STRIPED BASS AMENDMENT 7--CONSIDERING OUR OPTIONS: PART III, REBUILDING THE STOCK

 Amendment 6 to the Interstate Fishery Management Plan for Atlantic Striped Bass contains five “management triggers” which are tripped when one or more threats to the stock arise.

Management trigger 4 reads

“If the Management Board determines that female spawning stock biomass falls below the target for two consecutive years and the fishing mortality rate exceeds the target in either of those years, the Management Board must adjust the striped bass management program to rebuild the biomass to a level that is at or above the target within [no more than ten years].”

That trigger was tripped in 2013, after a benchmark stock assessment informed the Management Board both that fishing mortality was above the fishing mortality target, and that female spawning stock biomass was below the biomass target, and had been for a few years.

Yet, as far as the Management Board rebuilding the spawning stock biomass goes, that just didn’t happen.

That was partly because the Management Board heeded then-Fishery Management Plan Coordinator Michael Waine, who advised it not to initiate the required 10-year rebuilding plan, saying

“The Board is acting to reduce [fishing mortality].  Through that action we see the projections showing that [spawning stock biomass] will start increasing toward its target, but we’re uncomfortable wit projecting out far enough to tell you when it will reach its target because the further on the projections we go the more uncertainty that is involved.  Therefore, I think the trend is to get back toward the target, but we can’t tell you how quick that will happen.”

But the predicted rebuilding also didn’t happen, largely because the old Marine Recreational Fishing Statistics Survey grossly underestimated angler effort, and so the number of striped bass that were being killed by anglers each year.  

It wouldn’t be hard to argue that even if a rebuilding plan had been adopted in 2014, the underestimated recreational kill would have probably rendered rebuilding unlikely, although such plan, had it been initiated, might have been enough to stop some of the bleeding, and prevent the stock from declining further over the next five or so years.

There is another fishing mortality trigger in Amendment 6, management trigger 2, which reads

“If the Management Board determines that the biomass has fallen below the threshold in any given year, the Board must adjust the striped bass management program to rebuild the biomass to the target level within [no more than ten years]”

That management trigger was tripped in 2019, after the Management Board accepted the 2018 stock assessment, which found the striped bass stock to be both overfished and experiencing continued overfishing.,

But even after biomass triggers were tripped by two consecutive benchmark assessments, the Management Board seemed to be in no hurry to initiate the required rebuilding plan.  Instead of promptly taking action to rebuild the stock within ten years, action that the Amendment 6 said “must” be taken, the Management Board instead initated a new Amendment 7 to the striped bass management plan.  

As originally conceived by some of its earliest proponents, Amendment 7 would have, instead of rebuilding the stock, merely “moved the goalposts” by lowering the biomass reference points, an action that would do nothing to increase striped bass abundance, but would have allowed managers to point to the redefined biomass target and threshold and say that the stock was not overfished any more.

That approach was almost universally condemned by participants in the striped bass fishery, and efforts to reduce the biomass target and threshold were stripped out of the earliest draft of Amendment 7 at the Management Board’s May 2021 meeting. 

The Management Board went one step further at its October 2021 and January 2022 meetings, adding specific language to the final Draft Amendment 7 to the Interstate Fishery Management Plan for Atlantic Striped Bass for Public Comment, which seek public input on whether the Management Board should assume continued low striped bass recruitment when crafting the rebuilding plan, and whether it should fast-track the rebuilding plan in order to put its measures into effect sooner than would otherwise be the case.

It now appears that the Management Board is committing itself to rebuilding the striped bass stock by 2029, the deadline created by management trigger 2.  The only questions now revolve around how it will get the job done.

Should managers assume low recruitment?

Striped bass recruitment has been trending downward over the past few years.  

The Maryland section of the Chesapeake Bay is the single most important striped bass spawning area.  The long-term average for the state’s juvenile abundance index is 11.6, but the last three years have returned JAIs of 3.37, 2.48, and 3.20.  The average for the last 5 years is 7.04; for the last 10 years, it’s only a marginally better 8.11.

So it’s clear that sub-par recruitment has been going on for a long time.

Rebuilding striped bass, like rebuilding anything else, requires raw material, and in the case of bass, that raw material takes the form of young fish recruiting into the population.

Low recruitment over the past ten years can only limit the Management Board’s ability to rebuild the stock, as more restrictive regulations can only protect bass already in the pipeline, and help keep them alive until they mature; no regulation ever conceived can protect fish that were never spawned.

Thus, Section 4.4.1 of Draft Amendment 7 seeks stakeholder input on whether fishery managers should assume continued low recruitment when crafting the rebuilding plan.  In seeking such input, the draft amendment advises

“Several years of poor recruitment may indicate that the stock is entering a low recruitment regime, and levels of removals that were sustainable during average or above average recruitment regimes recruitment regimes may not be sustainable in the future.

“[The fishing mortality rate that would permit the stock to rebuild by 2029] could be calculated by drawing recruitment from the values observed from 1990 to the terminal year of the stock assessment (i.e., the standard recruitment method used in the striped bass stock assessment).  However, if recruitment is only drawn from a below-average period instead of the full period from 1990-forward, [the fishing mortality rate that would permit the stock to rebuild by 2029] would be lower.  If the population is fished at a [fishing mortality rate calculated to allow the stock to rebuild] using the standard recruitment but average recruitment remains lower than the time series mean, the population might not be able to rebuild to the [spawning stock biomass] target by 2029.”

Draft Amendment 7 offers two options, Option A, which would use the standard rate when calculating recruitment during the rebuilding period, and the more conservative Option B, which would base recruitment calculations on assumptions of low recruitment, and would thus require more restrictive management measures.

There is an immediate temptation to pick the more conservative Option B, to better ensure that the rebuilding effort is successful, but one additional aspect of the issue ought to be considered.

Striped bass do not mature quickly.  The 2018 benchmark stock assessment assumed that only 9% of age 4 female striped bass were mature; the percentage increases to 32% by age 5, 45% by age 6, 84% by age 7, and 100% by age 9. 

Only the 2022 and 2023 year classes, and maybe the 2024s, will be able to make a significant contribution to the spawning stock before the 2029 deadline.  Recruitment during the years 2025 through 2029 will have no impact on rebuilding at all, although it will have an affect on whether the stock can be maintained at the target level once rebuilding occurs.

Even so, Option B remains the preferable choice, because it could make a difference if the next few year classes are atypically small.  With only a few years left to rebuild the stock, managers are well-advised to take a risk-averse path.

Fast-tracking the rebuilding plan

The measures needed to rebuild the striped bass stock by 2029 are likely to be restrictive, but even very restrictive measures will probably need time, and maybe some luck, to get the job done.

Such rebuilding measures will to take the form of an addendum to the final version of Amendment 7.  The Atlantic States Marine Commission’s addendum process typically sees the Management Board instruct the Plan Development Team to prepare a draft addendum, to be reviewed at the Board’s next meeting.  If the addendum is satisfactory, the addendum is approved for public comment.  Hearings are held, and public comment is reviewed at a third Management Board meeting, at which point the addendum might—or might not—be finalized.

The entire process takes place over the course of no less than three meetings, and since the Management Board normally meets only four times each year, will be stretched out over no less than about 6 months.  The Board doesn’t like to change management measures partway through the year, so any addendum finalized after the winter meeting, which is held in late January or February, will normally not become effective until the next fishing year.

If the Management Board decided to move forward with a rebuilding plan after it receives the next stock assessment update in October, such addendum would not typically be finalized until at least May 2023, and its measures would not go into effect until January 2024, which only leaves five years to rebuild the stock before the 2029 deadline.

Thus, at its January meeting, the Board unanimously agreed to seek public comment on a proposal to fast-track the rebuilding addendum, and only that specific rebuilding addendum, by allowing the Management Board to move forward with a rebuilding plan without first seeking public comment.

The options relating to such proposal are contained in Section 4.2.2 of Draft Amendment 7.

Option A would require that the Management Board adhere to the usual process, drafting a rebuilding addendum and sending it out for public comment before a final decision is made.  Under such option, as noted above, rebuilding measures would not become effective until 2024.

Option B sets parameters that, if met, would permit a quicker management response.

If the October 2022 stock assessment update determines that current management measures (the existing commercial quotas, a 28- to 35-inch coastal recreational slot, as modified by conservation equivalency, and the existing recreational regulations in the Chesapeake Bay) do not have at least a 50% probability of rebuilding the stock by 2029, with the rebuilding plan based on whichever of the standard recruitment or low recruitment assumptions described above is ultimately selected, and if such stock assessment indicates that no less than a 5% reduction in fishing mortality will be needed to achieve timely rebuilding, the Management Board would be empowered to adopt a rebuilding plan without sending the plan out for public hearings.

Option B would not eliminate any chance for public comment on the rebuilding plan.  Stakeholders could still send in written comments relating to rebuilding measures ahead of all Management Board meetings, and have them made part of the meeting materials.  Comments could also be made during the public comment period at each Management Board meeting (and at this time, I’d like to thank Martin Gary of the Potomac River Fisheries Commission, the new Management Board Chair, for his very thoughtful—and very appreciated—decision to inviter public comment during the January meeting).

By foregoing a formal period of public comment and public hearings, the Management Board could conceivably adopt a rebuilding plan by February 2023, which could be implemented by the states somewhere abourd April—in plenty of time to be in place for most states’ entire striped bass season.

The extra year of rebuilding time that Option B provides makes it the far better choice.

Given the state of the striped bass stock, this is not a time for delay, something that stakeholders made perfectly clear during their preliminary comments on Amendment 7.  It could even be argued that such comments, which called for speedy action to rebuild the stock, constituted an endorsement of the Option B process.

The Management Board charted the right path when it approved Option Bs for both Section 4.2.1 and for Section 4.2.2.  Both options deserve strong support.