Fishermen are often optimists
who, despite poor fishing conditions and a shortage of fish, still venture out
on the water believing that they're going to catch, even if their experience on previous
trips would seem to suggest otherwise.
That optimism often spills over into the fishery management arena where,
despite all evidence pointing to a declining stock, they believe that all is
well, and that next trip, next month, or maybe next season, the fish will be
just abundant as they were years ago.
Of course, sometimes that’s not
just unalloyed optimism speaking.
Sometimes, it’s a matter of what fishermen want to
believe, or need to believe, because their job involves catching
fish, either as a commercial fisherman or for-hire operator, and if the fish
population isn’t as healthy and abundant as they hope it to be, they’re
going to have to be facing more restrictive regulations that are likely to impact
their incomes.
Right now, we’re seeing that
scenario play out with striped bass.
For many, many years, it has been
pretty well accepted that the Chesapeake Bay is the primary striped bass
spawning area, which contributes somewhere between 70 and 90 percent of all of
the fish in the coastal migratory population.
And the most recent benchmark stock assessment tells us that abouttwo-thirds of the Chesapeake fish are produced in Maryland waters.
The Hudson and Delaware rivers
provide smaller contributions, as does North Carolina’s fish from the
Albemarle/Roanoke River complex. But the North Carolina stock has effectively collapsed, and genetic studies suggestthat the Delaware River has now been colonized by Chesapeake bass, perhapsafter past episodes of hypoxia in the Delaware prevented the river’s original bass from reaching their spawning grounds.
So the Chesapeake stock remains the most important component of the
coastal population.
Recently, that has proven to be a
problem, as Maryland is now experiencing spawning failure, with itsaverage juvenile abundance index for the past five years the lowest in thehistory of a survey that dates back about 65 years. While Virginia spawns have arguably been alittle more successful, the last three years there have still seen very lowjuvenile abundance. While we won’t know
how successful the Maryland and Virginia spawns were until sometime in
mid-October, I’m getting enough signals—in the form of rumors, in the way
people try to change the subject when it comes up, and in what people in the
know just will not say—to make me believe that Maryland might well see its 6th
consecutive year of below-average spawns this year, although the juvenile
abundance index will hopefully be a little higher than it was in the recent
past.
However, even if the 2024
juvenile abundance indices for the major spawning grounds turn out to be near,
or even above, average, there will be five year classes of fish missing from
the population, and a big hole in the age structure of the stock that we will
probably begin to feel in 2026, when the largely-absent 2019 year class would
normally be expected to exceed the current 28-inch minimum size.
That would normally be problem
enough, but the striped bass stock is in even worse straits, as it remainsoverfished, and there is some question as to whether managers will be able to
rebuild spawning stock biomass to its target level by 2029, the deadlinecreated by the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission’s striped bassmanagement plan.
Put all of those issues together,
and it becomes clear that, if fisheries managers do what needs to be done to
rebuild the striped bass population, some very onerous management measujres are
going to have to be put in place when the ASMFC’s Atlantic
Striped Bass Management Board meets on October 23rd.
Those management measures won’t
be welcomed by those who kill bass for a living, and thus tend to focus on
short-term harvest rather than the long-term health of the stock. Such
folks already expressed their objections to the more restrictive management
measures contained in Addendum II to Amendment 7 to the Interstate Fishery
Management Plan for Atlantic Striped Bass.
One of the most common arguments was that as the climate changes and
waters warm, striped bass spawning is shifting from the Chesapeake to spawning
grounds farther north, including the Hudson River and various New England
streams.
Thus, we saw comments submitted
like those of the Stellwagen Bank Charter Boat Association, which wrote,
“Change in environmental conditions are
impacting the Chesapeake Bay striped bass spawning ground and climatic shift is
impacting the distribution and productivity of spawning grounds further
north. Proactive measures to address
detrimental impacts to the Chesapeake Bay and further assessment of other
striped bass spawning grounds including the Delaware and Hudson Rivers needs to
be conducted to further assess the status of the fishery. Proactive measures are recommended such as
what was conducted to address Atlantic Salmon and spawning forage species that
need to be considered with the potential removal of dams located on the Raritan
River, Connecticut River and Merrimack River where spawning is evident and/or
elsewhere to promote and protect spawning grounds.”
Tom Fote, a New Jersey angler who
frequently opposed striped bass conservation measures when he served as a
Governor’s Appointee on the Management Board, argued that
“Because of climate change and other
conditions in the Chesapeake Bay, I think other areas are producing a greater
percentage of the striped bass. Because
of the warming of the water, this may continue to increase. I have been waiting to see what happens to
the stocks in the Kenneback [sic] River since that has always been considered a
producing area. It is also interesting
to see if Connecticut’s waters are becoming producing areas. We know that Canada is having a problem with
wild Atlantic Salmon being eaten by striped bass and that may indicate more
production further north. We need to do
the necessary research to find out what is happening with the coastal migratory
stocks and not just continue to see the Chesapeake Bay as the only producing
area…”
Paul Haertel, another New Jersey
angler, made similar comments, claiming that
“in the NY Bight area we now have some of
the best striper fishing I have ever seen in my life. This is due to the fact that the Hudson River
stock is in great shape. However, we are
being denied access to them because of the declining Chesapeake Bay stock. I believe that as the population of the
Hudson River stock increases so does their range. They are heading further North, South and
East and providing great sport in areas where they never used to travel
to. I suggest you conduct a study to see
for yourselves…”
And another fisherman named James
Leone, who appears to belong to the commercial sector, commented
“As someone who derives 100% of my income
from fishing industry [sic] it would be a devastating blow to be further
regulated or shut down a fishery as important as stripedbass [sic]. My concern is that the science needs to be
updated because of rising ocean temps in the Atlantic, changes in migration and
breeding patterns. Therefore the science
that has been used for many years specifically as pertains to the Chesapeake
does not accurately reflect the total population that has moved further
north. I believe that there has to be
new research that takes into account obvious climate change before we start
further restricting a fishery our industry and coastal communities are
dependent on.”
A number of other individuals,
many of whom were connected with the for-hire fishing industry, made similar
comments, many at in-person hearings held by the ASMFC. However, no one provided any reliable data in
support of their claims of a northward shift, but merely assumed that it was
taking place; their requests for additional studies seemed to presuppose that
any such research would support their beliefs.
I have written about striped bass
many times on this blog, and one
of my more recent posts, published last August, addressed the hard decisions
that the Management Board is going to have to make at its October meeting. It received a response from Montauk, New York
charter boat captain Rick Etzel, who wasn’t particularly pleased with what I
had written, and chose to challenge my statements, saying
“If you think the striped bass stock is in
decline, you should step out of your cubicle and witness a spring and fall
run. For someone who claims to be on the
water for fifty years your knowledge appears minimal. The YOY in the Chesapeake and Maryland is
down because the fish don’t just spawn there and nowhere else. They MUST be spawning further north and east
in every estuary along the coast. How
else could we be seeing all these different Year classes that you and the
scientific community say don’t exist. You
spew as if you’re out there every day but you’re not. In fact you’re probably nothing more than a
weekend warrior professing to save the species.
Do is [sic] all a favor and convince Dr Drew [of the ASMFC’s Atlantic
Striped Bass Technical Committee] to go out and observe the fish stock instead
of swallowing what she is fed from the scientific community.”
Stripped of all the insults and
disdain for fisheries science that characterize the majority of comments emanating
from somewhere within the for-hire industry, that particular comment was merely made by someone who is afraid that regulations needed to rebuild the striped
bass stock are going to damage his business, and so is striking out against the science,
and anyone who supports it, not because he has any data contradicting what the
biologists are saying, but instead because he badly needs to believe that the stock
is healthy and that the spawning failure in Maryland won’t seriously impact his
income.
Thus, the comment “They MUST be
spawning further north and east in every estuary along the coast.”
After all, he seems to argue, we can assume that striped bass are successfully spawning somewhere, because they don’t exactly have labels on them specifying their waters of
origin.
Except that, in fact, such labels exist.
Every striped bass swimming in
our coastal sea, in our rivers, our bays, our estuaries and sounds carries a
very clear and distinct label that declares where they were spawned, included in their genetic code. Biologists can
readily read those labels, and newly
released genetic research—the very sort of research that many people called for
in their comments to Addendum II—conducted by biologists working under the
aegis of the University of New Hampshire and New Hampshire Sea Grant, has provided new insights into the origins of the striped bass migrating along the
East Coast of the United States.
As scientists have always
believed, the overwhelming majority of those striped bass were spawned in the
Chesapeake Bay.
The description of the research
project reads:
“The migratory striped bass stocks support
one of the most popular recreational fisheries on the Atlantic coast. Identifying the contribution of different
spawning populations (or stocks) to the fishery would provide a more thorough
understanding of stock dynamics and could enable more targeted, informed
management. Here, we used a genetic
approach to determine the proportional contribution of spawning stocks to the
striped bass mixed fishery in the Northwest Atlantic between Long Island, NY
and Portland, ME.”
The initial research was
conducted in 2018 and 2019, when biologists worked with 36 fishermen located along
four sections of coast, including the waters surrounding New York's Long Island, the Rhode
Island shoreline, the Buzzards Bay/Martha’s Vineyard/Nantucket region of
Massachusetts, and the waters between the New Hampshire side of the Merrimack River and Portland, Maine. Fin clips were taken from 5,400 different
striped bass, which
“eventually allowed for a detailed
description of when and where striped bass of different sizes and populations
are migrating northward and then southward throughout the region.”
With respect to the origins of
the striped bass sampled, the researchers determined that
“The Chesapeake Bay and Delaware River
fish were too genetically similar to differentiate using our panel [a differentstudy conducted by Massachusetts fisheries managers came to the sameconclusion]; together they contribute 80-88% of the striped bass to the
fishery,”
“The Hudson river system contributes
10-18% of the fish,”
and
“1-2% of the fish originated from the
Roanoke River or could not be assigned to any of the reference populations.”
The results were remarkably
consistent across both years and all four sampling regions, with the
contribution of Chesapeake Bay/Delaware River fish ranging from a high of 88.8% in Rhode Island in 2019 to a low of 75.4% in New York in 2018 (it should be
noted that the next-lowest Chesapeake contribution was 80.6% in Maine/New
Hampshire in 2018; the Chesapeake contribution to New York samples in 2019 was 86.5%).
As might be expected, the Hudson
River was the next-highest contributor, with contributions ranging from a high
of 19.6% in New York in 2018 to a low of 10.3% in Rhode Island in 2019 (the
Hudson’s contribution to New York in 2019 was 11.6%, the second-lowest
contribution made to any of the four regions that year).
But it might be the smallest
contributions that were the most intriguing.
Although North Carolina’s Albemarle/Roanoke stock never contributed more
than 0.4% of the fish to any of the sub-samples (New York 2018), and made no
contribution at all in three of the eight sub-samples, the fact that it
appeared in any measurable quantities, given the very badly depleted state ofthe stock, suggests that, at one time when the stock was healthy, it might have
been a more significant component of the coastal migratory population.
And the fact that New York
enjoyed the two highest contributions of fish of unknown origin—4.6% in 2018
and 1.7% in 2019, compared to contributions ranging from 0.9-1.6% for the other
six sub-samples—leaves some room to argue that, perhaps, some nearby, as-yet uncredited
spawning ground or grounds, perhaps the Connecticut and/or Raritan rivers, might
be contributing a very small fraction of the fish to the coastal population,
although it’s just as likely that contamination or other problems with some of
the samples led to the “unknown” determination.
But the important takeaway from
the study isn’t speculation about where a very small fraction of the bass might
have originated, but the fact that the Chesapeake Bay/ Delaware River stock is
proven to be the predominant source of striped bass for the entire
coast, providing over 80% of the bass being caught.
So if the Chesapeake stock
collapses, fishermen will not be able to look to the Hudson, or some
yet-unnamed rivers in New England to save them from the consequences of a
stock collapse that could look very much like the one of forty-some years ago.
If the Chesapeake stock collapses, the fishermen can expect no salvation to come from
anywhere else.
The future abundance of juvenile striped bass in the Chesapeake is going to depend on environmental conditions in
the spawning reaches, and on the availability of zooplankton for the juvenile
bass to feed on when and where they hatch.
No one can predict when favorable spawning conditions will recur, and if
and when they do, whether such conditions will coincide with a sufficiency of
food for the juvenile bass.
Thus, those who depend on striped
bass, whether for food, for recreation, or for their livelihood, would do well to
set aside false hopes and unsupported beliefs, and instead support managers’
efforts to rebuild and then conserve the overall striped b ass stock.
For if we get behind
conservative, science-based management efforts, there may still be a chance to
maintain some sort of fishery until conditions in the Chesapeake eventually
improve.
If we don’t, and instead stake the future on the fantasy of new spawning grounds taking the place of the Chesapeake Bay, then we're doing nothing more than setting the stock up for collapse.
I aleady saw the stock collapse once, and have no desire to sit through that show for a second time. And I can assure you that if you missed the last collapse, and particularly if bass help to pay for your meals and your mortgage, you really, really do not want to see that scenario played out again.
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