STRIPED BASS: GRASPING AT STRAWS

 

By now, anyone who follows striped bass management issues knows that there has been another bad spawn in the Chesapeake Bay, with the Maryland juvenile abundance index coming in at 4.0, and the Virginia JAI at 5.12.  Both are well below the long-term JAI averages for the two states, which are 11 and 7.77, respectively.

While neither of those numbers fall into recruitment failure territory, which is defined as three consecutive years of JAIs that fall within the 25^th percentile of all JAIs for the region’s time series (1957-2009 for Maryland, 1980-2009 for Virginia), both are low enough, when combined with the previous two years’ JAIs, to trip the recruitment trigger contained in Amendment 7 to the Interstate Fishery Management Plan for Atlantic Striped Bass, which is three consecutive years of JAIs that fall within the 25^th percentile of JAIs for the period 1992-2006.

Once the recruitment trigger in Amendment 7 is tripped,

“an interim [fishing mortality] target and interim [fishing mortality] threshold calculated using the low recruitment assumption will be implemented, and the [fishing mortality]-based management triggers [that require management action to be taken under certain circumstances] will be reevaluated using those interim reference points.  In [a fishing mortality] reference point is tripped upon reevaluation, the striped bass management program must be adjusted to reduce [fishing mortality] to the interim [fishing mortality] target within one year.”

Of course, that's almost irrelevant now, since low recruitment in Maryland, Virginia, and the Delaware River already tripped that management trigger a while ago.

So it’s clear that the two JAIs, and the Maryland JAI in particular, were pretty bad news.

However, there are always people who try to deny reality, either because the have a financial incentive for doing so, or because they just can’t bring themselves to accept that the striped bass stock is quickly sailing into dire straits.  I didn’t realize how delusional such people could be, until I happened to look at the Facebook page of Fisherman’s Headquarters, a New Jersey tackle shop.  The store got the story and the context right, saying

“4.0…better than the last two years but another poor year (7^th consecutive) of striped bass recruitment from the Chesapeake Bay.”

But then I noticed the comment,

“By the percentage, it looks like 25 was 100% better than 24, which was 75% better than 23.  I wouldn’t call that a failure.”

A second comment read,

“100% increase,non top [sic] of 100% increase.

Good news doesn’t sell.”

I’ve since seen similar comments on the Facebook page of a regional magazine and on a website dedicated to striped bass angling.

And then there are the conspiracy theorists, with one commenting,

“Can we really believe these numbers? Are bass still spawning in the same estuaries as ten, twenty and thirty years ago?  Is the entire biomass shifting northward as temps rise, making Chesapeake YOY less predictive?  We see more bass of NJ now than in the past 15 years and more in the past 15 then [sic] the past 50.  Bureaucrats can make numbers say whatever they want to justify their actions.”

I’ve heard those comments elsewhere,

 too, often at striped bass hearings when people, usually connected to the for-hire fishing industry, are trying to impeach the data underlying fisheries management actions, in order to maintain current regulations and current harvest levels.

It’s startling just how many people try to deny the reality that poor recruitment is putting the striped bass stock at risk of serious future decline, and how many others try to concoct stories in an effort to convince themselves that things aren’t really too bad, either because they found some hope in the data or because they are certain that conservation efforts are all part of some nefarious government plot.

To be fair to the first comment that I quoted, the last three Maryland JAIs were steadily increasing, and this year’s JAI of 4.0 was the highest since 2018.  But reaching a high of 4.0 over the course of seven years of poor recruitment isn’t something to be cheered.

If we look at the last time recruitment dropped to low levels for an extended period of time, the years 1975 through 1988—in other words, the years leading up to the last stock collapse, and the years extending through the collapse itself—we can find two different occasions when the JAI rose as high as 8.45, the first in 1978, the second in 1982.  

In the first instance, the 1978 JAI increased from 4.85 to 8.45, before falling back to 4.24 in the next year.  While none of the JAIs in the decade prior to 1978 were as low as all of the JAIs in the last seven years, the stock collapsed a few years later anyway.

In fact, no seven-year period, including periods immediately prior to the last stock collapse or during the collapse itself, resulted in an average JAI as low as the average for the period 2019-2025.  It isn’t even close, with the average JAI for the past seven years a mere 2.81, while the second-lowest seven year average was substantially higher, at 3.41.  And that one occurred during the years 1980-1986, in the heart of the last stock collapse, which puts the current low recruitment levels in an uncomfortable context.

Thus, the fact that the Maryland JAIs increased from 1.02 to 1.98 to 4.0 shouldn’t give anyone comfort, for those numbers are all still dismally low, and the last stock collapse occurred despite being preceded by JAIs that were substantially higher.

The 1982 JAI of 8.45 was bracketed by JAIs of 1.22 and 1.37, so taking heart because the JAI is trending somewhat higher in the near term is probably a mistake; the index can trend downward just as quickly as it can rise.    

That being said, the 1982 year class, with its index of 8.45, was the year class that managers relied on to rebuild the striped bass stock.  But that rebuilding didn’t occur because managers said, “Hooray, this year class is bigger than the last one!” and then clung to the status quo, hoping that the bass population would heal itself, but instead because managers built Amendment 3 to the Interstate Fishery Management Plan for Atlantic Striped Bass around the idea of protecting that year class, and every year class that followed, with a steadily increasing size limit, and of limiting fishing-related removals to no more than five percent of the spawning stock biomass until the spawning stock biomass was well on its way to being rebuilt.  

The regulations needed to accomplish that goal were far more restrictive than any adopted, or even proposed, in recent years.

Amendment 3 seemingly worked, as the 1989 JAI was 25.20, a year class that was considered “dominant” then, and would be considered the same today.  Yet the JAIs for 1988 and 1990 were Just 2.65 and 2.14, respectively.

Thus, anyone who believes that they can predict good news from three poor, but increasing JAIs, or who believes they can predict future JAI trends from past patterns, are going to be disappointed.  JAI patterns can no more predict future JAIs, than the patterns in tea leaves or in the entrails of a ram can herald future events, and we would foolish to believe otherwise.

And, speaking of foolish, why do the conspiracy theorists of the fishery world so often believe that managers are manipulating the numbers to show fewer fish in advancement of some secret government agenda?  

More particularly, why do they believe that “the government” wants to place additional restrictions on fisheries, and so cooks the data to further such goal, as the comment quoted above suggests?

There’s just no upside to any government agency doing that.

Anyone who spends any time around fisheries meetings know how much flak the various agencies receive any time that restrictions are mentioned, and anyone who knows any fisheries managers, and has spent any time speaking with them, also knows how much more flak they catch in letters, emails, and phone calls made outside of the public eye.

And anyone who takes the time to think for maybe four seconds will realize that commercial and recreational fisheries generate sales tax revenues, fuel tax revenues, and eventually income tax revenues, that are, to some degree, lost when fishing is further restricted.

So exactly what government interest would justify distorting the data in order to cause fisheries managers additional stress while also reducing the stream of tax revenues from the fishing industry?

Wouldn’t it make more sense for the government to only do what is necessary, based on the most accurate data available, to rebuild fish stocks, so that regulations could be eased, government employees receive fewer complaints, and more tax revenues might be generated?

That certainly makes sense to me, but the conspiracy theorists might know something that I don’t, because they’re always complaining that fisheries managers are using bad data to adopt unnecessary rules, all to, as the quote above suggests, “justify their actions,” although just what those actions might be, and why those allegedly unneeded actions might be, is never made completely clear.

And that’s because folks are grasping at straws.

Instead of accepting the fact that the striped bass stock is facing real problems, and that, regardless of whether the stock rebuilds by 2029, we’re looking at an almost inevitable decline after that, and instead of resigning themselves to the truth that tough remedial measures are going to be needed to turn things around, fishermen try to find solace in bad news, and if they can’t do that, try to convince themselves that talk of incipient problems are all part of some sort of government con.

In a few years, it’s likely that the truth is going to hit them between the eyes, and it’s going to hurt.  Very badly.

And then they’ll ask how it all happened, when everything was going so well.

                                                                                                                          .