STRIPED BASS MANAGEMENT: LOOKING TOWARD OCTOBER

 

Anglers who are even remotely tuned in to the science addressing the health of the striped bass stock know that the stock is not doing well.  It has been overfished for more than a decade, there has been a five-year string of poor recruitment in the Maryland portion of the Chesapeake Bay, the single most important spawning ground on the coast, and three-years strings of poor recruitment in both the Delaware River and the Virginia portion of the Chesapeake Bay.

Only the Hudson River has been producing near-average spawns.

At the same time, the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission’s striped bass management plan requires that managers rebuild the stock to its target level by 2029.  The ASMFC’s Atlantic Striped Bass Management Board has taken a few hesitant steps toward such rebuilding, adopting emergency measures for the ocean recreational fishery in May 2023 and then adopting Addendum II to Amendment 7 to the Interstate Fishery Management Plan for Atlantic Striped Bass early this year, but both such actions were interim measures, intended to begin the rebuilding process while managers wait for the results of the latest stock assessment update.

Such update is scheduled to be released this fall, in late September or early October, and will be formally presented to the Management Board at the ASMFC’s annual meeting, which is schedules to run from October 21-24.

That will be an eventful meeting for striped bass.

The stock assessment update will inform the Management Board as to whether current management measures have at least a 50 percent probability of rebuilding the stock by the 2029 deadline, or whether additional management measures will be needed to reach that goal.  If additional measures are needed, ASMFC’s Atlantic Striped Bass Technical Committee will provide the Management Board with possible options that are calculated to reduce striped bass fishing mortality by whatever amount is needed to make rebuilding by the 2029 deadline likely.

By the time the Management Board meets, information on striped bass spawning success in 2024 should also be available.  The Maryland and Virginia juvenile abundance indices are usually released in early October, and the Delaware River JAI, produced by the State of New Jersey, is usually also available by that time. 

The information presented to the Management Board, and how the Board reacts to the information that it receives, will have a long-term impact on the striped bass stock and the striped bass fishery.

Last Tuesday, at its August meeting, members of the Management Board provided some glimpses of how its October meeting might go.

Although no one came out and said it—which would, in any event, have been premature, since scientists are still working on the stock assessment update, and don’t know with certainty what it might reveal—the Management Board discussions seemed to assume that additional management measures are going to be needed if the stock is to rebuild by 2029.  Thus, the discussion largely focused on what such measures might be.

Dr. Katie Drew, representing the Technical Committee, set the tone early when she observed that the

“range of viable recreational options may be limited.”

That’s not necessarily something that everyone wanted to hear, but the plain fact is that, with a 1-fish bag limit and narrow slot size limits in both the ocean and Chesapeake Bay fisheries, reducing the bag limit and/or further narrowing the slot sizes are not realistic alternatives.  

Dr. Drew did also raise the possibility of creating a slot limit that would provide some additional protection for the 2018 year class, although she did not go so far as to suggest what such limit might be.

But it's pretty clear that, if we need additional management measures to achieve timely rebuilding, some sort of closed season is probably the only viable option left.

With that said, the meeting began to take its usual shape, with some Management Board members championing the cause of the striped bass, while others sought to protect various parochial interests.  The question of whether the commercial fishery and recreational fishery ought to make equal contributions to the striped bass’ recovery was one of the first issues raised.

Robert Brown, Maryland’s legislative proxy, was vehemently opposed to the idea, opining that

“We [the commercial fishermen] just took a seven percent reduction…I don’t think it’s justified at this time for the Technical Committee to consider”

additional commercial restrictions.  He failed to note that the recreational sector had accepted a 14 percent reduction, twice the size of that imposed on the commercial fishery, the last time around, and that while the recreational reduction was to actual landings, the seven percent commercial reduction was only to quota; since Chesapeake Bay commercial fishermen only utilized 84 percent of their quota in 2023, not only did the seven percent quota cut not reduce their landings, it would allow such landings to increase modestly in 2024.

John Clark, the Delaware fisheries manager, suggested that, if further reductions in harvest are needed to rebuild the stock,  the recreational and commercial sectors take “proportional” cuts that reflect each sector’s contribution to striped bass fishing mortality. 

On its face, it was a difficult suggestion to parse, as requiring each sector to reduce landings by the same percentage is inherently proportional; that is, if the recreational sector is responsible for 90 percent of the fishing mortality, and the commercial sector responsible for 10 percent—a 9:1 ratio—and, to oversimplify for illustrative purposes only (for we know that the real numbers are different), we assume that the recreational sector kills 9 million pounds of fish and the commercial sector 1 million—also a 9:1 ratio—and each sector is required to take a 10 percent reduction, the recreational cut would be 900,000 pounds while the commercial cut would be 100,000 pounds, again maintaining the 9:1 ratio and in perfect proportion to each sector’s share of the original fishing mortality.

However, based on the 2019 debate over Addendum VI to Amendment 6 to the Interstate Fishery Management Plan for Atlantic Striped Bass, that’s probably not what Clark’s comment intended.  Instead, he is probably championing an approach that would force the recreational sector to bear an unfair share of the conservation burden.  Using the same hypothetical fishing mortality employed in the previous example—9 million pounds recreational, 1 million pounds commercial—and the same required 10 percent reduction, his allegedly "proportional" approach would multiply the 10 percent overall reduction by the commercial sector's 10 percent share of the fishing mortality, to result in a required commercial reduction of just 1 percent, or 10,000 pounds, while the other remainder of the required reduction, 990,000 pounds, would be taken from the recreational sector.  That is a very disproportionate way to impose fishing mortality reductions, but nonetheless seems to be what Clark has in mind.

Such biased comments can be contrasted with those made by two other state fisheries managers, Chris Batsavage of North Carolina and Martin Gary of New York, both of whom clearly had the long-term interests of the striped bass in mind.

Mr. Batsavage first said that he was

“more in favor of equal reductions for the commercial and recreational sectors,”

and was the only Management Board member to acknowledge that previous recreational reductions had come from actual landings, while previous commercial reductions had come from quota, and so did not have the same impact on the respective sectors.  Then he said something that many striped bass anglers have long hoped to hear a Management Board member say, that in adopting additional management measures intended to facilitate rebuilding by 2029, the Board should be

“aiming a little higher”

than a mere 50 percent probability of success, in order to make rebuilding more likely.

That was a good start, and then Mr. Gary took another big step forward, asking Dr. Drew how the stock assessment update would be presented, particularly with respect to the five years of poor recruitment recorded in Maryland (and by implication, the three years of poor recruitment in Virginia and the Delaware River as well).  He seemed very aware that rebuilding by 2029, while important, was not the end of the management process; what happens to the bass stock after that year will probably have an even greater impact on the long-term health of the stock.

Dr. Drew replied that 2023 will be the terminal year of the update, so recruitment through 2022 will be included when the assessment’s calculations are made (we need to note that recruitment is determined by the number of fish that survive to Year 1, and not by the juvenile abundance index; at times, low Year 0 survival has resulted in somewhat disappointing recruitment even though the initial JAI was strong, while very good Year 0 survival has sometimes led to strong recruitment from what might have been deemed a solid, but not exceptional, JAI).  She noted that strong year classes prior to and including 2018 will help the rebuilding process, but also noted that after 2029, the effects of poor recruitment will be felt, and warned,

“The question of what happens after we rebuild is something that the Board should start thinking about.”

She said that the scientists working on the assessment update could stretch out the projections beyond 2029, and then noted,

“What we have in the bank [with respect to recruitment] is not promising.”

That was exactly what concerned Mr. Gary, who was concerned that the public might see spawning stock biomass increase as the rebuilding deadline drew near, but won’t necessarily be aware of what will happen as the five (so far) weak year classes begin to move into the spawning stock, at the same time that the big year classes inevitably decline in abundance.  He urged the Technical Committee to extend the projections in the assessment update to provide at least some of that information.

Dr. Justin Davis, the Connecticut fisheries manager, also supported extending the assessment update’s projections farther into the future.  He asked whether the current slot limit will protect the 2018 year class (the answer is that the greatest number of 2018s should fall into the slot in 2025, but that the 2018s will begin growing out of the slot in 2026 and, in particular,  in 2027).  

Given the state of the stock and the limited number of recreational management measures available, Dr. Davis felt that a no-harvest closure was the “obvious option,” should additional management measures be needed, but emphasized that such closure should allow bass to be targeted in a release fishery, saying that

“I still feel that [no-target closures] are an option of last resort,”

not something that the Management Board should be considering now.

As noted earlier, proponents for various special interests also argued for exceptions to whatever management measures might ultimately be adopted.  The most notable of those was Jason McNamee, the Rhode Island fisheries manager, who continued to support special regulations that favor the for-hire fleet (even though there is little evidence that the tighter slot limit imposed by the Board’s 2023 emergency action did any harm to Rhode Island’s for-hire fleet, as overall Rhode Island for-hire trips increased from about 33,000 in 2021 to a little over 37,500 in 2022 to nearly 44,500 in 2023, when the emergency measures became effective, although trips targeting striped bass did decline, beginning in 2022).

Mr. McNamee also expressed interest in the idea of adopting a moveable slot to protect the 2018 year class, noting that

“Slot limits work best when they’re dynamic.”

So what will happen when the Board meets in October?  

It’s still hard to say.

Addendum II provides that

“If an upcoming stock assessment prior to the rebuilding deadline (currently 2029) indicates the stock is not projected to rebuild by 2029 with a probability greater than or equal to 50%, the Board could respond via Board action where the Board could change management measures by voting to pass a motion at a Board meeting instead of developing an addendum or amendment (and different from the emergency action process).  [emphasis added]”

“Could” is the critical word.

The language was added to Addendum II because, as the rebuilding deadline grows close, any new management measures adopted by the Board would have a very limited time to impact rebuilding.  If the Board chose to adopt measures by a simple vote, bypassing the usual addendum/amendment process, such measures could be in place for the 2025 season, while measures adopted through the addendum process probably wouldn’t be effective until 2026.

But at this week’s meeting, there were signs that at least some Management Board members might be more comfortable with the addendum process.  Maryland fisheries manager Michael Luisi probably expressed such concerns most clearly, saying

“These are complicated issues…In October, if the Board decides to move forward with something, it’s got to be pretty simple.”

He expressed concern that language in Amendment 7 to the Interstate Fishery Management Plan for Atlantic Striped Bass, which prohibits the use of conservation equivalency (the doctrine that allows states to adopt measures different from those approved by the Board, so long as such measures have the same conservation effect) when the stock is overfished, may make it more difficult to adopt new measures at the October meeting.

If too many Management Board members feel the same way, it is very possible that the Board will do nothing but dither in October, and the supposed “interim” measures of Addendum II will be carried forward for another year.

But if enough people on the Management Board want to fulfill their obligation to rebuild the stock by 2029, it can still happen.

In my view, the simplest way to approach the issue would be to adopt a no-harvest season on a regional basis.

Pursuant to that approach, should the stock assessment update reveal that fishing mortality must be reduced by a certain percentage in order to make timely rebuilding likely, each region would be required to close the bass fishery to harvest long enough to achieve the needed reduction (or, better, the Board would take Mr. Batsavage’s advice to “aim a little higher” and impose a reduction somewhat greater than would theoretically be needed to achieve rebuilding, to account for the inevitable management uncertainty).  The exact dates of such closures would be up to the states involved, so long as the reduction was achieved.

Setting the regions will always engender debate, for there are always conflicting reasons why a state should or should not be tied to another state or state for management purposes.  But the Board wouldn’t go far wrong if it began with five regions to start:  Maine/New Hampshire, Massachusetts/Rhode Island/Connecticut, New York/New Jersey, Delaware/Maryland/Virginia, and North Carolina.  Within all such proposed regions, the states have seasons and fisheries that are similar enough to get the job done. 

Yes, New Jersey might complain that its Delaware Bay fishery might be too different from New York’s to work, and New York and/or Connecticut might complain that such split might cause problems in Long Island Sound, while Maryland…  But we’re not looking for perfection here, just for something that can get the job done.

Again, that's only my approach to the problem, and it is very likely that whatever the Board ultimately does, if it does anything, will differ from my proposition to a greater or lesser degree.

I just put my idea out there to show that the Board can easily put together something that works if it wants to.

But what if it doesn’t, and decides to kick the can down the road through another addendum process?

The striped bass stock is not doing well, and it will be under real stress when the weak year classes—so far, 2019 through 2023, although there could be more down the road—take their place in the spawning stock.  If the Management Board fails to do all that it can to rebuild the stock before that happens, and so fails to put the striped bass stock in the best possible position before the poor year classes force an inevitable biomass decline, the Board will have failed in its duty to both the striped bass and to striped bass fishermen, whether recreational or commercial.

Such failure, should it occur, would be a very, very hard thing to forgive.