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.