On
the morning of March 30, 2023, the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries
Commission’s (ASMFC) Atlantic Striped Bass Technical Committee (Technical
Committee) held a meeting, where it agreed that the currently overfished striped
bass population will probably not be rebuilt by the 2029 rebuilding deadline.
The news was not a surprise. Marine Recreational Information
Program data had already let fishery managers know that striped
bass landings in 2022 were roughly twice what they were in 2021, but it was
still disheartening to anglers who had long advocated for better striped bass
conservation. Just last November, a stock assessment update found
that, so long as fishing mortality remained at the 2021 level (F=0.14), there was
a 78.6 percent probability that the striped bass stock would fully rebuild by
2029.
The 2029 rebuilding deadline was set pursuant to Amendment 6 to the Interstate Fishery Management Plan for Atlantic
Striped Bass, and carried forward after the new Amendment 7 to
the management plan was adopted in May 2022. The plan requires that “If female
[spawning stock biomass] falls below the threshold, the striped bass management
program must be adjusted to rebuild the biomass to a level that is at or above
the target within an established timeframe [not to exceed 10 years]. [emphasis
added]”
That requirement was tripped in 2019, after the ASMFC’s Atlantic
Striped Bass Management Board (Management Board) accepted a benchmark stock assessment that
found striped bass to be both overfished and subject to overfishing. However,
the Management Board didn’t initiate rebuilding immediately. Instead, it first
took the time to draft and debate Amendment 7; when that was finally done, the
time for rebuilding had already shrunk from ten to just seven years.
Thus,
the assessment update’s conclusion that the stock would probably rebuild, even
if no additional management measures were taken, came as welcome news.
Unfortunately, last year’s big spike in recreational landings has completely
changed that outlook.
Removals of striped bass from the coastwide population increased
by 33.5% in 2022, compared to removals in 2021. The 2022 fishing mortality rate
was 0.1873, just about halfway between the fishing mortality target of 0.1679
and the fishing mortality threshold, which defines overfishing, of 0.2013.
Although fishing mortality has risen above the target,
overfishing is not yet occurring.
Still, fishing mortality has risen high enough to frustrate the
rebuilding process. If the fishing mortality rate does not change, the female
spawning stock biomass will probably rise above the threshold, and will no
longer be deemed overfished, at some point during 2023, but that recovery is
expected to stall somewhere short of the spawning stock biomass target.
Instead, striped bass abundance will probably level out at a point about midway
between target and threshold.
By 2029 female spawning stock biomass, far from being rebuilt,
will probably be shrinking slightly, due to the unusually low number of young bass that
have recruited into the population since 2018.
How unlikely is it that the striped bass stock will rebuild?
If the Management Board chose to reject Addendum I to the
Atlantic Striped Bass Interstate Fishery Management Plan (Addendum
I) at its May 2023 meeting, and so continues its ban on the interstate transfer
of unused commercial striped bass quota, and if the fishing mortality rate was no higher than 0.1837
(the average of the fishing mortality rates during the years 2019, 2021, and
2022), there would be a mere 14.6% probability that the stock will rebuild by
2029. There would also be a 93.9% chance that the stock would not be overfished
in that year.
That’s the best-case projection.
The worst case, which assumes that the fishing mortality rate
would remain at its 2022 level, that the Management Board will approve Addendum
I and that the entire coastal commercial quota will be caught, gives the stock
only a 3.4% chance of rebuilding by 2029. Under such circumstances, the
probability of the stock not being overfished in 2029 drops to just 75.8%.
The Technical Committee considered a number of different
scenarios, involving different levels of fishing mortality and commercial quota
utilization, at its March 30 meeting, and decided to present the Management
Board with three different projections for consideration at its May meeting.
All will assume that recreational fishing mortality will equal the three-year
(2019, 2021, 2022) average.
One projection will present the best-case scenario. Another,
which assumes that Addendum I will be approved and the entire commercial quota
caught, yields a fishing mortality rate of 0.1992. The third scenario assumes
that all state commercial quota, with the exception of New Jersey’s, which was
reallocated to the recreational fishery, will be caught, and results in a
slightly lower fishing mortality rate of 0.1987.
The fishing mortality rates of the latter two scenarios come
perilously close to the fishing mortality threshold of 0.2013. Since any such
projection includes some degree of uncertainty, it is possible that, when such
uncertainty is considered, either one might lead to overfishing.
Now, anglers must wait until the Management Board meets on May
2nd, to find out what the Management Board chooses to do with the Technical
Committee’s projections. It has the authority to take remedial action, but it
is not required to do anything at all. That’s because the projections provided
by the Technical Committee do not constitute advice provided by a formal stock
assessment or assessment update.
Yet, even if the projections were derived from an assessment,
they wouldn’t have tripped any of the triggers that require management action,
the most pertinent of which reads, “If [the fishing mortality rate] exceeds the
target for two consecutive years and
the female [spawning stock biomass] falls below the target in either of those
years, the striped bass management program must be adjusted to reduce [fishing
mortality] to a level that is at or below the target within one year. [emphasis
added]”
Since the fishing mortality rate has so far only risen above
target in a single year, 2022, action is not yet required. If the Management
Board chooses to act, it will only be because it decides to act prudently, to
head off a problem, rather than waiting until a crisis has already occurred.
Will it choose to do so?
If history is any guide, the answer is, unfortunately, no. When
faced with such a choice in the past, the Management Board has always eschewed
precautionary action. Perhaps the best example occurred at its November 2011 meeting when,
after being advised by a recent stock assessment update that
“Abundance and exploitable biomass of ages 8+ [striped bass] are expected to
decline regardless of the recruitment scenario,” and that “Female [spawning
stock biomass] will fall slightly below threshold by 2017,” meaning that the
stock would become overfished by that time, the Management Board chose to do
nothing.
Its mood was well expressed in the comments of Pat Augustine,
then the Governor’s Appointee from New York, who observed, “[there are] the 688
pages of documentation that say that the stock is pretty doggone healthy—that
we’re looking at a sustainable yield and at the same time looking at
sustainable spawning stock biomass to carry it through a minimum of 2016,
minimum, unless there is a catastrophe and then that will be something else to
worry about…We haven’t had a real spawning disaster to even trigger one of the
triggers within the [fishery management plan], and we’re sitting here gnashing
our teeth as to which way to go.”
The Management Board’s comments and actions during the Amendment
7 process provided reason to hope that it has become more responsive to the
needs of the striped bass stock than it was a decade ago, but there is still no
assurance that it will act in the face of 2022’s increased landings, even
though the management plan requires it to rebuild the stock by 2029, and the
latest projections make it clear that such rebuilding is very unlikely to
happen unless fishing mortality is reduced.
That leaves the Management Board with three options.
It can begin a new management action at its May 2nd meeting, to
reduce fishing mortality and put the stock back on track to rebuild by 2029.
Given that the current fishing mortality rate isn’t too far above its target
level, narrowing the slot limit, and so making it harder to catch a legal-sized
fish, might be enough to set things right.
It can sit on its hands and do nothing until after the 2024
stock assessment update is completed. At that point, given the Technical
Committee’s projections, it will probably take very substantial restrictions,
almost certainly including substantial closed seasons, to accomplish rebuilding
in the two or three years remaining to get the job done.
Or, it can renege on the commitment it made to the public, and
not rebuild the stock at all. It can demonstrate that the language of the
management plan, which requires the Management Board to rebuild the stock
within ten years, is no more than words inked on paper, void of any binding
legal or moral effect. As it makes its excuses for why the stock was not
rebuilt by 2029, it can make up other excuses as to how the poor recruitment in
2019, 2020, 2021, and 2022 will prevent rebuilding from occurring at any time
in the foreseeable future as well.
Hopefully, that latter scenario will not occur.
Hopefully, the Management Board will act responsibly, with
precaution, and with eyes sharply focused on the future health of the stock.
Hopefully.
On May 2nd, we will know.
-----
This
essay first appeared in “From the Waterfront,” the blog of the Marine Fish
Conservation Network, which can be found at http://conservefish.org/blog/
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