STRIPED BASS: WHAT DOES MANAGEMENT "SUCCESS" LOOK LIKE?

In last Thursday’s edition of One Angler’s Voyage, I mentioned that I almost choked when I read the report of the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission’s Atlantic Striped Bass Work Group, and learned that the Work Group believed that

“In the post-moratorium era (ending 1990), the management of Atlantic striped bass has largely been a story of success.”

After all, the last benchmark stock assessment, which was officially released early last year, indicated that the stock is overfished, and that overfishing has been occurring for quite a few years.

In addition, recreational fishing effort has been heading steadily downhill, along with striped bass abundance.  According to the most recent benchmark assessment,

“Female [spawning stock biomass] started out at low levels and increased steadily through the late-1980s and 1990s, peaking at 113,602 mt (250 million pounds) in 2003 before beginning to gradually decline; the decline became sharper in 2012.  Female [spawning stock biomass] was at 68,476 mt (151 million pounds) in 2017, below the [spawning stock biomass] threshold of 91,436 mt (202 million pounds).”

During the same time period, recreational fishing effort increased from about 1.3 million directed trips in 1985, when the rebuilding effort began, to nearly 2.4 million trips in 1989, when the ASMFC determined that the stock was recovering, to more than 13 million trips—ten times the 1985 figure—in 1985, when the stock was declared fully recovered.  As the stock continued to grow, effort continued to increase, hitting 22 million when the spawning stock biomass peaked in 2003, and peaking at more than 26 million trips in 2008, when the spawning stock biomass had already begun to decline, but large fish from the big 1993 and 1996 year classes were abundant.

After that, due to declining abundance, effort began to tail off quickly, falling to 22 million trips in 2012 and 17 million in 2017.

So how is it possible for the Work Group to claim that subjecting a once-healthy stock to overfishing and allowing it to become overfished once again, which resulted in a steep decline in angling effort and the concomitant loss of the economic benefits associated with millions of foregone fishing trips, a success?

The Work Group seems to believe that management was successful because

“The species was declared recovered in 1995 and the fishery experienced relative stability well into the 2000s.”

But then, the Work Group notes,

“several years of poor recruitment coupled with declining spawning stock biomass beginning around 2006 raised concerns, and resulted in the implementation of coastwide reductions to fishing mortality in 2015 through Addendum IV to the Interstate Fisheries Management Plan (FMP).  More recently, concerns for the well-being of the stock have been brought forward after the 2018 benchmark stock assessment indicated the stock was overfished and overfishing was occurring.  The adoption of Addendum VI to the interstate FMP further reduced fishing mortality coastwide.”

That’s the Work Group’s argument for striped bass management “largely being a story of success.”

So is the Work Group right?  Or are they merely whistling as they pass by the graveyard, trying to ignore the fact that the current state of the striped bass stock can be viewed as a management failure?

Let’s take a look at each of the claims, and see how things stack up.

We ought to begin by recognizing that the ten years beginning in 1985, when Amendment 3 to the Interstate Fishery Management Plan for Atlantic Striped Bass was adopted, and ending in 1995, when the striped bass stock was declared fully recovered, really was an example of successful fishery management.

I’ll go even further, and declare that the ASMFC’s rebuilding of the once-collapsed striped bass stock in the late 1980s and early 1990s was arguably the greatest saltwater fishery management success ever witnessed on the East Coast, perhaps in the United States, and possibly even anywhere in the world.  The ASMFC’s adoption of a rigorous management plan intended to protect the relatively robust 1982 year class, and all other subsequent year classes, until the spawning stock biomass could be restored is a textbook example of the right way to recover a collapsed fish stock, and nurture it back to health.

After that, though, any signs of a management success are very hard to find.

I say that based on the presumption that if improvement in the stock is to be declared a management success, then that improvement must be linked to a particular management action.  And between the time when Amendment 5 to the Interstate Fishery Management Plan for Atlantic Striped Bass, adopted in 1995, substantially relaxed fishery management measures in response to the stock’s recovery, and 2015, when Addendum IV to Amendment 6 to the Interstate Fishery Management Plan for Atlantic Striped Bass imposed more restrictive regulations that attempted to reduce fishing mortality by 25%, managers took no significant actions that were intended to increase striped bass abundance, although it did adopt a few measures intended to increase striped bass harvest.

If we look at that period, we find that, in Amendment 5, ASMFC’s Atlantic Striped Bass Management Board adopted a coastal recreational bag limit of 2 fish, and a coastal size limit of 28 inches (the previous recreational limits were 1 fish at 34 inches); in so-called “producer areas,” where striped bass spawned, the recreational bag limit was set at 1 fish that was required to be at least 20 inches long.  The commercial fishery was managed by the same size limits, and by initial quotas that the Management Board could change, as it deemed appropriate, to match a change in stock size.

During the period between 1995, when the stock was declared recovered, and 2003, when the female spawning period peaked, the Management Board adopted no significant new management actions, although Addendum IV to Amendment 5 to the Interstate Fishery Management Plan for Striped Bass, adopted in 1998 in an effort to increase the number of larger females in the spawning stock, did require all states to adopt regulations intended to reduce the landings of bass 8 years and older by 14%, beginning in the 2000 season.  However, states that had maintained regulations more restrictive than those mandated by Amendment 5, as a number did at that time, were given a “credit” for their existing rules, and could reduce landings of older fish by a smaller amount, and perhaps not be required to reduce landings at all.

That being the case, it is difficult to give fishery managers credit for any “success” connected with the big 1993, 1996, 2001 and 2003 year classes that provided an abundance of striped bass to the recreational and commercial fisheries, and caused recreational effort to spike.  As Dr. Michael Armstrong, Assistant Director of the Massachusetts Division of Marine Fisheries and recent Chair of the Management Board, noted in a July webinar sponsored by the American Sportfishing Association,

“the primary cause [of variation in striped bass year classes] is…the water regime in Chesapeake Bay.  When you have flood springs, you get bad recruitment. When you get really dry springs, you get bad recruitment.  When you get nice cool, wettish springs, you get big year classes…

“We have to husband the big year classes along the best we can.  The only way to do that is to keep fishing mortality low.”

So it’s nature, and not fisheries managers, who can take credit for good year classes and a real abundance of bass.

Where management measures are needed is after those “flood springs” and “really dry springs,” where management measures are needed to “husband the big year classes” and “keep fishing mortality low.”

After 2003, striped bass entered a seven-year stretch of largely below-average recruitment.  Was striped bass management a success during those years?  

Again, let’s look at the record.

The coastal recreational bag and size limit remained unchanged until 2015.  However, Amendment 6 to the Interstate Fishery Management Plan for Atlantic Striped Bass, adopted in 2003, removed the “producer area” designation from the Hudson River and Delaware Bay, requiring them to be governed by the coastal limits, while allowing Chesapeake Bay jurisdictions to adopt a smaller, 19-inch size limit provided that they also adopted a lower fishing mortality target, F=0.27 rather than the 0.30 that applied on the coast.  Amendment 6 also increased the overall commercial quota, setting it at 100% of each jurisdiction’s landings during the 1972-1979 base period.

While Amendment 6 did not lead to significantly increased recreational landings, it did cause commercial landings to jump, increasing overall fishing mortality just as the female spawning stock began its decline.  Then, beginning in 2007, as recruitment declined and the spawning stock continued to shrink slowly, the Management Board approved a series of exceptions to the management plan, each of which increased fishing mortality by a small amount.

In August 2007, it permitted Maryland to open a brief spring catch-and-keep fishery on the Susquehanna Flats, a designated spawning area that had previously been protected.  In October, it eliminated the quota in Maryland’s so-called spring “trophy” fishery, which targets mature female bass that exit the spawning rivers; Maryland wanted the change because its anglers had exceeded the quota in previous years.

In October 2008, it approved a proposal that would allow the states of Delaware and Pennsylvania to harvest what were technically undersized fish—bass between 20 and 26 inches long—in their sections of the Delaware River, an action which caused New Hampshire Legislative Appointee Dennis Abbott to remark that

“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.  We keep adding little things to our management plan; we can do this in one place and we can do things in another place, and it doesn’t really affect overfishing…

“Though I appreciate what Pennsylvania and Delaware are trying to do to have a better opportunity, we’re really going off the rails here.  When we adopted a coast-wide size limit of 28 inches and 18 inches for the producer areas, that is what we said but we keep 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.”

Mr. Abbott’s statement was one of the first words warning that problems lie ahead, but it was ignored by virtually all of the Management Board.

At its very next meeting, in February 2009, despite low recruitment and a declining stock, the Management Board actually initiated an addendum that would have increased the commercial quota by as much as 50%, and so increased overall fishing mortality by a lesser amount, although that addendum, at least, was ultimately defeated.

The Management Board’s next test, and next opportunity to pursue a successful management regime, came early in 2011, after an update to the stock assessment warned that

“…Abundance and exploitable biomass of ages 8+ are expected to decline regardless of the recruitment scenario.  Female [spawning stock biomass] will fall slightly below the threshold by 2017 regardless of the recruitment scenario…  [emphasis added]”

In other words, if the Management Board did nothing, the striped bass would probably become overfished by the year 2017.

And so the Management Board did…nothing.

At first, the Management Board thought about initiating a new addendum to reduce fishing mortality, but in the end, perhaps buoyed by a good 2011 year class in Maryland, it decided that, despite the best available science saying otherwise, that striped bass represented “a green light fishery,” and allowed the spawning stock biomass to continue its downhill slide.

A year later, it got a wakeup call when the 2013 stockassessment advised that the stock was declining, with fishing mortality abovethe target level, and female spawning stock biomass below the biomasstarget.  That combination of factors tripped two “management triggers” in Amendment 6, one of which required the Management Board to reduce fishing mortality to or below target within one year, and the other requiring it to initiate a 10-year rebuilding program.

As noted in the Work Group report, the Management Board adopted Addendum IV to Amendment 6 in order to reduce fishing mortality; what the Working Group failed to mention is that the Board completely ignored its duty to begin a rebuilding plan.  And even Addendum IV was a half-hearted affair.

Reducing fishing mortality to the target level within 1 year required a 25% reduction in overall F.  However, the Chesapeake jurisdictions whined and cried, trying toconvince the Management Board to ignore the 1 year deadline in Amendment 6, andinstead phase in mortality reductions over 3 years.  When that didn’t work, they successfully petitioned the Management Board to reduce fishing mortality in the Bay by just 20.5% compared to 2012, rather than the 25% compared to 2013 that was applicable everywhere else.

And anglers in Chesapeake Bay, most notably in Maryland, failed to reduce their fishing mortality at all.  Instead, in 2015, they increased striped bass fishing mortality by more than 50%.  And they didn’t stop there.  Maryland anglers killed an estimated 716, 742 striped bass in 2012.  In 2015, that number was 1,107,991, which increased to 1,545,086 in 2016, 1,091,614 in 2017, 993,304 in 2018 and 764,137 in 2019. 

The Management Board did nothing to rein in such landings and require Maryland to achieve a 20.5% reduction in fishing mortality.  That failure was particularly disturbing given that one of the purposes of Addendum IV was to preserve the big 2011 year class until it could enter the spawning stock, and much of Maryland’s recreational landings, particularly in 2015, were 2011s.

So much for the need to “husband the big year classes…”

The failure to adopt a rebuilding plan back in 2014, coupled with a failure to enforce the fishing mortality cuts mandated by Addendum IV, undoubtedly contributed to the most recent benchmark assessment’s finding that the striped bass stock was overfished and subject to overfishing.

Granted, new recreational catch and effort estimates, unavailable prior to 2017, were also a big part of the picture, so the Management Board can legitimately argue that, without those recreational figures, it couldn’t have known how bad things really were. 

Yet having said that, as far back as 2011, they knew that an overfished stock was on the horizon, so their lack of action to prevent that can hardly be justified.

But once they knew, without doubt, that the stock was overfished, what did the Management Board do to fix things? 

Not too much, except, perhaps, to reprise 2014.  Once again, they had an obligation to end overfishing and rebuild the overfished stock.

And, once again, they made a half-hearted effort to end overfishing, adopting Amendment VI, which has a less than 50% probability of succeeding. 

And, once again, they completely ignored their duty to rebuild the stock.

So what, then, does the Work Group, and perhaps the Management Board, think that successful striped bass management looks like?

Is success raising fishing mortality, if just by a little, in the face of declining recruitment and a spawning stock decline?

Is success ignoring the best available science, when it advises that an overfished stock lies just six years down the road, if no action to prevent it is taken?

Is success failing to hold states to their obligations under the management plan, or allowing them to adopt “conservation equivalent” measures that undermine the overall success of the plan?

Is success ignoring the clear mandates of your own management plan, and making no effort to timely rebuild the stock, even though you committed to do so?

Is success adopting an addendum to the management plan that’s more likely to fail than succeed?

Or is success allowing, through your own inaction, a once fully-recovered stock to become overfished once again?

If success is any or all of those things, then yes, the Work Group is right, and “the management of striped bass [over the past three decades] has largely been a story of success.”

But if success means maintaining the striped bass stock at sustainable levels, managing around difficulties such as sub-par recruitment and excessive fishing mortality, providing an abundance of fish that fishermen from North Carolina and Maine can enjoy, and that both commercial and recreational fishermen can exploit without threating the stock’s long-term prospects, then the history of striped bass management since 1995—and particularly in the last decade—is a story of startling failure.

But no, not of failure.

For to fail, as to succeed, one most take action.

The history of striped bass for the past thirty years is more a story of stasis, of a Management Board too paralyzed, to afraid, and/or too unwilling to act, which by its inaction has failed to live up to its commitments and its duty not only to striped bass fishermen, but to the striped bass itself.