LET'S NOT GIVE UP ON STRIPED BASS

 

By now, many—probably most—serious striped bass anglers have heard that Maryland has released its juvenile abundance index for 2026, and that such index recorded a very uninspiring 5.5.  

While that is the best Maryland JAI since 2018, it is still barely above the long-term average of 10.8, and helps entrench the period 2019 through 2026 as the eight years with the lowest average JAI, 3.15, in the 70-year history of the Maryland juvenile abundance survey.  The next-lowest eight-year average, 3.57, occurred in the period 1979-1986; the fact that those years encompassed most of the stock collapse of the late 1970s and 1980s provides some context as to just how dire the current striped bass recruitment situation really is.

Virginia also released its juvenile abundance index for 2026, and at 9.52, it was above that state’s long-term average JAI of 7.77.  However, it’s important to note that the calculation of Virginia’s long-term average began in the late 1960s, and that from the late 1960s through 1986 or so, recruitment was atypically low.  

To put that in perspective, if we replaced the period used to calculate Virginia’s long-term average JAI with the years 1992 through 2006, which the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission uses to determine whether the “recruitment trigger” in the fishery management plan is tripped, we’d find that the 2026 JAI was just a bit over Virginia’s recruitment trigger value of 8.22.  We’d also find that such recruitment trigger, which marks the 25^th percentile of all JAIs in the 1992-2006 period, is already above the long-term average of 7.77, so the simple fact that Virginia’s 2026 JAI is above the state’s long-term average doesn’t provide much reason to celebrate.

At the same time, there were some mildly hopeful details underlying the overall bad news.  The Maryland press release that announced the 2026 JAI also noted that, although

“the fish were more widely distributed than in recent years,”

“[t]he highest performing areas were the upper Bay and Choptank River.”

No explanation was given as to why there was a greater concentration of juvenile striped bass in the upper Bay.  It is very possible that higher water flows and lower water temperatures, attributable to snowmelt and runoff in the Susquehanna River watershed, particularly those portions of the watershed located in Pennsylvania and New York, made conditions in the upper Bay more favorable for juvenile survival.  If that was, in fact, the case, the greater number of fish in the upper Bay might portend greater numbers of juvenile bass throughout the Bay in the future, should winter and early spring bring conditions—including water flows, temperatures, and zooplankton availability—more favorable to striped bass reproduction.

While such favorable conditions might occur as early as this upcoming winter—right now, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is predicting that, at least during December, January, and February, the Chesapeake Bay region will see above-normal temperatures, above-normal precipitation, and no drought conditions at all—that’s not guaranteed, and might not even be likely.  When the striped bass population last collapsed in the late 1970s and 1980s, it took 14 years, from 1975, when the JAI began its decline at 6.69, until 1989’s dominant year class, with a JAI of 25.20, was produced; during those 14 consecutive years, the JAI averaged 4.35.

It’s not at all impossible that we might have to again wait that long before we see another dominant year class emerge.

Unfortunately, it appears that some fisheries managers are already growing impatient, and might not want to give the striped bass time to find a way out of its current troubles.  The website Maryland Matters reports that Carrie Kennedy, the Tidal and Coastal Monitoring and Assessment Division director for the Maryland Department of Natural Resources, is already suggesting that the current low JAIs may represent “the new normal” for striped bass recruitment, and that

“Maybe we need to have a conversation about new reference points and new expectations.  I don’t think that we should expect the population to be where it was in the early 2000s.  We have a different Chesapeake Bay.  We have a different planet than we had in the early 2000s.”

And maybe she’s right.

Maybe climate change has seriously wounded the Chesapeake Bay, and rendered it physically incapable of producing the sort of big striped bass year classes that it produced as recently as 2011, 2015, 2017, and 2018, the sort of year classes that, with proper conservation and management, might help to rebuild the striped bass stock to the current spawning stock biomass target.

However, we ought not to forget that, as early as October 2016, Michael Luisi, who represents the Maryland Department of Natural Resources on the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission’s Atlantic Striped Bass Management Board, complained about the supposed “severe and tremendous” impacts that the landings reductions imposed by Addendum IV to Amendment 6 to the Interstate Fishery Management Plan for Atlantic Striped Bass had on Maryland’s fishermen, and tried to immediately increase striped bass landings, even though Maryland’s recreational fishermen never achieved the reductions required by Addendum IV, and actually substantially increased their harvest instead.

Mr. Luisi’s efforts to increase striped bass landings has been a consistent feature of Management Board meetings ever since then.  So has his continuing effort to change the reference points used to gauge the health of the striped bass stock, so that the spawning stock biomass target would be lower, which would allow for higher annual landings.  As early as October 2017, he argued that

“I’ve always been one who has thought that the current targets that are set for spawning stock biomass, or [sic] set to a point where they’re unachievable.  They may be achievable, but we’re unable to maintain them.

“It sets a false expectation for fishermen along the coast…”

It sounds like a good argument, until one looks at historical fishing mortality rates, and realizes that one of the biggest reasons that spawning stock biomass rarely approached the target is because the striped bass stock was experiencing overfishing in 14 of the 22 years between 1996 and 2017, and that when fishing mortality did manage to stay below threshold—maybe it didn’t get all the way down to its target level, but at least overfishing wasn’t occurring—in the years between 1997 and 2003, the spawning stock biomass had no problem rising to and above its target level in multiple years.

It seems that the only reason that the spawning stock biomass target appeared “unachievable” or that managers were “unable to maintain” it was that the same managers never made a serious effort to get overfishing under control.

Even so, Mr. Luisi again tried very hard to include reduced spawning stock biomass reference points in the draft Amendment 7 to the Interstate Fishery Management Plan for Atlantic Striped Bass.  When a motion to remove such reference points from the draft Amendment was made, he attempted to argue that

“I do not support the removal of reference points as a discussion point.  I think 1, I think fishery goals and objectives is the fundamental basis for what we do.

“If you don’t have the appropriate goals and objectives, none of the other elements and the other components make any difference.  I would like to see us go forward with goals and objectives, reference points, triggers, stock rebuilding and schedule…”

Mr. Luisi lost the debate back then, but we would be foolish to believe that he has given up trying to skew the fishery management plan toward greater exploitation.

Thus, when we hear a Maryland fisheries manager talk about revisiting the reference points, and about how we shouldn’t expect to see the spawning stock biomass reach the level it did in the early 2000s—another way to say that the current SSB reference point is unrealistically high—it is only reasonable to wonder whether that manager is expressing a legitimate concern about changing conditions in the Chesapeake Bay, or whether that manager is merely setting the stage for another attempt to increase striped bass landings.

Whatever the motivation, giving up on striped bass rebuilding right now—or, more precisely, immediately after the 2027 benchmark stock assessment is released--would be a serious mistake.

Right now, the stated goal of the striped bass management plan is

“to perpetuate, through cooperative interstate fishery management, migratory stocks of striped bass; to allow commercial and recreational fisheries consistent with the long-term maintenance of a broad age structure, a self-sustaining spawning stock; and also to provide for the restoration and maintenance of their essential habitat.”

In order to achieve that goal, the management plan’s objectives include, among a number of other things, to

“Manage fishing mortality to maintain an age structure that provides adequate spawning potential to sustain long-term abundance of striped bass populations,”

and

“Establish a fishing mortality target that will result in a net increase in the abundance (pounds) of age 15 and older striped bass in the population, relative to the 2000 estimate.”

The current reference points are, at least in part, calculated to achieve such goal and the objectives of sustaining long-term abundance and a broad age structure that includes a reasonable abundance of fish that are at least 15 years old.

Changing the goals and objectives, and so the reference points, to allow higher landings, at the cost of reduced abundance, increased long-term risk, and fewer older, larger females, would be a mistake, particularly in the face of current poor recruitment, as it may well be those older, larger females that hold the key to rebuilding the stock. 

Over 25 years ago, Dr. David Secor published a paper, “Spawning in the nick of time?  Effect of adult demographics on spawning behavior and recruitment in Chesapeake Bay striped bass,” in the ICES Journal of Marine Science.  In that paper, Dr. Secor concluded that

“Through a moratorium on Maryland State harvests in the Chesapeake Bay the 1982 year-class [which was the key to rebuilding the striped bass stock after it had collapsed] was effectively protected and became a dominant one.  Ironically, most egg production in 1982 was attributed to striped bass >10 years in age.  Old remnant females produced during the 1960s were a hedge against a long period of recruitment overfishing which occurred during the 1970s.  Striped bass epitomize periodic strategists, spreading risk of failed replacement through variability in spawning behavior over many spawning seasons.  This life history tactic indicates that a truncated age structure would result in stock abundance being more closely linked to annual changes in year-class strength.”

In other words, doing what Mr. Luisi has suggested in the past—changing the goals, objectives, and reference points to allow higher annual landings, while compromising a broad age structure, reducing the number of age 15+ fish, and reducing long-term abundance—could remove the very old fish from the population that might be needed to spearhead the current recovery of the striped bass stock, as older fish spearheaded the recovery forty-plus years ago, and so make that recovery much harder to achieve.

As I noted before, it’s possible that Ms. Kennedy is right, and that long-term changes in the Chesapeake Bay will make rebuilding to the current spawning stock biomass target impossible.  But that has not yet been established, and there is no reason to hurry to change the reference points now.

If changes in the Bay have truly made the current spawning stock biomass target unachievable, that will be revealed to be true over time, but it would be a serious mistake to rush to give up on the striped bass’ recovery, and change the reference points before the data conclusively demonstrates that such recovery cannot and will not occur.

To give up too soon would potentially deprive striped bass fishermen, recreational and commercial, of the benefits that accrue from a healthy and abundant stock, and put the long-term sustainability of the striped bass population at risk.

We can, and without a doubt should, wait at least another decade or so before condemning the bass to such fate.