WHAT ATLANTIC HALIBUT CAN TEACH US ABOUT STRIPED BASS MANAGEMENT

 

We can learn a lot about managing today’s fisheries by looking back at how yesterday’s fisheries died.

The first thing we need to understand is that no one—at any time—set out to kill off a fishery.  Instead, fishermen merely plied their trade, trying to support themselves and their families by doing what they did every day—going out, catching fish, and bringing them back to the dock, usually to sell, but also for their own consumption. 

Those fishermen were out on the water every day, and certainly noticed changes in their fisheries.  Maybe the biggest fish that they caught were no longer as large as they once were.  Maybe the fish were arriving a little later in the year, and leaving a little sooner.  Maybe they were having to travel farther to find fish consistently, as some of the traditional close-to-home spots became only spotty producers.

But they shrugged off those changes, telling themselves that fish come and fish go, and did what they needed to do to keep putting fish on the dock.  The one thing that they didn’t do, and probably never considered, was intentionally reducing their landings to preserve declining fish stocks.  They were fishermen, after all.  Their job was to catch fish, bring them back to the dock, and turn them into money that would keep their families housed, clothed, and fed.

But in the long run, reducing landings was the most important thing that they could have done.

Along the northeastern coast, Atlantic halibut were probably the first fish to suffer severe overfishing.  Halibut had little to no commercial value prior to the 1830s, but as domestic markets for the fish opened up, the fishery became profitable.  In an article titled “What Appeared Limitless Plenty:  The Rise and Fall of the Nineteenth-Century Atlantic Halibut Fishery,” originally published in the January 2008 issue of Environmental History, author Glenn M. Grasso described what happened then.

“Like concentric circles moving away from Massachusetts’ North Shore, successive localized depletions progressed into the regional depletion of Atlantic halibut.  Fishermen in Massachusetts Bay, the area that had sustained fishing pressure longest, first observed the decline.  From the earliest colonial records, halibut were plentiful close to the shore, and two centuries later, Goode still claimed halibut were ‘very abundant’ in Massachusetts Bay, especially ‘before 1830, [when] those who wished to catch halibut had no difficulty in finding an abundant supply within a few miles of shore.”  However, the fish, Goode reported, ‘were gradually exterminated in the bay.’  When inshore halibut became scarce, the industry concentrated its efforts on the substantial halibut stocks on the offshore banks, especially Georges Bank, during the 1840s, 1850s, and 1860s.  This camouflaged the degree of resource degradation: it was easy to ignore halibut’s decline in coastal waters because the bulk of the industry now focused on the plentiful stocks offshore.  In less than a generation, intense commercial demand and unrelenting fishing pressure destroyed the Massachusetts Bay inshore fishery by the 1850s.’

“Fishermen sought halibut close to shore whenever possible and coastal areas continued to suffer fishing pressure…The crumbling Massachusetts Bay fishery and the viable Gulf of St. Lawrence fishery illustrate how, depending on geography, dearth and plenty could exist simultaneously.  However, inshore fishing still targeted both breeders and brood, and the lessons of the Massachusetts Bay fishery were not learned by those fishing in the Gulf of St. Lawrence…

“Although the industry’s solution to inshore decline was to head offshore, the plentiful halibut found on Georges Bank throughout the 1850s were disappearing by the late 1860s.  The Civil War created greater demand and pushed up prices, which in turn led to increased pursuit of halibut…Once the premier halibut fishing ground, Georges Bank was fished out by 1870.  Trawling, wartime demand, and consumer taste resulted in the halibut’s depletion in a locale once crowded with fish.”

Then, as is too often the case today, fishermen focused solely on the money to be made by putting dead halibut on the dock, and ignored warning signs that the fishery was in deep decline.  Even when they acknowledged that the halibut stock was not doing well, fishermen in the 1800s, just like fishermen today, made excuses and took no responsibility for the stock becoming depleted.

“Nature, rather than overfishing, was blamed for the halibut’s disappearance.  Contemporary commentators for popular audiences saw migration: ‘The seaward movement of the Halibut has been noted by American fishermen,’  National Geographic magazine retrospectively reported in 1923.  ‘When the taking of halibut first began, it was most abundant on Georges Bank.  Later, it gradually disappeared from the banks and went farther out to sea…”

Today, Grasso tells us,

“Halibut remain in the northwest Atlantic today, both near-shore and further out to sea.  However, it is clear that by the early twenty-first century, stocks are mere shadows of their original populations, even though no precise numerical baseline exists for early halibut stocks.  The virtual eradication of Atlantic halibut came in part because nineteenth-century fishermen failed to develop a cogent institutional memory.  Halibut fishermen in the 1920s and 1930s looked at smaller fish, taken in lesser quantities, yet still believed that they were landing good fares…”

Such time-limited outlooks, which have since been dubbed “the shifting baselines syndrome,” still plague many, perhaps most, of our fisheries.  However, the greatest lesson that striped bass managers, as well as striped bass fishermen, should take away from the Atlantic halibut debacle isn’t the shifting baselines, but the fishermen’s laser focus on putting fish on the dock, as they ignored signs that the halibut were in serious trouble.

That’s because the striped bass fishery is seeing similar attitiudes today, although they are being expressed by the for-hire fleet, and not the commercial sector.

Like Atlantic halibut around 1840, striped bass are still reasonably abundant, with some year classes of fish abundant enough to be deemed “plentiful.”  Today’s fishermen have a gauge of stock health that wasn’t available in the mid-1800s—detailed stock assessments built on the best available scientific information, which are subject to peer review by recognized, disinterested experts before being released and used for management work.

The problem is that fishermen too often ignore them.

The current stock assessment, completed in 2018, told us that, as of the end of 2017, striped bass were both overfished and subject to overfishing.  An update to that assessment, released in October 2022, revealed that the overfishing problem has been resolved, but that the stock remains overfished, although it is rebuilding slowly.  A report appended to the update provided the unsettling news that, because recreational striped bass landings doubled in 2022, the overfished stock is unlikely to fully rebuild by 2029 if management measures remained unchanged.

In addition, data released by the State of Maryland shows that recruitment in the Maryland section of the Chesapeake Bay—the most important spawning area for the coastal striped bass stock—was far below average for the years 2019-2022, creating another obstacle to rebuilding.

So both fishermen and fishery managers know—or, at least ought to know—that the striped bass stock is facing serious problems, and that fishing mortality must be reduced to restore the stock to health. 

Acting on such knowledge, fishery managers at the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission, at the Commission’s May meeting, adopted emergency management measures intended to reduce recreational landings by placing a 31-inch maximum size on any striped bass retained by anglers, thus reducing what had been a 28- to 35-inch slot limit to 28 to 31 inches.

Despite such knowledge, the emergency measures have been strenuously opposed by most members of the for-hire fleet, who view the narrow slot limit as a threat to their income.  Like the halibut fishermen of the mid-1800s, they see the striped bass as nothing more than a fish to be killed and transformed into money, regardless of the state of the stock.  An on-line petition recently crafted by the Montauk Boatmen and Captains Association, although specific to that organization, sets out a position that is more-or-less the same for all of the objecting for-hires.

The petition quickly informs the reader that striped bass are important to the for-hire fishery, noting that

“one of Montauk’s most popular fisheries is striped bass.  In fact, more than 75% of our charter boat fleet focuses the bulk of their season on striped bass fishing…Striped bass fishing is truly the ‘bread and butter’ for most of our for-hire fleet.”

In fact, as I observed in an post that appeared in this blog about a month ago, striped bass are the most important recreational species in New England and the mid-Atlantic region.  If the regional spawning stocks suffered a serious setback, and became “mere shadows of their original populations,” as is the case with Atlantic halibut, many for-hire business, including those fishing out of Montauk, would probably not survive.

Logically, such dependence should cause the for-hire fleet to advocate for the sort of striped bass management that would ensure the long-term health of the stock.  For-hire operators ought to realize that if the striped bass stock collapses, their businesses won’t be far behind.  They ought to be celebrating the emergency measures as a first step on the road to rebuilding the stock.

But, as I noted before, that’s not the case.  Despite the very clear science supporting the emergency action, the Montauk petition deems such action to be “drastic, unreasonable, and unnecessary,” as well as “preposterous,” although it never even tries to explain how or why the science underlying such action is wrong.

Instead, the entire thrust of the Montauk Boatmen’s petition was one that nineteenth century halibut fishermen would have readily understood:  We’re fishermen, and we make our living catching, and keeping, striped bass.  We don’t like the emergency action because it might cut into our incomes.

The petition claims,

“The emergency action will have a direct adverse impact on our for-hire fleet.  Our customers expect to take fish home after paying a charter or party boat fare.  With the rising prices of fuel, bait, tackle and insurance, our captains have had no choice but to raise their rates.  From our customers’ perspectives, the increase in rates is oftentimes offset by the ability to put fish in their coolers to bring home to their families.  Particularly in light of rising costs for basic groceries, this trade-off is essential.  If our customers are unable to bring fish home, they will be less inclined to book a fishing trip.  This, in turn, also hurts our local businesses, including hotels, restaurants and shops, all of which rely on Montauk’s visitors to thrive.”

Let’s begin by acknowledging that, yes, a lot of folks who book Montauk charters look forward to bringing a few fish home.  And many of those folks enjoy eating striped bass, and might be disappointed if they couldn’t put a bass in the fish box.  So yes, the emergency action might cause fewer folks to book charters although, on the other hand, nothing stops a boat from targeting abundant scup or black sea bass, tossing a bunch of them in customers’ coolers and then, the grocery bill having been addressed, targeting striped bass as well.

In fact, many boats offer exactly that sort of multi-species trip to their customers, although whether they fish for bass first or later often depends on the stage of the tide.

We should also acknowledge that the average striped bass spawned in 2015, which made up most of the fish in the old 28- to 35-inch slot, measures 31.6 inches long this year, which is right in the middle of the former slot limit.  Since most of the 2015s will measure either above or below that mark, perhaps by a few inches, rather than being exactly 31.6 inches long, there is still close to a 50% chance that any 2015 caught will still fall within the narrower 28- to 31-inch slot; the odds of bringing a legal bass home from Montauk remains very good.

But for the purpose of argument, let’s assume that some customers will be discouraged from booking trips by the new emergency measures.  At that point, we need to think about comparative evils, something that the Montauk Boatmen completely failed to do.

If they, like the nineteenth century Atlantic halibut fishermen, ignore the signs of a declining stock, and convince managers to allow them to fish at 2022 levels, it is nearly inevitable that, in a few years, the effects of poor recruitment in Maryland will make themselves felt.  In 2026, fairly large numbers of bass from the very small 2019 year class will exceed 28 inches, and begin to enter the slot.  Even if the slot remained at 28 to 35 inches, that will sharply reduce the number of bass that anglers might take home.

In 2027, the 2019s will be the same size as the 2015s are today, and will dominate the slot.  Except, because the 2019 year class is so very small, “dominate” somehow feels like the wrong word; the slot will hold very few fish.  And because the 2020, 2021, and 2022 year classes (and probably the 2023, although we won’t know that for sure until October) are also very small, there will be no relief on the horizon.

By 2029, the rebuilding deadline that the ASMFC is trying to meet, the striped bass age structure is going to be very lopsided, with few bass between 26 and 36 inches available to anglers.  That lack of fish will render arguments about the top end of the slot moot; whether the maximum size is 31 or 35 inches, there won’t be many fish in the slot to catch, much less to take home.

So here’s where the lesser of two evils comes in.

Are the for-hire boats—at least those which plan to be in business five years from now—better off if the ASMFC places real restrictions on landings, perhaps coupling a 28- to 31-inch slot with no-harvest seasons, so that the stock continues to rebuild, and leaves enough bass in the water for anglers to catch, even if they can’t take them home?

Or are they better off if managers heed their petition, return management measures to 2022 levels, and allow the spawning stock to decline, so that by 2029, there are few 28- to 35-inch slot fish in the ocean?   In that case, if an angler caught a bass between 31 and 35 inches, they could still take it home, but because slot-sized fish would be so scarce, the odds of catching a bass of that size would be substantially reduced.

Folks who were around in the early 1980s would remember what that’s like, although few of the people who fished back then bothered to target striped bass; in 1982, fewer than 2% of all saltwater fishing trips taken in New York focused on the species, as there were so few bass around.  Given that, if striped bass abundance fell back to 1982 levels—or even stayed a bit above—those Montauk charter boats who fish for bass 75% of the time might end up spending most of their time at the dock.

Of course, that’s all five or six years in the future, and if the Atlantic halibut’s story teaches us anything, it’s that fishermen rarely look that far ahead.  Their job, at least as they see it, is to catch fish NOW, and worry about the future on some later day.

And by the time that they finally get around to worrying, it’s far to late for that worrying to do any good.

I MUST HAVE UPSET SOMEONE--AGAIN

 

Writing a fisheries conservation blog can be entertaining.

In the nine years since One Angler’s Voyage first appeared, I’ve learned quite a bit about obscure aspects of fisheries science, management, and regulation.  I’ve made the acquaintance of quite a few interesting people, and been invited to speak before a National Academy of Sciences panel.  I’ve picked up a writing gig or two, and lost a few more, as various members of the recreational fishing industry, who apparently believe that having a conservation advocate appear in the angling press was bad for business, tried to make my words go away.

But one of the joys of writing my own blog is that I can write both opinion and facts without worrying about someone pulling the plug because I said something that was deemed politically incorrect by the tackle industry or the for-hire fleet.

In the course of doing just that since early in 2014, I have succeeded in pissing off quite a few people.

The folks in the angling industry get very upset when I tell the public things that the industry doesn’t want them to hear.  I’ve been cursed, threatened, and even had some party boat folks sic a private detective on me, only to find that I pay all my bills, don’t cheat on my wife, and have never been caught committing a crime.

That sort of thing irks an industry that, for many years, has conditioned the angling press—or, probably more precisely, the salt water, non-flyfishing angling press—to never publish anything that might get their readers involved in marine conservation.

They spend a lot of time and effort trying to convince such readers that the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act, which has allowed fishery managers to rebuild over 40 once-overfished stocks, and end overfishing of many more, is somehow bad for fishermen, and also spend a lot of time trying to drive a wedge between anglers and organizations that they deem part of the “environmental industry”—that is, mainstream conservation groups that get involved with marine fisheries issues—even though responsible anglers and conservation organizations share a wide array of common interests. 

Writers who stray from the industry line, and involve themselves in conservation issues, rarely stay writers for very long.  I lost a column in a regional magazine because I opposed a big fishing industry initiative, the so-called Modern Fish Act, a few years ago.  I know other writers who experienced similar fates, simply because they were willing to put their principles above their pocketbooks.

Yet even when writing a blog like this one, some people try to silence your voice.  That’s hard to do on the Internet, which tends to have a very long memory.  Once writings are out on the Web, they tend to stay out there forever. 

There are, however, services that offer to repair electronic reputations, a process that generally involves gaming the algorithms that search engines use to process and present information, so that favorable stories rise to the top of people’s searches, while less complementary information sinks farther down the list, hopefully far enough down that most searchers never see it.

One of the ways to do that, particularly when the information is contained in a blog like this one, which a disgruntled party does not and cannot control, is to manufacture a lot of search engine “hits” on other, somewhat related articles, so that the seemingly more popular items rise in the search engines’ rankings, while the piece they’re trying to suppress appears less relevant and falls farther from the top of the list.

Thus, I knew that I must have touched a nerve about three weeks ago, when blog hits suddenly spiked, and fell into a regular, every-other-day pattern of more-or-less uniform peaks and lows that continued regardless of what topics I addressed in each semi-weekly post.  After more than nine years, I know that normal blog activity just doesn’t take that sort of form.

It was pretty clear that someone was trying to manipulate how the blog interacted with the major search engines.

If I had any doubt that there was intentional interference, all I had to do was look at some other, supporting data.  While I might not be able to see every computer that contacts this blog, I can see, among other things, the web browsers used, the operating systems used, and the country of people accessing the blog’s address.  When I looked at all three of those things, and found that all of the usual increase in blog hits were coming from a person, or perhaps persons, in Singapore, using a Mobile Safari browser on an Android operating system, it becomes pretty clear that someone probably strongly disliked something that I had to say, didn’t want you to read a word of what I had written, and so was trying to hide it.

What was it that caused such consternation?

I can’t be completely sure, but given the timing of the sudden spurt of blog hits, I suspect that the offending article was either “Scare Tactics in the South Atlantic,” which addressed some dishonest angling industry propaganda regarding the region’s red snapper fishery, or a series of pieces on striped bass titled “Diminishing Returns,” “Striped Bass:  Embracing Release Mortality,” and “Some Real Work Will Be Needed to Rebuild Striped Bass,” all of which appeared in the weeks immediately preceeding the unusual and suspicious activity.

Any one of them would have perturbed some elements of the angling industry.

If I had to bet, I’d bet it was one or more of the bass pieces, because the for-hire fleet has been, in general, very opposed to the emergency management measures that the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission has put in place to reduce striped bass landings to sustainable levels, and has been trying very hard to convince customers that all is well with the stock, urging them to come out and book a few trips right away.

But I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that it was the red snapper piece, and not the bass posts, that triggered the censorship efforts.

Whatever incited the action, the alternate-day spikes of approximately equal volume, which avoid the most recent blog posts and instead seek to elevate older, less immediately controversial essays, make it fairly clear that I wasn’t seeing an unusual, but nonetheless innocent usage pattern.

And it’s highly unlikely that I’m dealing with a hacker.  I get hackers trying to break into the site from time to time, but usually when that happens, the hits are coming from Russia, Moldova, or some similar Eastern European venue, and often from a registered website which, when I click on the link to see what it is (something that I’ve hopefully learned not to do), immediately injects a virus into my system and sends me running to the nearest tech shop for help. 

Singapore, on the other hand, bills itself as a very business- and tourist-friendly nation, with a very active police force and courts that react—even, arguably, overreact—to the slightest violations of local laws.  Those involved in hacking, or any other criminal activity, are likely to seek a far more felon-friendly place to base their operations.

Reputation-defending, on the other hand, could easily originate there.

The fact is, I’ve been the target of reputation-defending operations before.  The first and most notable time was in early November 2016, when I published a post titled “Assessing the Election.”  That post began

“Just last Sunday, I posted a piece speculating on this year’s election, and how it might affect fisheries conservation efforts.  Now, with the big day behind us, the future is clearer, and it looks very bad.

“In fact, it’s hard to imagine it being much worse.”

That post, which quoted heavily from the 2016 Republican platform, was not complementary to Trump or his likely cabinet members, and predicted that his administration would, for the most part, be anti-conservation and pro-exploitation.  That prediction turned out to be true.

The blog drew an immediate response from someone who was clearly close to the Trump team, who wrote things such as

“Knowing some people close to Trump, I am honestly not worried at all.  He wants outdoorsmen, like his children, to be able to enjoy their sport.  Mass media does a great job making people thinking [sic] it’s all hellfire and damnation, but we will be just fine,”

and

“Trump won the GOP nomination by taking on the party elite and their love for endless foreign wars and cheap labor to increase corporate and Wall Street profits (funny, same things Hillary stood for…).  So, I’m not too concerned about Trump following the platform of the very special same special [sic] interests he spent the last year defeating.”

And right about then, the same pattern of high, consistent hit volumes, coming from unusual sources, appeared.  It was clearly an effort to bury my critical predictions of Trump’s approach to fisheries—which proved to be reasonably prophetic—beneath a deluge of other, less political posts.

I was surprised, and complimented in a backhanded way, that someone connected with a victorious national political campaign would go to such efforts to suppress the opinions of a small blog.  But I suppose that they felt obligated to do so because, in the end, the-oft quoted line from the Bible, John 8:32,

“And you will know the truth, that the truth will set you free,”

applies to far more than salvation.

Every time I sit down to write a post for this blog, I do my best to tell you the truth as I understand it to be, linking as many assertions as possible back to a source, so you can do some research on your own if you feel so inclined.  The thought of being fact-checked causes me no trepidation at all.

On the other hand, the Bible did not say, “and you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you rich.”  Sometimes, if you’re part of the angling industry, the truth, if applied to fishery management measures, is going to cut into your cash flow, at least in the short term, and when that becomes a possibility, the industry has a history of spinning the facts in favor of immediate profits rather than a fully-enlightened public.

That’s why conservation writers end up on editors’ blacklists, and manufacturers and dealers and the rest of that crowd hire “online reputation managers” to suppress anything that folks write, which they don’t want you to see.

But truth is a mercurial thing, and like mercury, will seek any small gap to set itself loose in the world.

STRIPED BASS CLEAR FIRST HURDLE ON TRACK TOWARD REBUILDING

 

Last Tuesday marked a milestone on the long road torebuilding the striped bass population, as New York finally adopted the 31-inch maximum size for striped bass that the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission’s Atlantic Striped Management Board established at its May 2^nd meeting.  Tuesday evening saw the New Jersey Marine Resources Commission, on a 5-2 vote, also support the 31-inch maximum size, ending worries that New Jersey might go out of compliance with the ASMFC mandate.

Thus, two of the most important states on the coast, interms of recreational landings, either have or will adopt a 28- to 31-inch slot limit, and hopefully effect substantial reductions in their states’ striped bass removals.

Virginia is now the only state that has not acted on the 31-inch maximum; however, a hearing on the matter is scheduled for June 27, so that state should also soon fall into line.

Putting that emergency measure in place should reduce 2023 fishing mortality by about 29% compared to 2022, but there is a fair amount of uncertainty around that estimate, because scientists can’t know how anglers are going to react to the new management measures.  Taking all things into account, they believe that the new management measures will reduce removals by about 4.9 million fish, compared to 2022.

That’s a significant reduction, and with New York and New Jersey now on board, and Virginia on the way, there’s a very good chance that it’s going to happen.

Unfortunately, as significant as that reduction is, it’s not big enough to reduce fishing mortality to the F=0.17 fishing mortality target, and even if it did, the reduction probably wouldn’t be enough to rebuild the striped bass stock.  It appears that, given the events of last Tuesday, the bass have cleared only one of at least three hurdles they will have to overcome to rebuild.

The next hurdle will be Addendum II.

At the Management Board’s May meeting, Dr. Justin Davis, the Connecticut fisheries manager, made the motion to initiate an addendum

“to implement commercial and recreational measures for the ocean and Chesapeake Bay fisheries in 2024 that in the aggregate are projected to achieve F-target from the 2022 stock assessment update (F=0.17).  Potential measures for the ocean recreational fishery should include modifications to the Addendum VI standard slot limit of 28-35” with harvest season closures as a secondary non-preferred option.  Potential measures for Chesapeake Bay recreational fisheries, as well as ocean and Bay commercial fisheries should include maximum size limits.”

That seems pretty straightforward and simple, but I suspect that getting Addendum II through the public hearing process and finally approved by the Management Board, in the form originally contemplated by Dr. Davis, is going to be a bit of a struggle.

The first hint of that came from the resistance to the original emergency action.

Although the simple expedient of capping the recreational size limit at 31 inches will probably save nearly 5 million bass, hopefully help ensure that we will have a viable bass fishery in the future, and was generally accepted by striped bass anglers, it was strenuously opposed by the for-hire fleet, particularly those sailing out of ports between Rhode Island and New Jersey. 

The region’s for-hire operators seem to believe that the emergency rules are going to hurt their businesses.  However, as Massachusetts fishery manager Dr. Michael Armstrong noted at the May meeting, “any captain worth his salt” ought to be able to find a fish that falls within the new, narrowed slot, given the current state of the population.  

A newspaper article that originally appeared in The Day, of New London, CT, quoted the president of the Connecticut Charter Boat/Party Boat Association, who complained that, because of the new regulations,

“We have to go through more fish to get a keeper fish.  It’s gonna have a long term, unfair effect…it’s drastic overreach,”

yet the same person, who is a charter boat captain, admitted that not even one customer has cancelled a charter because of the new rules.

Nonetheless, when the ASMFC held webinars/hearings on the emergency measures, Rhode Island for-hire operators were particularly vocal in calling for special rules that would give the customers on charter and party boats special privileges that were not enjoyed by other anglers on the coast. 

In New Jersey, for-hire opposition was strong enough to cause the state’s Marine Fisheries Commission to delay action on the measure until last Tuesday night (the video of last Tuesday’s Commission meeting, accessible here https://www.thefisherman.com/nj-de-bay-region-fishing-forecast-june-22-2023/, provides some idea of fishing industry opposition; the pro-industry slant of the narrator is also telling).  In New York,although the for-hire fleet is responsible for less than 2% of all directedstriped bass trips made in the state, they made enough noise to get both stateand federal legislators involved, and delay implementation of the emergency action until earlier this week.

Given that the emergency measures, on their own, won’t get fishing mortality down to the target level, and that Addendum II is specifically intended to reduce the fishing mortality rate to 0.17, it’s likely that the Addendum II management measures are going to be somewhat more restrictive than the current slot limit, although whether that will involve a different slot limit or perhaps include the non-preferred option of seasonal harvest prohibitions cannot yet be known.  But whatever measures are included in the Addendum, we can expect strong opposition from the for-hire fleet.

At joint meetings of the Plan Development Team and Technical Committee, we are also seeing resistance to the concept, included in Dr. Davis’ motion, of capping the size of fish landed by the commercial fleet.  

There are technical reasons for approaching such a cap with caution, for it takes more smaller fish to fill the same commercial quota that is currently being filled with fewer, but larger, bass; getting the cap right may well involve adjusting current quotas, with a focus on the cap’s likely impacts on spawning potential and yield per recruit, to prevent the cap from doing more harm than good.  But the scientists are working on that.

A more intractable problem is that of dead discards resulting from the use of non-selective commercial fishing gear.  While Massachusetts’ commercial fishermen may only use hook and line, and so can easily release oversized fish, many jurisdictions allow far less selective gear to be employed.  That became clear at the same PDT/technical committee meetings, where a Delaware representative has argued against the commercial size cap because, as he readily admitted, the fixed gill nets used by Delaware commercials are notoriously “dirty”—that is, they catch and kill just about anything they encounter—and so would produce a lot of dead discards.

That’s another problem that can be fairly easily fixed, either by converting the quotas to catch rather than landings, and so charging dead discards against a state’s quota, or—and on paper, this is the simplest fix at all—outlawing the use of non-selective gear types.

While all that is easy to say, it’s even easier to predict that when the draft Addendum II is released for public comment, which will probably happen soon after the August Management Board meeting, there will be a lot of hostile comment, coming from both the for-hire and commercial fishing communities, that could undercut the document’s ability to help rebuild the bass stock.

Again, Dr. Armstrong put it best:

“For next year, everything is going to be looked at, and if fishing mortality has to be cut, it will need to involve the commercial fishery too.  They won’t get a pass on this one.  There will be debate, and they will be arguing that they didn’t cause this, but at some point if you’re part of the harvest you need to be part of the solution.”

That only makes sense.  Unfortunately, when fisheries debates begin, sense is often the first thing to fall victim to at least some of the participants.

Even if Addendum II makes it through the process intact, and the fish successfully navigate their second hurdle, striped bass rebuilding will not be assured.  From what we know now, it won’t even be likely, for at the June 5 meeting of the PDT and Technical Committee, it was revealed that a fishing mortality rate of 0.17—the F_target that is Addendum II’s goal—only had a 28% chance of rebuilding the stock by the 2029 rebuilding deadline.

That means that yet another management action—we can, for purposes of this discussion, call it Addendum III, although it might or might not have that designation—will be required to get fishing mortality down to F_rebuild, the fishing mortality rate that will allow the stock to rebuild by 2029.

Right now, we have no idea what F_rebuild will be.  We probably know that it will be lower than Ftarget, 0.17—and I’ll always say “probably” because sometimes we get surprised when the technical folks crush the numbers—but we won’t know just how low it will have to be until the next stock assessment is released around October 2024. 

Fortunately, after Dr. Davis made his original motion to initiate Addendum II, Dr. Armstrong proposed an amendment which read,

“The addendum will include an option for a provision enabling the Board to respond via Board action to the results of the upcoming stock assessment updates (e.g. currently scheduled for 2024, 2026) if the stock is not projected to rebuild by 2029 with a probability greater than or equal to 50%.

That amendment was approved, as was the motion to which it was attached.  Thus, once the 2024 assessment update comes out, the Management Board will be able to move quickly to adopt needed rebuilding measures, without the need to first compose a draft addendum and send it out for public comment.

However, that doesn’t mean that adopting Addendum III will be easy.  Although the Board won’t take such addendum to public hearing, every Management Board member will be reaching out to and hearing from their states’ striped bass fishermen, tackle dealers, and for-hire fleet, and it’s likely that industry opposition will be even more strident than it was when the emergency measures were released.

We don’t know what sort of measures Addendum III might contain in addition to size limits, but no-harvest closures are virtually assured, along with likely cuts to states’ commercial quotas.  Resistance undoubtedly be stiff, state legislators will almost certainly become involved, and it is far from impossible that some states, which have supported rebuilding so far, with reconsider their positions if the required rebuilding measures will work real hardship on their fishing industries.

Whether there will be enough support on the Management Board to adopt Addendum III, and the measures needed to achieve rebuilding, is anyone’s guess at this point.  I remain somewhat optimistic, given the strong support for striped bass conservation that many states have demonstrated to date, but that may only be because I don’t know what achieving F_rebuild will take; the needed measures might be daunting enough to spark real concerns.

The bottom line is that, right now, we have no way to know how high the bass’ third hurdle will be, and no way to know whether such hurdle will be overcome.

It’s possible that, at some point between now and 2029, Maryland will produce another strong year class, or perhaps even more.  While that won’t help rebuilding, as any pass spawned over the next few years won’t enter the spawning stock before 2029, it would still help ensure the species’ future.

It’s also possible that the current dismal level of striped bass recruitment will continue over the next five or six years, and conceivably into the foreseeable future, at which point discussions about rebuilding become academic, and discussions about how to avoid a stock collapse begin.  Should we get to that point, talk about not mere harvest reductions, but also harvest prohibitions, could well be on the table.

Hopefully we won’t get to that point.

Hopefully, the Management Board will help the striped bass over every hurdle that it confronts. 

I think that, right now, most of the Management Board members intend to do just that.  Whether such intent will survive the challenges of rebuilding is just one more thing that, at this point in the process, we really have no way to know.

 

 

 

 

 

 

CONFRONTING RECREATIONAL BYCATCH IN THE SOUTH ATLANTIC

 

Fishery management is rife with controversy.  But if anything in that arena comes close to a universal truth, accepted by the commercial, recreational, and for-hire sectors, as well as by managers and the environmental community, it is the notion that bycatch is bad.

The Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act defines bycatch as

“fish which are harvested in a fishery, but which are not sold or kept for personal use, and includes economic discards and regulatory discards.  Such term does not include fish released alive under a recreational catch and release fishery management program.”

Magnuson-Stevens, in establishing national standards for fishery conservation and management, states that

“Conservation and management measures shall, to the extent practicable, (A) minimize bycatch and (B) to the extent bycatch cannot be avoided, minimize the mortality of such bycatch.”

Most people, and particularly anglers, tend to think of bycatch as a problem caused by commercial fisheries.  They think of things like turtles and marine mammals incidentally killed by miles-long pelagic longlines, cod unintentionally caught in trawls targeting haddock, pollock, and/or Acadian redfish, or the trail of striped bass, accidentally killed and intentionally dumped, floating in the wake of a dragger seeking other species.

In 2007, the angler-oriented Coastal Conservation Association, along with two marine fishery-oriented conservation groups, sued the Secretary of Commerce, who oversees the National Marine Fisheries Service, alleging among other things that, because approximately 90% of red snapper fishing mortality in the Gulf of Mexico was attributable to bycatch in the shrimp trawl fishery, the red snapper fishery management plan should contain provisions that addressed such bycatch.  The United States District Court for the Southern District of Texas in deciding the case of Coastal Conservation Association v. Gutierrez, ordered the Secretary to

“consistent with his obligations under [Magnuson-Stevens], approve a red snapper rebuilding plan, considering measures to reduce bycatch in the shrimp fishery, within the next nine months.”

 NMFS has since recognized the contribution that reducing such bycatch has made to rebuilding the Gulf red snapper population, although it doesn’t generally acknowledge the lawsuit.  The Coastal Conservation Association is far less reticent to hail the impacts of its litigation on the red snapper’s recovery, and it is not hesitant to point it’s finger at the impacts of commercial bycatch on the red snapper stock.

But what happens when the shoe finds itself on the other foot?

What happens when recreational bycatch begins to cause meaningful harm to a commercial fishery?  And in particular, to a commercial red snapper fishery?

We’re starting to see the answer to that question play out in the South Atlantic, where a group of commercial fishermen are suing the current Secretary of Commerce, Gina Raimondo, for NMFS’ failure to rein in bycatch in the recreational red snapper fishery, which failure, the plaintiffs allege, violates the clear language of Magnuson-Stevens.

The matter is Slash Creek Waterworks, Inc., et al v. Raimondo.  It was filed in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia on June 16, and challenges a recently-adopted temporary rule governing the South Atlantic red snapper fishery, alleging

“The Amendment 43 regulations, in conjunction with the temporary rule, establish and implement an annual catch limit for red snapper that is set in terms of landings only—ignoring dead discards, which represent the overwhelming majority of catch.  This approach fails to limit catch of South Atlantic red snapper, fails to prevent overfishing, and creates a de facto reallocation of red snapper to the recreational sector, each of which is contrary to law.”

The underlying facts of the case are difficult to dispute. 

The most recent South Atlantic red snapper stock assessment, designated “SEDAR 73,” was released in March 2021.  It found that the stock was both overfished and experiencing overfishing, and noted that

“…Since 2010, general recreational discards have been the dominant source of fishing mortality.

“…the exploitation rate has remained above [the fishing mortality threshold] since the late 1970s, with the exception of 2013.  Since 2010, the exploitation rate has been dominated by dead discards, especially from the general recreational fleet.

“…The general recreational fleet has been the dominant source of removals, for both landings and dead discards.  Since 2010, total landings have remained at or below [the landings level associated with fishing mortality at maximum sustainable yield], however discards have exceeded [the discard level associated with fishing mortality at maximum sustainable yield] for most of these years.”

There is thus little reason to doubt that recreational fishing mortality, and not commercial fishing activities, is the greatest single obstacle to red snapper rebuilding.  There is also little or no reason to doubt that it is recreational discard mortality, and not recreational landings, that creates the biggest and most intractable problem.  As noted by the South Atlantic Fishery Management Council,

“…overfishing [is] primarily driven by the high numbers of fish in the recreational fishery released throughout the year that don’t survive.  These dead fish comprise approximately 85% of the allowable removals in the fishery.  Due to the high proportion of the removals being dead discards, reductions in landings alone, even no allowable landings, will not end the overfishing of Red Snapper.  Therefore, in order to end overfishing, the Council must also reduce dead discards.  [emphasis added]”

It's important to note that such recreational dead discards accrue “throughout the year,” in fisheries for other species, and not just during the brief recreational red snapper season.  Thus, if the argument successfully made by the Coastal Conservation Association in Coastal Conservation Association v. Gutierrez has any lasting merit, NMFS has an obligation to address red snapper bycatch in other fisheries—in this case, in other recreational fisheries—in order to discharge its statutory obligation to rebuild red snapper.

NMFS appears to have agreed.

According to the American Sportfishing Association, the primary trade association for the fishing tackle industry,

“NOAA Fisheries strongly advocated for [the South Atlantic Fisheries Management Council] considering time/area bottom fishing closures for snapper grouper in the ‘short term’ to end overfishing of red snapper.  The NOAA Fisheries Southeast Regional Administrator noted that discard mortality needed to be reduced by 65% to end overfishing and that bottom fishing closures should be considered as a way ‘to keep people off the fish’…They specifically discussed options such as depth limits, seasonal closures, and/or area closures of snapper grouper fishing in federal waters.”

That the American Sportfishing Association opposed such regulations isn’t particularly surprising, given its job of promoting fishing tackle sales and protecting the profits of the fishing tackle industry.  However, it turns out that the Coastal Conservation Association—the very same association that went to court in an effort to place additional burdens on the commercial shrimp industry, in order to promote red snapper rebuilding in the Gulf of Mexico—is opposed to such measures as well.

I suppose “coastal conservation” doesn’t look so attractive when the fishery that someone is trying to burden happens to be your own.  It is, after all, far more appealing, and far less troublesome, to conserve someone else’s fish.

“…Off the states of North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida, a booming red snapper population is threatening to close all bottom fishing in the region for years.  Red snapper are currently in a rebuilding plan that won’t conclude for more than two decades, but they are already so numerous that NOAA Fisheries calculates that just what anglers catch as bycatch is overfishing red snapper…

“What’s driving this dilemma is a requirement that the Council end overfishing within two years of being notified of the condition.  NOAA Fisheries notified the Council over a year ago that based on the last stock assessment red snapper were undergoing overfishing, so the regulatory clock is ticking—loudly.  NOAA says a complete ban on directed harvest will not end the overfishing, so it believes something must be done to substantially decrease the discards (and discard mortality) to end overfishing.”

Recreational opposition to the closures was so substantial that the South Atlantic Council backed off any plans that it might have had to impose time and area restrictions, thus assuring that overfishing will continue in the South Atlantic red snapper fishery, and that recreational fishermen will, despite clear language in Magnuson-Stevens, to remain unaccountable for their overages.

In response, the commercial fishermen sued, making three related claims.

Their first claim is very simple.  Despite Magnuson-Stevens’ clear mandate that

“Conservation and management measures shall prevent overfishing while achieving, on a continuing basis, the optimum yield from each fishery for the United States fishing industry,  [emphasis added]”

the Council and agency has allowed overfishing to continue, even though use of the word “shall” takes away all Council discretion; neither the regional fishery management councils nor NMFS have any authority to permit overfishing in a fishery management plan, plan amendment, or other management measure.

And the term “overfishing” addresses all fishing mortality, not merely landings.  Magnuson-Stevens defines overfishing as

“a rate or level of fishing mortality that jeopardizes the capacity of a fishery to produce the maximum sustainable yield on a continuing basis.”

Magnuson-Stevens also requires that every regional fishery management council

“develop annual catch limits for each of its managed fisheries that may not exceed the fishing level recommendations of its scientific and statistical committee or the peer review process described [elsewhere in the law].”

To provide additional guidance to the regional fishery management councils charged with implementing such requirement, NMFS must publish guidelines (which do not have the force of law, but are nonetheless persuasive authority) addressing annual catch limits and related issues.  Some of the guidelines relevant to the South Atlantic red snapper situation state

“Each Council shall develop [annual catch limits] for each of its managed fisheries that may not exceed the ‘fishing level recommendations’ of its [scientific and statistical committee] or peer review process (Magnuson-Stevens Act Section 302(h)((6)).  The SSC recommendation that is most relevant to the ACLs is [acceptable biological catch], as both ACL and ABC are levels of annual catch.”

“Acceptable biological catch” is defined as

“a level of a stock or stock complex’s annual catch, which is based on an ABC control rule that accounts for the scientific uncertainty in the estimate of [the overfishing limit], any other scientific uncertainty, and the Council’s risk policy,”

while the “overfishing limit” is defined as

“the annual amount of catch that corresponds to the estimate of [the maximum fishing mortality threshold] applied to a stock or stock complex’s abundance and is expressed in terms of numbers or weight of fish.  [emphasis added]”

When we apply that statutory and regulatory language to the South Atlantic red snapper fishery, we find that Amendment 43 to the Fishery Management Plan for the Snapper Grouper Fishery of the South Atlantic Region doesn’t seem to comply.  Instead of basing the annual catch limit on the annual catch—that is, both dead discards and landings—the South Atlantic Council based it on landings alone, ignoring the dead recreational discards that comprise 85% of all fishing mortality.

The plaintiffs in the commercial fishermen’s lawsuit thus, not unreasonably, argue that the annual catch limit set in Amendment 43, and in the recently issued temporary regulation, violates the clear language of Magnuson-Stevens.  It seems somewhat difficult to disagree.

The plaintiffs' second claim is very similar to the first.

Plaintiffs’ third claim is that, because dead recreational discards make up such a large percentage of the overall catch—far more than the 71.93% allocated in the management plan, even before recreational landings are taken into account—both Amendment 43 and the temporary regulation constitute a de facto reallocation of the red snapper resource, and that such reallocation does not meet the “fairness” standard established by Magnuson-Stevens.

This claim is a tricky one.  It has been made in challenges to management actions affecting other species, but a definitive ruling on the “de facto reallocation” theory has not yet been made.  The relevant NMFS guidelines define an allocation as

“a direct and deliberate distribution of the opportunity to participate in a fishery among identifiable, discrete user groups or individuals.  Any management measure (or lack of management) has incidental allocative effects, but only those measures that result in direct distributions of fishing privileges will be judged against the allocation requirements of [National] Standard 4…”

It seems simple for NMFS to successfully argue that, because it didn’t explicitly increase the 71.93% recreational share of the South Atlantic red snapper fishery, it did not reallocate the resource.  On the other hand, the South Atlantic Council and the agency both decided that it was acceptable to ignore dead recreational discards, which constitute 85% of all fishing mortality, and only apply the established allocation to the other 15% of fishing mortality represented by recreational and commercial landings.

Could that decision to ignore dead discards constitute a “direct and deliberate distribution of the opportunity to participate in” the red snapper fishery?  That’s something a judge must still decide, but it is somewhat difficult to believe that NMFS may endorse a regional fishery management council’s decision to take actions which would have a profound impact on a sector’s ability to participate in a fishery, to the benefit of another sector, and be exempt from any judicial review of the fairness and equity of such action just because the word “allocation” was never used.

Hopefully, the District Court down in Washington will finally provide some clarity on that issue.

In the meantime, the lawsuit brought by the commercial plaintiffs is likely to cause some real consternation among recreational fishermen, and recreational advocacy groups, in the southeast, who have long acted as if the commercial sector was solely responsible for overfishing and overfished stocks.  We can probably expect such organizations to file amicus curiae (“friend of the court”) briefs in the matter, seeking to uphold the current management approach.

In time, we'll find out whether the plaintiffs prevail, or whether the courts will bless NMFS’ and the Council’s decision to ignore dead recreational discards.

In the meantime, the suit serves as a potent reminder that harmful bycatch isn’t limited to the commercial sector, and that sometimes, recreational anglers can, just by fishing, cause meaningful harm.

 

 

 

.. 

 

 

 

SCENES FROM A STOCK COLLAPSE

 

Everyone who has gotten involved with fisheries issues has heard the term “stock collapse,” yet beyond a general agreement that stock collapse is bad, there’s not too much agreement on what the term means.

The Encyclopedia of Ocean Sciences defines stock collapse as

“a rapid reduction in stock abundance, …distinguished from short-term natural fluctuations,”

but that doesn’t provide too much guidance.  While it tells us that any decline in abundance must be “rapid,” it doesn’t tell us anything about how significant such decline must be to earn “collapse” status.  Intuitively, we recognize that a five or ten percent decline isn’t good enough, but is 25% good enough?  Does the population have to decline by more than half before “collapse” becomes an accurate description?  Or is even that not good enough?  Is something like a 75%, or even a 90%, decline needed before the term “stock collapse” applies?

And how, exactly, does one distinguish a stock collapse from “short-term natural fluctuations?”

There is no generally accepted formula.

Five years ago, a group of sixteen scientists attempted to provide meaningful guidance.  They published a paper titled “When is a fish stock collapsed?” which can be accessed through the ResearchGate website.  In the paper, the authors noted that

“numerous definitions exist for classifying stocks as collapsed, and that the classification of a stock’s status is sensitive to changes in the collapse definition’s formulation.”

In an attempt to bring some consistency to how “stock collapse” is defined, the authors wrote,

“The definition we propose views a collapse as an abrupt change to an undesired state.  It consists of two sequential, interlinked criteria that capture the collapse process; an abrupt decline, and an ensuing period of prolonged depletion.  Indicative of impaired production, prolonged depletion is an undesired state for a fish stock.  Each criteria is defined as follows:

1.  Abrupt decline:  a stock’s adult biomass declines by 70% within a maximum of three generations or 10 years.

2.  Prolonged depletion:  a stock’s mean adult biomass over a succeeding generation remains below the 70% abrupt decline.”

While that definition is not generally accepted either, it provides a good starting point for a discussion, allowing us to assume that, to qualify as a stock collapse, the abundance of adult fish has to fall by far more than half, and has to stay at low levels for a while; a stock that falls quickly and bounces back just as fast is merely experiencing a temporary fluctuation.

With that in mind, let’s go back in time, to get an idea what a stock collapse looks like.

It’s 1968.  My family had purchased a new boat that year, a 15-foot no-name outboard—if I recall, the brand was something like “Glasscraft,” made in some ramshackle facility in Norwalk, CT—with a 33 hp Evinrude hanging on the back.  But it was the day after Thanksgiving, the town dock was officially closed, and the boat was sitting on blocks in our back yard.  Striped bass, bluefish, weakfish, mackerel, and just about everything else was already in the year’s rear-view mirror, which is why I was sitting on the supposedly shut-down town dock, with one line down on the bottom for flounder and tomcod, and the other suspending baits just a few feet below the surface, where they’d hopefully attract my main target—smelt.

I wasn’t alone.  There were a few older guys—and by “older,” I mean retirees, or men who owned seasonal business who could sneak away to fish during the day with no one complaining—who were also hoping that the smelt would appear, but the real show wouldn’t begin until after dark, when the after-work crowd would arrive, armed with rods, Coleman lanterns, and maybe a bottle or two to stave off the cold.  Those were the serious smelt fishermen, and from late October until the creek froze over, they’d be lining the dock—and just about every other dock and seawall along the Connecticut and Westchester shores—with some just stopping by for an hour or two and others planning to stay until midnight or the wee hours of morning, seeking the small, silvery fish that were crowding into estuaries all along the north shore of Long Island Sound.

I don’t recall how many smelt I caught that day—I know that there were a few, along with some flounder and tomcod—but I do know that it was the last time I caught any at all.  The river began to ice over shortly thereafter, and when the autumn of ’69 came around—the smelt didn’t.  They didn’t show up at all.  They just disappeared, and a quirky fishery that attracted far more anglers than one might expect—and helped pay tackle shops’ bills at the end of the year—vanished over the course of a single season, with few people alive today even remembering that it ever existed.

We never figured out why the smelt collapsed.  At the time, a lot of fishermen blamed it on predation by bluefish, which had only recently begun to flood into our inshore waters.  In retrospect, I suspect that increasing development cut off access to most of the streams where they spawned, and with fewer new fish entering the stock, they could no longer support existing mortality levels—both fishing and natural—and so disappeared.

Whatever the cause, the stock collapsed, although I don’t think that was the stock collapse that you expected me to describe.

So let’s go back to 1968, but start a little sooner.  It is April.  The new boat is in the water, and we’re headed out for winter flounder.

Flounder had actually started to bite during March, but the town dock didn’t open until April 15, so we couldn’t start fishing until the month was almost done.  I can’t provide the details of any one trip, but I can say that from April through the end of May, we did a lot of flounder fishing and caught a lot of fish—most weighing well under a pound—without bothering to use any chum or pay particular attention to the tides.  Flounder were just about everywhere.

Things stayed like that for another decade.  But in the fall of ’79, we suddenly started catching a lot of big flounder, many over a pound and some weighing close to two, where there were only small fish before.  Excited to be catching bigger flounder, we didn’t really notice that the small fish were getting scarce.  The good fishing continued for a few years, but in 1983, my wife and I moved to the South Shore of Long Island, where the same pattern was repeating itself.

We caught lots of flounder, and at first, there were more small fish than large.  But by 1990, the small fish were disappearing on Long Island, too; 2-pound flounder became more common than hand-sized fish, and numbers were starting to drop. 

In the late ‘80s, state regulators tried to adopt regulations to halt the decline, but faced a lot of pushback from the recreational fishing industry, with for-hire boats complaining that a low bag limit would take away anglers’ perception that they might enjoy a “big day”—that is, take home a pailful of fish—and hurt business, while the shops were complaining that regulations would impact their bottom line.

Recruitment of young fish into the stock began declining sharply, but every attempt to constrain harvest met stiff opposition from the fishing industry, which couldn’t see beyond the short term.  By 2005, the fish were just about gone.  Restrictive regulations were eventually adopted, but they came too late to do very much good.  New York’s recreational landings fell from about 14.5 million fish in 1984 to just about 100 in 2022.

That certainly qualifies as a collapse.

But I’m guessing that’s not the stock collapse you were expecting me to write about, either, even though, between the loss of the smelt and the loss of the winter flounder, inshore anglers probably lost at least six weeks of good fishing at the beginning of the season, and about the same amount at the end, and the angling industry lost close to three months of previously dependable income. 

To provide some idea of how the loss of the flounder impacted the industry, in the ‘80s, in my part of Great South Bay, I could drive over the bridge to Fire Island and see the local channels lined with private and for-hire boats, all soaking bloodworms, clams, and sandworms, and chumming with mussels and clams, in pursuit of winter flounder; this April, when I was planning to run offshore for cod, I went to every tackle shop within a reasonable drive and couldn’t find even one that had started carrying bait, because so few folks were fishing that early in the season.

Still, let’s go back to 1968 one more time, and this time, we’ll talk about the collapse you’ve been waiting for—striped bass. 

Of course, that collapse didn’t start in ’68.  1968 was the year that I became a dedicated striped bass fisherman, because we finally had a boat small enough to sneak around the rocks and along the sod banks where bass were most likely to be.  My father and I were out every weekend, trolling the sandworm and spinner combinations that everyone used at the time.  We weren’t the best anglers in our part of the Sound, but there were enough bass around, in sizes ranging from shorts (the size limit back then was just 16 inches) to the occasional 50-pounder, that we managed to put quite a few fish in the boat, although none were particularly large.

In 1970, I got my driver’s license and, shortly thereafter, a well-used car.  Now able to drive myself to the dock, I began fishing after school—at least on nights when I didn’t have to work—and throughout the  summer, expanding my experience and my success as I began fishing not only with bait, but with plugs, bucktails, and the new soft plastic lures that were appearing in the shops.

In the same year, Maryland produced the largest year class of striped bass that had ever been seen.  The juvenile abundance index for 1970 was 30.52, and thought we’ve had four larger spawns since, I don’t think that I’ve ever seen striped bass available in as many different sizes as I did in the mid-1970s.NB

Beginning in 1972, the ’70 year class swarmed into Long Island Sound, first as 14-inchers, then growing larger every year.  Bigger bass, spawned during the 1950s and 1960s, were also readily available.  Thus, on one July morning, I could take out the owner of a local tackle shop, have him hook a couple of rats on poppers at the same time that I was fighting a 17 hooked on a bucktail, and then run to another spot  and put a 51 in the boat.

Fishing was very, very good back then.

But then we started noticing that our small fish were steadily getting bigger.  That is, we saw the 1970s getting bigger and, for a while, a few somewhat smaller bass coming up behind them.  But then we stopped seeing shorts, and then stopped seeing anything under 20 inches or so, and then…

The funny thing is, no one thought much about it until Bob Pond, a legendary striped bass fisherman and creator of the Atom line of artificial lures, started trying to call people’s attention to the fact that the Maryland juvenile abundance index was in sharp decline.  From its record-high level in 1970, it fell to 6.69 in ’75, 4.91 and 4.85 in ’76 and ’77.  It came up to 8.45 in ’78, but then sounded new lows, recording JAIs of 4.24, 1.98 and 1.22 over the next three years. 

While few new fish were entering the stock, too many older, spawning-age fish were still being removed.  Because there were still a lot of large bass being taken, neither striped bass fishermen nor fishery managers paid much attention to the poor Maryland spawns until the stock, stressed beyond any hope of resilience, collapsed.

Every now and again, I hear people say that the striped bass stock is collapsing today. 

While I respect such people’s concerns for the fishery, and know that their hearts are in the right place, they have no idea of what a striped bass stock collapse really looks like.  Right now, spawning stock biomass is three or four times larger than it was in the first half of the 1980s, when the collapse drove it to lows that I hope we will never see again.

There are things that you have to live through to truly comprehend, and a striped bass collapse is probably one of them. 

Imagine heading out before dawn, fishing for stripers because that’s what you do, knowing before you cast off from the dock that your efforts will almost certainly prove fruitless.  Morning after morning, you try, casting to waters that you have fished almost since you first learned how to walk, waters you knew so well that if someone handed you a pen and a blank sheet of paper, you could draw in every ledge and boulder, and show how they appeared at every phase of the tide.  Morning after morning, there’s no sign of even a single striped bass.

Then, one day, that changes. 

The sun is still below the horizon, and everything is windless and still, wrapped in the sort of silver-gray light that you only get on soft, early summer mornings.  There are wisps of haze hanging over the water, enough that you can’t really tell where the sky stops and Long Island Sound begins.  You’re fishing a mile of bouldered shoreline; once a score of boats—maybe more—would have been working the points and rockpiles, but now, there is only one other boat, maybe two hundred yards away, to share the empty water.  But you cast, as you have cast so many times before, retrieving the bucktail with practiced motions, but without any hope.

But this time, something interrupts the lure’s return to boatside.  You lean back on the rod and set your hook into the jaw of a decent fish which you fight to the boat, then quickly unhook and release.

And just then, as you straighten up and reach for your rod, you notice the haunting sound of a single man clapping coming across the water from the other boat.  Whether he was clapping because you released the fish, or simply because you simply managed to find one, is something that you’ll never know.

But you’ll always remember.

That is what a stock collapse looks like.

Last Friday, in the dark before dawn, I met Mike Mucha at his boat on the Mianus River, and we fished my old home waters.  I still know where every rock resides, and how the current wraps around each one at various stages of tide.  We worked from Cos Cob to Greenwich, and found a few bass along the way.  None were very large—Mike had one that might have gone 10 or 12 pounds, from the big Maryland year class of 2015—but we knew that there were bigger fish around, from the strong year classes produced in 2011, 2003, and even 1996.  Anglers are celebrating the abundance of 2015s, and praising the health of the stock.

But of all the fish that we caught, there almost none were smaller than 24 inches or so, probably fish spawned in 2018.

Since then, the Maryland juvenile abundance index has tanked.  For the years 2019-2022, it was 3.37, 2.48, 3.20, and 3.62, the lowest four-year average ever recorded in the 65-year life of the survey.  Predictions for the 2023 year class are not good.

We drifted along the rocks and sod banks, and bass were still hitting our lures.

I’ve cast to those stones for most of my life, and know them well.  But lately, it’s not the rocks that have been giving me an eerie feeling of déjà vu.