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.