WHAT IS A FISH?

 

At the October 2025 meeting of the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission’s Atlantic Striped Bass Management Board, that Board rejected a proposal to reduce striped bass landings and so make it more likely that the stock will rebuild by the 2029 deadline imposed by the fishery management plan.

But it wasn’t a naked rejection.  Included in the motion to reject additional restrictions on the striped bass fishery was a proposal to create a “Work Group” charged with developing a white paper that could be used to inform future management decisions.  More specifically, as noted in the motion that created it,

“The goal of this Work Group is to consider how to update the [fishery management plan’s] goals, objectives, and management of striped bass beyond 2029, in consideration of severely reduced reproductive success in the Chesapeake Bay.”

The same motion directed the Work Group to include six specific topics in its discussions.  One of those topics was to

“Formally review hatchery stocking as both a research tool and a management tool for striped bass w/cost analysis.”

I have to admit that I cringed more than a little with respect to that topic, particularly to its mention of hatcheries as “a management tool” because I view hatcheries as an admission of abject failure, a concession that fisheries managers have failed in their efforts to maintain a fish stock or, at least, a concession that managers have experienced a failure of will, and will no longer make the effort to maintain a fish stock through natural means.

Instead, they turn to what are essentially factories designed to manufacture legions of man-made fish, to support unnatural fisheries where the primary intent is not to maintain fish populations that will perform their traditional roles in the ecosystems where their species evolved, but merely to entertain and enrich the people who participate in and profit from their capture.

And when we get to that point, the question needs to be asked, “Are they really fish at all?”

I recently came across an article written by John Waldman, a professor at New York’s Queens College.  Titled “The Natural World Vanishes:  How Species Cease to Matter,” it appeared in the April 8, 2010 edition of Yale Environment 360.  In it, Professor Waldman observed that

“Abundant research has shown that a fish is not a fish is not a fish,”

and quotes Richard Judd, who wrote in his book Common Lands, Common People:  The Origins of Conservation in Northern New England,

“An artificial resource maintained in a habitat no longer capable of spontaneous growth, fish became a property of the state rather than an element of the providential natural landscape.”

Thus, a hatchery fish, regardless of the species, is no longer a natural resource.  It is merely an object, existing without any meaningful context at all.

Mr. Judd’s comment is the sort of thing that I wish I had said first, because it perfectly sums up my views toward hatcheries and hatchery-based fisheries.

Still, others feel differently, and as striped bass reproduction grew ever worse, and the abundance of striped bass declined, it was inevitable that the topic of hatcheries would be raised, both by managers and by fishermen.

It’s not a new concept.

Maryland opened its Joseph Manning Hatchery in 1980, and although the facility has been and still is used to propagate a number of warm-water fish species, back in the mid-1980s one of its primary purposes was to produce striped bass in an effort to rebuild that stock, which had collapsed.  While it’s probably incorrect to say that Maryland’s stocking was ineffective, at least one scientific paper, “A Case History of Effective Fishery Management:  Chesapeake Bay Striped Bass,” which appeared in the May 1999 edition of The North American Journal of Fisheries Management, noted that

“Hatchery-reared striped bass were stocked in the Chesapeake Bay beginning in 1985 and may have accelerated recovery, though the benefits of stocking were far outweighed by the benefits of reducing fishing mortality.  [emphasis added]”

A striped bass hatchery was also built on New York’s Hudson River during the 1980s.  Costing 5.8 million dollars, it was funded by five electric power companies as part of a legal settlement between the companies, New York’s Department of Environmental Conservation, and concerned environmental organizations.  The hatchery effort was described in a June 8, 1986 article in the New York Times.

“’Our goal is always the same—to stock 600,000 fish,’ explained Bruce Friedmann, hatchery manager…The first year we produced 63,000 fish, the second year 156,000.  Last year we produced 293,000.  We’re hoping to continue that trend,’ to reach the 600,000 goal…

“…[S]ome biologists are turning to the restoration project as an important way to help the beleaguered bass species.  Others say that the hatchery programs are an expensive way to do it.  One biologist called the hatchery striper ‘a gold-plated fish…’

“New York State’s Department of Environmental Conservation is evaluating the hatchery program.  ‘It’s a very expensive way to put fish back into the river,’ said Robert Brandt, aquatic biologist for the state agency.  ‘From hatchery to river it costs about $1 a fish, and there’s a question of whether these fish are viable once they’re in the river.’…”

The Hudson River hatchery apparently failed its evaluation or, at the least, was found to be an expensive luxury after the striped bass stock began to rebuild in 1989; the hatchery was closed soon after.

While it’s possible—and probably likely—that hatchery technology has substantially improved, and become more efficient, since the Times article appeared, if the best a Hudson River hatchery can do is produce about 600,000 fish in a year, that hatchery would still be producing fewer bass than local anglers remove from the population annually.  New York anglers harvested about 433,000 striped bass during the 2024 season, and probably killed another 359,000 as a result of release mortality in the same year, thus providing more evidence that reducing fishing mortality, rather than manufacturing striped bass, is the more effective way to rebuild the striped bass population.

And hatchery programs are expensive. 

Assuming that there were no changes in the efficiency of hatchery operations, the $1 it cost to produce each bass stocked in the Hudson in 1986 would equate to $2.85 today; stocking 600,000 bass in the mid-2020s would thus cost over $1.7 million per year.  Recreating the hatchery that cost $5.8 million in 1981 would cost more than $20 million in today’s dollars—and that assumes that the computerized equipment that would certainly be used to run hatchery functions today had the same relative cost as the gear used to operate the facility during the early 1980s.

Which makes reducing fishing mortality not only the more effective, but probably also the less expensive, way to rebuild the striped bass stock.

Of course, there will always be voices from the recreational fishing industry and various “anglers’ rights” organizations that will support the introduction of manufactured fish, including striped bass, into the nation’s waterways as an alternative to natural reproduction, in order to keep the sales of fishing gear high and keep anglers’ coolers full.  

The Texas Parks and Wildlife Department freely admits that it uses artificially raised red drum, spotted seatrout, and southern flounder

“to ensure that harvest levels are sustained and stocks are replenished.  [emphasis added]”

However, there is little evidence that hatcheries, unlike lowered fishing mortality rates, have ever led to stable, sustainable, naturally-reproducing stocks of any popular commercial or recreational fish species. 

The first hatcheries used to stock Pacific salmon in United States waters appeared during the 1870s; in the 150 years since, more and larger hatcheries have continued to pump man-made salmon into Pacific coast rivers, but none have managed to rebuild a single salmon run, of any species, to the point that it could be sustained by natural reproduction alone.  Instead, despite the millions of dollars spent to dump millions of man-made salmon into rivers feeding into the Pacific,

“NOAA Fisheries has listed 28 population groups of salmon and steelhead on the West Coast as threatened or endangered under the Endangered Species Act.”

It is difficult to believe that reducing fishing mortality on at least some of those population groups—those devastated by dams blocking their access to historical spawning grounds being, perhaps, an exception—before they declined to the point where an Endangered Species Act listing was justified, would not have been a more effective management approach than just manufacturing more salmon to dump into the rivers.

Yet, there are those who just like to catch fish, and don’t care what hatcheries cost taxpayers or what impact they might have on native fish.  For example, the Coastal Conservation Association’s Oregon chapter

“supports the important role hatcheries have to play in providing harvest opportunities while conserving, sustaining, and rebuilding salmon and steelhead stocks.  We also support efforts to improve the efficacy of hatchery programs to ensure that, consistent with native fish conservation, opportunities are not unnecessarily constrained.”

Such language, while providing lip service to conservation considerations, leave little doubt that “providing harvest opportunities,” while ensuring that angling “opportunities are not unnecessarily constrained,” are the organization’s primary considerations. 

While it is impossible to predict anyone’s response to a situation with complete certainty, it seems likely that, if given the choice between a reduction in fishing mortality that would shut down the recreational fishery for an indefinite period of time, but eventually rebuild native salmon runs, or continuing hatchery production and maintaining “harvest opportunities” but leave the native runs wanting, they’d opt to keep the hatcheries pumping out fish.

I would choose otherwise.

People fish for different reasons.  Some fish for food, some for entertainment, some to spend time with family or friends.  Some are driven by ego, while others seek solitude and peace.

I understand all of those motivations, and all of them are, or have been, a part of my own motivation, too.  But, for the most part, I fish to touch the wild.

There was something about angling that always appealed to me, even when I was very, very young.  As I got older, the ability to get out on the water, learn how the marine ecosystem worked, and how fish—and most particularly, for many years, the striped bass—related to seasons and light and tides, the movements of baitfish, and all of the other factors that affected their behavior, fascinated me, and took me into a place where all of the concerns of school and, later, of work and all that involved, went away, and I could concentrate on more primal and, to my mind, far more real, concerns.

With that came a deeper understanding of the fish themselves, where they bred, how they migrated, and what they required to maintain themselves and support viable fisheries. 

It’s probably a difficult thing for a non-angler to understand—although I think most hunters would get it—but to use hard-gathered knowledge and execute a plan that results in meeting a wild creature on its home ground and bringing it successfully to hand, ignites an atavistic satisfaction, a feeling of being in touch with an ancient world that those who spend their time in more civilized pursuits will never know.

To have the wild removed from that pursuit, to know that the fish in my hand was unnaturally manufactured by man, no different than a golf ball or computer game that was produced solely to entertain, would strip the moment of wonder, and cause me to wonder whether the pursuit had any meaning at all.

For by seeking fish that are, as Mr. Judd called them, “an element of the providential natural landscape,” I become a part of that landscape as well. 

And it is in that landscape, and not in some unnatural vista where only factory-produced semblances of fish hold sway, that I choose to reside.