STRIPED BASS REBUILDING: CONFRONTING THE HEADWINDS

 

Striped bass are arguably the single most important recreational fish species on the Atlantic Coast of the United States--and probably on any coast of this nation.  Last year, anglers took approximately 15.6 million trips primarily targeting striped bass, dwarfing the number of trips primarily targeting other popular sport fish such as summer flounder (9.1 million), red drum (8.9 million), spotted seatrout (3.9 million), scup (2.8 million), or black sea bass (1.5 million).

Given that fact, one might expect that everyone, and particularly angler-dependent businesses, would be eager to rebuild the currently overfished striped bass stock, and to do it as quickly as possible.  However, that has not been the case.  There are significant headwinds hampering the striped bass rebuilding process, being generated in part by advocates for the commercial fishing industry, but also, illogically, by individuals who would have much to gain from greater striped bass abundance.

Consider a letter sent to the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission’s Atlantic Striped Bass Management Board in advance of last week’s meeting.  Submitted by a Rhode Island charter boat captain, its contents are...somewhat puzzling.

After a brief introduction, the letter begins

“Regarding Striped Bass management, I am concerned that the poor recruitment that has been reported over the past several years is being influenced by management decisions that are designed to protect as much [spawning stock biomass] as possible.  I would like the board to consider the possibility that the large [spawning stock biomass] we currently have is actually limiting spawning triggers within the stock.  We have had a variety of environmental conditions over the past 6 years, yet no real change in the spawning output.  Maybe something else is in play, like the stock does not feel compelled to spawn due to excessive [spawning stock biomass] in the water.”

It’s hard to get so much wrong in just one paragraph, but let’s take things a point at a time.

First, we have to point out that the references to “the large [spawning stock biomass] we currently have,” and “excessive [spawning stock biomass] in the water [emphasis added]” are completely divorced from reality.  The striped bass stock is currently overfished, which means that far from being “large,” or even “excessive,” the spawning stock biomass has been badly depleted, and has fallen below the threshold that biologists have established to better ensure long-term sustainability.

Thus, the assertion that striped bass recruitment failure could be based on an overly-abundant spawning stock necessarily fails, as it’s based on a false premise.

But even if that was not the case, a search of the literature failed to turn up evidence that striped bass spawning is, in any way, density-dependent, although the survival and fitness of juvenile striped bass probably is affected by the density of the juvenile population. 

But what is really shocking is how that paragraph ends:

“I would ask the board to consider giving a management strategy that reduces the [spawning stock biomass] a chance.  We know a low [spawning stock biomass] can produce healthy year classes so the risk of testing this hypothesis seems limited.  [emphasis added]”

Let that sink in for a moment.  This particular charter boat captain is suggesting that the Management Board abandon its years-long effort to rebuild the overfished striped bass stock, which is finally showing signs of crawling over the biomass threshold and reach the point where it is no longer overfished—but will still be well below its target level—and allow the stock to decline deeper into “overfished” territory, even though that stock has experienced spawning failure in three of its four most important spawning areas—Maryland, Virginia, and the Delaware River—and, if the 2025 data indicates another poor spawn this year, will experience failure in the Hudson River as well.  

He justifies such approach by saying that the stock “can” produce healthy year classes even when spawning stock biomass is low.

That latter assertion is true.

But there is a big difference between “can” and “will,” particularly in the face of a changing environment and warming Bay, and conditions that are not the same as they were the last time a relative handful of females produced an exceptional spawn.

Which may be why the commenter’s next step was to effectively discount the importance of the Chesapeake data by claiming that

“the Chesapeake Bay is not as influencing as it was 20 years ago.  In Southern New England, we regularly see smaller fish from 10-25 inches and I believe they are coming from other spawning areas.  There are good numbers of fish entering the fishery each year that are not considered in the current assessment model.”

Of course, what the commenter doesn’t suggest is just where the fish that he sees might come from, if not from the known spawning areas.  He claims that fish “[enter] the fishery each year that are not considered in the assessment model,” but doesn’t explain how he knows that to be true.

Did he, perhaps, perform genetic testing on those fish, to determine their place of origin?  Not that I know.  Or did he, perhaps, conduct biological surveys in candidate rivers, to determine where those “other spawning areas” might be?  Again, not to my knowledge.

However, other people have done such things, and their conclusions should come to no one’s surprise.

In one case, researchers in New Hampshire did a genetic study, sampling 5,400 striped bass, caught in 2018 and 2019, in the waters between Long Island, New York and Portland, Maine.  They found that somewhere between 80 and 88 percent of all striped bass sampled originated in either the Chesapeake Bay or the Delaware River (the genetics of the fish from the two regions are too similar to be reliably distinguished), between 10 and 18 percent of the bass were spawned in the Hudson River, while just two percent came from either North Carolina’s Roanoke River or , just possibly, from the “other spawning areas” cited in the commenter’s letter.

Two percent isn’t very much, while the 80 to 88 percent of the fish being of Chesapeake origin suggest that, contrary to the commenter’s assertions, the Chesapeake by is still “as influencing as it was 20 years ago.”

If we look at the samples unique to the commenters home grounds off Rhode Island, we find that, in 2018, 86.8 percent of the Rhode Island bass sampled were spawned in the Chesapeake, and only 1.6 percent in the Roanoke or in “unknown” waters.  In 2019, the Chesapeake share increased to 88.8 percent, while the Roanoke/unknown percentage fell to 0.9 percent, very strongly suggesting that the commenter’s assertions have no factual basis at all.

Still, the myth of striped bass spawning at unknown sites has spread pervasively throughout the for-hire community, and is often wrongly asserted at public hearings.  In response to such claims made during the hearings on Addendum II to Amendment 7 to the Interstate Fishery Management Plan for Atlantic Striped Bass, which were held in December 2023 and January 2024, and particularly in response to claims that Connecticut’s Housatonic River had become a major spawning ground, I contacted Dr. Justin Davis of Connecticut’s Department of Energy and Environmental Protection, to get his view on the matter.  His comments left no room for doubt:

“I think it is pretty easy to dismiss that striped bass spawn in the Housatonic or Thames Rivers.  The head of tide extends almost up to the most downstream dams in both systems—there’s very little freshwater habitat available below those dams—just not suitable spawning habitat for striped bass.”

Dr. Davis said that striped bass probably do spawn—although perhaps not every year—in the Connecticut River, as river herring surveys conducted in that river have come across both juvenile and Year 1 bass, along with females bearing ripe eggs and males with ripe, flowing milt.  However, with respect to both the Connecticut and other possible, “unknown” spawning sites in the northeast, Dr. Davis observed,

“While I agree that there are coastal rivers where striped bass spawn where no one is doing a scientific survey to produce annual indices of [young-of-the-year] relative abundance in those rivers, and therefore trends in YOY production in those rivers are not incorporated in the assessment—but—it is not then a logical step to assume there is some body of striped bass out there on the coast that is somehow “invisible” to the assessment and therefore the management process.  The striped bass spawned in those rivers will leave those rivers and recruit to the coastal stock—and when they do—they will be caught by recreational anglers, they will be harvested by commercial harvesters, and they will be captured by the many scientific surveys operating along the coast—and all of this information feeds into the assessment to produce estimates of [spawning stock biomass], fishing mortality, relative strength of various year classes, etc.  It’s a fallacy to assume that just because we don’t have a YOY survey in a given river, that somehow the fish produced in that river are never “counted” in the stock assessment over the course of their lifetimes.  [emphasis added]”

So once again, the Rhode Island charter boat operator/commenter based his position on a false premise.

The problem is that, while he doesn’t seem to grasp, or doesn’t choose to grasp, generally accepted striped bass science, he is nonetheless influential, either heading or playing a major role in no less than two for-hire industry organizations.  Thus, he has substantial opportunity to propagate his erroneous views, and have them accepted by other members of the for-hire organizations.  In addition, he has ready access to, and apparently the ear of, the fishery managers in his home state, and seems able to convince them of the need to elevate his and his organizations’ priorities when the Management Board meets.

Such industry voices, scattered along the coast from Virginia to Maine, create a substantial headwind, that makes it far more difficult to convince the Management Board to adopt needed conservation measures.

Unfortunately, headwinds are also generated by members of the Management Board itself, who have their own agendas and, more importantly, a vote that can push their state in the wrong direction, and are typically cast against the interests of the striped bass and the angling public.

We saw that at last week’s meeting, when John Clark, a Delaware fisheries manager, argued that the commercial striped bass quota should not be cut, and that all of the burden of rebuilding the striped bass, should be placed on the shoulders of the recreational sector, because commercial fishermen have already seen their quota cut by 40 or 50 percent since 2014.  Fortunately, another fisheries manager, Nicola Meserve of Massachusetts, rose to remind both Mr. Clark and the rest of the Management Board that the recreational sector has experienced its own substantial cuts, going from a 2-fish bag limit and 28 inch minimum size—with no cap on the maximum size of the bass that might be retained—to a one-fish bag and narrow, 28- to 31-inch slot over the same period.

We saw it at last week’s meeting, too, when Maryland fisheries manager Michael Luisi suggested that anglers might be able to avoid unpopular—and unenforceable, and probably ineffective—season closures in which even catch-and-release is outlawed, if they would be willing to lower the biomass target and threshold—moving the goalposts in, to make it easier to claim that the stock was fully rebuilt, while not coincidentally increasing the number of dead fish available to Maryland’s commercial and for-hire fleets, which Luisi has long done his best to protect, even if doing so meant taking fish away from Maryland’s anglers.

It wasn’t the first time that Luisi has tried to get the reference points lowered to increase the kill, and certainly won’t be the last.

But even before last week’s meeting, we saw Management Board members’ hostility to striped bass conservation, striped bass anglers, and particularly catch-and-release anglers, emerge.

We saw that at the October 2024 Management Board meeting, where New Jersey’s Legislative Proxy, Adam Nowalsky, tried to discredit the newly-released stock assessment update, and find a way to distort the data to suggest that the last six years of poor recruitment were somehow not as bad as they seemed:

“What I’m just looking for is some other way to possibly interpret this information that would indicate that there is perhaps more stability in the fishery with regard to recruitment…

“..if you didn’t have some of those super high years, that recruitment mean would be lower, and maybe you would have a different interpretation of recruitment…”

So yes, let’s throw all of the better years out of the time series, and keep all of the bad ones.  Then when we calculate the long-term average, it will be lower, and maybe current recruitment won’t be below-average any more...

Nowalsky’s contempt for the conservation-minded angler comes out most clearly in a comment that he made at the February 2025 Board meeting where, in response to anglers’ opposition to no-target closures that even outlaw the catch-and-release fishery, he said that

“Obviously, the no-targeting aspect is something that has generated a lot of discussion amongst people who have for a long time advocated for conservation at all cost, but are now pulling back from that stance to some degree, when they are faced with being directly affected by the need for conservation.”

No, the opposition to no-target closures arises out of the fact that the Law Enforcement Committee recognizes that they are practically unenforceable, and has listed them dead-last on a preference list of 27 possible management measures.  But Nowalsky, the same guy who was willing to cook the recruitment books by leaving out the highest-recruitment years, chose to make it a matter of personal spite. 

Believe it or not, some Management Board members really do think that way.

And some just seem to believe that recreational fishermen, particularly those who practice catch-and-release, should sit on the bottom rung of management priorities.  

Thus, Emerson Hasbrouck, New York’s Governor’s Appointee, someone who has supported putting all of the conservation burden on the shoulders of recreational anglers, while leaving the commercial quota unchanged, and who actively supports giving for-hire boats special regulations not available to those fishing from private boats or who fish from shore, also tried to convince the Management Board to devalue anglers’ comments on Addendum II, saying, at the January 2024 Board meeting,

“For most of the written comments and comments received at the public hearing.  The majority of those commenters, again written and again at the public meetings, were recreational fishermen primarily?  Is that correct?..

“However, on our own [Advisory Panel] we have a more balanced representation between recreational anglers, the for-hire industry and commercial fishermen, so that provides us with a more balanced representation.  As I recall from [Ms. Emilie Franke’s] presentation, the [Advisory Panel] and the majority, actually twice as many, I think, members of the [Advisory Panel] supported Option C [to give the for-hire fleet special privileges not enjoyed by other anglers] for the ocean fishery.  There was also overwhelming support for Option, I think it was, Option A, status quo for the commercial reduction.”

So yes, let’s disregard the public comment with respect to those options, give the for-hires special privileges that will allow them to catch more fish, make no reductions in the commercial quota, and place all of the burden on the shoulders of the shore-based and private boat anglers, because one, unfortunately stacked, panel said that they wanted things that way.

Having such people sitting on the Management Board creates a very big headwind, that isn’t easy to overcome.

Still, if we are to rebuild the striped bass stock and manage it for long-term stability, and—and this is not unimportant, although less important than conserving the stock—also preserve the interests of recreational fishermen who, in 2024, were responsible for 84 percent of striped bass fishing mortality and, here in New York, accounted for over 99 percent of all directed striped bass fishing trips, thus generating the lion’s share of the fishery's social and economic benefits, the headwinds must be overcome.

And the only way to do that is putting in the work and the time.

We have to show up at the hearings, and bring others with us, and let the managers know what we think.  Grab some friends and offer to buy them a beer after the meeting.  Believe me, by then, you'll all need more than one.

If we can’t show up at the hearings, we need to, at a minimum, submit written comments that protect the bass’ interests, and also our own.

Don't doubt that the headwinds will be fierce, and it will take substantial effort to defeat them.  But if enough people face them together, they can be overcome.