WHY STRIPED BASS MATTER

 

Over the course of a year, this blog will cover a range of topics that might range from Florida red snapper to Alaskan salmon to whales off the mid-Atlantic coast.  But if someone took the time to count up and characterize every post, I wouldn’t be shocked to learn that more posts mentioned striped bass than mentioned any other species.

There are a lot of reasons why that might be true. 

Although the commercial fishery for striped bass is relatively small and, except in parts of the Chesapeake Bay, generally involves very small—often one or two person—fishing operations, over the past decade or two, the recreational striped bass fishery, measured in pounds of fish landed, has been the most important recreational fishery in the United States.  Its importance becomes even more manifest when one realizes that the recreational striped bass fishery emphasizes catch and release; in a typical year, about 90% of the bass caught by anglers are returned to the water.

To put the species’ importance in context, anglers in New England and the mid-Atlantic took a little more than 20 million trips that primarily targeted striped bass in 2022.  That’s just a little bit less than the approximately 21 million directed trips taken for the next five most popular species combined (summer flounder, 9.1 million; tautog, 4.0 million; scup, 3.3 million; bluefish, 2.5 million; and black sea bass, 1.6 million).

And that’s with the striped bass stock still overfished.  Marine Recreational Information Program data makes it very clear that abundance drives striped bass fishing effort, so if the stock was in better condition, we would expect such effort to be substantially higher than it was in 2022.

So, with recreational striped bass landings having aboutdoubled in 2022, when compared to the year before, and with very lowrecruitment occurring in Maryland over the past four years--with reason to believe that it won’t improve substantially, if at all, this year--we probably ought to ask the question:   What happens to recreational fishermen, and to the recreational fishing industry in the northeast and mid-Atlantic, if the striped bass stock not only fails to rebuild, but declines farther, perhaps to the point of collapse?

History can suggest a probable outcome.

In 1985, the Atlantic striped bass stock had just about bottomed out.  It had collapsed a few years before, and would not show any signs of recovery for another few years, although what ultimately proved to be a successful recovery plan had just been put in place.  Such scarcity tended to deter anglers from striped bass fishing; only about 1.3 million directed striped bass trips were taken that year.

Instead of leading all other northeast/mid-Atlantic species in terms of angling effort, striped bass were sixth on the list, behind bluefish (9.5 million trips), winter flounder (6.2 million trips), summer flounder (5.5 million trips), weakfish (1.9 million trips), and tautog (1.5 million trips).  That’s a somewhat different species mix than we saw in 2022; the 1985 numbers don’t include either scup or black sea bass, which only inspired trivial effort back then, but included winter flounder which, except for a few places off New England, don’t even support a fishery these days, and weakfish, which supported more than ten times the effort than they do today.

One thing to keep in mind when comparing 1985 and 2022 effort estimates is that, over all, anglers in the northeast and mid-Atlantic fished more in recent years than they did back in the 1980s, taking about 66.5 million overall trips in 2022, compared to about 46.2 million in 1985.  Thus, while anglers may have taken fewer trips targeting particular species in 1985 than they did in 2022, we’d probably have to multiply the 1985 estimates by 1.44 to make them comparable to the 2022 figures.

But the point of this discussion is that if the striped bass population collapsed, a very significant portion of the revenues now attributable to saltwater recreational fishing in the northeast and mid-Atlantic would probably disappear.  Back in 1985—in fact, throughout much of the 1980s—a lack of striped bass could be offset by anglers switching effort to other species.  The region’s top five recreational species were primary targets of 24.6 million trips, substantially more than either striped bass or the next five most popular species, taken in aggregate, account for today.

Just for the purposes of this discussion, let’s assume that the striped bass stock collapsed again, and effort fell along with it, dropping to something like 2 million trips.  Where could anglers, the for-hire fleet, and the overall recreational fishing industry look to make up the 18 million trips lost to a striped bass stock collapse?

They probably couldn’t look to bluefish.  In 1985, bluefish took up much of the slack caused by the striped bass collapse.  They were very abundant—in fact, the time series currently used to evaluate the stock indicates that 1985 was the apex of bluefish abundance—and so could easily absorb some of the angler effort that shifted away from the striped bass fishery.  Today, the stock is much smaller.  Although some areas experience good bluefish action at times during the season, such action is not consistent anywhere throughout the fishing year.  As a result, effort has declined by about 75% compared to 1985; while some anglers might switch over to bluefish if the striped bass stock collapsed, the stock is nowhere near robust enough to support significantly increased effort.

And they certainly couldn’t look to winter flounder, since the Southern New England/Mid-Atlantic stock has collapsed, the status of the Gulf of Maine stock is unknown (although fish don’t seem to be abundant) and a recent stock assessment indicated that any significant increase in abundance is unlikely at any time in the foreseeable future.

Weakfish don’t offer much more hope.  Although there is quite a bit of anecdotal evidence suggesting that abundance may be increasing, the fish still aren’t exactly jumping into the boat.  Total directed effort in 2022 was well under 200,000 trips; even if such effort doubled, it wouldn’t do much to make up for the 18 million trips lost if the bass stock collapsed.

That leaves tautog, scup, and black sea bass.

The former species is still overfished in parts of its range, and still recovering elsewhere.  It is not a candidate for substantially increased fishing effort.

In the case of scup and black sea bass, both species are very abundant, with spawning stock biomass close to 200% of the target levels.  On the other hand, such biomass is steadily decreasing at current effort levels, while anglers have consistently exceeded the recreational harvest limit in recent years.  Such factors make it unlikely that either one could sustain a significant spike in recreational fishing effort.

When you look at the numbers, it’s clear that there is no substitute for striped bass in the New England/mid-Atlantic recreational fishery.  Even in its current state, the bass remains, by far, the most popular fish in the region, and the species most important to the recreational fishing industry.

Industry members who are critical of the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission’s recent actions to reduce recreational landings and rebuild the spawning stock are therefore arguing against their own interests.  For without the striped bass, the region’s recreational saltwater fishery would be a shadow of what it is today, and would generate correspondingly fewer economic benefits.

It’s also worth considering whether anglers, unable to catch a striped bass and facing substantially reduced numbers of bluefish and weakfish as well, would merely walk away from the sport and never return, even if striped bass abundance eventually improved.  If they decided to permanently abandon the sport, the impact on the long-term health of the recreational fishing industry would be profound.

Thus, conserving and properly managing striped bass isn’t merely important from an ecosystem perspective, or in the eyes of the many anglers who prefer to fish for striped bass, and have little desire to target other species.  Good striped bass conservation and management is also important to the health of every saltwater angling-related business between Virginia and Maine.

That’s a truth that the fishing industry would ignore at its peril.