Sunday, September 22, 2019

CHESAPEAKE BAY: MICROCOSM ON THE STRIPED BASS DEBATE



Although both the Hudson River and Delaware River make meaningful contributions to the coastal migratory stock, which even contains some fish from the more sedentary Albemarle/Roanoke (North Carolina) population, the effects of low recruitment in Chesapeake Bay will eventually be felt along the entire coast, from Maine to North Carolina.

It’s probably appropriate, then, that at this time, when the striped bass stock is again overfished and subject to overfishing, that the two Chesapeake Bay states, Virginia and Maryland, have placed themselves on opposite sides of the striped bass debate, and that all of the arguments for and against striped bass conservation can be heard on the shores of Chesapeake Bay.

Virginia has emerged as one of the leaders in the effort to end overfishing and rebuild the striped bass population.  



“Virginia has always been a conservation leader, and this is a time to step up.”
In August, Virginia announced additional emergency regulations that would further restrict both anglers and commercial fishermen.

The recreational changes would mirror those made in the spring; in the past, Virginia anglers were allowed to keep two striped bass per day during the fall season, one between 20 and 28 inches, and one at least 20 inches long, with no maximum size.  The emergency regulations, if they are confirmed in a permanent rule, would prohibit the harvest of bass more than 28 inches long.  On the commercial side, gill netters would, for the first time, face maximum mesh-size restrictions, with an upper limit of 9-inch mesh on the coast and 7-inch mesh in Chesapeake Bay.


“This is a bitter pill to swallow.  What would be worse for captains would be no rockfish.”

“Poor management of striped bass over the past decade has caused significant economic harm to Virginians who depend on healthy fisheries for their livelihoods and has reduced opportunities for recreational anglers.”
He then added

“We need other states to follow our example and help rebuild the striped bass population starting immediately.  Delay is unacceptable and the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission must take decisive action that will restore restoration of this fishery up and down the coast.”
But if Mr. Strickler was including neighboring Maryland in the list of “other states” that he expected to help, he’s going to be disappointed, because in Maryland, the overfished striped bass stock is not viewed as a critical issue.


“Some people are reacting to this as if the sky is falling.  We do understand the need for change.  We have the trend of a decade-long decline we have to turn around.
“We’re not in panic mode.  We believe that we’re still okay.  We know we have the ability to correct for the problem that we see.”
The problem is, Maryland doesn’t seem to be doing too much to correct anything.


Despite that fact, the State of Maryland did nothing to reduce recreational fishing mortality and made no further attempt to meet its obligations under Addendum IV.  In fact, when the issue arose at the October 2016 Atlantic Striped Bass Management Board Meeting, Mr. Luisi showed no remorse for his state’s overharvest, and instead blustered that all was fine, saying

“When we see numbers, an increase in harvest of 58.4 percent in the Chesapeake Bay, it kind of leads I think, board members to believe that Maryland and Virginia, Potomac River may not have contributed to the successful management.  I stress the word success.”
Later in the meeting, he expanded on that theme, and tried to justify Maryland’s overharvest by pointing out that

“The actual written report that we have in our briefing materials speaks to the emergence of the 2011 year class.  It reads that ‘the harvest in the Bay in 2015 was undoubtedly lower than it would have been, had regulations remained status quo.’  I just wanted to make that comment, because I believe it strengthens what was reported as kind of a likely reduction.”
But he was just blowing smoke in what turned out to be a successful attempt to conceal the real issue.  For Addendum IV didn’t merely require Maryland, and the rest of the Chesapeake Bay fishery, to reduce recreational landings below what they “would have been, had regulations remained status quo.”  Maryland and the other Chesapeake jurisdictions were obligated to reduce fishing mortality by 20.5% compared to what it was in 2012.


And still, Maryland shows no remorse.


“I don’t think it was ever anybody’s expectation that we would maintain some form of a constant harvest strategy; while we have the influence of year class strengths that we do.  It would suggest to me that this conversation about finding or maintaining a harvest level at or below the 2012 harvest, it wasn’t something that was going to happen.  We had a 2011 year class expanding into the Bay to the degree that it did.  While we may not have met the letter of the Plan, I believe that our potential harvest was reduced dramatically, as a result of those increases that we took.  I think that we all made a really solid good faith effort in putting together the regulations that we did as a result of Addendum IV, and I’ll leave it at that Mr. Chairman, thanks.”
Given that it’s a basic tenet of statutory or regulatory construction that you look first to the plain language of the law or regulation, and if the plain language is clear and unambiguous, it should be interpreted to mean exactly what it says, the argument that on one really expected Maryland anglers to reduce their harvest below that of 2012 is ludicrous on its face.  After all, the commercial fishermen in the Bay managed to deal with the 2011 year class and still meet their mandated reductions.  The recreational fishermen could have done the same, if Maryland really wanted them to do so. 

Cutting the bag limit from two fish to one, and closing the Bay season during mid-summer, when release mortality soars—as Virginia has already done—are just two approaches that come to mind.


“We’ve had concerns over the reference points for quite some time.  In our mind they’re a bit too high.  I think they provide for an unrealistic expectation to the public that we’re going to be able to achieve that level.
“You know, currently the threshold reference point is 91,000 metric tons and 125 percent of that puts us at a target value, and when you look at the estimates of spawning stock biomass that came out of the benchmark.  We have never achieved the target in all of that time as we’re evaluating that.”
Of course, what he doesn’t mention is that, “in all of that time,” managers have never reduced fishing mortality to the target, either, and doing so is a prerequisite for achieving and maintaining the target biomass.

He also doesn’t mention that allowing Maryland anglers to overfish doesn’t help rebuild the biomass to the target—or even to the threshold.


“The way the Department [of Natural Resources] has been making adjustments over the years has not been good for fishing itself, for the fish,”
making it clear that he understands that what’s good for the fish is also, in the long term, good for his fishing business.  

He observed, with respect to Maryland’s spring trophy season, that

“When you go a whole entire month and a whole fleet doesn’t catch a fish, that’s not good.  It was bad, bad.”

“Early on it was pretty poor, if not terrible.  I just think the biomass is depleted.  There’s a lot of overfishing.”
So fishermen in Maryland get it, even if some of those who are supposedly representing their interests don’t.

But, in the end, that’s the striped bass debate in a nutshell.  Many fishermen, responsible for-hire captains and concerned fishery managers are working to end overfishing and, in time, recover the stock. 

On the other side stand those who are more concerned with larger harvests in the short term, and feel no strong compulsion to build the stock back to a point where the public can enjoy its true potential.

The two sides face off over Chesapeake Bay, and elsewhere along the coast.

We can only hope that the right side prevails.

                                                                                                                                

No comments:

Post a Comment