Sunday, January 14, 2024

WHAT SOME STRIPED BASS FISHERMEN KNOW TO BE TRUE

 Mark Twain reportedly noted,

“The trouble with the world is not that people know too little, but that they know so many things that ain’t so.”

While the author was undoubtedly thinking of the world as a whole when he uttered that statement, it applies to the narrow world of fisheries management equally well.

Fisheries science is far from cut-and-dried.  Every new stock assessment typically brings new information; some of the data merely builds on existing knowledge, but other information, particularly that which comes from so-called “research track” assessments, can forge new ground.  We often spend too much time guessing at what an assessment might say; often, our guesses are right, but at other times, we’re surprised by something unexpected and new.

Unfortunately, fishermen tend to be a conservative bunch, who feel most comfortable when the future resembles the past.  To them, new information and ideas are often suspect, particularly when it leads to restrictions on landings and fishing effort.  When that sort of thing happens—and sometimes, even when it doesn’t—fishermen tend to believe whatever makes them comfortable, even if such beliefs are untrue.

That sort of thinking was showcased at an Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission hearing held in Kings Park, New York last December 4, to hear stakeholders’ thoughts on the Draft Addendum II to Amendment 7 to the Interstate Management Plan for Atlantic Striped Bass.  Addendum II is intended to put management measures in place for the 2024 season, which will reduce fishing mortality to its target level and provide the bass some interim relief until a stock assessment update, scheduled for release next October, can provide a better understanding of what managers must do to rebuild the stock by the 2029 rebuilding deadline.

However, many of those who attended the December 4 hearing represented the for-hire fleet, which typically opposes any management measure, no matter how badly needed, that might have even a short-term negative impact on their businesses.  Thus, those attending the hearing heard repeated comments to the effect that the bass stock

“is as healthy and strong as [it has] ever been,”

but that the fish are merely changing their behavior and so not showing up in the various surveys used to monitor the population.

One of the recurring themes that appeared in the for-hire fleet’s testimony was that the recruitment failure observed in the Chesapeake Bay, which has historically produced between 70 and 90 percent of all striped bass on the East Coast, doesn’t mean that the striped bass stock is in trouble, because warming waters are causing the fish to move farther north, and to concentrate their spawning in New York’s Hudson River, as well as Connecticut’s Housatonic and Connecticut rivers.  One party boat captain said that those rivers are “where the fish are from,” and that, collectively, they “produce tons of striped bass.”  After a biologist explained that the striped bass stock assessment didn’t include bass that spawned in the Housatonic River, the captain commented that

“Not having the Housatonic River in the stock assessment is like not having the Dallas Cowboys when you’re looking at cheerleaders.”

Yet, while the for-hire operators could provide plenty of comment suggesting that the center of striped bass spawning has moved northward, they could not supply an iota of data to support that contention; it turns out that they lacked such data for a very good reason—what they were claiming is simply not true.

I honestly think that the for-hire representatives believed what they were saying.  Striped bass fishing was very good in some places, particularly in the ocean between western Long Island and northern New Jersey, during 2023, and the folks who operate party and charter boats in that vicinity were unable to square their observations of locally abundant striped bass with the stock assessment’s finding that the stock is overfished and that, because of poor recruitment, could be headed for even worse problems

By deciding to believe that, contrary to the assessment’s findings, the striped bass stock was actually healthy and abundant, but merely shifting north, such stakeholders could both explain their observations and create a story that justified their opposition to proposed conservation measures.

Although I do most of my striped bass fishing along the western Connecticut shore, and my experiences didn’t support what the for-hire people were saying, I didn’t want to dismiss their contentions out of hand; I wanted to make a few inquiries, and see whether what they were saying might, in fact, be the truth.  So I contacted the Connecticut Department of Energy and Environmental Protection, seeking a local scientist’s thoughts on whether there was any merit in the for-hires’ assertions.

The biologist confirmed my suspicions.  There was no wholesale shift of striped bass spawning into Connecticut rivers.  I was told that

“I think its pretty easy to dismiss that striped bass spawn in the Housatonic or Thames Rivers.  The head of tide extends almost to the most downstream dam in both systems—there’s very little freshwater habitat available below those dams—just not suitable spawning habitat for striped bass.”

So it would seem that leaving the Housatonic River out of the stock assessment is less like omitting the Dallas Cowboys when looking at cheerleaders, and more like omitting the Cowboys when looking for the next winner of the National Hockey League’s Stanley Cup.

And while some bass are spawned in the Connecticut River—the Connecticut Department of Energy and Environmental Protection conducts regular surveys of river herring there, which have found both young-of-the-year and Age 1 striped bass, as well as ripe, egg-bearing females and males with flowing milt—the river’s contribution to the coastal migratory striped bass population is probably not very large.

“While there is enough collective evidence to suggest there is some level of striped bass spawning happening in the CT River, I don’t think the body of evidence suggests there is a large cohort of striped bass reliably produced on an annual basis.”

But the most significant point of the Connecticut biologist’s comments were not his thoughts about striped bass spawning in specific rivers, but rather the impact of any and all spawning outside of the major spawning areas.

“While I agree that there are coastal rivers where striped bass spawn where no one is doing a scientific survey to produce annual indices of [young-of-the-year] relative abundance in those rivers, and therefore trends in YOY production in those rivers are not incorporated in the assessment—butit is not then a logical step to assume there is some body of striped bass out there on the coast that is somehow “invisible” to the assessment and therefore the management process.  The striped bass spawned in those rivers will leave those rivers and recruit to the coastal stock—and when they do—they will be caught by recreational anglers, they will be harvested by commercial harvesters, and they will be captured by the many scientific surveys operating along the coast—and all of this information feeds into the assessment to produce estimates of [spawning stock biomass], fishing mortality, relative strength of various year classes, etc.  It’s a fallacy to assume that just because we don’t have a YOY survey in a given river, that somehow the fish produced in that river are never “counted” in the stock assessment over the course of their lifetime.  [emphasis added]”

Thus, as much as some people would like to believe otherwise, there is no cryptic mass of striped bass swimming somewhere beyond fisheries managers’ ken.  If they are spawned, and survive long enough to leave their natal rivers, they are counted and considered in the stock assessment.

As far as the northernmost producer river that is subject to regular surveys—that is, the Hudson—it isn’t showing any indication of increased productivity.  Over the past five years, one year—2020—appears to have produced a very strong year class, while a slightly above-average class was produced in 2022.  The other three years were below-average, with both 2019 and 2023 falling below the 25th percentile of all recorded spawns; 2023 produced the smallest year class of striped bass since 1985.


Even so, the belief that the center of striped bass abundance, as well as the bulk of the striped bass spawning, is shifting north remains a popular legend among some in the striped bass fishery, and particularly among those in the for-hire fleet.  I don’t expect that to change

It’s not because there are any facts supporting the notion, but because people nonetheless know that it’s true.

Even though it ain’t so.


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