STRIPED BASS: THE "M" WORD

 

As striped bass recruitment remains low, and as anglers note a distinct decline in the number of bass swimming past their shores, we hear more and more conversations turning toward the stock collapse of the late 1970s and 1980s, the subsequent recovery, and the role that a harvest moratorium played in rebuilding the stock.

There seems to be some support for a new moratorium, from a growing minority of anglers, who feel that the striped bass is in dire enough straits that conventional management measures won’t be enough to rebuild the stock or, in the worst case, avoid stock collapse.  The interesting thing is that a lot of those anglers, although certainly not all of them, are too young to remember what the past stock collapse, and the subsequent recovery, looked like, and they get a lot of things about the moratorium wrong.

Perhaps the biggest thing they get wrong is believing that there was a single, coastwide moratorium that prohibited striped bass harvest, both commercial and recreational. 

That was never the case.

For a long time, the states fumbled around, some adopting half-measures, some doing nothing at all, with most afraid to take decisive action that might disadvantage their fishermen compared to those in neighboring states.  That didn’t change until Congress passed the Atlantic Striped Bass Conservation Act in 1984, which gave the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission the authority to require all member states to adopt the ASMFC’s striped bass management plan, and put non-complying states at risk of having their entire striped bass fishery shut down by the Secretary of Commerce and Secretary of the Interior until the offending states decided that compliance with the ASMFC plan was the most acceptable of all their limited options.

Once the ASMFC had that authority, it prepared Amendment 3 to the Interstate Fishery Management Plan for Atlantic Striped Bass, which was released in 1985.  Amendment 3 was intended to protect the 1982 year class of striped bass, which was the only relatively strong year class remaining in the population, and all subsequent year classes as well.  It did that by imposing a minimum size limit that increased steadily through the years, always remaining high enough to ensure that no more than 5% of the bass spawned in 1982 and subsequent years would be removed from the population in any given fishing season.

Notably, it did not include a coastwide moratorium.

Instead, the various moratoriums were imposed by individual states, at different times and for different purposes, not all of which were the conservation of the striped bass stock.

Maryland, perhaps hoping to improve on Amendment 3, adopted a moratorium in 1985 that remained in place until 1989.  But on the other side of the Chesapeake Bay, Virginia didn’t impose a moratorium until June 1989, and lifted it less than a year and a half later, in November 1990, after a strong 1989 year class of striped bass led the ASMFC to adopt Amendment 4 to the Interstate Fishery Management Plan for Atlantic Striped Bass, which began to relax management measures.

Delaware emulated Maryland, and imposed a moratorium from 1985 to 1989, but most other states opted for shorter closures.  Connecticut and Rhode Island both imposed moratoriums in 1986.  New York did, too, but in New York’s case, the moratorium was imposed for health reasons, to keep people from eating PCB-laden striped bass from the Hudson River, and only lasted for a single year.  Two important striped bass states, Massachusetts and New Jersey, never imposed moratoriums at all.

In the case of all state moratoriums, anglers were still permitted to target striped bass in catch-and-release fisheries, leading to some level of release mortality, although with only an estimated 797,325 directed striped bass trips taken in 1985, compared to about 11,600,000 such trips in 2025, the number of bass that succumbed to release mortality during the Amendment 3 years would have been far fewer than die from the same cause today.

So, the question in at least some anglers’ minds is, if the striped bass stock continues to decline, might a moratorium be considered as a viable management measure, and if so, what would such a moratorium look like?

As early as 2021, Stripers Forever, a group of recreational fishermen that advocate for striped bass conservation, called for the ASMFC to put a 10-year moratorium in place.  Mike Spinney, one of the organization’s directors, argued that

“We are 18 years into a ten-year management plan that has utterly failed in its objective to rebuild striped bass stocks.  Now the ASMFC is preparing to embark on yet another ten-year plan of compromise and half-measures and stripers may not survive.  Bold, decisive action is needed to prevent a collapse of the fishery like we saw in the late 1970s.  An emergency moratorium was adopted in 1984 and is the only approach proven to work.  We are calling on recreational anglers, conservationists, and anyone who depends on a healthy coastal ecosystem for their economic well-being to stand with us and demand that a moratorium be adopted now.”

As we now know, the ASMFC did not listen to Stripers Forever, or to any other striped bass anglers who might have called for a moratorium five years ago, when managers were debating the shape of Amendment 7 to the Interstate Fishery Management Plan for Atlantic Striped Bass. 

But while Mr. Spinney might have gotten some of the details wrong—in 2021, we were not in the midst of a rebuilding plan that was initiated 18 years before, an apparent reference to Amendment 6 to the Interstate Fishery Management Plan for Atlantic Striped Bass, adopted in 2003, for at the time Amendment 6 was adopted, and for much of its duration, the striped bass stock was deemed to be in good shape, neither overfished nor experiencing overfishing; in addition, as noted before, there was never a unitary “emergency moratorium” adopted in 1984, but rather a patchwork of state moratoriums adopted at various times—but he wasn’t much off the mark when he noted that the ASMFC’s recent management efforts could be characterized as “compromise and half-measures,” such as the Atlantic Striped Bass Management Board’s failure to impose the 12% harvest reduction, to better ensure that the stock will fully rebuild by the 2029 deadline imposed by the management plan, at its October 2025 meeting.

And there is no doubt that the striped bass stock is in a worse position than it was when Mr. Spinney made those comments five years ago.

Even so, it’s a safe bet that the Management Board will try to avoid imposing a coastwide moratorium, which could prove the kiss of death for many commercial fishing operations, as well as for traditional “six-pack” charter boats that have long maintained business plans built around their customers killing and keeping a limit of striped bass rather than catch-and-release.  Commercial and for-hire interests, probably joined by the fishing tackle and boating industries and more harvest-oriented recreational fishermen, would undoubtedly raise strong objections and mount a fierce opposition should any such moratorium be proposed.

Still, should striped bass spawns continue to result in starkly below-average recruitment, and should the 2027 benchmark stock assessment predict another stock collapse should management remain unchanged, there is a good chance that, when the next management action is initiated, a moratorium will at least be discussed.

But what would such moratorium look like, and would everyone be affected?  Those are the key questions that might determine whether a moratorium proposal would get any significant support.

The last time a moratorium was considered, in conjunction with Amendment 7, it would have been limited to a moratorium on recreational harvest, and would not have impacted the commercial fishery.  Needless to say, that didn’t go over too well with anglers, with one recreational fishing group, the American Saltwater Guides Association, noting that

“[A moratorium] only works if everyone does it.  So, we save striped bass by allowing only one sector to harvest?  Somehow, this doesn’t pass the smell test.”

And even if such one-sided moratorium might have been justifiable in 2021, when the commercial fishery was thought to account for only 14% of fishing mortality, now that the Marine Recreational Information Program’s estimates of recreational striped bass landings and releases (and thus release mortality) have been revised downward by anywhere between 20.3% and 31.6%, and 21.4% and 31.3%, respectively, over the past five years, the commercial contribution to striped bass mortality will have to be revised substantially upward as a result, making a recreational-only moratorium unthinkable.

But one thing that anglers pursuing a moratorium probably should be thinking about is whether it would allow any recreational striped bass fishing at all.  When the ASMFC proposed Addendum III to Amendment 7 to the Interstate Fishery Management Plan for Atlantic Striped Bass back in 2025, which would have achieved a 12% reduction in coastal recreational removals by imposing a closed season, one of the biggest debates—and the issue that, in my view, doomed the 12% reduction—was whether the closed season would merely be closed to harvest, with catch-and-release fishing allowed, or whether it would be closed to all recreational striped bass fishing, including the recreational release fishery.

At the time, the party boats and “traditional” six-pack charters supported the no-target closure, both because it would have been shorter than a no-harvest closure, and because their business plans emphasized catch-and-kill and had catered to a customer base intent on taking fish home.  They, as well as the commercial sector, argued that it was only “fair” that if they and/or their customers couldn’t catch and kill striped bass, then anglers shouldn’t be allowed to catch and release them during the closed season, either.

Since a moratorium is, in effect, nothing more than a very long closed season, it is very possible that a ban on catch-and-release fishing during any such closure will be a part of the conservation, although it is also very possible that faced with the options of either not booking striped bass charters at all, or booking at least a few charters for anglers willing to release all their bass, the six-packs might be willing to rethink their positions should there be a serious chance that a moratorium will be imposed.

Which brings us to the final question regarding a moratorium, should things ever get so bad that one must be imposed:  What constitutes the best use of the striped bass resource, should the population continue to decline, and extreme measures become necessary to conserve what remains of the spawning stock biomass?

It’s probably not the commercial fishery. 

I try to focus solely on striped bass conservation issues, and do my best to avoid allocation debates; thus, I am not an advocate for “gamefish status” that would outlaw the commercial fishery, as that merely shifts the harvest from the commercial to the recreational sector, and doesn’t conserve any fish at all. 

In fact, it could be argued that, because commercial fishermen are bound by a hard-poundage quota, and must pay back any overages in the following year, while recreational fishermen are neither bound by a quota nor obligated to pay back overages, and may overharvest with impunity (as exemplified by Maryland’s recreational landings from 2015 through 2019, when instead of reducing harvest by 20.5%, as the management plan required, the state’s anglers actually increased harvest, sometimes doubling what their landings should, in theory, have been had the state complied with the letter of the management plan), that the commercial fishery better promotes the conservation of the striped bass stock.

However, while conservation is the ultimate goal, the Management Board is also going to give some consideration to economic concerns; any fishery that leads to over 11 million recreational trips in a single year is clearly an important driver of coastal economies.  In that regard, we have to consider the comparable economic benefits of the commercial and recreational fisheries.

There have been some studies produced in that regard.  The advocacy group Stripers Forever commissioned Southwick Associates, a firm specializing in performing economic analyses of various outdoor activities, including striped bass fishing, to produce economic analyses comparing the economic value of the commercial and recreational striped bass fisheries.  The studies determined that the striped bass produced far more economic value as a recreational species, although the fact that Stripers Forever has long advocated for making the striped bass a “gamefish,” and paid for the studies, has led some to question the studies’ conclusions.

A study produced by the presumably unbiased Virginia Institute of Marine Sciences in 2000 came to the same conclusion, finding that allocating the entire striped bass harvest to the recreational sector generated the greatest economic benefits, although it was careful to note that social and cultural concerns might militate against such a one-sided allocation.  Unfortunately, such study is now difficult to locate on the Internet, and so I cannot make it available to readers of this post.

So while the conservation arguments against shutting down the commercial striped bass fishery remains valid, in a situation where fishing mortality must be very tightly constrained, economic concerns could dictate otherwise.

And economic concerns would certainly dictate against a no-target moratorium, which would deprive coastal businesses of all income now being generated by the recreational striped bass fishery. 

While the need to maintain fishing mortality at or below a particular target might, in the sort of extreme circumstances that would justify a moratorium, require even the catch-and-release fishery to be limited to a particular season, and/or for no-target rules to prevail on striped bass spawning grounds, a moratorium that permitted catch-and-release angling might well produce the greatest economic and social returns from the very restricted fishery.

Hopefully, that’s a decision that managers won’t have to make.

Hopefully, while the striped bass fishery will probably have to be tightly restricted through most or all of the 2030s, when the impact of poor recruitment will be most acutely felt, stock collapse can be avoided, and talk of a moratorium will remain on a strictly theoretical level.

Still, until recruitment improves, a stock collapse, or something close to it, remains a possibility.  So long as that remains true, a moratorium remains a tool that managers might have to reluctantly employ in order to address the situation.

We ought to start giving some thought now to what might justify imposing a moratorium at some point in the future, and just what such moratorium might look like this time around.