I’ve been attending fisheries meetings for nearly 50 years,
ever since the striped bass began to collapse and people started making their
first halting efforts to address the problem.
By and large, well thought-out management measures have usually worked, often
despite the efforts of some fishermen, and much of the recreational and
commercial fishing industries, who remained firmly focused on the short term,
and what they can harvest today, and never spent enough time contemplating the
future or what might happen should a fish stock collapse.
I was reminded of that once again last Wednesday evening, when I attended an Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission hearing on striped bass, and heard almost every industry representative oppose conservation measures—at least for their sector—and insist on maintaining the status quo.
The ASMFC’s Atlantic Striped Bass Management Board could well decide to heed those industry calls when it meets again in October, and opt not to reduce striped bass fishing mortality.
And, if that happens, some folks
might be pleased.
But decisions have consequences, and just as the decision to
reduce landings by 12 percent might result in commercial fishermen making less
money, charter boats booking fewer trips, and the tackle industry selling less
merchandise, the decision NOT to reduce landings could result in fewer striped
bass in the ocean, and cause longer-lasting harm to the same
people who are fighting the proposed landings cuts.
Striped bass are at the forefront of the fisheries debate right now, and everyone is
talking about them, but it might make more sense to leave bass alone for a
while, and look at what happened in some other fisheries where managers were
less than successful in averting a population crash.
Just
this week, I came across an article on the Canadian Broadcasting Company
website that declared,
“Plunging salmon pool prices highlight stock’s decline,
anglers say.
“Most minimum bids in province’s once-a-decade Crown angling
lease auction drop 40 to 75 percent.”
The gist of the article was pretty simple: The number of Atlantic salmon returning to
rivers in the Province of New Brunswick, rivers that once were among the most
productive and most esteemed salmon waters in Maritime Canada--rivers like the Restigouche and Miramichi--has fallen so
low that well-heeled fishermen and lodge owners are no longer willing to pay
high prices to lease a section of river where they would hold exclusive fishing
rights.
The New Brunswick government reportedly refused to explain
why the leases had lost so much value, but only said that the minimum bids were
set by an unidentified third party, and that the relevant appraisals
"considered a range of factors, including comparable
private land transactions, Atlantic salmon returns, and catch statistics."
But while government spokesman might provide
oblique answers, the big, underlying truth can’t be denied: There are so few salmon left that people aren’t
willing to pay as much as they once did to fish on New Brunswick’s waters.
That was the truth expressed by Bradford Burns, a guide and
angler who believes that the loss of lease value tracks directly back to the
fact that the rivers’ populations of Atlantic salmon have declined by 90
percent over the past 15 years. He went on
to note,
“I wouldn’t be surprised if they have great difficulty even
getting bids on many of the properties.
“It isn’t like you went out and instead of catching 10 fish,
you caught one fish. It may be that you
go days and days and not catch any at all, or even see any because there aren’t
any there.”
“first ever conservation strategy to restore and rebuild wild Atlantic salmon populations and their habitats.”
In doing so, Canada admitted that
“Atlantic salmon populations face many threats linked to
human activity, including loss of natural habitat, decreased water quality,
invasive species, legal and illegal fishing, pollution and challenges linked to
climate change.”
Some of those threats, such as water quality and legal and illegal fishing, are arguably things that managers can control. But other factors, most particularly climate change, are not.
Salmon fishermen argue that Canadian fisheries managers are overlooking
another big cause of the salmon’s decline, the restoration of the striped bass
population in the salmon rivers, and the resulting striped bass predation on juvenile
salmon on their way out to sea, but stomach
contents studies conducted by Canada’s Department of Fisheries and Oceans have
failed to find significant evidence of such predation.
So, right now, New Brunswick’s Atlantic salmon are facing something that looks very much like a stock collapse. The population seems to be in free fall, while fisheries managers strive, so far unsuccessfully, to find ways to stem the decline as the economic value of the fishery begins to tank.
The situation is, in those
respects, very similar to the striped bass stock collapse of the very late
1970s and early 1980s. To anyone who
fished for striped bass during those years, Mr. Burns’ comment that, “It may be
that you go days and days and not catch any at all, or even see any because
there aren’t any there,” sounds uncomfortably familiar.
But we don’t need to go to distant Canadian waters, or turn
to fish as exotic and celebrated as the Atlantic salmon, to see what happens when
managers fail to respond quickly enough and forcefully enough to a species’
decline. We need only look in our local
creeks, bays, and sounds, at the collapse of the humble winter flounder.
At one time, not all that long ago, the winter flounder was the
bread and butter fish for inshore anglers, the party boat fleet, and
northeastern tackle shops. Although it
ranged south to the Chesapeake Bay, the heart of the recreational fishery
resided in waters between New Jersey and Massachusetts, where anglers, fishing
from private and for-hire boats, from docks, piers, and bulkheads, and from the
shore caught the little flatfish by the millions, at any time of year when the
waters weren’t bound up in ice.
In
1981, Massachusetts anglers harvested approximately 16.5 million winter
flounder, while New York, at 12.4 million fish landed, sat in second place. By 1984, New York had taken over the lead,
with just under 14.5 million flounder landed.
In the same year, anglers harvested about 8.5 million flounder in New
Jersey, 4.8 million in Massachusetts, 2.7 million in Connecticut, and 1.6
million in Rhode Island. By any
measure, just 40 years ago, there were a lot of flounder around.
But there were also signs that the flounder population was
under stress, and managers were slow to respond. As is the case with striped bass today, winter
flounder were such an important component of the recreational fishery that the
industry—party boats, charter boats, and tackle dealers—fought to maintain the
status quo, actively opposing any regulation that might cause their incomes to
decline.
So management measures tended to be too little, too late, andlandings never declined as much as necessary; the winter flounder population declined instead. In 1984, anglers caught flounder by the millions, but by the time 2024 rolled around, landings had collapsed along with the population.
Massachusetts still had the most landings, but at a mere 29,000, they
had fallen by 99.8 percent from their 1981 peak, and by 99.4 percent from what
they were in 1984.
Other states saw similar declines from their 1984
landings. In New York, 2024 winter
flounder landings were so minimal that a meaningful comparison is nearly
impossible; they had fallen by 99.994 percent.
In New Jersey, landings declined by 99.98 percent, and by 99.99 percent
in Connecticut and Rhode Island.
In terms of trips, that translates to Massachusetts anglers
making around 2.0 million winter flounder trips in 1981 and 940,000 in 1984,
but only 71,200 in 2024. New
York’s recreational winter flounder effort fell from 3.5 million trips in 1984
to 8,500 in 2024, as New Jersey’s effort went from 2.1 million trips to 40,500.
Connecticut and Rhode Island, where anglers
made 920,00 and 510,00 directed winter flounder trips, respectively, in 1984, seemingly
had no directed trips at all last year (although some such trips undoubtedly
occurred, but were so few that they never appeared on the surveys).
As a practical matter, from a recreational standpoint, winter flounder are all but economically extinct, a victim of failed fisheries management.
A fishery that once provided
anglers with millions of pounds of valued food fish, and kicked off the fishing
season well before the start of spring, is now effectively dead.
Yet the lesson of the flounder still seems lost in the
fishing industry.
And so we come back to striped bass.
Striped bass is a fishery driven by abundance, which has far
more to do with how often people go striped bass fishing than do restrictive regulations,
a fact that is easily demonstrated by effort data from the years 1995 through
2014, a time when regulations were generally consistent at a 2-fish bag limit
and 28-inch minimum size in the ocean fishery (although some states varied from
2 @ 28 inches, they didn’t change those regulations much, either), but striped
bass abundance changed substantially, both up and down.
In 1995, striped bass abundance was, by
definition, right at the level we now consider the biomass threshold, supporting 13.0 million striped bass trips. Biomass
peaked around 2002, at which point trips had increased to 20.8 million. After that, biomass declined a little and
then leveled off, with enough larger fish available from the big 1989 and
1993 year classes to keep angler interest up, leading to trips peaking
at 24.8 million trips in 2006 and 24.4 million trips in 2007.
But after that, striped bass abundance, and directed striped
bass trips, fell into a noticeable decline.
By 2011, trips had dropped a bit, to 22.7 million, and by 2014, the last
year of the consistent regulations, to 19.3 million. Since then, bass abundance declined while
regulations grew more restrictive, making any correlation harder to draw. In 2024, with striped bass abundance down and
a one-fish bag limit and 28- to 31-inch slot size limit in place, the number of
directed striped bass trips had fallen to 15.4 million, nearly as few as were
taken 30 years ago.
And there are indications that trips will decline again in
2025.
So, where do we go next?
In 1986, after the striped bass stock collapsed, the spawning stock biomass bottomed out. Anglers took just 540,000 directed striped bass trips, roughly 3.5 percent of the number of trips that they took last year.
Of course, back then, there were still plenty
of winter flounder, tautog (“blackfish”) were still unregulated, the cod stocks
had not yet collapsed, teen-sized bluefish were common, charter boats were still
bringing home mako sharks on a regular basis, and the size limit for fluke was
still 14 inches, so there was plenty to take up the slack.
We don’t have those fallbacks anymore.
So, do we urge the ASMFC’s striped bass management board to
do nothing, in an effort to maintain striped bass landings--and industry profits--in the short term,
knowing that by doing so, we might be greasing the skids for a future stock
collapse—and knowing that, if a stock collapse occurs, the economic benefits of
today’s striped bass fishery might disappear, seemingly overnight, with little
to take their place?
Or do we take a more prudent road, forsaking some short-term
gain, knowing that, in the end, we’re building the foundation for a striped
bass fishery that is healthy, sustainable and—for those in the business—profitable
in the long term?
We can look at Atlantic salmon and winter flounder, and get
a pretty good idea what can happen when fishery management fails.
The big question is, are we willing to let striped bass management fail as well?
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