IMPROVIDENCE

 

About a year and a half ago, I became a member of the Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council’s Summer Flounder, Scup, and Black Sea Bass Advisory Panel.  While I spend most of my time chasing sharks and tuna offshore, I also get a lot of enjoyment out of wreck fishing for black sea bass and scup, and do it enough, and have done it for long enough, that I have a lot of thoughts about how those species ought to be managed.

That’s particularly true of black sea bass, which is one of my favorite “inshore” species—with “inshore” in quotations marks because I usually fish for them in the ocean, well outside of state waters, although almost always inside the 20-fathom line.

I’ve fished for black sea bass for long enough to have seen massive changes in the fishery, dating back to the days when the overfished stock provided few and generally small fish, to the rebuilding years when good-sized black sea bass—sea bass between three and four pounds, with the occasional fish even larger—were a regular part of midsummer trips, to today’s situation, when black sea bass are extremely abundant, but have also drawn so much fishing effort that it has become difficult to find many that exceed New York’s current 16 ½-inch minimum size.

Throughout that time, I’ve watched fisheries managers at the Mid-Atlantic Council and at the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission struggle to properly manage the species.  That, too, has changed, from the arguably over-cautious approach employed prior to 2016, when there was no reliable stock assessment available to guide the management process; to the data-driven, yet uncertainty-plagued approach used for a few years after the 2016 stock assessment passed peer review; to the overly risk-prone stance taken by managers, beginning in the 2020 season, when they repeatedly found excuses not to respond to anglers chronically exceeding the recreational harvest limit; and, finally, to the current management mode, which began in the 2023 season, when managers adopted something that they called the “Percent Change Approach” which allowed anglers to legally exceed both the recreational harvest limit and the sector annual catch limit with near-complete impunity, so long as the spawning stock biomass remained sufficiently high.

Managers’ excuse for allowing such high recreational harvest limits was the black sea bass’ very high spawning stock biomass which, according to the most recent management track stock assessment, was estimated to be 29,934 metric tons, about 275% of the spawning stock biomass target of 10,877 metric tons, in 2025.  However, the same management track assessment predicts that spawning stock biomass will decline sharply in the near future, falling to 22,809 metric tons (210% of target) in 2026 and 17,563 metric tons (161% of target) in 2017.

Despite the declining trend, even a spawning stock biomass that is “just” 161% of the target level is still very high, particularly in a world where the summer flounder SSB hovers somewhere between its target and the threshold that defines an overfished stock (although, fortunately, a little closer to the target) and the striped bass stock, which supports the most important recreational fishery on the East Coast, remains overfished.

Fishing mortality is also relatively low, with the 2024 fishing mortality rate the lowest it has been over the last 10 years.

So it is easy to understand why managers might be willing to take an optimistic view of stock health, and allow anglers to kill more black sea bass than they ought to, and why they might be unwilling to place additional restrictions on landings, at a time when spokesmen for the recreational fishing industry are not hesitant to point out the size of the spawning stock biomass and call for more relaxed regulations.

Yet there is one reason to believe that the black sea bass stock might not be facing quite as rosy a future as everyone seems to believe, and that is the very small number of older, larger fish in a population.

Generally, a healthy fish stock, regardless of species, will include many different year classes of fish.  The number of different year classes depends on the species in question—shorter-lived species will, naturally, contain fewer year classes than those that live longer—but a perfectly healthy stock, which is experiencing no fishing  mortality at all, would consist of individuals ranging from Year 0s, which were produced only a few months before, to a handful of individuals representing the maximum age that the species can reach.

We can envision such a population represented as a triangle, with the youngest, and most abundant, individuals making up the triangle’s broad base, with the preceding year classes, which grow smaller with time, stacked atop it, until the triangle’s very narrow tip is made up of the handful of fish that have managed to reach their maximum age potential.  (Because some year classes are larger or smaller than average, a better analogue would be a child’s jagged drawing of a Christmas tree, with strong year classes represented by the branches jutting far from the trunk and weaker ones the spaces in between such branches, but for the purposes of this discussion, the triangle’s image will serve.)

Once a population is subject to fishing mortality, the shape and size of the triangle changes.

Intuitively, one might think that the triangle of a stock that’s being fished would stay just as tall, but become skinnier, with a narrower base, as fishing activity removes a similar proportion of fish from all of the different year classes.

But that’s not what happens.

Instead, imagine someone making a cut parallel to one of the triangle’s sides.

Such a cut would remove the top of the triangle completely, reducing the triangle’s height, while also narrowing the base.  That means, in the context of a fish population, that because of fishing mortality,  fish would no longer be able to reach their full age potential; the oldest year classes would probably be lost completely, while the older, larger fish that remained would make up a smaller proportion of the overall population.

Because the oldest, largest fish would no longer be present, and the older year classes that remain would be removed from the population at a higher rate, the spawning stock biomass would be  composed primarily of younger individuals, and perhaps by only a very few year classes.  Such a population might still sustain itself for years, and perhaps indefinitely, provided that the recruitment of new fish into the spawning stock remains strong.

However, such a population is also more vulnerable to periods of poor recruitment.  With fishing mortality removing most of the older fish from the population and truncating its age structure, there are fewer age-classes in the spawning stock biomass, so if the stock experiences a few consecutive years of below-average spawns, its spawning potential could quickly be reduced.

On October 24, biologists produced Recreational Demand Model predictions of what the black sea bass population will look like on January 1, 2026, assuming that regulations remain unchanged.  Those predictions include a chart which shows that, at the beginning of the next year, three age-classes of sea bass—the five-year-olds, the six-year-olds, and those fish that are seven years old and older—each make up less than 5% of the black sea bass population.  The chart is denoted in intervals of 20%, so the precise contribution each age-class makes to the overall population is difficult to determine by eye, but none seem to rise above 3% or so.

To put that in context, consider this length-at-age chart that I recently received from a biologist who sometimes follows this blog, which I understand was developed by the Connecticut Department of Energy and Environmental Protection:

age 1: 5”
age 2: 10”
age 3: 12”
age 4: 13.5”
age 5: 15”
age 6: 17”
age 7: 18.5”
age 8: 19”
age 9: 20”
age 10: 21”

That chart isn’t completely precise, because fish, just like people, grow at different rates and, particularly as they get older, the size difference between individuals of the same age can be marked.  However, it proves as a good general guide, and what it tells us is that, for a black sea bass to be large enough to meet the 16 and 16 ½ inch size limits that prevail in New York and New England, that fish will probably have to be between five and six years old. 

The chart of relative age-class abundance suggests that black sea bass of that age make up only a very, very small proportion of the population, and corroborates the anecdotal information provided by a number of fishermen and for-hire captains in the region—including myself—that legal-sized black sea bass have become very hard to find.

It also shows that the black sea bass population is largely dependent upon three age-classes—the two-year-old (when about 50% of females are mature), three-year-old, and four-year-old fish—to maintain the health of the stock, particularly that portion of the stock that spends most of its time north of Hudson Canyon.

Such dependence on just a few year classes might not matter quite as much with black sea bass as it does with most other species, as black sea bass are considered “atypical protogynous hermaphrodites,” which means that most—but not all—of the fish start life as females, and most—but not all—of the females later transitioning to males, so the majority of the egg production is concentrated in the younger age-classes.   However, it still makes black sea bass vulnerable to poor recruitment, should it occur.

So while the stock isn’t facing any immediate problems, managers probably shouldn’t become too sanguine about what the population might look like five or ten years from now.

And that’s where the November 19 meeting of the Summer Flounder, Scup, and Black Sea Bass Advisory Panel comes in.

Ahead of the Advisory Panel meeting, we were provided with four documents, which included a memorandum addressing 2026-2027 black sea bass recreational measures.  Among other things, that memorandum noted that

“The updated Recreational Demand Model predicts that if 2025 measures were to remain in place in 2026, this would result in 5.86 million pounds of black sea bass harvest, with an 80% confidence interval of 4.22-8.50 million pounds.  The 2026-2027 [recreational harvest limit] of 8.14 million pounds is within this confidence interval.  Therefore, given that the stock is not overfished, the Percent Change Approach requires a ‘no liberalization/reduction’ outcome…”

That probably makes sense.  Yes, the decline in the number of older, larger black sea bass is troubling, and could foreshadow problems with the stock, and the size of the spawning stock biomass is expected to decline in the upcoming years.  But with the spawning stock biomass nearly triple the SSB target, and a fishing mortality rate that is almost 25% below the overfishing threshold, managers could easily maintain current regulations and, even if landings are a little too high, not do any real harm to the stock before the 2027 management track assessment gives them an updated look at where things are heading.

But at the Advisory Panel meeting, we learned that some members of the Summer Flounder, Scup,  and Black Sea Bass Monitoring Committee, which is composed of biologists employed by the ASMFC, National Marine Fisheries Service, and various states, have looked at the uncertainty surrounding the Recreational Demand Model’s estimates, particularly its estimates of relative abundance-at-age, and have concluded that the 80% confidence interval—which has been used for all Percent Change Approach-related calculations since that approach was adopted a few years ago, because it

“balances consideration of certainty in estimates with responsiveness to changing conditions”

—created too great a spread of possible values, a spread that was not only “much larger” than spreads for black sea bass estimates in the past, but also wider than the current spreads for summer flounder and scup.  That led some Monitoring Committee members to become concerned that

“Too wide of a [confidence interval] mean measures remain unchanged for too long,”

and could result in forgoing yield that might otherwise be landed.

Such Monitoring Committee members recommended using a 75% confidence interval instead, suggesting that a 75% confidence interval was still close to 80%, but led to a narrower estimate of possible 2026 black sea bass landings, which might range between 4.29 and 8.06 million pounds.

While there is only about a 5% difference between the upper bound of the 80% confidence interval for 2025 landings—8.50 million pounds—and the upper bound of the 75% confidence interval, because of how the Percent Change Approach works, that 5% difference would, if a 75% CI was adopted, result in a 39% increase in the 2026-2027 black sea bass recreational landings target, because the 2026 recreational harvest limit of 8.14 million pounds would be just above the upper bound of the 75% confidence interval, and so permit such drastic liberalization.

Not all of the members of the Monitoring Committee supported such result.  Some argued that there was no “thorough analysis” to support dropping the confidence interval to 75%.  Some believed that

“any CI [other than 80%] would appear arbitrary without strong justification,”

while others maintained that it was

“preferable to discuss appropriate [confidence intervals] when it can be independent of the outcome.”

But most members of the Advisory Panel pounced on the 75% confidence interval, and the 39% increase in the recreational landings target, like a barn cat pouncing on pigeon with a bad wing.

The Advisory Panel, or at least its recreational component, is dominated by the for-hire industry.  I’m one of the very few private-boat anglers on the panel, and I’m not sure that any of the members spend their time fishing from shore.  Thus, the Advisory Panel’s comments largely focused on the prospect of higher landings and relaxed regulations attracting more customers to the party and charter boat fleet. 

With the exception of one very experienced New Jersey party boat operator, who emphasized the need for a large and abundant black sea bass population, none of the industry comments expressed any concern for the future of the black sea bass stock.

In fact, another New Jersey party boat operator argued for the 39% increase because, if landings needed to be reduced at some point in the future, any reduction would be made from a recreational landings target 39% higher than the one in place today, so that even after such prospective cut, recreational landings would still remain relatively high.

Again, the impact on the black sea bass population was not a major concern.

That is a foolish way to proceed.

Should recreational fishing mortality increase as a result of the possible 39% increase, the oldest black sea bass age-classes would quickly be reduced in size, which would have a decided negative impact on the black sea bass fishery in New York and New England, which is largely dependent on those older, bigger fish.  Should the 2027 management track assessment find that recreational landings must be reduced—which would not be a surprising outcome, given the upcoming revisions to recreational catch and effort data—the northeastern black sea bass fishery could be destroyed.

That’s a big price to pay for just two years of profligacy.

And given that black sea bass thrive, and produce the largest year classes, when the young of the year encounter warm, saline water while spending their first winter, and given that the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is warning that the Gulf Stream has temporarily shifted south, and that cold, less saline northern water is flowing over the edge of the shelf off New England and the upper mid-Atlantic, a condition that might persist for the next decade or so, the likelihood of lower recruitment, and the need for landings cuts, might be pretty high.

But just about everyone—or, at least, just about everyone who spoke at the Advisory Panel meeting—was firmly focused on the here and now.

That’s not unusual in fisheries meetings, especially when the recreational industry is involved.

In December, the Mid-Atlantic Council and the ASMFC’s Summer Flounder, Scup, and Black Sea Bass Management Board will meet in a joint session to decide on recreational black sea bass regulations for the 2026 and 2027 fishing years.  One of the key aspects of that decision is to determine whether an 80% or a 75% confidence interval should be used to estimate 2026 black sea bass landings (assuming status quo regulations).

It would be nice to believe that they will maintain the 80% confidence level, along with the current level of recreational landings.

Unfortunately, the recreational seats on the Mid-Atlantic Council are effectively owned by the for-hire fleet, and the for-hire fleet will almost certainly support the 75% confidence interval, so that they can offer more dead fish to their customers. 

At least for the next couple of years.

Their planning rarely goes out any farther than that.

Providing for the future of the black sea bass fishery—or any other fishery, as far as that goes—has never been their strong point.  But improvidence always has a cost, and one day—maybe not too long from now—their bill will come due.