and should catch and release be allowed when the season is closed?

One thing that everyone needs to understand about Addendum III is that, if it is adopted in any meaningful way, it is going to require a closed season in the recreational ocean fishery for striped bass.  In their long deliberations leading up to the initial draft of the addendum, the Plan Development Team and Striped Bass Technical Committee looked at many possible size limits, including both slot limits and traditional minimum sizes, that might achieve the minimum 12 percent reduction.  None met that goal. 

It quickly became clear that some sort of season was needed.

Just what that season should look like was the next big debate, which could be broken down into three distinct aspects: 1) Should states all adopt the same closures, 2) When should the closures occur, and 3) should catch-and-release striped bass fishing be permitted during the closed season?

All of those issues inspired intense debate.

In a perfect world, every state along the striper coast would have the same set of management measures.  But while that is relatively easy to do in the case of size and bag limits, it is virtually impossible to accomplish, in any meaningful way, with respect to seasons, because the recreational ocean striped bass fishery occurs at different times along different parts of the coast.  A July ocean  closure would be effectively meaningless of the Virginia coast, while a January closure would mean nothing in Maine.  

The trick was to adopt seasons that would effectively reduce recreational fishing mortality by at least 12 percent, while maintaining the benefits of consistent management across state borders, without placing an undue burden on any particular states while allowing others to remain unaffected.

So, to address the first issue, the Management Board decided to split the coast into two separate regions, each with its own closures, although it couldn’t decide where the dividing line ought to be.  The Draft Addendum thus offers two options, the consequences of which are set forth in tables 10 and 11.  One would set the border between Massachusetts and Rhode Island as the dividing line, which makes some sort of sense, because the timing of the Rhode Island fishery is very different from the timing of the fishery up in New Hampshire and Maine.  The other would divide the regions at the Rhode Island/Connecticut border, which also makes sense, since the beginning and end of the Rhode Island fishery bears little resemblance to that in the New York Bight and points south.

Anyone who has strong feelings on the issue ought to make them known to the Management Board, but the debate is likely to be esoteric enough that public comment won’t have too much impact on the outcome.

Much the same can probably be said about the second aspect of the debate: when the closed season—or seasons—should occur.  They need to happen at times when they can achieve the needed reductions, but also at times when they won'[t cause particular pain to one or two states’ anglers, while allowing anglers in other states to experience only a trivial burden. 

Once again, this is an issue that is probably going to be decided by the internal politics of the Management Board, where we will undoubtedly see substantial maneuvering by at least a few managers who will seek to adopt closures that will have a minimum impact on their own states, while shifting the conservation impact to others.  

Public comment will probably have little impact on a debate that will most likely be decided by a relatively slender majority, which will probably pick the option that, in their eyes, will cause their anglers and their angler-related businesses the least amount of pain—and, unfortunately, very possibly the option that allows for the greatest degree of gamesmanship with respect to when a closure occurs (e.g., the last 25 days of December, off the New Jersey shore), even if that gamesmanship impairs the effectiveness of the closed season.

Folks may comment on the issue if they feel compelled to do so, but they will probably have a de minimis impact on the outcome.

But the third and final aspect of the seasons debate is one that demands both anglers’ attention and their response, because it could determine whether Addendum III succeeds or fails.

It is the issue of whether catch-and-release should be allowed during any closed season.

The Management Board, and ultimately the Draft Addendum, has defined the two options in terms of “no-harvest” versus “no-target” closures.

A no-harvest closure is just what its name suggests:  Anglers could engage in a catch-and-release striped bass fishery during the closure, but would have to immediately release any bass caught.  During a no-target closure, even catch-and-release fishing would be outlawed.

A no-target closure might, at first glance, seem attractive to some.  After all, the striped bass stock assessment assumes that nine percent of all released bass die, so a no-target closure would seem to provide a more effective way of reducing fishing mortality, which would lead to a shorter closed season.

And that might be the case, except for a very important real-world truth:  No-target closures just aren’t enforceable.

That’s not just speculation.  It’s the expressed view of the ASMFC’s Law Enforcement Committee, which listed no-target closures dead last on a list of 27 potential enforcement measures, from the point of view of enforceability.  

At the August 6 Management Board meeting, a member of that Committee, Lt. Jeff Mercer of the Rhode Island Department of Environmental Management’s Division of Law Enforcement, explicitly stated that

“We believe that no-targeting closures would be very difficult to enforce,”

and noted that, although targeting striped bass in federal waters has been illegal since the mid-1980s, he was not aware of a single instance in which a violation of the no-target regulation was successfully prosecuted unless the violator also had a striped bass in their possession.

When multiple species of fish can be caught in the same place using the same techniques, it’s practically impossible to convince a judge, beyond reasonable doubt, that someone was illegally fishing for bass. 

Consider these two scenarios, which could take place on any beach between New Jersey and Maine at any time during the striper season:

SCENARIO ONE:  The striped bass season is closed, with a prohibition on targeting in effect.  A surfcaster stands by the shore, tossing a lure—maybe a tin squid, maybe a popper, maybe something else—into the white water foaming around an offshore bar.  As he works his lure through the water, he repeatedly hooks, beaches, and releases bluefish.  A law enforcement officer, seeing the action from afar, stops by and asks, “Any luck?”  The angler responds, “No, it’s been pretty bad.  I’m trying to catch a striped bass, but all I can hook are some bluefish.”  Having heard an explicit admission that the angler is breaking the no-targeting law, the officer hands the angler a summons.

SCENARIO TWO:  The striped bass season is closed, with a prohibition on targeting in effect.  A surfcaster stands by the shore, tossing a lure—maybe a tin squid, maybe a popper, maybe something else—into the white water foaming around an offshore bar.  As he works his lure through the water, he repeatedly hooks, beaches, and releases striped bass.  A law enforcement officer, seeing the action from afar, stops by and asks, “Any luck?”  The angler responds, “No, it’s been pretty bad.  I’m trying to catch a bluefish, but all I can hook are striped bass.”  The officer, understanding that no provable violation has been committed, says “Have a good day,” and walks on.

Ridiculous?

Of course.

But so is adopting no-target closures that will inevitably lead to such results—and worse, provide the illusion of reducing fishing mortality, when the no-target aspect is doing nothing of the sort.  Mistaking such illusion for reality could result in fishing mortality being reduced less than required to rebuild the stock, causing Addendum III to fail.

In addition, adopting a clearly ineffective, unpopular, and unenforceable no-target closure could easily erode anglers’ support for needed management measures, along with their respect for the regulatory process.  

At the August 6 Management Board meeting, Emerson Hasbrouck, New York’s Governor’s Appointee, admitted that no-target closures were unenforceable, then supported their adoption, claiming that 80 percent of anglers would obey the law anyway.  It was an impossibly naïve comment from someone trusted to manage striped bass, for even if many anglers started out honoring no-target closures, after spending some time watching less ethical fishermen illegally catching and releasing striped bass with impunity, many of the initially law-abiding anglers who initially refrained from fishing would begin asking themselves why they were seemingly being punished for doing the right thing, while others enjoyed the fishery, ignoring the no-target rule without any adverse consequences.

They would begin to consider their abstinence foolish.

Yet despite the obvious flaws of a no-target approach, it still has many supporters.  On August 6, Joseph Cimino, a New Jersey fisheries manager, said that he was unhappy that the question of enforceability entered the debate, as it shouldn’t determine whether no-target closures are adopted.  

Worse, Michael Luisi, a Maryland fisheries manager, explicitly suggested that no-target closures might not be needed—if otherwise conservation-minded anglers would only be willing to lower the spawning stock biomass target and settle for a smaller striped bass population, so making “rebuilding” easier to achieve while also allowing larger harvests.

The advocates of no-target closures are going to make them a part of the final version of Addendum III.  Thus, anglers should, in their comments, be adamantly opposed to no-target closures in the ocean fishery, making it clear that they are unenforceable, that their benefits are illusory, and that they would erode respect for the management and regulatory processes.

In the Chesapeake Bay fishery, things aren’t quite so clear.  While no-target closures remain unenforceable, high summer water temperatures, severely reduced dissolved oxygen, and the documented tendency of Bay striped bass to die after release when air temperatures get too high might, arguably, justify managers using such closures as a means to reduce recreational effort.  

It is an issue that Chesapeake Bay striped bass anglers ought to comment on based on their own experiences in the fishery.

The other issues

The other three issues included in the Draft Addendum are only of local application, and don’t directly impact most striped bass anglers.  Still, they do have at least a theoretical effect on the bass population as a whole, and so are deserving of some discussion and comment.

Section 3.1.  Method to Measure Total Length of a Striped Bass, if adopted, would establish the rule that, in every state,

“Total length means the greatest straight line length in inches as measured on a fish (laid flat on its side on top of the measuring device) with its mouth closed from the anterior most tip of the jaw or snout to the farthest extremity of the tail with the upper and lower fork of the tail squeezed together.”

Many states already have a similar rule in place, but others don’t, and a study conducted by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, referenced in the Draft Addendum, revealed that

“while there is a minor difference between a natural and a pinched tail measurement (estimated 0.25”), there is a more substantial difference between a natural and forcibly fanned tail measurement which also depends on fish size (e.g., a 32.8” fish measures 31” when the tail is forcibly fanned, a difference of 1.38”…).  Consequently, loosely defined measures of [total length] measurement or where anglers have discretion whether to forcefully fan the tail to make the fish shorter can effectively allow harvest of striped bass that are over the maximum size limit…”

The Draft Addendum also noted that

“Further review of the states’ regulatory definitions of total length for striped bass demonstrated several other inconsistencies that may be of interest to address.  First, not all states establish that the length measurement be taken in a straight line (as opposed to over the curve of the fish’ [sic] body).  Second, some states specify that the fish needs to be laid on its side and/or be laid as flat as possible.  Third, not all states specify that the mouth of the fish must be closed.”

All of those inconsistencies can allow anglers to expand the slot limit, to allow them to land bass either under or over the 28- to 31-inch slot.  Thus, in the interests of uniformity across states and to avoid the harvest of out-of-slot bass, commenters should support Option B.  Mandatory Elements for Total Length Definition.

The next section is Section 3.2. Commercial Tagging:  Point of Tagging, which would require bass to be tagged either immediately after capture or before offloading the fish/removing the vessel from the water.

The logic behind the proposal is that, if tags don’t have to be applied to commercially-caught fish before the point of first sale—that is, when the fish are sold to a fish house or other licensed buyer—there is an opportunity for the fisherman to divert a portion of the catch to the black market, and so sell fish in excess of the state quota.  Only three states, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and North Carolina, currently allow fishermen to forego tagging until the bass are sold.

The matter was included in the Draft Addendum largely at the behest of Delaware fisheries administrator John Clark, who was trying to convince the Management Board that so many fish were being diverted prior to tagging that banning point-of-sale tagging might serve as an alternative to commercial quota cuts.  While the Management Board didn’t buy his argument, a majority of the Law Enforcement Committee thought that tagging at some point prior to offloading was a good idea, although a minority disagreed.

An interesting aspect to the proposal is that, if it passes, it might well drive major changes to Massachusetts’ commercial striped bass fishery.  Currently, that fishery is open-access, meaning that anyone who can plunk down a modest fee can become a Massachusetts commercial striped bass fisherman, with no limit on how many commercial bass licenses might be issued.  As a result, a lot of the permits are sold to so-called “recremercials,” who want to recover some of their gas, fishing tackle, and beer money by selling striped bass, and perhaps by others looking for a way to sidestep the 1-fish bag limit and/or the 28- to 31-inch slot.  Massachusetts can currently accommodate the resulting large number of supposedly “commercial” bass fishermen, because they only need to issue licenses to a relatively small universe of fish buyers, and not to the many fishermen themselves.  If the tag-before-landing provision was put into place, Massachusetts would almost certainly be unable to provide tags to all of the people who currently hold commercial permits, and would have to limit the number of such permits in some way—perhaps by selling them only to those with reported commercial landings, or to those who make a majority—or at least a specified percentage—of their earnings from commercial fishing, and can prove it with their tax returns.

If for no other reason than to clean up Massachusetts’ commercial fishery, and to limit bass sales to people who really do make a living selling fish, it makes sense to support either Option B.  Commercial Tagging At the Point of Harvest, or Option C. Commercial Tagging By the First Point of Landing.  

If the primary concern is limiting fishermen’s ability to divert fish into the black market, Option B, which would place some restrictions on their ability to make on-water transfers, would be the better choice.

Finally, the Draft Addendum includes Section 3.3.  Maryland Chesapeake Bay Recreational Season Baseline.

The best way to describe Section 3.3 is to say that, over the past decade, Maryland gone so far out of its way to benefit its commercial and for-hire fleets, at the expense of its shore-based and private-boat anglers, that it has had to make all sorts of complicated changes to its recreational season structure to get the job done.  Now, with the likely adoption of Addendum III, which will require still more changes, Maryland finds itself snarled in a web of its own creation, and is trying to untangle things and create a more workable structure.

In the course of doing that, it has eliminated a spring no-target closure and replaced it with a no-harvest closure in April and an open season in the first half of May, while moving the current summer no-target closure from the last two weeks in July to the entire month of August, when the water is warmest and will have its most adverse impact on the survival of released bass. 

While those generally seem like beneficial changes, there is one concern:  Maryland claims that the changes won’t increase fishing effort, and will actually lead to a trivial decrease in recreational fishing mortality, even though it seems very likely that converting a 45-day no-target closure into 30 days of catch-and-release season and 15 days of harvest is going to increase both effort and fishing mortality, and that extending the summer closure from two weeks to 31 days, and pushing back its start from July 16 to August 1, isn’t likely to make up the difference.

The Draft Addendum notes that the scientists on the Atlantic Striped Bass Technical Committee

“could not develop a quantitative assumption about how effort would change when the season is opened from no-targeting to catch-and-release that was any more defensible than the assumption of constant effort, and so it accepted the use of that assumption in this case.”

Thus, even though the Technical Committee recognized the substantial uncertainty inherent in the Maryland proposal, they were unable to come up with any better numbers that could be used to challenge the Maryland assumptions.

To address those concerns, the Plan Development Team originally proposed two alternatives that included “uncertainty buffers” of 10 and 25 percent.  However, the 25 percent option was removed from the Draft Addendum at the August 6 meeting, after at least one recreational representative from Maryland whined that it constituted a “punitive” measure.

Yet, even without the 25 percent uncertainty buffer, the Maryland proposal seems to offer some real benefits, and shouldn’t be rejected out of hand.  The best way to address the issue during the comment period is probably to PROVISIONALLY support Option C. New Chesapeake Bay Recreational Season Baseline Plus 10% Uncertainty Buffer, and then ask that the Management Board consider increasing the buffer to some higher percentage such as 15 or 20 percent.

No, such 15 or 20 percent uncertainty buffers are not now, and never were, in any draft of Addendum III, but that doesn’t mean that they can’t be considered.  After all, at the August 6 Management Board meeting, the Board eliminated the option that would have required recreational fishermen to reduce fishing mortality by 14 percent while the commercial quotas remained unchanged, leaving only the option requiring both recreational and commercial fishermen to face a 12 percent reduction.  Yet right after that was done, Board members acknowledged the possibility of reducing recreational landings by the full 12 percent, while reducing the commercial quota by some lesser amount—even though such action was not included a one of the options in the Draft Addendum.

Thus, if the Management Board can ultimately settle on an management measure that would lead to more dead striped bass and reduce the likelihood that the stock will rebuild by the end of 2029, even though it did not appear in the Draft Addendum, it only follows that the Board can also adopt a 15 or 20 percent buffer for Maryland, even though that was not a published option, in order to keep a few more fish alive and make rebuilding more likely.

The next step

The next step is, quite simply, for people to get out to the hearings, and send in written comments.

For the sake of the striped bass, the Management Board needs to hear an outpouring of support for the 12 percent reduction, and a similar outpouring of opposition toward any suggestion that commercial fishermen, or anyone else, should be allowed to take a lesser landings cut.

For the sake of themselves, anglers must turn out and provide an outpouring of opposition to proposals that would allow anglers patronizing the for-hire fleet to increase their landings, at a time when everyone else--both anglers and commercial fishermen--are going to have to accept a significant landings cut, and make the shore-based and private-boat anglers pay for that increase in the form of a longer closed season.

And, for the sake of themselves, anglers must oppose the senseless support of no-target closures in the ocean fishery, which would deny them the opportunity to catch and release striped bass and deny coastal towns and angling related businesses the economic benefits that the catch-and-release fishery provides, while eking the greatest level of benefits out of a declining fishery. 

It’s not clear what the final version of Addendum III is going to look like.

It will probably contain a substantial harvest reduction, and some or all of the lesser proposals will most likely be approved.  But the fight against special privileges for the for-hire sector, at the expense of everyone else, and the battle against pointless no-target closures, are going to be intense, with the outcome probably decided by just one or two votes.

So while it’s impossible to predict what the final version of Addendum III is going to look like, it’s very easy to predict that it’s going to look a lot worse if anglers fail to show up—in big numbers—to be heard.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

TOO MANY STRIPED BASS

 

Up in Canada, some say, they have a problem.

There are just too many striped bass.  As a result, the Atlantic salmon population is crashing.

At least that’s what Atlantic salmon anglers claim.

The Canadian Maritimes host separate, geneticallyidentifiable striped bass stocks.  The largest spawns in the Miramichi estuary, which is located in the Province of New Brunswick.  The Miramachi has, historically, also hosted a strong run of Atlantic salmon, which has declined substantially in recent years.  Salmon anglers blame a resurgent striped bass population for the salmon’s ills.

The salmon fishermen argue that the bass are eating most of the smolts—the young, recently-hatched salmon that have grown large enough to leave the rivers and head out to sea, where they will spend most of their lives.  They claim that a 20-year study, which found that between 55 and 75 percent of the smolts made it out of the rivers and into the open Atlantic in the early 2000s, but less than five percent did so in 2022 and 2023, demonstrates that the bass are killing off the Atlantic salmon population.

For, in the same Canadian waters, striped bass have staged what, to striped bass fishermen, at least, has been a magnificent recovery. 

In the late 1990s, the Canadian Department of Fisheries and Oceans believed that the entire female striped bass spawning stock biomass was composed of fewer than 5,000 individuals, and closed the commercial and recreational fisheries as a result.  Perhaps in response to that action, female spawning stock biomass quickly increased, and was estimated at about 900,000 fish in 2019. 

The increasing striped bass population led the Department to reopen the recreational fishery in 2013, and to allow some commercial fishing, first by indigenous Tribes, and later by others.  Last year, it increased the Tribal quota from 50,000 to 175,000 bass and also increased the recreational bag limit from three fish to four (there is also a slot size limit of 50 to 65 centimeters, or roughly, 19.7 to 25.6 inches).  Earlier this year, the Department ordered the 43 commercial gaspereau (the regional name for the alewife, Alosa pseudoharengus) fishermen in the region to retain the first 500 striped bass measuring between 50 and 65 centimeters that they incidentally capture this season.

A 2024 stock assessment update suggests that the reopened fisheries may have had a significant impact on the female spawning stock, which had declined to an estimated 334,900 individuals.

That reduction was not enough to satisfy the Atlantic Salmon Federation, an organization of recreational fishermen that argues for salmon conservation, and insists that Canada reduce the female striped bass spawning stock to just 100,000 fish.

But, despite the one study that the salmon advocates quote, the science doesn’t necessarily support the claims of out-of-control striped bass predation on salmon smolts. 

A survey of striped bass stomach contents, conducted in 2022 by the Department of Fisheries and Oceans, found that 68 percent of the bass sampled had nothing in their stomachs at all, suggesting that they didn’t feed heavily when they congregated in the Miramichi estuary to spawn.  Of the bass that did have something in their stomachs, alewives—gaspereau—and some smelt dominated.  Although some salmon smolt were present, they made up a very small proportion of all stomach contents.

A scientific paper, titled "Multi-species Considerations for Defining Fisheries Reference Points for Striped Bass from the Southern Gulf of St. Lawrence,” written by Department of Fisheries and Oceans biologist Gerald Chaput, advised that

“It is not clear from the available studies that reducing striped bass spawner abundance to a level of the mid-2000s, i.e. 100,000 spawners or less (as requested by [the Atlantic Salmon Federation]), would improve the acoustic tagged smolt survival estimates or the population level relative survival rates derived from the cohort model, nor landings of gasereau [sic] and rainbow smelt in the commercial fisheries.”

But the Atlantic salmon anglers were not to be deterred.  When the Department of Fisheries and Oceans declined to cull the bass population back to just 100,000 spawning-age females, they formed an organization, Save Miramichi Salmon Inc., which sued the Department, seeking to compel it to reduce the striped bass population.

A spokesman for the organization alleged that

“DFO mismanagement and bad science over several years are destroying a National and Provincial treasure—the Miramichi Atlantic Salmon—and immediate remedial action is required now.”

The complaint—what in Canadian jurisprudence is known as a “Statement of Claim,”—makes for interesting reading.

For example, when describing the Atlantic salmon, it alleges that

“Atlantic salmon (salmo [sic] salar), referred to as the ‘King of Fish’, are a species of salmon native to waters throughout the North Atlantic Ocean.  Atlantic salmon is endemic to the Miramichi River system.

“Atlantic salmon have frequented the Miramichi River since the end of the last ice age and are of significant cultural and economic importance to Canadians, including, but not limited to, Indigenous Canadians and non-indigenous communities on the Miramichi since European settlement…  [numbering omitted]”

But when describing the striped bass, the allegations are far less fulsome, stating only that

“Atlantic striped bass (Morone saxatilis) are a species of rockfish which live throughout the Atlantic coast of North America, including the Gulf of St. Lawrence.

“Striped bass are commercially and recreationally significant fish, and, historically, were subject to significant commercial harvest.  [numbering omitted]”

No mention of bass being endemic to the Miramichi estuary, and no mention of their long presence and well-established role in the estuary’s ecosystem.  And no mention that Atlantic salmon, too, were “historically…subject to significant commercial harvest.”

The Claim’s language strives to make it clear to the court that while Atlantic salmon are the “King of Fish,” striped bass are nothing but an upstart commoner, and more, a commoner that is committing acts of treason against the crown.

The Claim makes allegations like

“Because of geographical separation and historic numbers, and standing net and sport fisheries, striped bass did not, historically, have a significant impact on the number of Atlantic salmon smolts migrating to the ocean, feeding only on a limited number of smolts during the annual migration, primarily from the Northwest and Little Southwest Miramichi systems.

“In the 1980s, populations of striped bass in the Miramichi River were considered stable and healthy despite being significantly lower than they are today.  [numbering omitted]”

The problem is that the phrase "historic numbers" is vague enough to mean whatever the plaintiff might want it to mean.  It’s a particularly amorphous concept when it comes to natural resources such as salmon and bass, when “historic” conditions, due to intentional and unintentional human manipulation of the environment, may be very different from what the default—the pre-human or, in a North American context, the pre-European—conditions of the resources might have been.

In that regard, it’s not the “historic,” but instead the prehistoric, conditions that should be used as a benchmark.

Applying that benchmark to the Miramichi’s salmon and striped bass, it’s impossible to note that both lived in apparent harmony for many centuries—for millennia—without bass driving down the Atlantic salmon population.  

For thousands of years before there were significant net fisheries—other than those of the Tribes, once they arrived—and before there were any recreational fisheries at all, Atlantic salmon and striped bass both utilized the Miramichi estuary and, given by the numbers of fish the first explorers found, somehow managed to thrive.

Maybe it was because the bass and the salmon were geographically separated, as the plaintiffs contend, although that seems unlikely, as healthy populations tend to expand into all suitable space.  

The fact is that we have no idea what the spatial distribution of either species was when Jacques Cartier first explored what is now the Gulf of St. Lawrence in 1534.  Any allegation that the species were spatially separated at that time is the merest speculation, without supporting facts; it is far more likely that any separation that occurred happened later on, after human influence drove down the region’s salmon and striped bass populations.

In any event, the 1980s hardly define either “historical” times or a healthy striped bass population, and to try to define ecological relationships on the basis of what has occurred in the past 50 years, or even the last century, is a fool’s errand. 

But where things really get interesting is in the Claim section, “Atlantic Salmon—Decline and Cause”, which alleges

“In or around 2010, Atlantic salmon returns to the Miramichi River began to decline rapidly.  Between 2010 and 2024, the river’s salmon population declined by approximately 96%.

“The decline in Atlantic salmon in the Miramichi River corresponds to the rapid growth of striped bass, a known predator of juvenile salmon, in the same areas.

“In 2019, the Standing Committee on Fisheries and Oceans [which is composed of politicians serving in Canada’s Parliament, and not of fisheries scientists] issued a report identifying the rapid increase in the Gulf of St. Lawrence striped bass population as placing strain on struggling Atlantic salmon populations.  The Parliamentary committee recommended [the Department of Fisheries and Oceans] implement management measures that prioritize the long-term balance of fish species in the Miramichi River, including establishing upper and lower limit reference point thresholds which should be adjusted according to justifiable scientific evidence.  [numbering omitted]”

Apparently, the recreational fishing interests bringing the lawsuit are trying to blame the striped bass for the Atlantic salmon’s woes.

But the salmon’s problems, across the entire North Atlantic basin, run deeper than that.

One paper, published in 2022 in Reviews in Fisheries Science & Aquaculture, was titled "The Decline and Impending Collapse of the Atlantic Salmon (Salmo salar)  Population in the North Atlantic Ocean:  A Review of Possible Causes”.  It blames illegal open-ocean fishing for the widepread salmon declines, saying

“Adult returns to many Atlantic salmon wild and hatchery stocks of the North Atlantic have declined or collapsed since 1985.  Enhancement, commercial fishery closures, and angling restrictions have failed to halt the decline…The decline and collapse of stocks has common characteristics:  1) cyclic annual adult returns cease, 2) annual adult returns flatline, 3) adult mean size declines, and 4) stock collapses occurred earliest among watersheds distant from the North Atlantic Sub-polar Gyre (NASpG).  Cyclic annual adult returns were common to all stocks in the past that were not impacted by anthropogenic changes to their natal streams.  A flatline of adult abundance and reduction in adult mean size are common characteristics of many overexploited fish stocks and suggest illegal, unreported, and unregulated (IUU) fisheries exploitation at sea.  Distance from the NASpG causing higher mortality of migrating post-smolts would increase the potential for collapse of these stocks from IUU exploitation…Distribution in time and space of former, legal high-sea fisheries indicated fishers were well-acquainted with the ocean migratory pattern of salmon and combined with a lack of surveillance since 1985 outside Exclusive Economic Zones or in remote northern regions may mean high at-sea mortality occurs because of IUU fisheries.  The problem of IUU ocean fisheries is acute, has collapsed numerous stocks of desired species worldwide, and is probably linked to the decline and impending collapse of the North Atlantic salmon population.”

Whether or not that conclusion is correct, the paper reminds us that the decline in salmon populations isn’t limited to the Miramichi River, and is occurring even in places where there are no striped bass.  A United Kingdom-based conservation group, the Missing Salmon Alliance, notes that

“Wild Atlantic salmon have declined by around 70% across the North Atlantic over the last few decades.  In Great Britain the species was listed as endangered by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) in December 2023, with British salmon having suffered an additional 30-50% decline since 2006 and a projected 50-80% decline between 2010 and 2025.”

The Alliance suggests that changes in the marine environment, which have caused a decline in the zooplankton, have also created food chain issues for juvenile salmon.

The North Atlantic Salmon Fund, an conservation group originally founded in Iceland, to address the steep decline in that nation’s Atlantic salmon population, has now extended its reach to include the entire North Atlantic ocean.  It notes that

“Like elsewhere in the world, Canadian stocks have been in rapid decline for the past 40 years…Human interference, industrial aquaculture included, is the considered the [sic] largest threat to Canadian stocks…

”…While the historic decline of salmon stocks is largely due to low survival rates at sea, there are always larger declines where fish farming is close to wild salmon…”

And climate change also plays a role.  Canada’s Department of Fisheries and Oceans notes that

“Rising water temperatures, lower water levels, and more frequent extreme weather events are all contributing to the decline of salmon populations.”

Specific to the Miramichi, an article authored by a graduate student at the University of New Brunswick—Saint John noted that

“With warmer summers, the water temperatures are beginning to stray away from the Salmon’s optimal temperature (4-12^o C), approaching the upper threshold temperatures in which they can survive (28^o C being lethal, and anything over 20^o C impeding survival).  Over the summer of 2017, the Miramichi River contained periods where water temperature readings exceeded 30^o C!”

The Department of Fisheries and Oceans went on to advise that

“in the Miramichi River, the annual abundance of the past decade have frequently been at record lows, particularly for the earlier maturing one-sea-winter salmon.  Salmon populations in the southern regions are impacted by rapidly changing marine, estuarine and freshwater environments, and by anthropogenic stressors, including land-use and the spread of invasive species.”

So it’s clear that there are many factors causing the decline of the Miramichi’s salmon.  Striped bass do not bear the sole responsibility.

Still, it would be wrong to completely discount striped bass predation.  When any fish is at a very low level of abundance, any removals, regardless of cause, will have an adverse effect on the stock.  As the Department of Fisheries and Oceans observed,

“Migrating smolts face predation from species such as striped bass and cormorants, while adult salmon may be preyed on by seals or other larger predators.  Though natural, predation can exacerbate challenges associated to human activities, climate or ecosystem shifts for Atlantic salmon throughout its range.”

In other words, striped bass predation didn’t cause the Atlantic salmon runs to collapse, but they may be making it more difficult for such runs to be restored.

A similar view was expressed in the 2024 paper, “A Review of Factors Potentially Contributing to the Long-Term Decline of Atlantic Salmon in the Conne River, Newfoundland, Canada”, which appeared in Reviews in Fisheries Science & Aquaculture, where the authors observed that

“Impacts on Atlantic salmon due to predation are more likely to be a result of cumulative effects by a variety of species along with other anthropogenic factors rather than any one individual component.  [One team of researchers] state that predation is a natural phenomenon and one that does not necessarily imply that it is a particular driver of the current population declines of salmon.  [Another team of researchers] have similarly noted that predation impacts on Atlantic salmon are not likely to be the primary cause for population declines in the North Atlantic but as others have noted predation may act to keep depressed populations from recovering.  [citations omitted, emphasis added]”

Another, comprehensive study of the Atlantic salmon’s decline, “The quest for successful Atlantic salmon restoration:  perspectives, priorities, and maxims”, which appeared in the ICES Journal of Marine Science in 2021, even suggested that efforts to control predation could be bad for the salmon, noting that

“Control or removal of predators may have similar counterproductive effects.  Predators often select slow, weak, or sick prey such that predation is compensatory and, in some cases, may allow disease to spread, in instances where predation of diseased animals is more frequent.”

So, taking all of the above into account, it’s clear that the striped bass is not responsible for all of the ills besetting the Miramichi’s Atlantic salmon runs.  But the bigger point of this post is to examine, in detail, why the striped bass ought not to be blamed for the ills besetting any other marine resource, even though the bass might eat a few fish every once and again.

Yet that’s a theme that we hear again and again.

For many years, New York’s striped bass anglers were dismayed to hear one of the state’s representatives on the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission’s Atlantic Striped Bass Management Board repeatedly suggest that striped bass were too abundant, and were driving down the populations of other managed species, saying things like

“is this an attempt by the state to maybe address the concern that the stock of striped bass in Chesapeake Bay is growing much greater than anticipated and is having an additional negative effect on menhaden?..

“…I was concerned about your concern that there are a greater number of larger and older fish within the body—or residing here year after year.  The question is has that increased significantly, to have a detrimental effect on the menhaden that are available, as we heard in the report yesterday that they appear to be under duress.”

And

“I’ve often asked the question as how many more striped bass do we have to have in the ocean and do the surplus, quote-quote, above the threshold—and there are some folks that are not going to like what I say, but the reality is what kind of damage are these fish doing to the sub-species [sic] below them, including the forage fish that other species are feeding on?..

“The bottom line is that they’re opportunists, whatever is there they’re going to eat, so to speak…

“The question that still remains open and unanswered is what are the extra fish above and beyond the threshold doing to the other sub-species?  I’m not trying to start a fight with anybody.  I’m just saying it is a question.  Look at what happened to winter flounder.  We blame weather conditions and water conditions, lack of eelgrass, lack of phytoplankton, zooplankton, et cetera, on that end, and yet what is eating them?”

His answer, of course, to purported declines in the menhaden and winter flounder populations was the same one that the Atlantic salmon anglers have to declines in their favorite fish:  There are too many striped bass.  They’re eating them all.

And far too many other folks also feel that way.

At the October 2014 meeting of ASMFC’s Atlantic Striped Bass Management Board, as the Board debated adopting Addendum IV to Amendment 6 to the Atlantic Striped Bass Interstate Fishery Management Plan, the Board’s first, hesitant effort to address what was a clearly declining striped bass stock, Kelly Place, then the Chair of the Striped Bass Advisory Panel, argued that

“there could be a trophic collapse if the striped bass abundance increases…

“…if you have record young of the year, you’re going to have record competition for the same food resources…we’ve got an amazing abundance in the Chesapeake Bay of channel bass, puppy drum, red fish.

“They are in the same trophic level, they’re eating the same things, they’re eating the same thing all the way up into freshwater and all the way down to the ocean…”

Clearly, there are too many striped bass.

Because, at the same meeting, Russel Dize, Maryland’s Legislative Proxy, complained

“I’ve been a commercial fisherman for 55 years in Maryland.  I’ve watched the striped bass come and go.  At this time, we’ve probably got more striped bass in the bay than I have ever seen in my life.  We’ve got so many striped bass that it’s affected our crab-catching industry.  We are probably down to a low ebb last summer on crabs.

“One of the predators is rockfish, striped bass.  When the charterboats catch the striped bass and they clean them, you can count anywhere from ten to forty striped bass in the belly of a rockfish.”

  Too many striped bass once again.

It’s not overharvest by Maryland’s watermen that’s the problem with the Bay’s blue crab population.  It’s not hypoxia, or the loss of seagrass, or any other possible cause that caused the Bay’s crab population to drop.

It’s too many striped bass.

It’s always too many striped bass.

From Maryland to the Miramichi, too many striped bass are the cause of all our fisheries problems, starting out with Atlantic salmon and ending up with winter flounder. 

They do so much harm that you have to wonder how any fish survived in those thousands of years between the retreat of the Wisconsin Glacier and the arrival of the first European settlers, who came to North American shores and, finally, put out their nets in the spawning rivers and began to save the the continent's marine resources from the ravages of the striped bass.

Or, perhaps, you have to wonder whether some of these folks are getting things backwards, and that the fish didn’t need the Europeans to save them from the striped bass, but rather that the fish needed someone to save them from the rapidly multiplying Europeans and their generations of progeny, who merely find it convenient to blame the striped bass from the consequences of their own actions.

 

 

 

 

AUGUST AT THE MID-ATLANTIC FISHERY MANAGEMENT COUNCIL: SHORT-TERM GAINS, BUT LONG-TERM QUESTIONS

 

The Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council’s August meeting is arguably the most important meeting of the year, for it is the time when the annual specifications—the overfishing limit, acceptable biological catch, annual catch limits, etc.—will be set for the following year.  It’s when the commercial fishery’s rules will be finalized although, with the exception of bluefish, recreational management measures aren’t typically set until the December meeting, after managers have a better idea of how current regulations impacted recreational landings.

For the important recreational species--bluefish, summer flounder, scup, and black sea bass--the Council meets jointly with the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission’s Bluefish and Summer Flounder, Scup, and Black Sea Bass management boards.  The current rules require that both the Council and the appropriate management board agree on management measures for those four species, although nothing prevents an ASMFC management board from going rogue and refusing to cooperate with the Council. 

We saw that last year in the case of black sea bass, whenthe Summer Flounder, Scup, and Black Sea Bass Management Board refused to adoptthe Acceptable Biological Catch set by the Council’s Scientific and StatisticalCommittee, which would have lowered black sea bass landings by approximately 20percent.  The Management Board had the flexibility to do so since it, unlike the Council, is not bound by the provisions of the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act, which compels the Council to follow the SSC’s harvest advice.

However, such divergences are unusual, and this year, none occurred, perhaps because the SSC recommendations allowed more liberal landings of all four species, something that the management boards, and many Council members, often strive to promote.

The increased landings limits will make fishermen happy in 2026 and, in the case of the recreational fishery, where regulations are maintained for two consecutive years, in 2027 as well.  Whether they will benefit fishermen in the long term is probably up for debate.

In the case of bluefish, which are still in a rebuilding program, the increase in the recreational harvest limit will be substantial, increasing from 15.7 million pounds in 2025 to 22.02 million pounds in 2026 and 22.5 million pounds in 2027.  That will allow the bag limit to be increased from 5 to 7 fish for anglers on for-hire vessels, and from 3 to 5 fish for the now second-class anglers who fish from their own boats or from shore.

Although that’s a big increase, the really big jump was in the acceptable biological catch, which increased from 21.83 million pounds in 2025 to 44.61 million pounds in 2026 and 45.41 million pounds in 2027.  However, the commercial and recreational harvest limits didn’t jump nearly that much, as they were constrained by management uncertainty buffers imposed by the Council and the Bluefish Management Board.  Such uncertainty buffers reduced the commercial annual catch limit, which set at 14 percent of the acceptable biological catch, by 25 percent, and the annual recreational catch limit, set at 86 percent of the ABC, by 30 percent, to allow for management uncertainty.

That is a very big deal, and should be seen as a very welcome move in the right direction.

The guidelines for setting harvest limits, established by the National Marine Fisheries Service, call for reducing the annual catch limit to account for any management uncertainty.  However, in the past, the Council has been very reluctant to do so, as such buffers reduce the amount of fish that could be landed over the course of the year.  But this year, in the case of bluefish, the Council and Board adopted buffers which

“are intended to prevent management volatility and ensure the continued rebuilding of the stock.  Council and Board members also noted that the upcoming changes to the [Marine Recreational Information Program] estimates are a significant source of uncertainty.  [emphasis added]”

(Remember that highlighted language, as we’ll be coming back to it in a while.)

Hopefully, the Council’s and Board’s willingness to finally acknowledge management uncertainty will set a precedent that we will see in future years and with other species, although I’m somewhat skeptical about such a fortunate outcome.

In any event, even with the uncertainty buffers, the 2026 commercial quota will be 50 percent higher than it was in 2025, while the recreational harvest limit will rise by about 40 percent.

It’s going to be interesting to see fishermen’s reactions to the increased harvest limit.  Even at 2025 harvest levels, commercial fishermen needed to be careful that they didn’t land too many bluefish, flood the market, and drive down the price.  So how much they might benefit from more quota is an open question.

On the recreational side, the calculated increase in bluefish spawning stock biomass has had an irregular impact along the cost.  In some places, bluefish have been abundant, and anglers are catching a lot of them.  In other areas, fishing for bluefish has been sporadic at best, with a lot of slow days.  In my own experience, which mostly takes place offshore, I still haven’t had a bluefish—with the exceptions of some 12-inchers in July 2023—in my shark slicks since 2017, even though I often chum in places where bluefish swarmed two decades ago.

Also, now that the recreational bag limit has increased to five fish, it’s somewhat disturbing that the Council and Board have decided to grant for-hire anglers special privileges, and increase their bag limit to seven, thereby arbitrarily creating winners and losers within the recreational fishery.  As noted by Michael Waine, a spokesman for the American Sportfishing Association, the largest fishing tackle industry trade group, in a letter to the Council and Board,

“…ASA recommends increasing the private angler bluefish bag limit to 5 fish, aligning it with the current limit for for-hire anglers.  This change would reunite all anglers under a 5-fish bag limit, ensuring consistent management and equitable access ahead of the joint Sector Separation Amendment, which is expected to address mode management more formally…  [emphasis added]”

Unfortunately, the for-hire sector’s dominance of the management bodies, and particularly of the recreational seats on the Council, assured that such consistent bag limit and equitable access would not occur.

Summer flounder also saw a very large increase in the acceptable biological catch, which jumped by 55 percent from its 2025 level.  Once again, that increase was tempered by a decision to apply a 12 percent buffer for management uncertainty to both the commercial and recreational annual catch limits.

In recommending that buffer, the Summer Flounder, Scup, and Black Sea Bass Monitoring Committee, composed of biologists from NMFS, the ASMFC, and the various states sitting on the Summer Flounder, Scup, and Black Sea Bass Management Board, acknowledged that it was

“concerned about the implications of such a substantial increase, particularly given the volatility of ABCs over the past several years…The Monitoring Committee emphasized the importance of maintaining quota stability and ensuring the specifications process remains responsive to uncertainty and stock dynamics without overcorrecting from one specifications cycle to the next.”

In addition,

“The Monitoring Committee expressed reservations around the stock projections used to inform the ABC.  The [Scientific and Statistical Committee’s] recommendation relied on short-term projections from the most recent management track assessment, which were based on the recruitment stanza from 2011-2024.  The Monitoring Committee noted that while 2023 and 2024 recruitment appear stronger than those in the preceding decade, recruitment in nearly every year since 2010 has remained below the long-term average.  This persistent pattern raised concern about whether the recent increase reflects a meaningful shift in stock productivity or merely a short-term fluctuation, as it appears to have in the past.  The Monitoring Committee emphasized that recruitment has been highly variable over time, and the stock has yet to demonstrate a consistent return to higher recruitment levels…”

Thus, the Monitoring Committee recommended precaution, and the Council and Board agreed.

Even so, the commercial quota will increase from 8.79 million pounds in 2025 to 12.78 million pounds in 2026 and 2027, while the recreational harvest limit will change from 6.35 million pounds to 8.79 million pounds over the same period of time.

Of course, that doesn’t mean that 2026 or 2027 recreational regulations will allow landings that are higher than those predicted for 2025.  That’s because summer flounder spawning stock biomass is currently at 83 percent of the target level, and the so-called “Percent Change Approach” used to set recreational management dictates that, if a stock is at “low” abundance levels—defined as not overfished, but less than 90 percent of the biomass target—even if 2026 and 2027 recreational landings are predicted to be below the recreational harvest limit for those years, no increase in the recreational landings limit will occur.  

However, that doesn’t mean that recreational management measures might not change; if 2026-2027 recreational landings are likely to fall well below the recreational landings limit under the current rules, regulations could be liberalized to make it more likely that landings will approach the landings limit in those years.  At the same time, should 2025 recreational landings be likely to exceed the 2025 landings limit, regulations could become more restrictive.

We won’t know that until the December joint Council and Management Board meeting.

But if the August meeting saw managers take a more precautionary approach with bluefish and summer flounder, it saw them exercise their usual profligacy with black sea bass and scup, undoubtedly because, while the former species are at 89 percent and 83 percent of their target levels, respectively, the two latter species are at levels approaching or exceeding 300 percent of target, which makes it a little easier to recover from management mistakes.

Still, there are warning signs in the data suggesting that the future for both scup and black sea bass might not be quite as favorable as conditions are today, and that a little bit of precaution might also be justified.

In the case of scup, the fish are almost embarrassingly abundant.  The 2025 management track stock assessment calculated the spawning stock biomass to be 235,613 metric tons (519.4 million pounds), which is 323 percent of the SSB target, with fishing mortality low, at only 55 percent of the biomass target.

That allowed the acceptable biological catch to be increased by two percent.  However, that increase was not reflected in the commercial quota, which will decrease from 19.54 million pounds in 2025 to 17.70 million pounds in 2026 and 15.57 million pounds in 2027.  The recreational fishery, on the other hand, will see the recreational harvest limit increase from 12.31 million pounds in 2025 to 13.17 million pounds in 2026, before declining to 11.58 million pounds in 2027.

However, despite all the seemingly good news in the short term, there is some troubling information in the management track assessment, in the form of continued low recruitment.  Scup recruitment peaked in 2015, an exceptionally productive year, when nearly 696 million Age 0 fish entered the population.  But recruitment has been down since then, dropping to about 319 million in 2016, to 160,000 the year after.  Recruitment fell to 88 million in 2019 before rebounding to 153 million in 2021, but then fell to its lowest levels in the last 10 years in 2023 and 2024, at 40 million and 16 million, respectively.

Managers can only hope that recruitment improves to more typical levels.  Even if it does, the last two years are going to be felt once the fish that recruited in those years grow into the minimum size.  Given that, perhaps a little precaution now might have helped moderate the shock when rules need to be tightened again, perhaps for 2028, perhaps not until 2030.

In addition, there is the question of the revised Marine Recreational Information Program estimates of anglers catch, landings, and effort, which we first encountered in the bluefish discussion.  The problem is that in 2023, a pilot study conducted by NMFS suggested that MRIP might be overestimating angler effort, and so recreational catch and landings, by as much as 30 percent.  That created significant management uncertainty, since if the pilot study’s findings were even close to accurate, the true level of recreational catch and landings can not be known with any reasonable degree of precision.

That might seem OK at first glance, since if recreational landings were overestimated, then it’s easy to believe—falsely—that such overestimate built a margin for error into the process of designing recreational management measures.  If the actual recreational removals were less, one might think, then fewer fish were being killed, and no harm was being done.

But that’s not true, because recreational landings aren’t only used to set recreational management measures.  They are also one of the data sets that are used in stock assessments, and contribute to the calculation of things like spawning stock biomass.  So if recreational landings are high, and fishery-independent surveys seem to show that the stock can sustain that level of removals, then biologists assume that the stock must be larger than previously believed, increase their estimates of spawning stock biomass, and also their estimates of things like the spawning stock biomass target, the overfishing limit, the acceptable biological catch, and the annual catch limit for both the recreational and the commercial sectors.

That’s where things start heading downhill, for while the increase in the recreational catch limit doesn’t really matter—the overestimate of recreational landings and the overestimate of stock size more-or-less offset one another—overestimating the biomass also leads to commercial quotas that are set higher than they ought to be, which could be the case with scup.

Yet neither the Monitoring Committee nor the Council and Board chose to adopt a buffer for the management uncertainty that very definitely exists for scup, as they did for bluefish and summer flounder.  One has to suspect that it was the political aspect of reducing landings for a fish of very obvious abundance that stayed their hand.

Black sea bass decisions followed a very similar course to those affecting scup.  With the 2025 management track stock assessment indicating a spawning stock biomass that was 284 percent of the target level, the acceptable biological catch was increased from 16.66 million pounds in 2024-2025 to 21.34 million pounds for 2026-2027.  That led to a 31 percent increase in the commercial quota, from five million to 7.83 million pounds, and a 30 percent increase in the recreational harvest limit, from 6.27 to 8.14 million pounds.

But black sea bass have some of the same threats lurking in the shadows as scup.

The reset of the Marine Recreational Information Program creates the same sort of management uncertainty, and black sea bass recruitment is also headed downhill.  The 2025 management track assessment shows that, over the past ten years, recruitment—which is measured at Age 1—hit its lowest point in 2024, at about 28 million fish, compared to peaks of 62 million in 2016 and 61 million in 2023.  

While the 2024 number could be viewed as merely a one-year anomaly, and thus fairly meaningless, a recent report issued by NMFS informed us that, because of a temporary, southerly jog in the Gulf Stream, cooler, fresher water from northern regions are flowing onto the continental shelf off New England and the upper Mid-Atlantic.  That cooler, fresher water may be present at the edge of the shelf for years. 

That matters for black sea bass, because the strength of a black sea bass year class isn’t determined by the success of the spawn, but by ocean conditions at the edge of the continental shelf during the fish's first winter.  Warm, saline water generally produces large year classes, while cooler, fresher water tends to produce small ones.  Thus, the small 2024 year class may well be the first in a series of low-recruitment years, driven by unfavorable ocean conditions that could persist for as long as a decade.

Another thing that the Monitoring Committee noted was

“comments from several advisors about high numbers of small black sea bass this year.”

Unfortunately, the Monitoring Committee only interpreted those comments to mean that there might be higher levels of release mortality, due to a higher number of undersized fish, and not as a warning that a lack of large black sea bass may be an indication that fishing mortality has risen so high that few fish are surviving long enough to reach larger sizes.  Again, like the cooling water and lower recruitment, the small fish could be a sign that a population decline is on the way.

But despite the uncertainty, as was true in the scup fishery, no buffer was put in place.

And maybe it doesn’t matter.

The best available scientific information for bluefish, summer flounder, scup, and black sea bass all suggested that higher annual catch limits are justified, and at least in the short term, they almost certainly are.

But maybe managers should also take time to read the warning signs that flash around all of the Mid-Atlantic Council-managed recreational fisheries.  They did so for bluefish and summer flounder, but not for scup and black sea bass.  ‘

Maybe they don’t have to.  Maybe with populations as high as they are, managers can intervene later, and still maintain the stock at or near the biomass target.

But still, we have to ask ourselves, is it better to be a little cautious, even if there’s no immediate need, than to wait until a real problem looms, and then try to fix things all at once?

In the case of scup and black sea bass, future events might well answer that question.