STRIPED BASS AMENDMENT 7: IT'S TIME TO LEAN BACK, BREATHE, AND SAY THANKS

 Yesterday, the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission’s Atlantic Striped Bass Management Board finalized Amendment 7 to the Interstate Management Plan for Atlantic Striped Bass.  It’s a good document.

That’s not how we expected things to turn out back in August 2020, when the Management Board put together a Work Group to chart the initial course of the new amendment.  At that time, there was a real drive to weaken the striped bass management program, reduce the target spawning stock biomass to allow a bigger annual kill.  There were efforts to change the goals and objectives of the management plan, to de-emphasize a healthy spawning stock, containing a good number of older, larger fish, in favor of a stock shaped by higher fishing mortality, dependent upon numbers of smaller, less productive female fish for its survival.

In the summer and fall of 2020, such ideas seemed to gain a lot of momentum, and resulted in a Public Information Document for Addendum 7 to the Interstate Fishery Management Plan for Atlantic Striped Bass which elevated

“management stability, flexibility, and regulatory consistency”

above rebuilding and subsequently maintaining the health of the striped bass stock.

Stakeholders didn’t care for that.  They wanted a management program that would restore the overfished striped bass stock to health, prevent overfishing, and maintain the stock at sustainable levels over the long term.  When the time came to comment on the Public Information Document, more than 3,000 such stakeholders came out to tell the Management Board that they didn’t want to kill more striped bass.  Instead, they wanted the fish managed conservatively, to maximize abundance and the opportunity for every angler to encounter a few striped bass.  They wanted a sustainable fishery that they could pass on to future generations of anglers.

Every one of those stakeholders, who made their opinions clear, deserve thanks.  They took the time and made the effort to participate in webinar hearings and send in written comments.  They spoke to their state fishery managers, and their states’ representatives to the ASMFC.

And the state managers and other Management Board members listened.  They voted to remove changes to the goals and objectives from the first draft of Amendment 7.  They kept the 10-year rebuilding plan, the spawning stock biomass reference points, and the fishing mortality reference points intact, and removed them from further consideration.  

Over the course of a few meetings, they also added provisions to protect the 2015 year class (and later removed it, when scientists determined that such protections would do little for the bass).  They called for a low recruitment assumption to be used in the next rebuilding plan, and added a proposal to fast-track rebuilding, so that the stock might have a better chance to be rebuilt by 2029.

For doing those things, and more, many members of the Management Board also deserve our thanks.  We’re always quick to complain when they do the wrong things, but we tend to be slow to admit that, since May 2021, most—but not all—of the work that they did on Amendment 7 was right.

But if anyone thinks that the Management Board thinks up all of these things on their own, they don’t really understand how the process works.  While the Management Board may make the final decisions, most of the work occurs behind the scenes, where the Plan Development Team and Atlantic Striped Bass Technical Committee spend their time trying to perfect the various options that appeared in the evolving draft amendments. 

I listened in on a number of Plan Development Team meetings, and am very aware of how Emile Franke, the Fishery Management Plan Coordinator, shepherded the draft amendment through the process, and how the PDT as a whole weighed each option, repeatedly revised their wording, and tried to put together a document that was both comprehensive and comprehendible.  I’ve heard a lot of people complain that the Draft Amendment 7 was too long and confusing; all I can say to them is “You should have seen what it looked like before all of the editing took place.”

So yes, we should be thankful for the hard work of the Plan Development Team, and for Technical Committee who advised them.  Dr. Katie Drew, the ASMFC’s Stock Assessment Team Lead for striped bass and other species, was always available to the PDT and to the Management Board, providing objective advice on technical issues whenever the need arose.  Together, they took the suggestions made by the Management Board and forged them into the draft amendment that we commented on early this year.

That most recent round of comments attracted even more stakeholders than we saw last year, with well over 4,000 ultimately submitted.  With few exceptions, such comments strongly supported conservative management of the striped bass resource, with many of the proposals in the draft amendment receiving the support of more than 99% of such stakeholders’ support.

So once again, we ought to thank everyone who sent in a comment.  But some deserve special recognition.  The American Saltwater Guides Association, Backcountry Hunters and Anglers, the New York Coalition for Recreational Fishing, and the Massachusetts Striped Bass Association made a special effort to educate anglers on the draft amendment, and convince them to make their views known.

In the environmental community, the Chesapeake Bay Foundation was responsible for more than 2,000 letters received by the Management Board.  The Nature Conservancy and Wild Oceans also provided strong support for striped bass conservation.

And then there was what might have been the most remarkable comment letter that was sent in.  Written on the letterhead of Connecticut’s Attorney General, William Tong, it was signed not only by Mr. Tong, but also by Peter F. Neronha and Maura Healey, the Attorneys General of Rhode Island and Massachusetts, respectively.  I’ve done fisheries advocacy work for a very long time, and this may be the first time that I have seen three attorneys general comment on striped bass issues.  It was also the first time that I have seen public officials acknowledge what striped bass anglers have long believed:

“The striped bass is the flagship species of ASMFC, and public confidence in the Board’s ability to manage striped bass sustainably is at an all-time low.  Now is the time to take the actions needed to ensure that the public will enjoy a thriving striped bass resource, and a vibrant and economically valuable striped bass fishery, for generations to come.”:

Given its source, that is a letter that the Management Board could not prudently ignore.

Finally, we ought to save some of our thanks for Marty Gary from the Potomac River Fisheries Commission, who chairs the Management Board, for running an efficient and effective meeting.  In particular, he deserves recognition for how he handled the January Management Board meeting, when he solicited stakeholder comment on last-minute changes to the draft amendment, which might otherwise have gone unaddressed until the draft was released.  He didn’t have to take public comment in the middle of a Management Board meeting, but by going that extra mile, he certainly earned my respect.

Thanks to all of those folks, the final version of Amendment 7 retained what was good in the Management Plan, and augmented it with new measures intended to more quickly address overfished stocks and declining recruitment, rebuild the stock by 2029, and rein in abuses of conservation equivalency programs, which have long been the bane of effective bass management.

I’ll delve deeper into the nuts and bolts of Amendment 7 in a week or two; right now, I’m a little burned out from two and a half years of working with a lot of dedicated folks who want to see the striped bass stock thrive.  

An hour after yesterday’s meeting ended, I was speaking to a fishing club, telling them of the changes ahead.  This morning, time that I should have spent writing this blog was tied up in discussions of what happened yesterday, the many things that went right, the few things that went wrong, and what we’ll be facing tomorrow.

So for a couple of days, I want to stop talking and writing about striped bass, and just catch a couple of fish.  My boat went in the water two days ago, and it’s looking a little lonely.  With the Amendment 7 fight over, I want some time on the water to clear my head.

And to thank everyone who made this win possible.