STRIIPED BASS: "SUCH A SOLID FALL RUN"

For last Thursday’s edition of this blog, I put up a post describing the issues that the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission’s Atlantic Striped Bass Management Board will be considering when it meets on December 16, and suggested some themes for comments that stakeholders might wish to submit to the Management Board ahead of next Tuesday’s deadline.

The post drew a few comments, the majority of which seemed to question whether any further management action was needed, because from what the commenters saw, the bass stock appeared to be healthy.  One commenter wrote

“The past fall run has proved to me that the fishery is strong and robust…Countless bass gorging on sand eels and bunkers.  Acres and acres of fish.  Last year I did not land one school nor one slot fish.  Something is going right.”

Another wrote,

“I as many on LongIsland [sic] have experienced a very strong fall run of striped bass…I am a true believer that the slot law is working.”

A third noted that

“It was a terrific year for striped bass fishing.  Contrary to the last couple of years, I was able to land more than my share of slot sized fish this year, with leads me to believe that the limits that have been imposed have worked to help revive the striped bass population,”

while a fourth simply said,

“Such a solid fall run…It was a great fishing run with my family.  What a great season.”

The truth is that those anglers are right:  There was a great fall run of striped bass off western Long Island this year.  And the truth is that those anglers are wrong, when they try to extrapolate from their very successful fall season off Long Island, to reach the conclusion that there were plenty of bass everywhere.

That’s just not the case.  The striped bass stock remains overfished, and is facing some serious challenges.

It turned out that one of the anglers who commented on the post is a friend, who runs his boat out of Fire Island Inlet, New York, just as I do.  He had a great fall season, and is having a hard time believing that the striped bass stock is not doing well.  

In response to his comments, I referenced an old fable that I had learned as a child, which spoke of six elderly blind men who were extremely curious about elephants, but were never able to see one because of their blindness.

According to the fable, the blind men were eventually led to the palace of the Rajah, where they would be able to approach an elephant and, because they could not see the creature, touch it to determine its nature.  When the opportunity finally arose,

“The first blind man reached out and touched the side of the huge animal.  ‘An elephant is smooth and solid like a wall,’ he declared.  ‘It must be very powerful.’

“The second blind man put his hand on the elephant’s limber trunk.  ‘An elephant is like a giant snake,’ he announced.

“The third blind man felt the elephant’s pointed tusk.  ‘I was right,’ he decided.  ‘This creature is as sharp and deadly as a spear.’

“The fourth blind man touched one of the elephant’s four legs.  ‘What we have here,’ he said, ‘is an extremely large cow.’

“The fifth blind man felt the elephant’s giant ear.  ‘I believe an elephant is like a huge fan or maybe a magic carpet that can fly over mountains and treetops,’ he said.

“The sixth blind man gave a tug on the elephant’s coarse tail.  ‘Why, this is nothing more than a piece of old rope.  Dangerous, indeed,’ he scoffed.”

Each of the blind men having perceived one part of the elephant, and certain that their perception disclosed the elephant’s true nature, they each began to argue about what an elephant was really like, rejecting the views of the others.  Their argument grew quite clamorous, until finally,

“’Stop shouting!’ came a very angry voice.

“It was the Rajah, awakened from his nap by the noisy argument.

“’How can each of you be so certain that you are right?’ asked the ruler.

“The six blind men considered the question.  And then, knowing the Rajah to be a very wise man, they decided to say nothing at all.

“’The elephant is a very large animal,’ said the Rajah kindly.  ‘Each man touched only one part.  Perhaps if you put the parts together, you will see the truth.  Now, let me finish my nap in peace.’”

That fable’s teachings are applicable to many situations, including perceptions of the striped bass stock, which is very large—even overfished, its spawning stock biomass at the end of 2023 was estimated to be 86,536 metric tons, or slightly over 190 million pounds—and ranges from North Carolina to Maine, with a handful of fish even straggling up into Canadian waters.

So while fishermen off Long Island undoubtedly experienced very good fishing this fall, their perceptions were very limited in time and place.  The popular striped bass website Stripers Online hosts a series of chat boards, including one dedicated to Connecticut anglers which features a thread titled “stripers in CT this year….” which sees Connecticut anglers reporting their very different perceptions of the fishery.  The leadoff post reads,

“this was without question the worst season I’ve ever had fishing for bass…talking to others seems to reinforce my experience.”

I grew up in Greenwich, Connecticut, and still go back to my old home waters to fish with a friend every year.  One of my favorite times is late summer, which typically sees a short but intense pencil popper bite occur right at first light.  But this year, that bite didn’t happen, and it really wasn’t worth my time to drive up to Connecticut at all.  Thus, I wasn’t surprised to see others who fish there make comments such as

“Same here.  Bass fishing sucked for me this year,”

“I wish this were a fluke but the steady deterioration is in its 5^th yr at least.  Each yr is a little worse,”

“It has been the worst year I’ve had in several years…The fall was the Nail in the coffin for me with only one good week in early October…Since then it has been skunk city with a few rats under the birds here and there,”

and

“The locations that I would normally fish this time of year that would be stacked up thick with schoolies are empty…It has been going downhill for years and this year is worse.”

Clearly, those Connecticut anglers didn’t touch the same part of the elephant as folks fishing off western Long Island, even though the two areas are not all that far away from one another.  Anglers fishing other areas of the coast also have divergent perceptions of the health of the striped bass stock.

So how do we—all “blind men” in that we only see a piece of the overall whole—gain a full picture of the striped bass stock?

The answer, of course, is by using science and analyzing data, to create a factually unbiased view of the entire striped bass population, throughout its various peregrinations between nursery grounds and summering areas, and between coastal rivers and the waters of the continental shelf. 

When it comes to the health of the striped bass stock, the primary scientific documents are the benchmark stock assessment and the periodic updates thereto.  In preparing the assessment, biologists employ no less than 15 different state surveys and monitoring programs, which gather data from coastal and estuarine waters between New England and Virginia.  All are fishery-independent, meaning that they are not derived from catch or landings by either commercial or recreational fishermen, although fishery-dependent data, such as that developed through the Marine Recreational Information Program and commercial landings data, are also used to inform the stock assessments.

Because of the wide array of data included in a stock assessment, gathered over most of the striper coast, a benchmark stock assessment or subsequent update necessarily provides a far more comprehensive and far more accurate picture of the striped bass stock than do the limited experiences of anglers fishing along a small section of coast.

To assess the future, as well as the current status, of the striped bass stock, biologists can rely on juvenile abundance indices, which provide an estimate of spawning success in the four most important spawning regions, the Maryland and Virginia sections of the Chesapeake Bay, the Delaware River, and the Hudson River.  

The Chesapeake Bay is, by far, the most important spawning area, providing about eighty percent of the migratory striped bass found along the Atlantic Coast, and Maryland Is the most important portion of the Chesapeake Bay, producing about two-thirds of the Bay’s juvenile bass

Thus, to learn that the 2024 Maryland striped bass juvenile abundance index revealed that the bass experienced recruitment failure for the sixth consecutive year, and that the Virginia index signaled the fourth straight year of recruitment failure was particularly bad news.  2024 data is not yet available for the Delaware and Hudson rivers, but the fact that the New Jersey juvenile abundance index, marking the success of the Delaware River spawn, was below the 25^th percentile of the juvenile survey’s time series in 2021 through 2023, and that the Hudson River index for 2023 was the worst since 1985 provides reason to worry about the bass’ immediate future.

Contrary to some Long Island anglers’ beliefs, the conclusions of the stock assessment and assessment updates, combined with the recent juvenile abundance surveys, provide no objective evidence that “the stock is strong and robust,” nor that “something is going right.”

Good fishing that occurs within a limited area, particularly good fishing for bass that fit within the recreational slot limit, can give the impression that the stock is healthier than it actually is.  But a simple test can reveal whether abundance is improving, or whether the health of the stock is getting worse:  calculating the number of bass caught on an average trip.  When striped bass abundance is increasing coastwide, the average number of bass caught per trip will increase; when abundance declines, the number of bass caught per trip declines, too.

And over the past few years, the number of bass caught per trip has steadily headed in the wrong direction, with the rate of decline increasing in recent years.  In 2019, the average trip taken in New England/mid-Atlantic region, primarily targeting striped bass, saw 1.960 bass caught.  That number ticked up slightly, to 2.032 fish per trip, in 2020, then declined, at an ever-increasing rate, to 1.947 bass/trip in 2021, 1.814 bass/trip in 2022, and 1.611 bass/trip in 2023.  

For the first eight months of 2024, the average number of bass caught per trip was just 1.059, although that figure might be deceiving, as it leaves out the last four months of the year, when bass fishermen are often very active.  Still, it's not  unreasonable to expect the 2024 average to fall below that of 2023.

A vast preponderance of the objective evidence indicates that the coastwide health of the striped bass stock is not good, which again illustrates why relying on personal experience to gauge stock status, instead of depending on objective information, can easily lead someone astray.

I wish that wasn’t the case.  I wish that the fishing we saw off Long Island this fall accurately represented the health of the stock.

But when it comes to striped bass, subjective impressions must yield to objective fact, and the fact is that the immediate prospects of the striped bass stock are worrying.

Hopefully, when it meets on December 16, the Management Board will have the courage, wisdom, and collective will to put the stock back on the track to long-term health and sustainability.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

STRIPED BASS: THE TIME HAS COME TO PROVIDE YOUR COMMENTS

 

On December 16, the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission’s Atlantic Striped Bass Management Board will meet to discuss possible changes in management measures, for the 2025 season.  The Management Board is seeking public comment ahead of that meeting, which comment must be emailed to comments@asmfc.org by 11:59 p.m. on December 10.

The question for stakeholders is precisely what they’ll be asked to comment on.

Because the Management Board will be fast-tracking any measures that might be adopted, and adopting such measures outside the usual addendum process, it did not produce the typical draft addendum for public comment, not did it schedule public hearings.  Instead, the only document available for stakeholder review is the memo that the Striped Bass Technical Committee and Stock Assessment Subcommittee produced for the Management Board, which is included in the meeting materials.  It’s not the easiest document to navigate if someone isn’t familiar with management jargon, as it doesn’t include clearly labeled options.  However, the topics for comment are clearly presented.  In the remainder of this post, I’ll try to lay out the key points, along with some thoughts on what might best benefit the striped bass resource in this difficult time.

Uncertainty still clouds the data

One of the tasks that the Management Board assigned the Technical Committee, when the Board last met in October, was to include data from Wave 4—July and August—into its calculations of the fishing mortality reductions needed to rebuild the stock by 2029.  

Unfortunately, that additional data may have only increased the uncertainty.

At the October Management Board meeting, a Technical Committee presentation suggested that, based on data from Waves 2 and 3—March through June 2024—and depending upon how much 2025 landings increased after the above-average 2018 year class entered the coastal slot limit, a reduction in the 14.5 percent to 26.8 percent range would be needed to rebuild the stock by 2029, assuming that fishing mortality fell back to 2024 levels in the years 2026-2029.  A 14.5 percent reduction seemed the most likely outcome.

But when the Technical Committee included the Wave 4 catch and landings in its calculations, things changed—a lot.  Because catch and landings were relatively low during Wave 4, it now appeared that, assuming that the fishing mortality rate for the rest of the year was no higher than it was for Waves 2-4, that the fishing mortality rate for 2025 was no more than 17 percent higher than the 2024 rate, and that the fishing mortality rate in 2026 through 2029 fell back to a level no higher than it was in 2024, there was a 57 percent probability that the stock would fully rebuild by 2029 even if management measures remained unchanged.

Of course, that was a lot of assumptions, and there was no guarantee that all—or any—of them would prove true.  The Technical Committee cautioned that

“While including additional data (i.e., adding Wave 4) is generally informative, the [Technical Committee-Stock Assessment Subcommittee] notes that using Waves 2-4 to predict removals does not always result in a more accurate estimate of final removals than using only Waves 2-3.”

Warnings like that should be heeded, particularly when, after providing two other scenarios, including 1) the scenario based on Waves 2 and 3, which calls for a 14 percent reduction and 2) another scenario that includes Wave 4 data but assumes higher landings in 2025 and a fishing mortality rate for 2026-2029 slightly higher than the 2024 rate, which would require an eight percent reduction to achieve rebuilding.  With respect to all three scenarios, the Technical Committee advised

“The probability of achieving rebuilding by 2029 range from 57% to 43% across the three primary scenarios which equate to reductions ranging from 0% to 14%.  The [Technical Committee-Stock Assessment Subcommittee] notes that all three primary scenarios represent a credible range of what might happen.  As such, the Board should consider its risk tolerance when considering possible management response for 2025 and beyond.  The level of risk the Board is willing to accept (with respect to resource status, economic loss, and persistent modeling uncertainty due to annual management changes) is a management decision.”

Thus, the Technical Committee acknowledges the uncertainty inherent in its recommendations, does not  attempt to predict which scenario is most likely, and further warns that

“Although these projections aim to capture some component of changing effort and fish availability (i.e., increased [fishing mortality] when strong year classes are available), angler behavior and fish availability are still sources of uncertainty.  Additionally, there is high uncertainty in the exact [fishing mortality] values that will occur over this period even with constant regulations.  The estimated F₂₀₂₄ and F__rebuild values for all scenarios would be the lowest values since 1994, which is possible given both the extremely narrow slot limit and the lack of a strong year class in that slot.  The low year-classes following the 2018 year-class will result in lower availability of harvestable fish after 2025, which may result in a decline in effort and a lower F for 2026-2029; however, if removals remain constant on these weaker year-classes, F may not decrease as much as expected.  Finally, the ability to maintain a constant F for consecutive years is difficult even with regulation changes.  While the projections assume a constant F for 2026-2029, the [Technical Committee-Stock Assessment Subcommittee] cannot predict how F will vary from year to year.”

So it is clear that even the best estimates of the Technical Committee might not be very precise.

A risk-averse approach is needed

The Technical Committee’s projections unavoidably include a high level of uncertainty, and when considering fishery management measures, a high degree of uncertainty calls for an equally high degree of precaution.

That is particularly true in the case of the striped bass.

Last October, the ASMFC released an update to the benchmark striped bass stock assessment, which revealed that the striped bass stock remains overfished, although spawning stock biomass is slowly increasing.    

In addition, recruitment of young striped bass into the population has been very low in recent years.  Maryland, the most important spawning ground on the coast, has experienced six consecutive years of recruitment failure, with the average juvenile abundance index for those six years the lowest of any six-year period on the coast—including those years in the late 1970s and 1980s when the striped bass stock experienced a collapse.  Virginia recruitment has also been poor for the past four years, and Delaware River recruitment for three (although we don’t have the 2024 data yet; 2024 could conceivably mark the fourth poor year there, too).  The only relatively successful recruitment has been in the Hudson River, where it has vacillated wildly from year to year, with 2020 producing one of the strongest year classes on record and 2023 producing the worst recruitment since 1985.  We don’t yet know what Hudson River recruitment looked like this year, although there are some rumors floating around suggesting that it wasn’t very good.  The Hudson figures should be released later this year.

Because of the low recruitment, the current effort to rebuild the stock by 2029 is about more than merely increasing the number of striped bass available to the commercial and recreational fisheries; it is about shoring up the spawning stock biomass, so that if recruitment stays low for an extended period due to unfavorable environmental factors, as it did in the 70s and ‘80s, and biomass crashes again, there will still be sufficient spawning stock available to begin a recovery once more favorable spawning conditions recur.

Given the overfished status of the striped bass stock, and the impossibility of predicting when recruitment will again return to more typical levels, the Management Board should be urged to exercise caution and assume that a 14% overall reduction in landings will be needed to rebuild the spawning stock biomass by the 2029 deadline.

The issues that must be considered

Once the size of the reduction has been determined, the next question is just who must reduce their landings.  Here, the Technical Committee offers three possible choices:  1) the commercial and recreational sectors could both take an equal reduction, 2) the commercial quota could remain unchanged, and the recreational sector made responsible for the entire reduction, or 3) the commercial sector could take what the Technical Committee describes as a reduction “based on sector contribution to total removals.”

The first two choices are self-explanatory, while the third is strange enough to require a little discussion.  It was first proposed during the debate over Addendum VI to Amendment 6 to the Interstate Fishery Management Plan for Atlantic Striped Bass, which was adopted in 2019, although it never gained too much traction back then.  The idea was that the commercial sector was only responsible for about 10 percent of striped bass landings, so instead of being reduced by (in the current case) 14 percent, the commercial quota should only be reduced by 10 percent of 14 percent, or 1.4 percent, while the recreational sector is held responsible for the rest of the cuts.

It’s clearly inequitable, making the recreational sector assume a disproportionate share of any landings reduction, but it is an approach revived by commercial fishing advocates every time that the subject of landings reductions is raised.

Requiring both the commercial and recreational sectors to accept an equal percentage reduction is the only equitable option, and should be the option adopted by the Management Board.  

Making no change to the commercial quota would require the recreational sector to shoulder the entire conservation burden, and take a 16 percent reduction, while the third approach would reduce the commercial quota by only about 1.5 percent, while still imposing a 16 percent cut on recreational fishermen.

The question of who must reduce their harvest being resolved, the next question is how that reduction ll be achieved.

Of the six different size limit options for the ocean fishery, which range from a narrower, 28- to 30-inch slot limit to a 40-inch minimum size, none offered more than a 6 percent reduction.  So, even if a size limit was adopted, it would have to be paired with some sort of season, along with a reduction of the recreational size limit in the Chesapeake Bay to achieve a meaningful reduction in landings.

The need to combine size limits with a closed season will probably militate against new size limits being adopted.

Instead, it is very likely that any recreational reductions imposed by the Management Board will be achieved through some sort of closed season.  The Technical Committee put together two pages of suggested season closures for the coastal fishery.  All but one of them broke the coast into regions, with different seasons for northern New England (Maine to either Massachusetts or Rhode Island, depending on the option) and the rest of the coast. 

If the Management Board adopts a closed season, it can do one of two things.  It can close the season to harvest, but allow catch-and-release fishing to continue, or it can prohibit even targeting striped bass, prohibiting the release fishery as well.  While the latter approach results in a season closure only about half as long as a no-harvest closure, it has one very big disadvantage:  No-target closures are virtually impossible to enforce. 

The National Marine Fisheries Service has maintained a no-target closure in federal waters for the past 40 years, and when asked, NMFS representatives could not recall a single instance in all that time when a fisherman was convicted for merely targeting striped bass, unless that fisherman also had a dead bass in the cooler.  State law enforcement personnel told the ASMFC about the same thing:  Unless someone is in possession of a striped bass, it is extremely difficult to convict them for merely targeting the species.

It's just too easy for an angler to target striped bass, but say that they’re fishing for bluefish, white perch, weakfish or anything else, and was just catching striped bass by accident.  In such cases, it is very, very difficult to prove to a judge, beyond a reasonable doubt, that striped bass was the actual target.

Thus, as a practical matter, a no-target closure is little more than a no-harvest closure that is only half as long as it needs to be to accomplish its goal.  The Management Board should be encouraged to adopt a no-harvest closure, which allows catch-and-release to continue, to achieve the needed recreational reduction.

Unfortunately, in constructing the possible season closures, the Technical Committee focused on all states reducing their season by the same number of days, even though that leads to the very inequitable result of Maine and New Hampshire, which has the shortest seasons on the coast, giving up a far larger proportion of its season than, for example, New Jersey, where anglers can catch bass for at least ten months of the year.

The Technical Committee also chose to break the coast into only two regions, and in all cases, the southern region is just too big.  There are few similarities between the striped bass fisheries off southern New England and those in the ocean off Virginia, and it would have served the bass better to break the coast up into at least one more region, perhaps with Delaware Bay as the dividing line.

The current division allows the more northerly southern states too much opportunity to play games with any closure that might be adopted.  For example, should the Management Board decide on an option that provides for a 23-day no-target closure in Wave 6, a state like New Jersey, which has a reputation for abiding by the letter of the rules while doing its best to apply them in the way most likely to negate their effect, could close its bass fishery for the last three weeks of December, when most boats are already out of the water, be in technical compliance, but not achieve anything close to the intended harvest reduction.

However, this late in the game, there is no time for the Technical Committee to investigate other possible seasons.  We can only hope that the Management Board picks the best of the choices available, and live with the results of their choice until the 2026 assessment update tells us whether additional modifications are required to meet the rebuilding deadline.

What will the Management Board do?

Hopefully, quite a few anglers will provide comments ahead of the December 16 meeting, but we still have to wonder what, regardless of the comments made, the Management Board might decide to do.

It might well do nothing.  

The Technical Committee did calculate, after all, that if fishing mortality rate for the first eight months of 2024 is maintained throughout the rest of the year, there is a 57 percent chance that the stock will recover under current regulations.  That finding will probably tempt quite a few Management Board members to take the easy way out, forego any new management measures, and hope that the basws work things out on their own.

It's a risky strategy, with a 43 percent chance of failure, and the poor recruitment in recent years makes going into 2030 with a spawning stock biomass that remains below the target level more hazardous than it would otherwise be.

The high level of uncertainty could also lead the Management Board to defer action until they can get the recreational catch and landings data for Waves 5 and 6.  

That could mean deferring any action until February 2026 or, perhaps, even until May, or it could mean that the Board will decide that, instead of fast-tracking new management measures, it should initiate an addendum through the normal addendum process.  Doing so would allow the Management Board to put concrete options on the table and send them out for public comment, and would make it possible to hold public hearings to maximize stakeholder input.  

Any measures included in such an addendum wouldn’t be effective until 2026, but given the advice that additional measures might not be needed at all, initiating an addendum might be an easier sell than it was two months ago, when a motion to do so was rejected by the Management Board.

But there are also quite a few responsible members of the Management Board, who understand the perils now facing the striped bass stock, and who will want to take immediate, decisive action.  We can only hope that there are enough of such people, holding the majority of the seats in enough states, that their views will prevail.  

If they do, we can probably expect some sort of closed season, and probably some sort of commercial quota reduction as well, although I’m hesitant to predict anything beyond those two things.

What we need to do

Whether or not the Management Board decides to take action, and what sort of action it decides to take, may well depend on the volume and content of public comment.  

If the Management Board gets a couple of thousand emails—not an unreasonable volume, as they received more than that many comments on both Amendment 7 and Addendum II—and a substantial majority of those letters call for a 14 percent reduction, there’s a pretty good chance that the Board will comply.

That’s not a certain outcome, because one or more Management Board members might make an argument compelling enough to yield a different result, or there might be enough disagreement between Board members that it becomes impossible for any proposal to attract a majority of the votes.  Nonetheless, a strong outpouring of public comment calling for a particular outcome is likely to have a real impact.

Thus, it’s important that stakeholders comment on the issues.

Comments must be emailed and, as noted at the start of this post, must be received no later than 11:59 p.m. on December 10.  Emails should be addressed to comments@asmfc.org, with a subject line clearly indicating that they are “Striped Bass Comments.”  Emilie Franke, the Fishery Management Plan Coordinator, asks that if an organization is planning to solicit form emails from members or from the general public, it contact her at efranke@asmfc.org, or call her at 703-842-0716, to arrange for a special subject line that will make such emails easier to identify and sort.

Ms. Franke has done a masterful job in the past, sorting, compiling, and reporting on the public comment received, and anything that we can do to make her job easier, given the short time she has to get it done, is something we ought to do.

And that’s it for now.

I only ask that readers of this blog do what they can to make their views known.  In return, two weeks from now, I’ll let you know how it all turned out.

STRIPED BASS: LOOKING TOWARD DECEMBER 16

 

On December 16, the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission’s Atlantic Striped Bass Management Board will meet to discuss, and hopefully adopt, management measures for the 2025 season, which should make it more likely that the spawning stock biomass will be completely rebuilt by 2029.

But before the Management Board gets to that point, there are a lot of things that need to happen.  And along the way, there will undoubtedly be people who will be doing their best to see that the adoption or new, more restrictive management measures is one thing that doesn’t happen at all.

Thus, this is a good time to begin thinking about the state of the striped bass stock, what might be done to rebuild it, and some of the arguments people might use in their efforts to convince the Management Board to maintain the status quo.

Regarding the state of the stock itself, there should be little doubt that it remains overfished, and that spawning stock biomass must increase by more than 25 percent over the next five years for it to reach its target level by the 2029 deadline.  That might not be too hard to accomplish if striped bass fishing mortality remains as low as it was during the first eight months of this year.   However, continued low fishing mortality is not guaranteed.

While recreational striped bass landings in 2024 have lagged landings in both 2022 and 2023 by a substantial amount—52 percent and 25 percent, respectively—landings in November and December of those years were, by far, higher than in any previous two-month period.  If 2024 repeats that pattern, which is possible given the large numbers of striped bass caught off New York and New Jersey during November, rebuilding may not be quite as easy as data from earlier in the year suggests.

At the same time, the good late-season fishing will undoubtedly lead some members of the fishing community, most particularly those engaged in the for-hire fishery and perhaps some members of the retail tackle business, to argue that the striped bass stock is healthier than the most recent stock assessment update suggests, and that no additional restrictions should be imposed on the fishery.

A variation of that argument, which we heard during the debate leading up to the Management Board’s adoption of Addendum II to Amendment 7 to the Interstate Fishery Management Plan for Atlantic Striped Bass, is that recent poor recruitment in the Chesapeake Bay does not signal a potential crisis for the striped bass stock, because a warming climate is shifting recruitment toward more northern rivers, including rivers in Connecticut and perhaps elsewhere in New England that are not currently considered striped bass spawning grounds.

But as I noted almost a year ago, there is no evidence to support such assertions.  Although striped bass recruitment in the Hudson River can swing wildly from year to year, recent spawns have averaged out to something close to historical levels, and the 2023 spawn was the least successful since 1985.  As far as the New England rivers go, some might produce a few bass each year, but their overall contribution to the spawning stock biomass is minimal, and whatever contribution they do make would be detected in the various state surveys once the bass grew old enough to begin migrating along the coast.

In addition, new research reported a few months ago confirmed the importance of the Chesapeake Bay to the health of the coastal striped bass stock.  Using fin clips to sample the DNA of more than 5,400 striped bass caught at various locations between New York Harbor and Portland, Maine, New Hampshire researchers found that, depending on the year, the Chesapeake Bay produces between 80 and 88 percent of all the striped bass migrating along the coast.

Thus, despite some of the claims being made, recruitment in the Chesapeake Bay does and will continue to have a very big impact on the number of fish that will be present along the coast.

We need to keep that in mind when we think about December 16 and 2025 management measures, because rebuilding the stock, while important in its own right, is only one step on the road to a healthy striped bass population. 

And rebuilding is not guaranteed.

I know that at least one representative of the fishing tackle industry, Michael Waine, an employee of the American Sportfishing Association, has already suggested not fully rebuilding the stock, saying

“the question becomes like how far are we willing to go from a management and policy side to meet these very ambitious conservation goals, and you can see the byproduct of that, we have a very narrow slot limit.  And so where we, where we’re currently located is where do we go from here?  We want to avoid like the scenario like southern flounder and a scenario like red snapper [where recreational landings are sharply curtailed].  We want to make sure that management…is aware of the headwinds but also allows for access for anglers to go out and catch a fish, and so how do we balance these values?  How do we balance building back a population to a conservation level that we can all agree on, which we never likely will, with fishing access, with the ability to actually go out and catch these fish, and what worries me, worries on this specifically is like we’ll go too far, meaning we’ll actually tell people to stop fishing for striped bass, which is where I think everyone loses…”

And at the November meeting of New York’s Marine Resources Advisory Council, one representative of our local fishing tackle industry asked whether there was any chance that the 2029 rebuilding deadline, which was established by the very clear language of Amendment 6 to the Interstate Fishery Management Plan for Atlantic Striped Bass, language that was perpetuated when the ASMFC adopted Amendment 7 to the management plan in 2022, might not be a firm deadline, but instead could be extended out by some unspecified number of years.

I have been involved with fishery management issues for close to half a century now, and if I have learned anything over those years, its that when an industry spokesman starts to talk about “balancing” conservation and business concerns, his goal is to shape an outcome that is all about business, and not about balance at all, and that when industry folks talk about “extending” a rebuilding deadline, one might think that the choice is, perhaps, between extending the deadline from one year to the next or maybe the year after that, when the real choice often turns out to be between the designated rebuilding deadline and never.

When discussions over 2025 management measures begin, we ought to keep those things in mind.

We also ought to remember that the discussion is going to be about more than just timely rebuilding.  Given that the 2018 year class is going to be the last even somewhat strong year class to enter the spawning stock for some time, and that the Maryland juvenile abundance index for the years 2019-2024 represents the lowest six-year average index in the 60-plus year history of the Maryland juvenile abundance survey—lower even than during any 6-year period when the striped bass stock collapsed in the late 1970s and early 1980s—what we’re really talking about is the health and sustainability of the striped bass stock in the foreseeable future.

There is no room for mistakes, compromise, or overconfidence.

While we all hope that recruitment in the Chesapeake Bay will soon improve, and that a large year class of bass will be produced very soon—maybe even in 2025—there’s no guarantee that will happen.  It is very, very possible that the spawning stock biomass that we have in 2029 will be the largest we will see for many years, and that Chesapeake Bay will not produce another big year class until another decade or more has passed.  If that happens, the bass that we have in 2029 may, for all practical purposes, be the only bass that we have for a very long time, and it would be wise to make them last.

Although it’s still far too soon to utter the words “impending stock collapse,” as the spawning stock biomass is still nearly four times as large  as it was in the early 1980s, we cannot be certain that a stock collapse doesn’t loom in the bass’ not-too-distant future.  While striped bass management is far better than it was 45 years ago, with far more protections in place, striped bass are also a much bigger component of the recreational landings today than they were then, as traditionally targeted species such as winter flounder, cod, and even mako sharks are no longer available to anglers, and other species, including bluefish, weakfish, and summer flounder are far less abundant today than they were in 1980.

It is entirely possible that the benefits of the improved management system that bass enjoy today could be more than offset by the greater recreational fishing pressure that they’re facing.

Should the worst-case scenario occur, and the striped bass stock collapses once again, then the females that compose the spawning stock in 2029 may be just about the only females that we will have to depend on to rebuild the stock once spawning conditions are again favorable enough to produce a strong year class.  It is thus only prudent to maximize the size of the spawning stock biomass while fish remain available, and so hopefully preserve some older, larger females that will be able to jump start a recovery when the opportunity finally arises.

We will probably get our first look at the ASMFC’s proposed 2025 management measures on Tuesday.  On Thursday, the Management Board will hold a webinar that will provide stakeholders an opportunity to ask questions, but not provide opinions, on such proposals, while all public comment on 2025 management measures must be provided to the ASMFC, in written form, by December 10.

The ASMFC has issued a press release, which all stakeholders should read, that provides more detail on both the webinar and the comment period.

Maybe conditions will improve, and we’ll see a good spawn in the Chesapeake this year.

But maybe they won’t, and maybe the December 16 meeting will represent managers’ last best chance to put rebuilding, and the future of the striped bass stock, back on track.

It’s important that everyone who is concerned for the striped bass’ future make one more big push, and comment in support of the efforts of the Technical Committee, ASMFC staff, and those Management Board members who are doing their best to get it right.

Time is running short.