THE ASMFC ADOPTS FLAWED STRIPED BASS ADDENDUM VI

On Wednesday, October 30, the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission’s Atlantic Striped Bass Management Board adopted Addendum VI to Amendment 6 to the Interstate Fishery Management Plan for Atlantic Striped Bass.

Addendum VI, as originally contemplated by the Management Board, was already inadequate to address the problems faced by the striped bass stock.  A benchmark striped bass stock assessment, presented to the Management Board earlier this year, found that the striped bass stock is both overfished and experiencing overfishing, findings that came as no surprise to serious striped bass anglers. 

Amendment 6 to the Interstate Fishery Management Plan for Atlantic Striped Bass clearly states that, if the stock experiences overfishing, the Management Board must adopt measures to return fishing mortality to the target level within one year, and that if the stock becomes overfished, the Management Board must adopt measures to rebuild the female spawning stock biomass to the target level within ten years.

The draft version of Addendum VI represented a reasonable effort to address the overfishing problem, but completely ignored the requirement to return the biomass to target within ten years.  The latter action will, supposedly, be addressed in another management action that won’t be initiated until next May, and might or might not be adopted by the Management Board at some point in the indefinite future.

But even the narrow focus of the draft Addendum VI didn’t save it from Management Board members who were seeking to reduce its effectiveness, at least with respect to their own states’ fisheries.

As written, the draft Addendum VI would have a 50 percent probability of reducing fishing mortality by 18%.  It proposed a number of different options, each of which, if followed to the letter, should have been sufficient to achieve that goal.  

One option would have required the commercial and recreational fisheries to each reduce fishing mortality by 18%; the other would have placed most of the conservation onus on the recreational fishery, requiring it to reduce its fishing mortality by 20 percent, with only a 1.8 percent reduction imposed on the commercial side.  (There was also an option to do nothing, but that received no serious attention; everyone recognized that, given the state of the bass, they had to do something to help rebuild the stock.)

Which way to go on those basic options was the first decision that the Management Board had to make.  Pat Keliher, the fisheries director from Maine, moved to adopt Option 2, which would require both sectors to reduce fishing mortality by 18%.  Richard White, the Governor’s Appointee from New Hampshire, seconded the motion.

So far, the new Addendum was on track.  But soon after discussion on the motion began, things went off the rails.

Before the debate had a chance to get underway, Adam Nowalsky, the Legislative Proxy from New Jersey, broke in, questioning the motion’s language about an “equal percentage reduction” and turned the discussion from one about fishing mortality reduction to one about “conservation equivalency.”

For those who are unfamiliar with the way things work at the ASMFC, “conservation equivalency” is a management tool that allows states to adopt regulations that are different from, but supposedly have the same conservation effect as, the regulatory package adopted by the ASMFC in a management plan.  It’s a good idea in theory, but in practice, it has shown quite a few warts, mainly because in the real world, it often provides a path for states to kill more fish than they would have otherwise been allowed to under measures spelled out in a management plan.

After Addendum IV to Amendment 6 to the Interstate Management Plan for Atlantic Striped Bass was adopted in 2014, and established a 1 fish bag limit and 28-inch minimum size for all coastal anglers, New Jersey used conservation equivalency to finagle an extra striped bass for its anglers, manipulating the catch data to show that a regulation allowing anglers to kill one 28 to 40-inch bass, plus a second bass over 43 inches, was equivalent to the ASMFC’s proposed 1@28 inches rule.

Apparently, based on New Jersey’s 2013 landings, prohibiting anglers from keeping a bass in the very narrow 40 to 43-inch slot entitled those anglers to a whole second fish.  You have to wonder how many length combinations New Jersey had to run through their models before they found the right one…

Given Nowalsky’s comments, it was pretty clear that he was setting the scene for history to repeat itself.

Both he and his colleague, Tom Fote, the New Jersey Governor’s Appointee, made repeated comments about how the management measures in Addendum VI would impact some states more than others, and it eventually came out that New Jersey would probably be impacted more than any other state—not surprising, given that its anglers were allowed to kill two bass per day while anglers in every other coastal state, except for little Delaware, could only kill one.

Because of their special, supposedly “conservation equivalent” regulations, New Jersey anglers took home about 625,000 striped bass in 2017, head and shoulders above the next-largest harvests of about 475,000 bass in New York and 400,000 in Massachusetts.  But while it was OK for New Jersey to have the highest landings, it was certainly not OK, at least in the New Jersey folks’ eyes, to take the biggest reduction.

So Nowalsky moved to table the discussion on the “meat” of Addendum VI, the management measures, in order to decide how conservation equivalency was going to be calculated. Because, of course, how many fish you can kill is far more important than how many you can conserve.

At least, it is in New Jersey.

Nowalsky’s motion ultimately failed, with 5 in favor, 8 against, and the two federal agencies abstaining, but that didn’t really matter.  It just pushed the conservation equivalency issue a little farther down the line.

At that point, the original motion was back on the table, at least for a minute, and then there was another diversion as Eric Reid, Legislative Proxy from Rhode Island, made a motion to substitute Option 3 for Option 2, and cut recreational mortality by 20 percent, and commercial by just 1.8.  John Clark, a Delaware fisheries manager, liked that idea enough to second the motion, but he was in a distinct minority, with the motion garnering only 4 supporting votes.

Finally, Option 2, which had received overwhelming support at the public meetings and in comments sent in to the ASMFC, was put to the vote, and passed with a total of 11 votes in favor and 4 opposed.

That was a good start.

After that, it was time to decide on coastal management measures.  The options all included a 1-fish bag limit, but gave the Management Board a choice between a 35-inch minimum size, a 28 to 35-inch slot, a 30 to 38-inch slot or a 32 to 40-inch slot.  All would supposedly meet the 18 percent reduction goal, with some of the slots achieving more, although Addendum VI included some caveats about the slots’ long-term impacts.

I favored the 35-inch minimum size, both to avoid the slots’ tendency to concentrate harvest on the very year classes needed to rebuild the stock, and because it would allow the 2011 and 2015 year classes to spawn two or three times before they were vulnerable to harvest, while the 28 to 35-inch slot, at least, would allow some fish to be removed from the stock before they had spawned even once.

That being said, I had heard enough scuttlebutt coming out of the meeting to know that one of the slots, probably the 28-35, was going to be the most likely choice of the Management Board—even though anglers speaking at the various meetings that ASMFC held, and anglers who sent comments in, preferred the 35-inch minimum by a ratio of more than 3 to 1.

The rumors turned out to be true.  Justin Davis, Connecticut’s fisheries manager, moved for the 28-35 slot, explaining that he felt that such slot would minimize release mortality.  He noted that anglers in some places, and in some sectors, would release too many bass in their efforts to find a 35-inch fish, and cause such mortality to spike.  His choice was also influenced by a desire to protect the oldest, largest females in the spawning stock.

Michael Luisi, a fisheries manager from Maryland, seconded the motion, largely because he felt that Maryland charter boats would have a hard time finding larger fish.  A few members of the Management Board objected to the motion, with Richard White of New Hampshire pointing out that anglers overwhelmingly preferred the 35-inch minimum, and reminding the Board that it was a single, high minimum size that brought the stock back from collapse in the late 1980s and early 1990s.

Jim Gilmore, New York’s fisheries director, commented that while New York anglers sent conflicting signals (comments made at the ASMFC meetings differed from those made in a state Internet survey) angler comment that the 36-inch minimum worked to rebuild the stock before and would also work now “Rings in my head” and caused him to lean toward the 35-inch minimum.  Tom Fote of New Jersey also spoke in favor of the 35-inch minimum, due to its historical success, while John McMurray, Legislative Proxy from New York, said that he favored 1@35” both because of the broad public support and because the anglers who wanted the 28 to 35-inch slot felt that way because it would allow them to kill and take home the very fish from the 2011 and 2015 year classes that Addendum VI was supposed to protect.

As I mentioned earlier, I preferred 1@35 inches, but I could tolerate the slot on a “better than nothing” basis and the hope that the Technical Committee was right when they calculated it would result in a 19 percent reduction.

But Nowalsky brought up conservation equivalency again, and the hope for a real 19 percent reduction went straight out the door.

There were three ways that the conservation equivalency issue could have been handled.  A state could have been required to craft alternate management measures that would meet or exceed the needed coastwide 18 percent reduction.  A state could have been required to craft alternate management measures that would meet or exceed the reduction calculated for the management measure that was adopted—in the case of the 28 to 35-inch slot, 19 percent.  Or, a state could have been required to craft alternate management measures that would meet or exceed the reduction that such particular state would have experienced if it adopted the management measure approved by the Board—which in the case of New Jersey, would apparently have been substantially more than 18 or 19 percent

It should come as no surprise that when Nowalsky rose to amend the motion on the floor, he chose to add the least restrictive conservation equivalency option—18 percent compared to 2017 landings. 

Jason McNamee, Rhode Island’s fishery manager, spoke to Nowalsky's motion to amend.  His comments were critical.  

He observed that “You’re either in or you’re out,” and that “Conservation equivalency can’t work like this, because we’re not going to achieve our goals,” alluding to the fact that if New Jersey’s “conservation equivalent” regulations didn’t achieve the same reductions, in New Jersey, that the slot limit would have, the odds against reducing fishing mortality to the target level increase.

Despite such comments, Nowalsky’s amendment passed by a vote of 11 to 2, with two abstentions, and the amended motion passed 12 to 1, again with two abstaining.

At that point, the chances of Addendum VI achieving its goal took a nosedive.

It’s just simple math.

When the ASMFC’s Atlantic Striped Bass Technical Committee determined that the measures included in Addendum VI would have a 50% chance of reducing fishing mortality by the required 18 percent, it made all of the calculations on a coastwide basis.  That doesn’t mean that such regulations would impact every state in the same way.  Some states, because of how their fishery works, might not see much change in their fishing mortality, while other states—including New Jersey—might experience reductions significantly larger than 18 percent.

But when everything was averaged out, Addendum VI would have had a good chance of reducing fishing mortality to the target level, and a better than 90 percent chance of ending overfishing.

However, if the fishing mortality reduction in a big striped bass harvesting state such as New Jersey is limited to just 18 percent, when it would have been much greater under the coastwide measure, the numbers no longer work.  Because New Jersey won’t take the reduction that it would have taken pursuant to coastwide measures, the average coastwide reduction will no longer be 18 percent, but some lower figure.

At that point, the probability that fishing mortality will be reduced to the target level is no longer 50 percent, but some lower percentage as well.  The probability bell curve is now skewed toward failure.

That doesn’t mean that success is impossible.  The lack of striped bass could well discourage some anglers from fishing, or at least from fishing as often.  And a dearth of striped bass might keep anglers from catching many fish, even when they do venture out.  Striped bass landings, measured in numbers of fish, for the first eight months of this year are nearly 250,000 fish—more than 15 percent—lower than they were for the same period in 2018.  If that trend continues, fishing mortality might be reduced to target even though Addendum VI is was badly damaged by Nowalsky's amendment.

But even if that happy accident occurs, managers must come to realize that Addendum VI is nonetheless badly flawed.  

That flaw doesn’t stem from the fact that it imposes a slot limit, despite the fact that many of us would have liked to have seen something else.

It stems from the fact that conservation equivalency, as applied in Nowalsky's amendment, sabotages the Addendum’s chances of achieving its goal, because it reduces the size of the fishing mortality cuts that occur in the real world to something significantly less than they need to be.

It is well past time for the Management Board to stop blindly accepting conservation equivalency standards that all but assure that management plans will fail.  But for now, wee can only hope that the striped bass don’t pay too high a price for the Management Board’s recent mistake.

IS THIS THE RIGHT TIME FOR A STRIPED BASS SLOT LIMIT?

When the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission’s Atlantic Striped Bass Management Board learned that the striped bass stock was both overfished and experiencing overfishing, it initiated Addendum VI to Amendment 6 to the Interstate Fishery Management Plan for Atlantic Striped Bass, which is intended to end overfishing by reducing fishing mortality by 18 percent.

It proposes a number of possible recreational measures, which can be broken down into those which would establish a fixed minimum size of either 35 or 36 inches, and those which would create a so-called “slot” limit that allows anglers to keep bass falling within a relatively narrow size range, and requires them to release all other fish that fall either below or above the designated legal “slot.”

Slot limits have long been promoted by conservation-minded anglers, who believe that there would be benefits to protecting the larger, more fecund females, and focus harvest on smaller fish.  Such anglers point to the supposed success of slot limits in southern red drum and snook fisheries, and argue that such limits would be beneficial for striped bass as well.

Maine adopted a sort of slot limit in the late 1990s, which it didn’t abandon until 2015, after Addendum IV to Amendment 6 to the Interstate Fishery Management Plan for Atlantic Striped Bass required all coastal states to reduce striped bass fishing mortality by 25 percent.  At that point Maine joined New York and the other New England states in adopting a 28-inch minimum size.  

Maine’s erstwhile slot, which allowed anglers to take one striped bass per day that measured between either 20 to 26 inches, or one measuring at least 40 inches, was anything but a conservation measure.  Because of the detrimental impact of taking immature, 20 to 26-inch fish on the striped bass stock, Maine was forced to reduce its bag limit to a single fish at a time when the ASMFC still permitted all other states to maintain a 2-fish bag limit and a 28-inch minimum size.

The slot limits proposed by Addendum VI don’t create the same problems as the former Maine slot, as none of the coastal slot limits proposed feature a minimum size of less than 28 inches (proposed Chesapeake Bay slots do, but those must be considered separately, as Chesapeake anglers have been traditionally permitted to harvest smaller, and often immature, striped bass).

It’s not clear what anglers really think about slot limits for stripers. 

The ASMFC held meetings in every state on the striper coast, and overall, slots weren’t a popular option.  In Maine, 18 comments supported fixed limits, while 9 favored slots; in New Hampshire, the vote was even more lopsided, with 13 persons favoring a fixed limit, and just 2 supporting a slot.  In Massachusetts, which has one of the largest recreational striped bass fisheries on the coast, 57 persons commented in favor of a fixed limit, and 26 in favor of slots.  

Much of the support for slots in Massachusetts came from the charter boat community, which feared that a 35- or 36-inch minimum size would make it too hard for customers to catch a legal bass, and thus be bad for business.

Moving farther south, 24 anglers in Connecticut spoke in favor of fixed size limits, while 13 favored slots.  In New York, which saw the largest turnout of any state, 17 anglers spoke in favor of a fixed 35-inch minimum size, while just 2 supported a slot.  The ASMFC’s meeting summary noted that, in New York, 

“The shore and private angler sector generally favors a 35” minimum size while the for-hire/party boat sector generally does not support a 35” minimum size.”

Slots fared somewhat better in New Jersey, with 11 persons speaking in support, although the majority—16 anglers—still preferred a fixed minimum size.  Delaware saw few anglers turn out; two spoke in favor or a fixed minimum size, none supported slots.

Only Rhode Island and Pennsylvania saw slot limits garner more support than a fixed minimum size.  The support was strongest in Rhode Island, where 17 persons spoke in favor of slots, and 4 supported a fixed minimum size.  In Pennsylvania, three anglers supported slots, and one a fixed minimum.

The debate took a different tone in southern states, with much of the focus on Chesapeake Bay.  No one commented on specific proposals at the North Carolina meeting.

Even so, the coastwide trend in angler preference is clear:  A simple 35- or 36-inch minimum size was preferred over a slot limit by a ratio of roughly 2 to 1.  Much of the support for a slot limit came from the for-hire community, which was concerned with their customers’ ability to catch and take home legal fish.

The State of New York, like a few other states, also offered an on-line survey to anglers, to give those who didn’t attend the ASMFC meetings a chance to voice their opinions.  To the surprise of many who attended the public meetings, the preliminary results of the New York survey were completely opposite the opinions expressed at the New York meetings, and of the majority of meetings throughout the Northeast and upper Mid-Atlantic:  About three-quarters of the respondents supported some sort of slot, with a 28-35-inch slot the most popular, while just one-fourth of the respondents favored a fixed minimum size limit.

It's difficult to reconcile the two very different results.

In the end, no one should have to.  When trying to end overfishing and rebuild an overfished stock, the right management measure isn’t the one that anglers prefer, or the for-hire boats want.  The right answer is the measure that the stressed fish stock needs.

And right now, there are good reasons to believe that the striped bass need something other than a slot limit.

The first suggestion comes from Addendum VI itself, which notes

“the long term conservation benefits of implementing slot limits (i.e., protecting older, larger fish) many not be realized if effort is concentrated on fish within the slot limit, thus reducing the number of fish that survive to grow out of the slot.  While the [Plan Development Team] expects fish larger than the slot limit will be protected, concentrating effort within the slot limit may reduce the number of fish that are able to grow out of the slot thus potentially reducing the population of larger, older fish over time.”

That’s a real concern, because if a slot is put in place, that portion of the for-hire fleet that emphasizes catch-and-kill, along with all shore-based and private boat anglers who are looking to take a fish home, will be spending their time targeting those few year classes of fish that fall into the narrow 7- or 8-inch wide (e.g., 28-35-inch or 32-40-inch) slots, a concentration of effort that is likely to diminish the benefits of big year classes to the spawning stock, and decimate smaller year classes before they can make a meaningful contribution to the future of the striped bass.

While some in the for-hire fleet argue that a slot will reduce release mortality by making it easier to catch and keep a legal fish without having to winnow through a host of undersized stripers, they ignore the fact that smaller fish are much easier to release alive than the large ones are, and that a slot might very possibly increase release mortality because it is the bigger bass, that experience more stress over the course of being captured, which are the most likely to die after being returned to the water.

It’s also important to note that one of the big motivations behind the for-hire sector’s support of a slot is that it better assures that they’ll be able to find bass for their customers to take home.  But assuring that customers can still take home fish is antithetical to the notion of a fishing mortality reduction.  

If we can assume that the charter boats, at least, can currently find enough bass for their customers to take home (a dubious assumption, as sometimes even the best angler gets skunked), then the management measures adopted under Addendum VI will be at least a partial failure if all for-hire customers can all still come home with a bass in their cooler.  The entire purpose of the new Addendum is to reduce mortality by at least 18 percent—which means that for the Addendum to be a success, at least 18 percent of the for-hire customers who successfully took home a bass in 2017 need to be coming home with empty coolers next season.

When thinking about slots, we also need to think about the current structure of the striped bass spawning stock. 

2003 was a very big year class in the Chesapeake Bay, which led to very strong recruitment of Age 1 fish in 2004.  Then, it was 8 years before another strong year class, with fairly strong recruitment of Age 1 fish, occurred.  

The 2003s have experienced substantial attrition over the years, and are far less abundant than they once were.  The future of the spawning stock now depends not on the survivors from the 2003 year class, but on the survival of the 2011 year class, on the big 2015 year class and, to a lesser extent, on the marginally above-average 2017 and 2018 year classes.

As the 2003s exit the population, the 2011s and 2015s, and perhaps the 2017s and 2018s, represent the future of the striped bass population.  A 28-35-inch slot limit, which allows those year classes to be depleted as soon as the majority of them are recruited into the spawning stock, will minimize those year classes’ ability to reproduce and contribute to the future of the population.

While a 35-inch minimum size will allow anglers to harvest some of the oldest and most fecund female striped bass, it will also allow all of the striped bass to mature and spawn at least once before being caught, and will give most of those fish a chance to spawn two, three or more times before being large enough to be legally retained.

When a stock is overfished, increasing recruitment becomes critically important and the best way to do that is to keep the spawning stock as large as possible.

Under such circumstances, encouraging the harvest of barely-mature fish through the use of a slot limit could be harmful to the long-term health of the stock.

For those reasons, we can hope that, when ASMFC’s Atlantic Striped Bass Management Board meets next Wednesday, it adopts a 35- por 36-inch minimum size, and eschews anything that resembles a slot limit.

That doesn’t mean that slots are necessarily bad.  Once—IF—the striped bass stock is restored to abundance, and mistakes have relatively minor consequences, managers might want to experiment with a slot, to see whether it might be better for the bass.

But now, when a further decline in abundance could put the stock in real danger, is not the time to experiment with anything.  Managers should be prudent, and adopt a time-tested approach to ending overfishing and rebuilding the stock—a 35- or 36-inch minimum size.

There will be plenty of time to experiment with slot limits once the population is rebuilt.  But right now, the cost of making a mistake would just be too high.

STRIPED BASS: IS THIS THE ASMFC'S LAST CHANCE TO GET IT RIGHT

When the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission announced, in 1995, that they had managed to fully restore the once-collapsed striped bass population, that announcement marked one of the most significant fisheries management victories that ever occurred, not only on the East Coast or in the United States, but arguably in the world.

In just ten years, the ASMFC managed to bring back a collapsed stock that had fallen to such lows that people  sought to have it listed under the federal Endangered Species Act, and achieved a full and vibrant recovery.

But after that, the ASMFC’s striped bass management program fell into decline.  Instead of defending its singular victory, and standing ready to challenge any and all threats to the striped bass population, the ASMFC’s Atlantic Striped Bass Management Board fell into a sort of lassitude, where it cared more about regulatory stability and not rocking the boat than it did about maintaining a healthy striped bass population.

It could get away with that at first, as a healthy striped bass stock produced outstanding year classes in 1993, 1996, 2001 and 2003, and a host of fish of various sizes filled the coastal sea.  At that point, the Management Board’s toughest job was to fight off efforts to push landings up to clearly unsustainable levels.  Except for that debate, which culminated in the adoption of Amendment 6 to the Interstate Fishery Management Plan for Atlantic Striped Bass in 2003, the Management Board didn’t have to do much more than bask in the reflected glow of its earlier success.

The situation changed soon after that, as a string of average to below-average spawns caused recruitment to decline .  

Female spawning stock biomass peaked in 2003, and thene entered upon a long-term decline.  The stock waned for a few years before fishermen and fisheries managers took notice, since even with the population decreasing, bass remained relatively abundant.

The first quasi-official warning that there might be problems with the stock came at the October 2008meeting of the Management Board, when New Hampshire’s Legislative Appointee, RepresentativeDennis Abbott, objected to proposed state management measures that weren’t instrict compliance with the management plan, saying

“To me what is going on is, as I would term it, is  we’re dealing with striped bass management as becoming death by thousand cuts…

“…When we adopted a coast-wide size limit of 28 inches and 18 inches for producer areas, that is what we said but we keep on weakening that.  I just think that it’s the wrong way to go because in a lot of circles people think that striped bass fishing is not as good as it was, and continuing as a management board to do these things is not going in the right direction.  [emphasis added]”

But the Management Board took no heed of Rep. Abbott’s warning, continued to approve state regulations that allowed the capture of sub-28-inch striped bass, and blindly stuck to their chosen path despite the steady stream of reports, mostly from northern New England, that suggested that the stock had fallen into decline.

Such reports were held in such disregard that, in early 2009, the Management Board seriously considered increasing commercial landings by as much as 25 percent, although they eventually abandoned that effort.

Management Board members continued to express concern about the health of the stock.  Those concerns were fully justified in 2011, when a stock assessment update advised that

“Abundance and exploitable biomass of age 8+ are expected to decline regardless of the recruitment scenario.  Female [spawning stock biomass] will fall slightly below the threshold by 2017 [meaning that the stock will become overfished] under both recruitment scenarios.”

Thus, for the first time, the Management Board had a clear warning from the Striped Bass Stock Assessment Subcommittee that there was trouble ahead.  

At first, the Management Board responded appropriately, initiating an addendum to the management plan that could have reduced fishing mortality by as much as 40 percent.  But at the November 2011 Management Board meeting, work on that addendum was halted.

It was the first in a series of bad management decisions that culminated in the striped bass stock becoming overfished.

In just about every case, such decisions share a common thread—a sort of perverted precautionary principle that led managers to avoid placing any restrictions on harvest if there was a chance that such measures might be unnecessary.  Time after time, they demonstrated a willingness to put the future health of the stock at risk, rather than take the chance that landings levels were cut without absolute and uncontrovertable evidence that such cuts were necessary.

In short, on multiple occasions, the Management Board demonstrated that it would rather take the chance that there would be fewer live fish in the ocean than risk putting fewer dead bass on the dock.

That’s what happened in 2011 when, despite the warning that the stock would become overfished, a number of Management Board members declared that striped bass represented a “green light” fishery, and that no precautionary measures were needed.  Comments made by Tom Fote, the Governor’s Appointee from New Jersey, pretty well summed up the prevailing attitude:

“I also look at the fact that we’re dealing with a species that is not being overfished and overfishing is not taking place, and the targets [in the management plan that supposedly would require management action] are not on line…

“…how can I be a hypocrite and go out to my public in New Jersey and basically say, oh, by the way, we’ve been doing so great with striped bass and there really is no—we haven’t hit any of the triggers and now I’m going to reduce your catch by 40 percent.”

In other words, it’s better to wait until the striped bass are facing a certain crisis than trying to prevent that crisis from ever occurring.  It’s like racing down a road, seeing a sign that says “BRIDGE OUT AHEAD” and not easing up on the throttle, because, after all, you haven’t reached the river bank yet.

At the least, you ought to slow down…

In 2013, a new benchmark stock assessment finally threw downthe caution flag, when it warned that, while the striped bass stock was not yetoverfished, and not yet subject to overfishing, it had been above the fishingmortality target, and below the spawning stock biomass target, for a number of years.  Those findings tripped two triggers in the management plan.

One trigger required the Management Board to reduce fishing mortality to the target level within one year.  The Management Board made a good-faith effort to do that by adopting Addendum IV to Amendment 6 to the Interstate Fishery Management Plan forAtlantic Striped Bass, which required a 25% reduction in fishing mortality on the coast, and a 20.5% reduction in Chesapeake Bay.

However, the Management Board it totally ignored a second requirement to rebuild the spawning stock biomass to its target level within three years.  Surprisingly, that failure was due, at least in part, to a comment by Michael Wayne, then the Fishery Management Plan Coordinator for striped bass, who told the Management Board

“Management Trigger 2 [Author’s comment 1:  it was actually Management Trigger 4] in Amendment 6 says that you need to rebuild the [spawning stock biomass] back to its target over a specified timeframe that should not exceed ten years.  I think there is sort of a combination of things happening.  The board is acting to reduce [fishing mortality].  Through that action we see the projection showing that [spawning stock biomass] will start increasing toward its target [Author’s comment 2:  In the real world, that increase never occurred] but we’re uncomfortable projecting out far enough to tell you when it will reach its target because the further on the projection we go the more uncertainty that is involved.  Therefore, I think the trend is to get back towards the target, but we can’t tell you how quickly that will happen.”

It was strange advice, first because it advised the Management Board to ignore an explicit provision of the management plan, and second because, yes, uncertainty increases as projections go out in time, but ten-year rebuilding plans are the default in all federally-managed fisheries, and if federal managers can make 10-year projections, it’s difficult to understand why ASMFC’s managers can’t do the same.

But, strange or not, it was advice that the Management Board could hang on to, if it wanted to avoid the harvest reductions associated with a 10-year rebuilding plan.  So no rebuilding plan was adopted.

That decision greased the skids on a declining stock that was already speeding on its path downhill.

If a rebuilding plan was put in place and properly monitored, the Management Board would have been able to track the stock’s trajectory, and hopefully make adjustments if it was growing too slowly to recover within the 10-year deadline.  But without such monitoring, the stock continued to slide downward, and nobody noticed.

The benchmark assessment released in 2018 revealed that the spawning stock biomass was already overfished in 2014, but as it relied on information unavailable four years earlier, it’s not reasonable to hold the Management Board responsible for information that it couldn’t yet know.  On the other hand, actions that the Management Board took—or didn’t take—pursuant to Addendum IV just made that bad situation worse.

And that, it could have prevented.

Instead, it made two more bad decisions that led to a further decline.

Addendum IV required the Chesapeake Bay states to reduce their fishing mortality by 20.5 percent, compared to what it was in 2012.  That was an easy thing to do in the commercial fishery, which could be shut down once landings reached the new, reduced cap.  In the recreational fishery, it was a lot harder, as anglers’ catch isn’t governed by a hard quota, but rather by a “soft” fishing mortality target.  

That means that state fishery managers and ASFC’s Atlantic Striped Bass Technical Committee had to make some assumptions—you can call them “guesses” if you like—about angling effort in the face of both more restrictive regulations and a big 2011 year class that was just entering the fishery.

Everyone did their best, but it turned out that recreational fishing mortality in Chesapeake Bay not only failed to achieve the required 20.5 percent reduction, but actually increased by more than 50 percent.  

That was no one’s fault; predicting angler behavior is hard.

But, again, when faced with the fact that the Bay anglers overfished, the Management Board did nothing at all to correct the problem.  It did not require Maryland, which was by far the biggest offender, to revise their regulations in a way that would actually achieve the 20.5 percent reduction.

Instead, it allowed Maryland to overfish for at least another four years.

Part of the justification for that was a 2016 update to thestock assessment, which showed that, over all, anglers had actually underfishedtheir target; fishing mortality dropped to 0.16 in 2015, slightly belowthe mortality target of 0.18.

Still, it was a mistake to allow any sector to evade its responsibilities to reduce harvest, because there is never a guarantee that everyone else will underfish their quotas in the future.  And, as things turned out, they didn’t.

As early as the Management Board’s February 2017 meeting, there was strong evidence that the low 2015 landings were a one-time event, and that recreational fishing mortality was trending upward again a year later.  Yet, one again, the Management Board ignored the clear warning.  It decided to rely on the 2015 figures and 2016 update, and ignore the fact that recreational harvest in 2016 was 18 percent higher than it was the year before.  It did not want to consider the possibility that fishing mortality was again on the rise.

Given the Management Board’s inaction, it’s hardly surprising that the 2018 benchmark assessment found that the striped bass stock is both overfished and experiencing overfishing.

And it’s hardly surprising that, when that finding tripped two more triggers in Amendment 6 that required the Management Board to take action, the Board again opted to try to reduce fishing mortality, but has taken no action to rebuild the overfished stock within the required 10-year time period.

Thus, in a little more than eight years, the Management Board has had five separate opportunities to take meaningful action to either maintain or restore the health of the striped bass spawning stock.

And every time, it failed to take actions needed to protect the striped bass.

Now, it has one more chance.

But today, it can no longer afford to make a mistake.

This is no longer 2011, when determined intervention before the stock became overfished might have prevented the spawning stock biomass from sinking beneath the threshold.

This is no longer 2014, when the required rebuilding plan, which was never drafted, might have let managers know that the stock was in more trouble than they thought, and perhaps give them a chance to stem the continuing decline.

This is no longer 2016 nor 2017, when managers had a chance to intervene and reduce excessive landings, but sat on their hands instead.

And this isn’t even May 2019, when the Management Board was required to initiate a rebuilding plan, and chose to shirk that duty once again.

Now, as 2019 draws to a close, the striped bass stock is overfished, and overfishing continues.  The stakes have been raised, because a failure to take needed action today could have much more dire consequences than a mistake made eight years ago.

Yes, there is always the chance that a dominant year class, something the size of the year classes produced in 1993, 1996, or 2001—or perhaps even 2011—will again be produced in 2020, and if that happens, many will say that all of us who have called for more precautionary management are all just alarmists who see the sky falling every time a bird’s shadow passes over the ground.

If we are indeed wrong, the worst thing precaution might bring is more striped bass in the sea.

But if events justify our caution—if the striped bass experience below-average recruitment for a few years in a row, something like the low recruitment that occurred from 2004 through 2010, which led to our current problems—and the ASMFC doesn’t take strong enough action to cut landings, we will find ourselves in a very bad place.

If we start with a healthy stock, and the ASMFC fumbles, we know happens next.  We end up with the overfished stock that we have today.

But if we start with an overfished stock, and the ASMFC drops the ball, we could be staring at stock collapse.

Thus, when the Management Board meets on October 30, they must adopt measures that end overfishing and reduce fishing mortality to no more than the target level.  But that, in itself, is not enough.

Once work on the pending Addendum VI is done, the Management Board must reject any conservation equivalency proposals that might look good on paper, but are based on such tenuous data that their real-world worth is unknown.  We can’t let any state fail, once again, to make a real 18 percent cutback.

And in May, when the Management Board begins work on a new amendment to the management plan, it must finally take action to rebuild the spawning stock, so that the stock is not only abundant, but includes a wide range of ages and sizes, to buffer it against those times when recruitment is low.

Given the state of the stock, this may be the Management Board’s last chance to not only take action, but to get it right.

Because if they get it wrong this time, it might be many years before they have an opportunity to make things right once again.

HOW TO THINK ABOUT MARYLAND'S 2019 JUVENILE STRIPED BASS ABUNDANCE INDEX

By now, the word is out.

Maryland’s striped bass juvenile abundance index for 2019, announced last Thursday, is 3.37, less than one-third of the long-term average of 11.6.  Given that the striped bass stock is already overfished and is also experiencing overfishing, the biggest question out there is what poor spawning success in 2019 means for the striper’s future.

It’s impossible to gauge the impact of the 2019 abundance index figure on the striped bass stock without putting the number in context.  Maryland’s Department of Natural Resources took a struck a measured tone when it noted that

“Weather, river flows, and abundance of food for newly-hatched fish are all important factors in the spawning success of fish such as striped bass.  Although the specific cause of this year’s poor spawning has not yet been determined, large variations in annual reproductive success are normal for the Bay’s striped bass population.  Typically, several years of average reproduction are interspersed with high and low years.  While three of the past five years have produced strong numbers of young-of-the-year striped bass, the department is recommending continued monitoring and conservation measures.”

Bill Anderson, Maryland’s Assistant Secretary for Aquatic Resources, also noted that

“The Chesapeake Bay spawning stock is still capable of high reproductive success under the right conditions.”

That’s an important point, because some Striped Bass Management Board members have also argued that the Chesapeake Bay’s productivity has declined in recent years.  Maryland’s statement that the Bay is still capable of “high reproductive success” goes a long way to put the reduced productivity arguments to rest.

Of course, we can’t ignore the qualification “under the right conditions.”

There is good evidence that striped bass spawning success is highest in years that feature wet winters and cool springs.  On the other hand, when winters are dry with little snow, and spring brings quick warming, spawns are likely to be sub-par.  Spawning success is associated with a phenomenon known as the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation, which is a long-term climate pattern that sees large areas of the Atlantic Ocean alternately warm and cool.

When the Oscillation brings favorable spawning conditions, bass thrive.  When it brings unfavorable conditions, spawns are often poor, and bass populations decline.  About 80% of the variation in striped bass spawning success can theoretically be attributed to this long-term climate pattern.

If 2019’s low juvenile abundance index is associated with the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation, we could be looking at a long string of relatively poor spawns, similar to what we saw during the period 2004-2010, which helped to bring the striped bass spawning stock down to its current overfished state.  The Striped Bass Management Board’s failure to promptly reduce fishing mortality inorder to compensate for those poor spawns helped assure that the stock would become depleted.

Thus, it’s important that the Management Board act to reduce fishing mortality to the target level when it meets on October 30.  That’s when it will make a final decision on Addendum VI to Amendment 6 of the Interstate Management Plan for Atlantic Striped Bass, which is expected to impose needed cuts in harvest.  

If fishing mortality isn’t adequately constrained, and striped bass go into another long period of below-average spawns, the stock could find itself in real trouble.

Even if fishing mortality is reduced to the target level next year, there is less than a 10% chance that the stock will rebuild by 2023; if fishing mortality is significantly above target, even if overfishing does not occur, there is virtually no chance at all that the stock can be rebuild by that date.  At the August Management Board meeting, the time required to rebuild the stock, assuming that fishing mortality was reduced to target, was estimated to be about 13 years.

And that assumes that the striped bass enjoy average spawning success.  Again, depending on conditions, that could be a big assumption.

As mentioned earlier, the 2019 Maryland abundance index of 3.37 is relatively meaningless unless put in context.  Maryland’s recent announcement notes that “three of the past five years have produced strong numbers of young-of-the-year striped bass,” and putting this year’s figure into a historical context is probably the right way to begin evaluating just what that figure really means.

Taking a historical approach, we note that an average of the Maryland juvenile abundance indices for the past three years—2017, 2018, and 2019—would be a little over 10.4, somewhat below the long-term average of 11.6.

Extending that average back another two years would capture the large 2015 year class, and result in a 5-year average of 11.5—just below the long-term average, and close enough to consider the five-year average to equal the long-term figure.  Go back 10 years, to capture not only the 2015s, but the 2011 year class as well, and you end up with a number that equals the long-term average of 11.6.

From that perspective, this year’s abundance index doesn’t seem to signal anything dire.  However, it also isn’t enough to spur recovery.  Remember that the 2011 and 2015 year classes were already figured into the projection that the stock will still be a long way from recovered in 2023.

But, again, the big question is what happens next.  Is the 2019 juvenile abundance figure an outlier or, like the 2016 juvenile abundance number, a seeming interruption in what could be a trend of increasing spawning success?  Or is it the first in a string of bad years?

Remember that the average index for the seven-year period 2004-2010 was around 9, not too far below the long-term average. Yet the small difference between a seven-year average of 9 and the long-term average of 11.6 was enough to cause the spawning stock, which peaked in 2004, to slip into a steady decline beginning in 2011, and eventually to become overfished.

Thus, if the 2019 juvenile abundance index is the harbinger of a similar period of below-average recruitment that began when the stock was already overfished, it is easy to see how the stock could end up in serious trouble unless management measures far more restrictive than those in Addendum VI are promptly implemented.

So it’s reasonable to say that the 2019 juvenile abundance figure doesn’t foreshadow anything good.

It might still turn out to be a relatively meaningless number, if a few large year classes are produced in the near future.  But such production is no guaranteed.

Perhaps the most rational comment on the 2019 number came from the American Saltwater Guides Association, which noted

“The press release yesterday does not spell the end for stripers.  They do spawn in boom and bust cycles.  Cold, wet springs are the recipe for good recruitment.  It should be noted that the spring of 2019 was one of the wettest on record.

“Our plea to the managers up and down the coast is simple.  If a robust [2011] year class gave you the wiggle room to ease reductions in 2012, then the equal and opposite reaction would be that this [young-of-the-year] report should cause you to take a precautionary approach.”

Because when you don’t know where you’re going, and you see a warning sign, it makes sense to slow down.

Otherwise, you could find yourself driving right over the edge of a cliff, with no time left to avoid a crash.