STRIPED BASS: THEY RELEASE FISH IN THE CHESAPEAKE, TOO

As the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission’s Atlantic Striped Bass Management Board begins its first unsteady steps toward a new amendment to the striped bass management plan, anglers can only hope that it bases such amendment on science and statistically-demonstrable facts, and not on instincts, opinion and political considerations.

The recently-released report of the Work Group tasked with identifying issues to be addressed in the amendment provided little comfort in that regard, seeming to focus more on bureaucratic and political conveniences such as “management stability” and “flexibility” rather than on the long-term health of the stock. 

It is particularly troubling that the Work Group report seemed, in at least once case, to present unverified assertions and mere opinions as fact, and used such non-facts as one building block of its recommendations to the Management Board.  I’m specifically referring to the comment that

“The [Work Group] has acknowledged that angler behavior varies significantly on both a local and regional level.  In some parts of New England, many fish are released, while in Chesapeake Bay, anglers often wish to keep their allowable catch.”

After hearing Maryland’s Michael Luisi—who, perhaps not coincidentally, was a member of the Work Group that produced the report--repeatedly attempt to undercut conservation efforts by allowing a bigger kill in the Chesapeake Bay, and argue for reducing the female spawning stock biomass target and so permanently reduce the size of the Atlantic striped bass population, it’s easy to believe that such assertion is true.

But is that really the case?  Do the numbers actually support a philosophical divide between New England and Chesapeake Bay anglers with respect to catch and release?

I decided to take a look at the data and to see what it might tell us. 

In order to focus on current angler behavior, under a set of regulations that was more-or-less consistent along the entire coast and throughout the entire time series, I looked at data for every state between Maine and North Carolina for the five years beginning in 2015 and ending in 2019—the span of time when recreational striped bass regulations were governed by Addendum IV to Amendment 6 to the Atlantic Striped Bass Interstate Management Plan, when coastal anglers (except in a few “conservation equivalent” states) were subject to a 1-fish bag and 28-inch minimum size, while anglers in the Chesapeake Bay fished under regulations that were supposed to reduce their fishing mortality by 20.5 percent, when compared to 2012, but actually allowed such mortality to increase to more than `150 percent of what it was in that base year.

The data revealed that the Work Group’s assumption was false.  

While the highest catch and release rates did generally occur in New England, Maryland’s overall release rate for the five-year time period hovered just a few percentage points below the coastwide average, while that of Virginia anglers, who also fish in the Chesapeake Bay, very slightly exceeded that average.  The lowest release rate occurred not in the Chesapeake Bay, but right in the center of the striped bass’ rang, in the State of New Jersey, which the Management Board favored with regulations that facilitated such higher striped bass kill.

For the period 2015-2019, striped bass anglers released about 92 percent of the fish that they caught.  Only three states had anglers who released a lower proportion of their catch, New York (89 percent), Maryland (89 percent) and New Jersey (81 percent).  Given the imprecision inherent in state-level catch, harvest, and release estimates, it’s safe to say that, in every state but New Jersey—but including the Chesapeake Bay jurisdictions—striped bass anglers release about 90 percent of all fish that they catch.

Thus, contrary to the assertions made by some Management Board members at the Board’s August meeting, the recreational striped bass fishery can realistically be considered—and managed as—primarily a release fishery, in which high abundance and ready access to fish are paramount, rather than as a meat fishery, in which lower abundance and less access is a reasonable tradeoff to gain a higher level of landings.

It also means that, in terms of catch and release, there is less of a north/south difference in catch and release than people seem to think.  While New England does have higher catch and release rates than the rest of the coast, ranging from nearly 99 percent in Maine down to 95 percent in Massachusetts, the states with the highest total recreational striped bass catch over the five-year period, Maryland (50 million fish), Massachusetts (36 million fish) and New York (21 million fish) all have release rates in a broadly similar ballpark, 89 percent, 95 percent, and 89 percent, respectively.

That pretty much throws the notion that Chesapeake Bay anglers want to harvest more fish out of the window, particularly when one realizes that the Chesapeake Bay anglers were generally fishing on a two-fish bag limit, rather than the single fish bag that applied to Massachusetts and New York.  Such bag would mean that Maryland anglers could, if they had wanted to, retain a higher percentage of their catch than anglers in New York and Massachusetts.

But the similarity between the release percentage in Maryland and the release percentage in New York suggests that they didn’t want to.  And the Virginia release percentage for the five years in question, 92 percent, just about equal to the average coastal release rate, seems to further discredit the claim that “in Chesapeake Bay, anglers often wish to keep their allowable catch.”

After all, a large part of Virginia’s coastline, and a large part of its striped bass catch, falls within the bounds of the Chesapeake Bay.

However, where we do see some big differences in the harvest to release ratio is between the for-hire and other sectors.  In most states, the for-hire sector is much more harvest-oriented than other anglers. 

Over-all, for-hire boats released just 69 percent of the bass that their anglers caught, which was 23 percentage points lower than the release rate for anglers as a whole.

Once again, there was no clear distinction between the New England and the Chesapeake Bay states.

Maine led all of the states in the proportion of fish released, with its for-hire boats returning more than 97 percent of their fish to the water (technically, Delaware for-hires actually earned first place, releasing 100 percent of the fish that their clients caught; however, because that state’s for hire boats only caught about 500 bass during the entire 5-year period, they were not included in the standings).  New Hampshire for-hires came in right after Maine, releasing nearly 95 percent of their striped bass.

But after that, the percentage of fish released by New England for-hires falls off fairly quickly, with Rhode Island boats releasing only 47 percent of the bass caught, a low for the entire coast.  New Jersey had the second-lowest for-hire release rate, 59 percent, followed by Maryland and New York, at 62 and 66 percent, respectively.  Virginia, Maryland’s partner in the Chesapeake Bay recreational fishery, saw its for-hires release 80 percent of their bass, placing them well above the coastwide average.

It’s also worth looking at is how the effort is spread across the sectors.  

Generally, the for-hire sector makes up an extremely small percentage of the total recreational trips taken, accounting for fewer than 2 percent of all targeted striped bass trips coastwide, yet it consistently takes far more than 2 percent of the fish landed.  

When we again look at the three states with the largest recreational striped bass catch, we find for-hire trips comprising about 1.5 percent of the recreational effort in Massachusetts, 4.5 percent in Maryland, and a little over 2 percent in New York.  However, because the for-hire’s release rate is so low, that sector accounted for about 9.5 percent of the harvest in Massachusetts and New York, and over 15 percent in Maryland.

 So yes, some people in the Chesapeake Bay may want to keep the fish that they catch, but those people seem to be disproportionately represented in the for-hire fleet.  When for-hires are removed from the equation, the release rate of Maryland’s shorebound and private boat anglers, who account for more than 95 percent of all striped bass trips taken in that state, is slightly above 90 percent.

Looking at the hard numbers, it’s easy to refulte the claim that Chesapeake Bay anglers are significantly more likely to kill their fish than are anglers farther north.  

If any pattern emerges at all, it is that the State of New Jersey, releases a lower proportion of fish than do anglers either to the north or south of that state.

But that's hardly surprising, given that New Jersey regularly finds ways to finagle supposedly “conservation equivalent” regulations out of the Management Board, in odrder to allow its anglers to land more fish than their counterparts elsewhere on the coast. When a state’s policy is designed to facilitate landings, rather than encourage conservation, it's not hard to understand why such state will have the lowest release rate on the coast.

But, New Jersey aside, anglers' tendency to catch and release their bass is evident everywhere else, from Massachusetts (95 percent) and Rhode Island (96 percent) in the north to Virginia (92 percent, including the Chesapeake Bay) and North Carolina (96 percent) in the south. 

In between there are some outliers, but no clear regional trends.

Despite some language in the Work Group report, and some comments made by particularly fish-hungry members of the Management Board, throughout its range, the striped bass is a fish that supports a largely recreational, largely catch-and-release, and overwhelmingly surf/private boat fishery.

As such, it should be managed conservatively, for a stable and abundant stock, and not for the highest sustainable harvest.

Managing for landings instead of abundance would place the short-term economic interests of a handful of stakeholders ahead of the long-term interests not only of the vast majority of stakeholders, but of the striped bass itself.

That’s just the wrong thing to do.