STRIPED BASS: A TIME OF UNCERTAINTY

 

Over the past twenty years, striped bass have arguably been the single most important recreational species in the northeast and mid-Atlantic regions.  While there are different ways to measure a fishery’s importance, using what may be the simplest gauge, pounds landed, shows that striped bass led all other species harvested by recreational fishermen 13 out of the last 20 years in New England, and 19 out of the last 20 in the mid-Atlantic.

Some might object, arguing that pounds landed isn’t the correct gauge of importance for recreational species, but given that anglers have released about 90% of the bass that they caught over the last two decades, the striped bass is also a very important species for those who don’t necessarily bring fish home.

Unfortunately, the last benchmark stock assessment found striped bass to be both overfished and subject to overfishing.  While fishery managers have managed to get overfishing under control—although fishing mortality may still be somewhat above its target level—the stock remains overfished, and rebuilding efforts still have a long way to go.

The fishery management plan developed by the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission’s Atlantic Striped Bass Management Board calls for the stock to be rebuilt by 2029, which may very well be possible, but five consecutive years of very low recruitment in the Maryland portion of the Chesapeake Bay, three years of poor recruitment in Virginia’s portion of the Chesapeake and in the Delaware River, and what has probably been average recruitment over the past five years in the Hudson River is causing many anglers to wonder what will happen in 2030 and beyond, even if the stock is successfully rebuilt by the 2029 deadline.

Some fishermen have convinced themselves that a stock collapse is at hand, and have asked regulators to impose a moratorium that would shut down the fishery until the stock rebuilds.  Others are whistling past the graveyard, telling all who will listen that the stock is doing fine and no further management measures are needed.

The truth is that no one—not even the fishery managers themselves—know exactly what’s going on or what the future will look like.  Thus, there are a lot of people looking forward to the stock assessment update that will come out this fall, and even to the next benchmark assessment, which is currently scheduled for 2027, hoping that the facts that they reveal will banish some of the current uncertainty.

By the time the ASMFC’s Annual Meeting, which will include the October meeting of the Atlantic Striped Bass Management Board, rolls around, we should have the answers to two important questions:  We should know what it will take to fully rebuild the spawning stock biomass by the 2029 deadline, and we will know whether the striped bass finally managed to break the chain of poor spawns in the Maryland tributaries of the Chesapeake Bay.

It’s virtually certain that some sort of additional management measures are going to be needed to rebuild the stock by 2029.  After the 2021 season, which saw fishing mortality drop slightly below the fishing mortality target, it looked very likely that such rebuilding would occur.  However, recreational landings spiked in 2022, as much of the large 2015 year class grew into the 28- to 35-inch slot that was in place at the time, and dropped the probability of timely rebuilding to somewhere around 15 percent.  

To help get rebuilding back on track, in 2023 the Management Board adopted an emergency measure that capped the maximum size in the recreational ocean fishery at 31 inches, effectively creating a 28- to 31-inch slot.  While that did prevent recreational landings from reaching 2022 levels, 2023 landings were only reduced to about 2.6 million fish, a figure halfway between the 1.8 million landed in 2021 and the 3.5 million landed in 2022.

It is very unlikely that reduction will be enough to make timely rebuilding likely, particularly given that the somewhat above-average 2017 and 2018 year classes are now entering the current 28- to 31-inch slot and will serve to keep landings relatively high.  More will almost certainly have to be done.

What we won’t know until the assessment update comes out is how much more fishing mortality must be cut to achieve a timely rebuilding.  We also don’t know exactly how the Management Board will choose to achieve the needed reduction.

What we do know is that the current one-fish bag limit, and the narrow slots that prevail in the ocean and Chesapeake Bay recreational fisheries, are not going to provide much opportunity for further harvest reductions.  As I’ve noted in earlier posts, the only effective tool left in the box is some sort of season, so the only big decision left is whether that season will merely prohibit harvest while allowing catch-and-release, or whether it will prohibit all targeting of striped bass.

As I also noted in a recent post, implementing a no-target season would be a mistake for a number of reasons.  Perhaps the most important of those is that it would not be enforceable.  

Except at the very start of the year, striped bass do not swim alone.  Depending on where an angler is fishing, the time of day, and the time of the year, it is very typical to have bluefish, weakfish, fluke, black sea bass, scup, speckled trout, Atlantic bonito, Spanish mackerel, red drum and/or other species hit baits and lures intended for striped bass.  That being the case, should a no-target closure be put in place, it would be very simple for anglers to claim that they were targeting other sorts of fish, but couldn’t help unintentionally catching the striped bass that “just happened” to end up on their lines. 

The many, many anglers who seek to evade the prohibition on striped bass fishing in federal waters by claiming to target bluefish are a good example of how that would work.

Beyond that, a no-target closure makes little sense from an economic standpoint. 

Last year, anglers in the New England/mid-Atlantic region made slightly over 62.6 million salt water fishing trips.  Nearly 17.8 million of those trips—a little over 28 percent—primarily targeted striped bass.  So the question is, if managers impose a no-target closure on the striped bass fishery, where is that displaced effort going to go?

At one time, displaced striped bass anglers might have shifted over to bluefish, but these days, bluefishing tends to be spotty, with fish abundant in some places and completely absent in others, not an unusual situation when a population is only at about 60 percent of its biomass target.  At other times, weakfish might have absorbed some of the effort, but that population is badly depleted, in far worse shape than the bluefish, and offers even less opportunity to accommodate effort formerly expended on striped bass.

Bottom fish also fail to offer realistic opportunities for displaced striped bass anglers.  Overfishing has already forced a 28 percent reduction in summer flounder landings this year, anglers are chronically exceeding their scup landing limits, and the most recent stock assessment suggests that black sea bass may be experiencing overfishing.

That being the case, there is a very good chance that many, and very possibly most, of the striped bass anglers displaced by a no-target closure would merely stop fishing until the striped bass season reopened (assuming that they didn’t decide to just keep on fishing for bass and, if stopped by enforcement personnel, claim that they were actually targeting something else), which would result in an economic hardship for tackle shops, marinas, gas docks, for-hire operators, and other businesses serving the striped bass fishing community.

Nonetheless, many on the Management Board are singling out catch-and-release fishing, and the resultant release mortality, as a particular problem in the fishery.  At its last meeting, the Management Board authorized the creation of a special work group to look into the issue.  While it’s not at all certain what action such work group will recommend, we should note that a memorandum from ASMFC staff, sent to inform the Management Board on the release mortality issue, advised that

“it is assumed that maximum reduction of effort, and thus maximum reduction in number of releases, would be achieved with no-targeting closures.”

Why the memo emphasized a “maximum reduction in number of releases,” rather than the overall reduction in fishing mortality, regardless of source, is not clear. 

Aside from rebuilding issues, the results of this year’s spawn, and particularly that part of the spawn which takes place in Maryland’s waters, is also unclear.  Water temperatures and water flows look far more favorable than they have in the recent past, so there is reason to hope that we will see an improvement in the generally dismal recruitment of the past five years.  

Speaking just for myself, based on the very limited information that I have obtained and the opinions of professional fishery managers whom I respect, I expect that the Maryland juvenile abundance index will, at worst, be close to the long-term average of 11.2, is more likely to be somewhere in the high teens, and could realistically exceed 20.

But some experienced fisheries professionals are reportedly doubtful, and think it more likely that the index will be below average once again.

That low recruitment will have only a limited impact on striped bass rebuilding, as significant numbers of bass don’t become sexually mature until they’re between five and six years old.  However, continued low recruitment would inevitably have a big impact on the striped bass’ future.  Even if a strong year class is produced this year, its affect on the future of the striped bass stock will depend on what comes after.  If recruitment in 2025 and beyond falls back to the levels of the last five years, a strong 2024 year class would provide only a temporary reprieve.  On the other hand, if recruitment returns to more typical levels in 2025 and beyond, a strong 2024 year class could act like the strong year class of 1989, jump-starting a recovery that is then sustained by future spawning success.

That doesn’t mean that the following year classes all have to be big.  If we look at spawning patterns prior to 1970—that is, prior to the big 1970 year class that ushered in the boom-or-bust era that has prevailed for the past 50 years—we find a fishery that has its smaller peaks and valleys, with above-average year classes, including one that reached 23.5, in 1958, 1961, 1962, 1964, and 1966, and severely below-average year classes in 1957 (2.89), 1959 (1.38), and 1963 (4.03).  While that early period didn’t see any year classes as large as some of those of the late 1990s and early 2000s, what it did see was reliably mediocre production—that is, a lot of year classes that were neither above-average nor notably below average, but instead fell between 7 and 8 and, combined with the stronger years, were enough to maintain the female spawning stock.

A similar string of mediocrity, with a strong year class popping up every third or fourth or fifth year, would certainly be an improvement over what we have now and, if coupled with responsible management, would probably be all we need to maintain a sustainable, quality striped bass fishery.

Whether we are likely to see that sort of sustainable fishery, or whether the stock might be headed for long-term trouble, is something that might be revealed in the 2027 benchmark assessment, which will take an in-depth look at the state of the stock and might even adopt a new and different approach to evaluating the stock’s health and sustainability.  Until that assessment is completed, our thoughts about the future of the striped bass will necessarily include a large amount of speculation.

Thus, this is neither a time for despair nor for undue optimism.  Until we receive more information including, at a minimum, an updated stock assessment and juvenile abundance indices for Maryland and, ideally, the other three major spawning areas, it is instead a time for precaution.  It is a time for acting conservatively, and for resolving any ambiguities in the data or outlook in favor of the striped bass.

But we should never overlook the fact that it is also a time for hope, for while the new information might bring bad news, it may also tell us that rebuilding can occur by 2029, and that an end to the recruitment drought could promise a better future.