STRIPED BASS: HOW DID THE 28- TO 31-INCH SLOT LIMIT REALLY AFFECT THE FOR-HIRE FLEET?

Addendum II to Amendment 7 to the Interstate Fishery Management Plan for Atlantic Striped Bass has been finalized.  Included among its provisions was a 28- to 31-inch slot size limit for anglers participating in the ocean recreational fishery.

That slot limit did not originate with Addendum II; instead, the new addendum effectively ratified the emergency action taken by the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission’s Atlantic Striped Bass Management Board last May, after recreational landings spiked in 2022.

While most dedicated striped bass anglers appeared to be happy with the emergency action, it received a hostile reaction from much of the for-hire fleet, which seemed to believe that the narrow slot would cut deeply into their profits.  The for-hires’ position was exemplified in a petition drive initiated by the Montauk Boatmens’ and Captains’ Association, which wrote

“Recently, the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission (ASMFC) took drastic, unreasonable, and unnecessary measures to pass an emergency action that reduces the maximum size of an allowable striped bass from 35” to 31”.  Many anglers will recall the days when customers who paid a premium to fish on board a charter or head boat had the privilege of going home with 2 striped bass per person, vs the 1 per person limit for recreational anglers.  Regulations then changed, limiting the catch to 1 fish per person for all anglers.  Three years ago, in 2020, NYS introduced a slot size, further hurting the ability of captains to catch striped bass for our customers and requiring not only a minimum size of 28”, but also a maximum size of 35”.  And then, earlier this year, the ASMFC approved its preposterous emergency action, which was subsequently implemented by the NYS Department of Environmental Conservation on June 20, 2023, reducing that maximum size to 31”, leaving us with a slot range of a mere 3”.

“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 ofttimes offset by the ability to put fish in their coolers to bring home for their families.  Particular 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 upon Montauk’s visitors to thrive.”

Taking away the breathless rhetoric, and leaving aside the fact that, if putting groceries on the table is the ultimate goal, it’s a lot cheaper, and a lot more certain, to buy fish rather than charter a boat and attempt to catch them, the argument breaks down to a simple proposition:  Customers won’t patronize for-hire boats if they aren’t reasonably sure of bringing home a striped bass.

Is that proposition rooted in reality, or is it merely one more argument made by folks uncomfortable with change, no matter how necessary that change might be?

To examine that question objectively, I analyzed Marine Recreational Information Program data for the years 2021, 2022, and 2023. 

2021 provided a baseline, when the 28- to 35-inch slot was still in effect, most of the big 2015 year class had yet to enter that slot, and fishing mortality was very slightly below the fishing mortality target.  2022 saw the 2015s enter the slot in large numbers, causing recreational landings to spike and driving fishing mortality well above target without, so far as we know right now, exceeding the threshold that defines overfishing, and so created optimum conditions for for-hire customers who wanted to take a striped bass home.  The emergency measure which created the 28- to 31-inch slot limit became effective on July 1, 2023, although most states adopted it sooner, and so provides a gauge of how Addendum II’s continuation of that slot should impact the for-hire fishery.

I limited my inquiry to three categories of data:  For-hire striped bass landings, for-hire trips primarily targeting striped bass, and total for-hire trips in each state.  I also limited the inquiry to the New England states, New York, and New Jersey, since Maryland’s and Virginia’s for-hire bass fishery does much of its fishing in the Chesapeake Bay, and thus wasn’t be significantly impacted by the ocean slot limit, while Delaware’s for-hire fishery for striped bass is too small to generate meaningful data.

I was surprised by what the data revealed.

Based on the comments that I heard at various New York meetings, as well as the comments submitted with respect to Addendum II, I expected the number of directed striped bass trips to decline sharply in 2023, but that wasn’t the case.  In four of the seven states analyzed, the number of such directed trips taken in 2023 was higher than the number taken in the 2021 base year, when regulations were less restrictive.  

That was also the case when 2023 striped bass fishing effort was compared to effort in 2022, which provided the most favorable conditions for the catch-and-keep fishery since Addendum VI to Amendment 6 to the Atlantic Striped Bass Interstate Fishery Management Plan was implemented in 2020 (although the New Jersey increase in 2023 was so small as to be statistically indistinguishable from the directed effort in 2022; New Jersey’s 2023 effort might well have been significantly lower had New Jersey not delayed implementation of the emergency measure until July 1, thus allowing its for-hire fleet to take full advantage of the strong spring striped bass run in Raritan Bay).

Maine, New Hampshire, and Connecticut all saw directed striped bass trips in 2023 exceed the number of such trips made in both 2021 and 2022, while Massachusetts’ 2023 directed striped bass trips were about 27% higher than the 2021 total, but about 23% lower than the number of such trips made in 2022 (when considering such percentages, it’s necessary to remember that there is always some uncertainty in the estimates, particularly when made at both the state and sector level; thus, it’s reasonable to say that the relative increase in Massachusetts’ 2023 effort compared to 2021, and the decrease in effort when compared to 2022, were roughly equivalent). 

There were other coastal states that saw directed trips drop over the three years.  Both New Jersey and Rhode Island saw 2023 directed for-hire striped bass trips decline by about 20% when compared to 2021, while the number of New York’s directed for-hire trips fell far more sharply, by about 55%, over those two years.  It would be easy to argue that, in those states at least, the emergency regulations caused real harm to the for-hire fleet.

But, once again, the data does not support that claim.

In all three states, a significant decline in directed for-hire striped bass trips occurred in 2022, the very year when the big 2015 year class grew into the 28- to 35-inch slot caused recreational landings to spike, and should have made catch-and-keep anglers eager to book trips aboard for-hire boats.  Those striped bass bookings did not occur.  Instead, 2022 for-hire effort trailed that of 2021 by 13% in Rhode Island, 20% in New Jersey, and 31% in New York, even though anglers’ chances of catching a legal fish increased substantially.

If we add landings data to the number of directed trips taken in the three states, we find that in Rhode Island, anglers retained only 0.34 bass per for-hire trip—about one fish for every three outings—in 2021.  Although retention more than doubled, to 0.74 bass per trip, in 2022, the number of directed for-hire trips taken went down.  In New York, for-hire anglers retained about 0.43 bass per trip in 2021 and 0.67 bass per trip one year later, yet the number of for-hire trips taken in 2022 declined by a far greater percentage than it did in Rhode Island.

New Jersey’s data provides an even more puzzling pattern, as landings per for-hire trip dropped from 0.78 fish in 2021 to 0.68 fish in 2022, despite the greater availability of the the 2015s, and the for-hire effort decreased as well.  But even though the emergency regulations restricted the number of legal fish available, 2023 landings per trip increased to 0.84, although the number of trips taken didn’t change.

At that point, it becomes pretty clear that something other than an increase or decrease in the availability of legal striped bass is driving for-hire bookings.

In Rhode Island, while directed for-hire striped bass trips declined between 2021 and 2023, the number of overall for-hire trips increased substantially—by 34%--over those years, suggesting that the decline in the availability of legal striped bass did not lead to a corresponding decline in for-hire revenues.

In New Jersey and New York, the decline in directed striped bass trips corresponded to a larger, overall decline in the number of for-hire trips taken, regardless of the species targeted.  In New Jersey, overall for-hire effort fell by 40% between 2021 and 2023, even though striped bass only comprised between 13% and 17% of for-hire landings during that time—and made the greatest contribution to overall landings in the same year that the emergency measure was imposed.

In New York, overall for-hire effort fell by 32% between 2021 and 2022, the same year that directed striped bass landings fell by a statistically indistinguishable 31%; between 2022 and 2023, directed for-hire bass trips fell by 33%, while overall for-hire effort only fell by 3%.  Thus, while the emergency regulations might have discouraged for-hire anglers from pursuing striped bass, as may also have been the case in Rhode Island, they probably did not lead to a significant loss of for-hire revenues.

In summary, MRIP data provides little or no evidence suggesting that the 28- to 31-inch emergency striped bass slot limit led to substantial reduction in overall for-hire revenues in 2023 (although there is no way to disprove that, had the emergency action not been taken, revenues might have been somewhat higher).  In three of the seven states examined, more directed striped bass trips were taken in 2023 than were taken in either 2021 or 2022; in a fourth state, Massachusetts, more directed for-hire trips were taken in 2023 than in 2021, although fewer than in 2022. 

The three states which saw directed for-hire striped bass trips decrease from 2021 levels all shared a common pattern:  The greater part of the decrease occurred in 2022, before the emergency action was taken, and was thus entirely unrelated to the 28- to 31-inch slot limit.  However, in two of those states, Rhode Island and New York, a further decrease in directed for-hire trips occurred in 2023, which may or may not have been related to the emergency measure.  It is notable that, in both Rhode Island and New York, an increase in for-hire trips targeting other species led to either an increase (RI) or statistically trivial decrease (NY) in the overall number of for-hire trips taken in 2023, so that overall for-hire revenues likely either increased or were largely unchanged.

That does not mean that some individual for-hire operations were not impacted by the emergency action.  Any operation that had a client base primarily interested in catching and keeping striped bass, which was either unable or unwilling to expand into other fisheries or into the catch-and-release striped bass fishery, probably suffered a significant revenue loss as a result of the emergency measure.  Also, for-hire operators in states which suffered a decline in overall effort over the three-year period, as was the case in New Jersey and New York, also likely experienced revenue loss, although a decline in striped bass bookings, whether or not due to the emergency action, was not the decisive cause.

That being said, 2023 data presents a snapshot of a particular time with respect to the state of the striped bass stock.  2023 patterns of landings and effort do not necessarily predict the future. 

While Addendum II perpetuates the emergency action’s 28- to 31-inch slot limit, 2024 will see only a small portion of the 2015 year class fall within the bounds of the slot.  Instead, the primary cohort of fish falling within the slot will be 2017s, with 2018s taking their place in 2025 (assuming that, as was the case with the 2015 year class, the average 8-year-old bass is 31.5 inches long).  Both of those year classes recruited into the population in reasonably good numbers, although the recruitment of neither year class, at age1, was close to the recruitment of the 2015 year class at the same age.  Given that the weak 2016 year class was seven years old, the age when the average-sized fish should have fallen within the slot, in 2023, it is very possible that 2024 and/or 2025 will see a larger number of legal-sized bass available to anglers.

If that proves to be the case, it will be even harder to argue that Addendum II’s 28- to 31-inch slot limit causes any harm at all.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

BLACK SEA BASS: IS THE BLOOM FALLING FROM THE ROSE?

 

The northern stock of black sea bass, which includes all such fish found north of Cape Hatteras, was still overfished in 2007.  But from that point on, thanks to good fishery management and a boost from Mother Nature, the stock experienced a startlingly fast recovery, with the spawning stock biomass spiking at nearly 2.4 times the biomass target in 2014.

The sharp increase in black sea bass numbers was due, in part, to a warming ocean.  Black sea bass recruitment is largely dependent upon the conditions experienced by Year 0 fish during their first winter which is spent near the edge of the continental shelf, with warm, saline water increasing the survival of young fish.  

A warming coastal sea has also shifted the abundance of older fish northward.  The population model used to assess the stock indicates that, prior to 2005, spawning stock biomass in the northern region (New York and New England) averaged around 1,300 metric tons.  After that, it began to increase significantly, reaching nearly 16,300 metric tons—more than a 12-fold increase—in 2016, before dropping back to an average of 13,400 metric tons in the years since.

Sea bass landings spiked, too, particularly in New England, where they increased from 350,000 fish in 2007 to 1,850,000 fish in 2010, eventually peaking around 2,550,000 million fish in 2021, even as size and bag limits grew ever more restrictive.

The fish became so abundant that, anywhere between New Jersey and Massachusetts, it was hard not to run into them, regardless of what an angler was fishing for.  Because of such abundance, anglers began making more and more trips targeting the species.  Again using numbers for just the New England fishery, 2007 saw anglers make about 56,000 trips that primarily targeted black sea bass.  Directed black sea bass trips more than doubled, to 190,000, in 2010, and rose to about 785,000 in 2021, when landings peaked. 

Fishery managers were both unable and unwilling to constrain recreational black sea bass landings, even though such landings regularly exceeded both the recreational harvest limit and the annual catch limit.  Beginning in 2019, both the Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council and the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission’s Summer Flounder, Scup, and Black Sea Bass Management Board chose to maintain status quo, or near status-quo, black sea bass landings, even though the annual catch limit for the recreational sector had been chronically exceeded, triggering the accountability measures incorporated into the fishery management plan.

Such attitudes have continued to the present day,  At the December joint meeting of the Council and Management Board, fishery managers chose to ignore a regulation that clearly called for a 10% reduction in recreational black sea bass landings, justifying their actions by arguing that such regulation didn’t contemplate the situation where a stock assessment was delayed and managers were forced to make their decision based on three-year-old stock status data.  And, as happened in the past, even though average recreational landings for the previous three years exceeded the average annual catch limit, both Council and Board failed to adopt any accountability measures, this time claiming that a 10% landings reduction imposed the previous year, coupled with a new model for setting recreational harvest limits, eliminated the need to hold anglers responsible for their past excesses.

Perhaps because of the increased fishing pressure, abetted by fishery managers’ failure to make even a half-hearted effort to constrain recreational catch to or below the sector’s annual catch limit, something interesting is happening in at least part of the sea bass’ northern range.

The average size of the fish caught by anglers seems to be shrinking.

I’ve always fished for black sea bass from time to time, but given that the stock was overfished, and that sea bass were, for a very long time, largely small and rarely abundant, I didn’t start putting in any significant effort until about 15 years ago.  At that point, spawning stock biomass was still rebuilding, although it had nearly achieved its target level.  Regulations, as I recall, included a 15-fish bag limit, a size limit of 13 inches or so, and a season that started sometime in the spring.  Even though the season had been open for a couple of months, I could still run out to a local wreck (located in about 85 feet of water off Fire Island, New York), and over the course of a couple of hours, catch a limit of fish that included many large males weighing more than three pounds; using two baited hooks, I'd regularly catch a few double-headers of sea bass big enough that their combined weight broke the seven-pound mark. 

Despite the quality of the fishing, I could often run out to a wreck and be the first, and often the only, boat to fish it that day.

A few years later, because of increasing angling pressure, the season had been shortened, to begin in July, while the bag limit was cut to eight fish and the size limit increased by a little.  Still, when I ran out at the start of the season, before the larger fish had been picked off the wreck, I could still limit out, with the smallest fish around 16 inches and the largest over four pounds, in less time than it took me to run to the wreck from the inlet.

But not long after that, things changed.  The size limit had been increased again, and the bag limit cut to just three fish.  On the same wreck where I could once limit out with eight quality fish in well under an hour, it now took me a couple of hours, even on the first day of the season, to find three 16-inch fish.  

Last year, even fishing with jigs, which typically catch larger fish than does bait, I shuffled through nearly 40 black sea bass without finding a single fish that broke the 16 ½-inch minimum size.

The fishing club that I belong to is made up of nearly 100 members, with most being skilled and experienced anglers.  Yet it only had two black sea bass entered into its annual contest last year, and both weighed less than three pounds.

And shrinking black sea bass aren’t only found off Fire Island.  When I speak to anglers, and some professional captains, who fish both off Montauk and off Long Island’s West End, I hear the same stories of having to return large numbers of undersized fish in order to find—if luck favors the fisherman—one, or two, or maybe three legal fish.

Shrinking fish size is usually a warning to fishery managers, a sign that all is not well with the stock, with too many fish being removed from the water too soon.

In the case of black sea bass, a recent research-track stock assessment makes it clear that the fish is not currently in any trouble at all.  Although spawning stock biomass has declined from its peak, when it stood at nearly 240% of the SSB target, it remained robust in 2021, when it was still estimated to be at about 181% of its target level.  Recruitment of new fish into the population also appears to be fairly strong.

If there is any cause for concern, it is that mild overfishing seems to have occurred in 2021, when the threshold fishing mortality rate was exceeded by about 8%.  Assuming that spawning stock biomass has continued to decline since 2021, and recognizing that excessive recreational landings continue to drive catch above the annual catch limit, the next management track assessment, which will be released later this year, may well find that such overfishing continued, at an accelerated rate.

Even if that is the case, there is no cause for panic.  There are still plenty of black sea bass around, and should be for some years to come.

However, it may be time for both anglers and, particularly, fishery managers, to stop taking black sea bass abundance for granted, and to recognize that even very abundant species can experience overfishing, and that such overfishing, if not addressed in time, can have a negative impact on both the fish and on the fishermen who pursue them.

 

 

SHOULD MARYLAND'S (AND EVERYONE ELSE'S) FOR-HIRE FLEET GET THEIR OWN STRIPED BASS QUOTA

 

One of the hot issues in fisheries management over the past few years has been “sector separation” or “mode splits,” the concept that the for-hire fleet should be governed by special regulations that allow its customers to retain more fish or smaller fish than anglers fishing from private boats or from shore, and perhaps also fish during seasons closed to other members of the angling community,

Sometimes, there has been good reason to put such special rules in place.  The best example may have been the Gulf of Mexico red snapper fishery, which saw private boat anglers kill so many snapper within (or, at least, supposedly within) state waters that federally-permitted for-hire boats were left with an impossibly short season—at one point, a season that only lasted three days.  In that case, creating different sets of rules for private and for-hire vessels merely leveled a playing field that was thrown badly off-center by the excesses of the private boat fleet.

But when the for-hire fleet in the northeast and mid-Atlantic talk about sector separation and mode splits, they’re not just seeking parity with shore-based anglers and those who fish from private vessels.  Instead, they’re seeking special privileges that elevate their anglers above the rest of the recreational fishermen, and let them kill more fish than everyone else is allowed.

That effort became very apparent in the recently concluded debate over Addendum II to Amendment 7 to the Interstate Fishery Management Plan for Atlantic Striped Bass, which saw the for-hire fleet make a concerted effort to expand their slot size limit in the ocean fishery to 28 to 33 inches, while private boat and shore-based anglers were constrained to a 28- to 31-inch slot.  In the Chesapeake Bay, Maryland for-hires were attempting to cling to their own special privileges, a 2-fish bag limit that contrasted sharply with the 1-fish bag that applied to the rest of the recreational fishery.

In the end, the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission’s Atlantic Striped Bass Management Board decided that an angler was an angler, no matter what platform they decided to fish from, and denied the for-hires the special rules that they sought.

Some of the for-hires are still throwing tantrums about that decision.

Perhaps the most spectacular of those occurred earlier this week in Talbot County, Maryland, where the Delmarva Fisheries Association and the Maryland Charter Boat Association co-hosted a meeting of commercial fishermen and for-hire operators, giving them a chance to complain about the ASMFC forcing them to share some of the burden of conserving the same striped bass resource that they profit from throughout the season.  

The for-hires would have much preferred to leave that responsibility up to the private boat fleet and the folks who fish from the shore.

Thus, the organizers of the event also invited some local politicians, lawyers, and representatives from a public relations firm, trying to spread news of their grievances far and wide (although, given that I have only seen one local publication, The Star Democrat, pick up the story so far, the PR folks might not have been needed).  There was also talk of bringing a federal lawsuit against the ASMFC, but given the 2010 appellate court decision in New York v. Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission, the ASMFC probably isn't too concerned about that.

The Maryland charter boat operators were united in the belief that the one-fish bag limit would not only harm their businesses, but also limit the profits of other enterprises that are supported by striped bass anglers.  Capt. Brian Hardman, president of the Maryland Charter Boat Association, seemed particularly outraged over the pending regulations.  According to the Star Democrat, he fumed about the ASMFC’s ability to impose management measures on coastal states, and whined,

“I can’t believe that…other states can dictate how a business is run in the state of Maryland, and how they can create financial havoc on businesses in the state of Maryland.”

Such comment ignored the history of the ASMFC and its empowering legislation, the Atlantic Striped Bass Conservation Act and the Atlantic Coastal Fisheries Cooperative Management Act, which gave the ASMFC the right to impose its preferred management measures on states after the last striped bass stock collapse precisely because, when left on their own, some states were more interested in protecting their businesses than they were in protecting and rebuilding the depleted striped bass population.

Eventually, Hardman made what might have been the most interesting comment of the night, saying

“Give us our own quota like the commercial guys.  We are a commercial entity; give us our own quota and then leave us alone.  If we fish it out, that’s our problem.”

The more that I think about that comment, the more that I believe that Hardman is right.  It makes sense for the for-hires to have their own quota.

Folks who have been reading this blog for a while might be surprised that I wrote that, as I have long been adamantly opposed to extending special privileges to for-hire anglers.  As I noted in a post a few weeks ago, doingso creates an elite group within the angling community, which is grantedprivileges not enjoyed by the common rabble who fish from their own boats orfrom shore.  I believe that an angler is an angler is an angler, regardless of the platform that they choose to fish from.

Thus, I thought that New York was wrong back in 1995, when it awarded its for-hire fleet a two-fish striped bass bag limit, while everyone else was restricted to one (for the record I, and most other serious striped bass anglers in the state, wanted one fish at 36 inches for everyone, not the two at 28 inches that the for-hires sought).

And I still think that it’s wrong for the ASMFC and the Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council to create a special “bonus season” for scup that allows for-hire anglers to retain more fish than other recreational fishermen, and also to create a special five-fish bluefish bag limit for the same for-hire anglers, while restricting everyone else to retaining just three, particularly because those anglers’ landings are included in the same annual calculations as the landings of the less privileged masses.

But that’s not what Hardman was talking about.  He was talking about regulating an entire industry, and not just a few anglers that, aside from the platform they fished from, were indistinguishable from the whole. 

And that’s probably a good idea.

The constant refrain of the for-hire fleet is that it needs to kill more fish than anyone else, in order to retain its clients.  So perhaps it’s time to let them do so, within reasonable restraints.

Perhaps it’s time to carve for-hire anglers out of the recreational sector, and put them in a sector of their own.  It’s not a new idea; the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act already defines three different modes of fishing, providing that

“The term ‘charter fishing’ means fishing from a vessel carrying a passenger for hire…who is engaged in recreational fishing;”

“The term ‘commercial fishing’ means fishing in which the fish harvested, either in whole or in part, are intended to enter commerce or enter commerce through sale, barter, or trade;”

and

“The term ‘recreational fishing’ means fishing for sport or pleasure.”

Thus, even though Magnuson-Stevens doesn’t govern the recreational striped bass fishery, which may be legally pursued only within state waters, the law nonetheless sets out a practical definition of the three sectors that could guide the creation of a separate striped bass “charter fishing” sector.

Once the ASMFC established a separate charter fishing sector, it would be a simple thing to create a baseline charter fishing allocation, both for the coast and for individual states, denoted in either fish or in pounds, based on what the charter fishing sector caught under current regulations and the current condition of the striped bass stock.  

To be sure that they get the allocation right, the ASMFC could base it on the for-hire boats’ vessel trip reports, rather than the admittedly uncertain estimates created by the Marine Recreational Information Program, as in both the Addendum II debate and in debates addressing other fisheries issues, for-hire representatives repeatedly assert that such VTRs represent the best data with respect to for-hire landings.

Although some for-hire operators might chafe at allocations  based on landings governed by the current 28- to 31-inch slot limit, such concerns are not justified by the landings data.  According to MRIP (unfortunately, VTR data isn’t readily available to the public), 2023 for-hire landings were not driven to historically low levels as a result of the 28- to 31-inch slot. 

Instead, 2023’s estimated landings of 271,620striped bass caught from for-hire boats fell within the range of annual for-hire landings for theperiod 2015 through 2023 (such years were chosen because they’re subsequent to the ASMFC’s adoption of Addendum IV to the Atlantic Striped Bass Interstate Fishery Management Plan, which introduced a one-fish bag and 28-inch minimum size for all coastal states—although conservation-equivalent measures were still allowed), ranking 6^th in the 9-year time series.  2023 landings were greater than for-hire landingsin 2016, 2018, and 2020, even though in such earlier years, either a 28-inch minimum size or a 28- to 35-inch slot limit prevailed. 

Four New England states, Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, and New Hampshire, actually had higherlandings in 2023 than they had in 2021, although Connecticut’s increase was small enough to be statistically insignificant (2022 landings were higher in most coastal states, but since the purpose of the new, narrower slot wasto reduce landings from 2022 levels, that fact is not relevant to this discussion).  New Jersey’s 2023 landingsdecreased by about 13.6% compared to 2021, although it’s not clear how much of that decrease was due to the elimination of the conservation-equivalent regulations that prevailed in the earlier year.  Only two coastal states, Rhode Island and New York saw for-hire landingsdecrease significantly in 2023 compared to 2021; such landings decreased by 31.7% and 43.4%, respectively.  For the rest of the coast, the narrower slot had no significant impact on for-hire landings.

Thus, for most states, establishing state quotas should be a relatively painless process.  States should then be required to issue tags to their for-hire operators, as is already the case with the commercial fishery, and require those tags to be attached before a bass is put in the fish box, to best assure that the sector quota is not exceeded.  The number of tags issued would change along with striped bass abundance; if the Management Board adopted a new addendum in response to an increase in the spawning stock biomass, the charter sector quota would be increased as well, while if a decline in the stock brought required more restrictive management, the number of tags would be cut.

Most of the remaining regulation could be left up to the states, although the Management Board might want to set a coastwide size limit to assure that important year classes of fish are protected.  Otherwise, with the tagging requirement in place, it would be up to the states to decide whether to impose a bag limit or season, knowing that once a for-hire boat used up all of its tags, no matter how quickly or slowly it did so, it would be out of the fishery for the rest of the season, unless the state also decided to make tags transferrable, and allow for-hire operators to buy and sell tags as the need to do so arose.

Of course, if a state exceeded its charter fishing quota in any year, pound-for pound (or fish-for-fish) paybacks would be imposed in the following season.

Such a sector-specific approach to management would allow for-hire operators to make market-based decisions as to when, and how quickly, to utilize their available tags, in order to optimize their income.  It would also allow them to adopt bag limits and seasons that might be different from those preferred by private boat and shore-based anglers, without placing additional stresses on the striped bass resource.

It is, I believe, an approach worth exploring, which could pave the way for similar management of not only striped bass, but other species where the for-hire fleet believes it might benefit from management measures different from those which bind the larger part of the angling community.

 

SHIFTING FISH STOCKS GAIN SENATE'S ATTENTION

Over the last decade or two, we’ve seen stocks of fish respond to a warming ocean by shifting toward thepoles.  It is a worldwide phenomenon that is particularly noticeable to those living and fishing along the New England and mid-Atlantic coasts, where important commercial and recreational species are moving northward, shifting their centers of abundance away from traditional fishing grounds.

Such movement has had a big impact on fishermen, fish allocations, and other aspects of fisheries management.  Commercial fishermen in southern states, which were granted the largest allocations based on where fish were during the 1980s, are having to travel much farther to land their quotas, while their counterparts to the north have fish right off their ports, but lack the state quotas that would allow them to take advantage of such local abundance.

We've seen it in recreational fisheries, too.  

Black sea bass may be the best example.  The fish have become much more abundant in more northern waters, where anglers fish under far more restrictive rules than their southern neighbors, merely because some southern states had far larger historical catches which are memorialized in current rules.  Perhaps the worst example of that is the dichotomy between New York and New Jersey where, despite the fact that some of the states’ anglers may fish side-by-side on New York Bight wrecks, New Jersey fishermen are allowed to retain 12 ½-inch fish and have a bag limit of 10 to 15 fish for most of the year (although the bag limit during July and August is just a single fish), while New York’s recreational fishermen must endure a 16 ½-inch minimum size and a bag limit of either three or six fish, depending upon the time of year, even if they’re fishing on the same sub-stock of fish in the same waters.

Viewed objectively, it doesn’t make a lot of sense, but neither the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission nor the federal regional fishery management councils have developed the political will to fully new allocation and management schemes that fully align with current patterns of fish abundance (although the ASMFC has come closer to doing so, particularly in the case of the recreational summer flounder fishery, than any of the regional management councils).  That’s typically the case when politics, rather than science, dictates management measures.

Political problems require political solutions, and in the case of shifting stocks, it appears that three United States senators, Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT), Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), and Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) have introduced legislation that will begin to address the issue.  Titled the “Supporting Healthy Interstate Fisheries in Transition Act,” (“SHIFT Act”), the legislation is intended to

“modernize outdated regulations governing commercial fishing along the Atlantic Coast.”

because

“Restrictions on the species and number of fish that can be caught in Atlantic waters haven’t been updated in decades, even as fish locations have changed dramatically in response to warming ocean temperatures and climate change.  As a result, commercial fishermen are forced to travel significant distances to access these fish populations and are often forced to throw their landings back into the ocean, resulting in high mortality rates.”

The senators intend that

“The SHIFT Act would require the Secretary of Commerce and encourage the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission to account for the impact of climate change on the current distribution of fish populations when deciding fishing quota allocations.” 

The language of the SHIFT Act is similar in effect, in not in precise wording, to shifting stocks language that appeared in Rep. Jared Huffman’s Sustaining America’s Fisheries for the Future Act of 2022, to the extent that it requires a regional fishery management council to request that the Secretary of Commerce determine whether

“a substantial portion of a fishery extends beyond the geographical area of authority of any one Council,”

in which case the relevant regional fishery management councils would have to decide either 1) which of them would be responsible for the fishery management plan, or 2) decide to draft a joint plan.  If such councils could not agree on an alternative within six months, the Secretary would then make the necessary decisions.  In the case of joint fishery management plans,

“No jointly prepared plan or amendment…may be submitted to the Secretary unless it is approved by a majority of the voting members, present and voting, of each Council concerned.”

Such language may be the Achilles’ heel of the SHIFT Act.  To understand why, let’s take a look at how allocation shifts work in the real world, by examining the ASMFC’s Addendum XXXIII to the Summer Flounder, Scup, and Black Sea Bass Fishery Management Plan, adopted in 2021, which addressed the reallocation of commercial black sea bass quota (the Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council contemporaneously adopted its Black Sea Bass Commercial State Allocation Amendment, which addresses the same reallocation, but for purposes of this essay, the ASMFC document is easier to work with, as it is not weighted down with the pages of text needed to meet the requirements of the federal Administrative Procedures Act).

Addendum XXXIII explains that

“State-by-state allocations of the commercial black sea bass coastwide quota were originally in 2003 as part of Amendment 13, loosely based on historical landings from 1980-2001.  The state shares in Amendment 13 allocated 67% of the coast-wide commercial quota among the states of New Jersey through North Carolina (north of Cape Hatteras) and 33% among the states of New York through Maine.  These state commercial allocations had been unchanged since they were implemented in 2003.

“Over the last decade, the distribution of the black sea bass stock has changed, abundance and biomass have increased significantly, and there have been corresponding changes in fishing effort and behavior.  According to the most recent black sea bass stock assessment, which modeled fish north and south of Hudson Canyon separately, the majority of the stock occurred in the southern region prior to the mid-2000s.  Since then, the biomass in the northern region has grown considerably.  Although the amount of biomass in the southern region has not declined in recent years, the northern region currently accounts for the majority of spawning stock biomass…

“In some cases, expansion of the black sea bass stock into areas with historically minimal fishing effort has created significant disparities between state allocations and current abundance and resource availability…  [emphasis added, references omitted]”

Addendum XXXIII also notes that

“Connecticut and New York have experienced a substantial increase in abundance of black sea bass in state waters over the last seven years.  [emphasis added]”

So, given that the understanding that the majority of the black sea bass biomass was now in the waters stretching from New York to Maine, and no longer in states between New Jersey and North Carolina, how did Addendum XXXIII reallocate the commercial quota?

First, it created a new baseline allocation that increased New York’s percentage of the coastwide quota from seven to a princely eight percent, while increasing the Connecticut quota from one percent to three, in supposed recognition of the “substantial increase” in black sea bass abundance in those states’ waters.  However, in doing so, Addendum XXXIII also took away quota from the other northern states, slashing Maine and New Hampshire’s already tiny quotas in half, and also taking fish away from Massachusetts and Rhode Island. 

When all was said and done, managers made only a trivial cut in the southern states' share of the baseline quota, reducing it from 67% to 65.2%, while increasing the northern state's share from 33% to a mere 34.8%--even though more than 50% of the fish are now found between New York and Maine.

In the end, the northern states did a little better than that, because in the full allocation scheme, each year,

“75% of the coastwide quota will be distributed to states using the baseline allocations…The remaining 25% of the coastwide quota will first be allocated regionally based on the most recent regional biomass proportions from the stock assessment.  Then, regional quotas will be distributed to the states within each region in proportion to their baseline allocations, with the exception of Maine and New Hampshire.  Maine and New Hampshire will each receive 1% of the northern region quota.”

So managers will now have to distribute some additional black sea bass to states where the fish swim today, but 75% of future allocations will still be based on what was caught in the days when most of the sea bass still swam south of New Jersey, and not where they are swimming right now.

One interesting thing is that in the new allocation, New Jersey is considered a single-state “region,” neither north nor south, supposedly because of

“it’s geographic position straddling the border between the northern and southern spatial sub-units (approximately Hudson Canyon as defined in the stock assessment…)”

and thus gets to both keep its current baseline allocation of 19.42% of the coastwide quota, and also benefit from the movement of fish into the northern region. 

Somehow, the states where the bulk of the fish used to be always seem to come out ahead, while the states where the fish are today…don’t.

That might not change under the SHIFT Act. 

If we imagine the black sea bass reallocation occurring under a SHIFT Act regime, we might see the New England Fishery Management Council petition the Secretary, claiming that “a substantial portion” of the black sea bass fishery now exists in the waters between Connecticut and Maine.

The result of that petition would be one of two things:  

A single regional fishery management council—almost certainly the Mid-Atlantic, which manages black sea bass today, given the size of the fisheries off New York and New Jersey, as well as off the other mid-Atlantic states—might be given sole responsibility for the black sea bass management plan and any amendments, in which case the resulting amendment would look little or no different from Addendum XXXIII.

Or, the plan and amendments would be jointly managed by the New England and Mid-Atlantic fishery management councils, in which case the New England Council would probably try to shift more of the quota to the northern states.  But because a majority of each council would have to approve the resulting management plan, and because the Mid-Atlantic Council would be highly unlikely to shift any significant quantity of sea bass to the New England states, the resulting amendment would still end up looking more-or-less line Addendum XXXIII.

There is some language in the SHIFT Act that might arguably avoid such outcome, as a provision requires that

“when establishing or revising quota allocations between any State, Federal, or other management unit in…a plan or amendment, the Secretary [of Commerce] shall account for, using the best scientific information available, any climate change impact on coastal fishery resources, including any change or shifting trend in fish abundance and distribution; and any potential ecological impact, including food web and habitat impacts, arising from such revised quota allocations.  [formatting omitted]”

Whether the phrase “shall account for” will be interpreted as a requirement that quotas follow fish abundance, or merely directs that the effects of stock shifts be considered as one of any number of factors impacting the allocation process, is something for the Secretary, and undoubtedly the courts, to decide should the SHIFT Act become law.

Of course, the chances of that happening in the current, election-year Congress is not very good.

That’s unfortunate, because the SHIFT Act, while imperfect, represents a good first step toward tackling the intransigent problem of shifting stocks, a problem that will never be adequately addressed unless Congress intervenes.

 

  

ODD DAYS IN THE OLD DOMINION

 

I don’t pretend to know how some legislators make their decisions.

Certainly, they try to satisfy their donors and supporters, along with the constituents who put them and keep them in office.  Party politics can dictate votes, as can personal relationships in and out of the legislature, as well as overarching political beliefs.  And I need to believe that at least some lawmakers are where they are because they want to do the right thing.

Even so, some legislative decisions, particularly when viewed in context with lawmakers’ other actions, seem bizarre enough to leave me shaking my head.

Two recent committee actions down in Virginia illustrate just what I mean.

It probably shouldn’t surprise anyone that both of those actions involved not only menhaden, but the industrial-scale menhaden reduction fleet.  

Menhaden, and menhaden management, has been a long-debated subject in and around the Chesapeake Bay.  Even with the coastal population above its biomass target, further restricting the commercial menhaden fishery remains a goal of some members of the recreational fishing and environmental communities.  When you add Omega Protein, the company that just about everyone outside of the commercial fishery loves to hate because of its large (nearly 300 million pounds per year) menhaden landings, to the mix, it’s pretty likely that something interesting is going to happen.

One can argue that menhaden deserve people’s interest, because they are an important forage species, with everything from juvenile “snapper” bluefish to humpback whales feeding on them at some stage in the menhaden’s lives.  And while the menhaden stock is abundant on a local basis, a lot of folks worry that concentrated menhaden harvest in a given location could lead to localized depletion, and resultant harm to menhaden-dependent predators in such particular region.

There is particular concern about such localized depletion in the Chesapeake Bay, where osprey nesting success has supposedly declined because of a decline in menhaden abundance, and some anglers are blaming the reduction fishery for taking so many menhaden out of the Bay that the striped bass stock has suffered.  To address such concerns, the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission’s Atlantic Menhaden Management Board has capped the reduction fleet’s menhaden harvest within the Chesapeake Bay to 51,000 metric tons.

Naturally, the reduction fishery, in the form of Omega Protein, denies such allegations, and has argued that the 51,000 metric ton cap is completely unnecessary. 

The Virginia state legislature, in an effort to resolve that issue and expand its knowledge of the menhaden and its impacts on the state’s waters, considered funding a three-year study that would hopefully answer the questions now being debated.

The study seemed to have near-universal support, with even Omega Protein buying in.  But, as I noted in this blog about ten days ago, a legislative committee decided that such study should not be initiated this year, and pushed off any further consideration until 2025.  The committee never deigned to disclose the reason for its actions, although some of the study’s supporters have publicly surmised that the legislators were swayed by Omega lobbying against the proposed research, allegations that Omega Protein has strongly denied.

The decision not to fund the study this year caught many people by surprise, given public concerns about the localized depletion issue and the widespread support that such study seemed to have.  Yet, however surprising that decision was, it probably didn’t qualify as truly odd.

The odd stuff surfaced a few days later, and culminated when a different legislative committee unanimously approved a bill that would increase the penalties imposed on anyone found guilty of harassing a commercial fishing activity.  That legislation arose out of an incident in which someone riding a jet ski, who apparently didn’t approve of the menhaden reduction fishery, harassed a purse seine crew last September.

I don’t side with the guy on the jet ski.  A spotter plane pilot caught him on camera, and there’s just no excuse for his actions.  The resultant video clearly shows the jet ski speeding in from open water toward two boats setting a purse seine, passing dangerously close to one of the net boats before cutting in front of it and into the closing circle of the net, before racing out, again dangerously close to the boats, as the two ends of the seine came together.  The jet skier clearly engaged in reckless behavior that could have easily injured, and perhaps killed, one or more of the fishermen.

Still, it’s hard to understand why legislators would be so willing to support a bill increasing penalties for harassing commercial fishermen, just because one jackass on a jet ski got out of hand, while other legislators would vote to kill the bill for a comprehensive menhaden study that was supported by just about every relevant group in the state.

That just seems a bit odd, and also seems to demonstrate a bias toward the menhaden fleet, without a similar bias toward protecting the health of the menhaden resource that is critical to the well-being of a host of predators, including the reduction fleet.

To be clear, commercial fishermen should not be harassed, and the existing law against their harassment is completely appropriate, although it’s interesting to note that while Virginia also criminalizes harassing hunters and trappers, as well as harassing anglers on the state’s inland waters, it does not extend such protections to its salt water recreational fishermen.  Thus, although the proposed Virginia legislation would protect menhaden fishermen from being harassed by anglers, no state law would protect anglers from being crowded, set around, or otherwise harassed by a purse seine crew, something that has reportedly occurred in the past.

That, too, is a little odd.

But then, it’s also a little strange that some anglers feel entitled to harass menhaden fishermen.  The jerk on the jet ski seemed to feel that he had the right to speed around purse seine boats, while allegedly yelling obscenities at and splashing water on the fishermen within.  And if the Menhaden Coalition, a group including Omega Protein and other large menhaden harvesters, is to be believed, such attitudes are fairly widespread.  Supposedly, the jet ski incident was only one of three similar incidents last year, in which people aboard recreational vessels harassed commercial menhaden fishermen.  The Coalition claims that such harassers

“are being instigated and fueled by the participants in various sport fishing organizations.  These groups monitor and report where commercial boats are operating and where they are anchoring each evening, which appears to have encouraged their membership to harass and disrupt fishing operations.”

Are they overstating the alleged connection?

Maybe.  But then again, maybe not.

What is undoubtedly true is that by taking such actions, those harassing the menhaden fishermen are handing the reduction fleet the opportunity to cast themselves as innocent victims, and gain the public’s sympathies as a bunch of blue-collar folks just trying to make ends meet, who are being unjustly obstructed by a coterie of well-heeled, boat-owning, abusive recreational fishermen.  Such propaganda does neither the menhaden nor the conservation community any good.

So perhaps the final, and most disturbing oddity, is that the responsible members of the recreational community don’t publicly condemn such harassment, and make it clear that while they may not approve of purse seining within the Chesapeake Bay, they also disapprove of irresponsible anglers who operate outside the law.  That they don't insist that the only way to solve existing menhaden conflicts is with deliberate and sober reason, based on demonstrable facts.

Which brings us full circle, to the need for more research, and the odd fact that legislators voted Virginia’s study down.

 

 

 

THE STRIPED BASS AND THE FLOUNDER

 

In 1984, New York’s recreational fishermen took home about 14.5 million winter flounder, a harvest that totaled about 13.9 million pounds and dwarfed the 1.35 million pounds of flounder that was landed by the state’s commercial fishermen in the same year. Winter flounder made up over one-third of the nearly 40 million fish landed by New York anglers that season.

 

Although New York’s 1984 flounder recreational landings were the highest ever recorded, they weren’t particularly unusual. The state’s anglers harvested 12.4 million winter flounder in 1981, and 11.9 million in 1985. At the time, the recreational flounder fishery was completely unregulated; anglers could take as many flounder as they wanted, of any size that they wanted, on every day of the year.

 

The fish was a key component of New York’s recreational fishery. In 1984, New York’s saltwater anglers took about 9 million fishing trips; roughly 2.5 million of those trips—28 percent—primarily targeted winter flounder.

 

The unrelenting fishing pressure, combined with changing environmental conditions within New York’s bays, proved unsustainable. The winter flounder population entered into a decline that fishery managers lacked the ability, and perhaps the political will, to reverse. The decline became a collapse so deep that, by 2022, New York’s recreational flounder landings fell to a supposed 120 fish, although shoreside catch surveys contacted too few anglers who had caught flounder to calculate a statistically meaningful estimate.

 

Overfishing was an initial cause of the collapse. The last benchmark stock assessment, released in 2011, reported that “fishing mortality…varied between 0.61 (1982) and 0.95 (1993) and then decreased to 0.47 by 1999. Fishing mortality then increased to 0.70 in 2001, and has since decreased to 0.51 in 2010, generally tracking the decrease in fishery catch.” Since a fishing mortality rate greater than 0.29 constituted overfishing, the Southern New England/Mid-Atlantic (SNEMA) stock of winter flounder experienced overfishing throughout that time.

 

The same stock assessment estimated the spawning stock biomass of the SNEMA stock to be just 7,076 metric tons (MT), well below both the biomass target of 43,661 MT and the biomass threshold of 21,831 MT, meaning that the stock was badly overfished. Updates to the benchmark assessment determined that spawning stock biomass continued to decline, first to 6,151 MT in 2014, then to 4,360 MT in 2016, and finally to 3,638 MT in 2019.

 

3,638 MT equals a little over 8 million pounds. To put that figure in context, New York’s recreational fishermen caught and took home about 75 percent more SNEMA stock flounder in 1984 than were swimming in the entire ocean 35 years later.

 

In October 2014, despite the continuing decline of the SNEMA stock, the Winter Flounder Management Board decided to quintuple the length of the recreational fishing season.

Once the SNEMA stock began to decline, fisheries managers found themselves caught between a recreational fishing industry that chafed at any form of regulation and a changing marine environment that put new stress on the stock.

The 2011 benchmark assessment advised, “Recruitment at age 1 decreased nearly continuously from 71.6 million age-1 fish in 1981 (1980 year class) to 7.5 million fish in 2002 (2001 year class). Recruitment has averaged 10.5 million during 2003-2010.” Such declining recruitment has led biologists to repeatedly reduce the spawning stock biomass target. In 2022, a stock assessment update slashed the biomass target from 12,322 to just 3,314 MT. Although the SNEMA stock, at 3,353 MT, was less than half the size that it had been 11 years earlier, when it was deemed overfished, the change to the biomass target shifted the stock’s status to not overfished and above the target level; rebuilding efforts were terminated.

 

The decline in recruitment began to be felt in the mid-1980s, but when New York’s Department of Environmental Conservation tried to respond, proposing the first restrictions on recreational landings, it met with strong resistance from the recreational fishing industry, and particularly from the party boat fleet, which insisted that, in order to get customers to board their boats, regulations must be lax enough to give such customers the “perception” that they could still have a “big day” and bring a lot of flounder home, even though declining abundance significantly reduced the likelihood of such a big day ever occurring.

When regulations were finally issued in 1988, industry opposition assured that they were not strong enough to halt the flounder’s decline.

That pattern has continued to the present day.

At the September 2009 meeting of New York’s Marine Resources Advisory Council (MRAC), in response to a stock assessment that found the SNEMA stock biomass to be only 9 percent of its biomass target, an MRAC member proposed shutting down the recreational and commercial fisheries to best conserve the stock. The proposal was met with a wave of industry opposition.

 

The MRAC bulletin reported one party boat captain opining that “describing winter flounder as a collapsed stock may be inaccurate,” because “when he speaks to fishermen, he hears that winter flounder are perhaps not plentiful, but are definitely accessible.” An audience member, who introduced himself as “Managing Director of the Recreational Fishing Alliance and President of the New York Sportfishing Federation,” argued that instead of restricting fishermen, fishery managers should investigate the effects of predation, while a representative of the fishing tackle industry “not[ed] that the recreational fishing community is in trouble and they need to have the opportunity to fish,” and that “They need to keep the [tackle] shops open.”

The fact that the flounder was in trouble did not seem to raise many concerns.

Nearly five years later, at the March 2014 MRAC meeting, members discussed liberalizing New York’s winter flounder regulations, despite the poor health of the stock. As was true in 2009, members of both MRAC and the audience discounted the role of fishing in the flounder’s demise, blaming water quality, cormorants, and other predators for the decline in abundance.

 

A decade after that, at MRAC’s January 2024 meeting, the industry efforts to kill more flounder have still not abated, as two party boat captains, one from the North Shore of Long Island, and one from Montauk, rose to ask regulators to relax regulations on the collapsed SNEMA stock.

But now, most of the attention of anglers, regulators, and the industry has switched to striped bass, which are probably the single most important recreational species in the New England and mid-Atlantic regions. That’s certainly true in New York, where, of the nearly 16.5 million fishing trips taken by the state’s anglers in 2022, about 5.8 million—35.5 percent—primarily targeted the species, giving it an even more dominant role in the fishery than winter flounder held four decades ago.

But like SNEMA winter flounder, the striped bass stock is not doing well.

While the bass are still in far better condition than the winter flounder, the striped bass population remains overfished, with spawning stock biomass falling from approximately 113,000 MT in 2003 to 55,100 MT in 2018, although it has risen somewhat since then.

 

Like winter flounder, striped bass are now experiencing low recruitment. The Chesapeake Bay produces between 70 and 90 percent of the striped bass that migrate along the Atlantic coast. In the Maryland portion of the Bay, the striped bass juvenile abundance index (JAI) for the past five years recorded the lowest average juvenile abundance for any five-year period in the 67-year history of the state’s juvenile abundance survey. In Virginia, over the past three years, the JAI has been below the 25th percentile of the entire time series recorded there, and thus meets the definition of “recruitment failure;” if 2023 preliminary data for the Delaware River proves accurate, the same situation will exist there. Only the Hudson River is showing somewhat higher levels of juvenile abundance, and even there, the 2023 numbers are the worst since 1985.

 

And, as was the case with winter flounder, managers have been slow to respond to the problem, ignoring biologists’ early predictions that the stock was heading for trouble and, for far too long, failing to adopt a rebuilding plan, even though the ASMFC’s striped bass management plan required them to do so. Now that the ASMFC is finally trying to rebuild the overfished stock, some members of the recreational fishing industry are trying to deny that a problem exists.

 

At a December 5th hearing, held to obtain stakeholder comments on the ASMFC’s latest management proposals, one Long Island charter boat captain announced, “Our observation is that striped bass are as healthy and strong as they have ever been,” and argued that biologists only believe the striped bass stock is overfished because “something has changed,” and most of the bass are now found in new places, where scientists aren’t looking for them.

A Long Island Sound party boat captain built on that message, claiming that the Hudson River, along with some Connecticut rivers, “produce tons of bass,” are “where the bass are from,” and that not including bass spawned in Connecticut’s Housatonic River “is like not including the Dallas Cowboys when you’re looking at cheerleaders.” He apparently didn’t realize that dams on the Housatonic River block all access to whatever spawning habitat the river might otherwise provide.

Instead trying to avert the harm that a striped bass stock collapse would do to their business, the captains railed against needed regulations, with one whining that “We’re being persecuted…You’re already crucifying us,” while another imagining “a very targeted war against the for-hire industry” that was allegedly being waged by surfcasters and private-boat fishermen.

In written comments sent to the ASMFC, a charter boat captain from the South Shore of Long Island, displaying a remarkable sense of entitlement, complained that “As a charter captain I pay a State fee of $250 for my charter business. I pay for commercial insurance. I have to maintain my captain’s license and renew it every 5 years. I am subject to random drug testing. For all of these righteous requirements I get no preferential treatment to help maintain my business and no consideration of what I do for the tourist industry in my region.”

 

Needless to say, he also wanted managers to adopt special regulations that would allow his customers, and those of the rest of the for-hire fleet, to kill bass that would remain off-limits to the vast majority of anglers.

The recreational fishing industry managed to survive when the SNEMA stock flounder disappeared, although the fishing season begins six or seven weeks later now, and there’s little to fish for inside the bays once the bass begin their southward migration. Both the shops and the boats that once depended on flounder for much of their income are now making do with the other remaining species although, as the comments at the January 2024 MRAC meeting revealed, there are still those trying to squeeze the last drop of blood from a sere and crumbling stone.

But if the bass stock collapses, many of those businesses probably won’t survive.

The striped bass stock collapsed once before, in the late 1970s and early 1980s, but when that happened, SNEMA winter flounder abundance was still very high. Anglers were catching big bluefish all along the coast, weakfish were widely available, and the blackfish (tautog) population had not yet declined.

 

Today, bluefish biomass is just above the threshold, as managers continue to rebuild the recently overfished population. The weakfish stock is depleted; although numbers seem to be increasing, high levels of natural mortality continue to hinder rebuilding. Summer flounder, one of the traditional standbys of New York’s inshore fishery, are not overfished, but the spawning stock biomass is already below its target, and recruitment has been below average for more than ten years. The summer flounder stock experienced overfishing in 2022, and so is in no position to absorb much additional fishing effort.

 

Only the scup and black sea bass stocks are truly healthy, and they’re already under substantial fishing pressure. Although the spawning stock biomass of both species is double their target levels, that biomass is, nonetheless, slowly declining. Recreational landings of both scup and black sea bass have exceeded the annual catch limits in 2020, 2021, and 2022, and there is no reason to believe that 2023 landings estimates, once they are finalized, won’t continue that trend. It is unlikely that either stock will be able to sustain the additional pressure that would result if anglers shifted their attentions to them instead of striped bass.

 

There is currently no fishery and, realistically, no combination of inshore fisheries that could absorb a significant portion of the 5.8 million annual fishing trips that would be lost in New York alone if the striped bass stock collapsed.

Yet many members of the fishing industry apparently haven’t learned from the winter flounder’s collapse. They continue to contest the striped bass data and ignore the stock assessments’ findings. They continue to claim all is well, just as they did as the SNEMA flounder stock spiraled downward toward unfishable scarcity.

They don’t understand that if the striped bass collapses again, their own businesses won’t be far behind.

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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/