STRIPED BASS MANAGEMENT DEMOSTRATES WHY STAKEHOLDERS ARE "LOSING FAITH" IN THE ASMFC

 

Striped bass are one of the United States’ most important recreational fish. Between 2010 and 2019, anglers landed more striped bass (measured in pounds) than any other saltwater fish.

 

The bass has paid for its popularity. A benchmark stock assessment released in April 2019 found that female spawning stock biomass (SSB) had fallen so low that the stock has become overfished. It also found that fishermen were still removing too many bass from the water, subjecting the stock to continued overfishing.

 

The benchmark assessment’s findings seemed to catch some state fishery managers by surprise. But they didn’t surprise striped bass anglers, some of whom had spent the past decade trying to convince the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission’s Atlantic Striped Bass Management Board to take steps to reverse the species’ decline.

However, the management board showed no inclination to do so. Over the past decade, it has been given repeated warnings that the SSB was in decline, and that the striped bass stock was headed for trouble. Yet each time, the management board has opted to either do nothing, or to take indifferent action that fell far short of what was needed to rebuild the stock, even when rebuilding was explicitly required in the striped bass management.

 

Its long history of ineffective management culminated in 2019 when, after learning that the striped bass stock was both overfished and experiencing overfishing, the management board adopted an addendum to the striped bass management plan that it knew was more likely to fail than to succeed in reducing fishing mortality to its target level. At the same time, the management board, for the second time in just five years, ignored its clear obligation to initiate a 10-year rebuilding plan.

 

The management board has now embarked on a path that will end in the adoption of a new amendment, Amendment 7, to its striped bass management plan. Given the importance of the striped bass fishery, and the fact that the striped bass stock is now overfished, we can only hope that the management board will do everything in its power to ensure that the new amendment, when finally adopted, will promote the long-term health and sustainability of the striped bass stock.

That may be expecting too much from the management board.

For when the Public Information Document For Amendment 7 to the Interstate Fishery Management Plan for Atlantic Striped Bass (PID), which seeks public comment on the direction that Amendment 7 should take, was released, we learned that the rebuilding the SSB and achieving sustainable fishing mortality levels were not among the management board’s highest priorities. In fact, those two pillars of competent fisheries management didn’t appear to be priorities at all.

 

Instead, the PID informs readers that “The [Management] Board identified management stability, flexibility, and regulatory consistency as guiding themes for future striped bass management.”

That’s troubling, for the management board’s past embrace of two of those favored “themes,” management stability and flexibility, only accelerated the SSB’s decline.

Yet the management board seems eager to double down on its flawed approach to striped bass management. The PID includes statements like “the shorter timetables for corrective action [in the current management plan] are in conflict with the desire for management stability,” and “a quota-based management approach conflicts with the stated objective of management stability for the fishery.”

Yet PID doesn’t comment on far more important questions: Would shorter timetables for corrective action and a quota-based management approach allow more effective management of the striped bass stock? Would such management measures make it easier to rebuild the SSB, prevent overfishing, and keep the stock from being overfished again?

After all, the primary job of the management board is to protect the long-term health and sustainability of the striped bass stock. Subordinating that obligation to a bureaucratic ideal like management stability is a clear dereliction of the management board’s duty to both the public and to the striped bass resource.

History teaches us how that works out.

In November 2011, the management board failed to reduce fishing mortality after a stock assessment update warned that striped bass would become overfished by 2017. Believing that the SSB was still above the biomass target, it declared striped bass to be a “green light fishery,” decided that any action taken to avert future problems would constitute “overmanaging,” and opted for stability.

 

If the management board had instead taken decisive action when the stock was still healthy instead of waiting for things to get worse, the striped bass might not be overfished today.

History teaches us about “flexibility,” too.

A “Work Group” report, which guided the PID drafting process, explained

 

Some [Work Group members] felt that incorporating more flexibility into the management triggers [that require Management Board action] could give managers the ability to make adjustments that make sense while still being accountable for their management actions. For example…there is a 1-year response [requiring the Management Board to take action] for exceeding the F-threshold [and overfishing the striped bass stock]…Some stakeholders support the 1-year requirement for change while others believe that it promotes ‘knee-jerk’ reactions that may not always be necessary. It was discussed that there could be a goal to find balance that promotes conservation while also considering the impacts that changes in regulation have on commercial and recreational industries.

Incorporating that sort of “flexibility” into Amendment 7 would merely reinforce the management board’s inclination to do nothing when problems that threaten the striped bass stock first arise, and can most easily be addressed.

Even without a formal endorsement of “flexible” striped bass management, the management board ignored its clear obligation to initiate a 10-year rebuilding plan in 2014, when the SSB was in steep decline, and again in 2019, when it became overfished. Given the management board’s track record of inaction when the bass stock is threatened, it’s daunting to contemplate how little they’d do if such inaction was explicitly condoned in Amendment 7.

 

The management board’s long history of inaction renders its fixation on making management stability and flexibility the focus of Amendment 7 difficult to understand. A quarter-century ago, the striped bass stock was declared fully recovered; recreational management measures that included a 2-fish bag limit and 28-inch minimum size for the coastal fishery, and complimentary measures for nursery areas such as the Hudson River and Chesapeake Bay, were adopted. Since then, recreational management measures were only changed twice.

The first change came in 2014, in response to a stock assessment that found the SSB in decline. The second came in 2019, after the stock was declared overfished. Two changes over the course of twenty-five years, both in response to clear and present threats to the health of the stock, hardly justify such a focus on stability and inaction, instead of rebuilding the SSB.

If the management board was governed by the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act (MSA), as federal fishery managers are, such issues would never arise, as MSA elevates the health and sustainability of fish stocks above all other concerns.

 

Pursuant to MSA, managers must “develop annual catch limits…that may not exceed the fishing level recommendations of its scientific and statistical committee;” thus, such limits are set by scientists, not by the amateur fishery managers who dominate the management board. If fishermen exceed those limits in any given year, MSA holds them accountable for doing so.

 

Had striped bass been managed pursuant to MSA back in 2011, it’s very likely that the management board’s scientific advisors would have set a lower annual catch limit, and so reduced fishing mortality to prevent the stock from becoming overfished. The management board would have been unable to idly sit by and observe the SSB’s decline.

And had bass been managed pursuant to MSA in 2014, when the management board, finally recognizing the need to reduce fishing mortality, adopted Addendum IV to Amendment 6 to the Atlantic Striped Bass Interstate Fishery Management Plan (Addendum IV), the management board would not have been able to just sit on its hands and watch when state regulations failed to adequately constrain fishermen’s landings.

 

That would have made a particular difference in Maryland where anglers, instead of reducing their fishing mortality by 20.5 percent, increased it substantially. Instead of landing 570,000 fish each year, as contemplated by Addendum IV, they took home far more in every year between 2015 and 2019, reaching a high of over 1,500,000 striped bass in 2016.

 

The management board knew that, yet did nothing. Instead of holding Maryland anglers accountable, it opted for management stability, and allowed such excessive harvests to continue, while the SSB continued to decline. Had MSA applied, Maryland anglers would have been held accountable for their excesses. At the least, state regulations would have been changed to adequately constrain anglers’ future landings, but pound-for-pound paybacks might also have been in the cards.

If striped bass were managed pursuant to MSA back in 2014, the Atlantic State Marine Fisheries Commission (ASMFC) might also have found itself in court. The ASMFC’s striped bass management plan clearly states that, when the SSB falls below target for two or more years, and fishing mortality also rises above its target level, “the Management Board must adjust the striped bass management program to rebuild the biomass to a level that is at or above the target [emphasis added]” in no more than 10 years. Such management trigger was tripped in 2014, but the management board took no action.

It could ignore the clear language of the management plan because, in 2010, a federal appellate court found that the ASMFC’s management actions weren’t subject to judicial review under the Administrative Procedures Act. MSA, on the other hand, specifically provides for judicial review of all actions taken under its aegis.

 

In 2019, when the striped bass was found to be both overfished and experiencing overfishing, MSA would have made even a bigger difference.

Although the management plan required the management board to initiate a 10-year rebuilding plan upon learning that the stock had become overfished, that provision of the management pan was, once again, ignored. Depending on how Amendment 7 turns out, such rebuilding may never occur. If bass had been governed by MSA, the management board would have been legally obligated to implement a rebuilding plan no more than two years after being notified that the stock was overfished. Under such a provision, rebuilding would have been underway by May 2021, in time for the upcoming season.

Even the limited action that the management board did take, when it implemented Addendum VI to Amendment 6 to the Atlantic Striped Bass Interstate Fishery Management Plan (Addendum VI) at the end of 2019, wasn’t enough to meet the MSA’s standards. Addendum VI was intended to reduce fishing mortality to the target level, but because the management board allowed states to adopt their own, flexible regulations, and so limited Amendment VI’s effectiveness, the addendum only has a 42 percent probability of achieving its goal. Under MSA, that’s not good enough; management measures must have at least a 50 percent chance of success to pass legal muster.

 

At the management board’s February 2021 meeting, Dr. Justin Davis, Connecticut’s chief marine fisheries manager, advised the board that stakeholders were “losing faith” in the management board’s stewardship of the striped bass stock. Dr. Davis is right.

How can stakeholders not lose faith in a management board that has repeatedly failed the striped bass, and believes that maintaining “management stability” is more important than promptly rebuilding an overfished stock?

At one time, the federal fishery management councils were just as ineffective as the management board. They failed to rebuild overfished stocks, didn’t get fishing mortality under control, and, like the management board, often prioritized the short-term wants of the fishing industry above the long-term needs of fish stocks.

Congress responded to that problem by passing the Sustainable Fisheries Act of 1996, which amended the MSA to include clear legal standards for the conservation and management of federal fisheries. Ten years later, Congress amended MSA again, to require science-based annual catch limits for all managed species, and hold fishermen accountable when those limits are exceeded. Now, MSA is arguably the most successful fishery management law in the world.

 

Considering the management board’s history of inaction when faced with a declining and depleted stock, it may take similar congressional action to secure the future of the striped bass, and restore stakeholder’s faith in the ASMFC’s management system.

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This essay first appeared in “From the Waterfront,” the blog of the Marine Fish Conservation Network, which can be found at http://conservefish.org/blog/

 

STRIPED BASS: WHAT HAVE WE LEARNED IN THE PAST TWENTY YEARS?

 

I was digging around in my archives, and came across a report that was released almost exactly two decades ago.  Titled “A Population Study of Atlantic Striped Bass 2001 Report to Congress,” it was prepared by Gary R. Shepherd of the National Marine Fisheries Service’s Northeast Fisheries Science Center, in cooperation with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission’s Atlantic Striped Bass Technical Committee.

That report played a big role in the debate preceding adoption of the most recent amendment to the ASMFC’s striped bass management plan, Amendment 6, which was finalized in 2003.  Much like the nascent debate over the proposed Amendment 7, the conversation twenty years ago pitted a group of angler/conservationists who wanted to see a healthy striped bass stock, managed in a sustainable manner, against pro-harvest stakeholders and Atlantic Striped Bass Management Board members, who were trying to push harvest up as high as the science might possibly allow.

Thanks to the Report to Congress, the conservationists didn’t lose.

I can’t say that we won, because we were seeking a target fishing mortality rate somewhere below 0.25, and the final Amendment 6 set it at 0.31.

But I can’t say that we lost, either, because the other side was seeking a rate closer to 0.40, and they didn’t get what they wanted, either.

Instead, the Management Board sort of split the baby down the middle.  As typically happens in such situations, the baby died; or, at least, the Management Board’s actions killed off the likelihood that we’d have a healthy and sustainable striped bass stock over the long term.  But we do have enough bass around to give us a solid base, upon which such a healthy stock can be built, if the Management Board is willing to take appropriate action in Amendment 7.

That, of course, is never a sure thing.

So it’s interesting to see whether the twenty-year-old Report to Congress provides any guidance on the situation that we face today.

In some ways, the report is ‘way out of date.  When it was written, scientists still believed that there was a stock/recruitment relationship that tied spawning success to the size of the spawning stock.  Now, we know that’s not true.

And when it was written, scientists were comfortable with the idea of a target fishing mortality rate around 0.30, with a fishing mortality threshold of 0.40 or thereabouts.  Today, we know that’s not true either.

But there is one bit of wisdom that we ought to think about, because it still applies.  The Report to Congress noted that

“at fishing mortalities higher than 0.2, the proportion of large fish in the population would decline well below the 2000 level.  In this model, large fish are considered all fish greater than age 10 (about equal to or greater than 36 inches in total length).  Since female striped bass are estimated to reach full maturity at age eight, the decline in older fish results in a decreased spawning stock biomass…

“The distribution of age classes in a population has important implications for stock productivity and stability.  Studies on striped bass have shown that larger fish produce larger eggs and larvae, and larger individuals of these life stages have a greater chance of survival…

“…even modest levels of fishing mortality reduce the proportion of older fish in the stock and shift the bulk of egg production towards younger fish…Maintaining a diverse number of ages in the population has the biological advantages of increased spawning potential through inclusion of older more fecund fish, and a reduced risk of poor recruitment associated with dependence on younger fish for egg production…”

Right now, the target fishing mortality rate just happens to be 0.20.  The models used to determine such things have changed in the past 20 years, so we can’t be certain that raising mortality a little bit above 0.2 will necessarily cause the number of larger fish to go into steep decline,  Still, raising the target fishing mortality rate, as some would like to see Amendment 7 do, is certainly ill-advised, absent data indicating that such a decline won’t happen.

Whether 0.20 is still deemed to be the pivotal fishing mortality value or not, retaining a well-structured spawning stock, that contains many older, larger fish, remains important.  Dr. David H. Secor, a biologist who is well-known for his work with striped bass, explained why in his paper “Spawning in the nick of time?  Effect of adult demographics on spawning behavior and recruitment in Chesapeake Bay striped bass.”

There, he noted that striped bass spawning success is not dependent upon the number of spawning females, but rather on temperature, water flow, and other conditions in the rivers where the fish spawn.  Such changes vary not only from year to year, but also from time to time during the same year; even during years when conditions are generally unfavorable, there may be short windows of time when more favorable conditions exist.  Since older, larger striped bass are believed to spawn earlier in the season, while younger, smaller fish spawn later, having a broad range of age and size classes in the population makes spawning failure less likely.

In Dr. Secor’s words,

“Increased age diversity in the spawning stock may increase the temporal and spatial frequency of spawning (spawning dispersion) and thereby increase the probability that some offspring will encounter favorable conditions.

”…In periodic strategists like striped bass, moderately long reproductive lifespans and low adult mortality rates result in accumulation of spawning stock biomass.  When environmental conditions favor recruitment, this large reproductive reservoir generates dominant year classes which drive population growth.  Diversity in age structure and spawning behavior contribute to this storage effect.  If minority spawning behaviors—for instance spawning during early or late parts of a season—in some years resulted in successful offspring, a diverse age structure should contribute to sustained annual recruitment and accumulation of spawning stock biomass.

“Striped bass epitomize periodic strategists, spreading risk of failed replacement through variability of spawning behavior over many spawning seasons.  This life history tactic suggests that a truncated age distribution would result in stock abundance being more closely linked to annual changes in year-class strength.  [emphasis added]”

Not only does a broad age structure better assure that at least some females will meet with spawning success each season, but a truncated age structure would make striped bass more vulnerable to years when conditions in the spawning rivers are unfavorable.  It’s not hard to see how consecutive years of below-average spawning conditions, and so below-average spawning success, suchas most recently occurred between 2005 and 2010, could significantly increase the risk to the spawning stock, particularly if there were fewer larger, older fish to provide what Dr. Secor referred to as “a hedge against a long period of recruitment overfishing,” or a long period of poor recruitment due to any other cause.

Which brings us back to today, and the Public Information Document For Amendment 7 to the Interstate Fishery Management Plan for Atlantic Striped Bass which, among other things, asks for comment on two closely related questions:  Are the current goals and objectives of the management plan still germane to striped bass management, and are the biological reference points used to gauge the health of the stock appropriate, or should they, too, be changed.

The current goal of the 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 management of their essential habitat.  [emphasis added]”

There are a number of different objectives intended to help to achieve that goal, but none is more relevant to this discussion than the one directing the Management Board to

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

So even 20 years ago, we knew that raising fishing mortality will reduce the number of older, larger striped bass in the spawning stock, make it more dependent upon younger, smaller fish, and increase the risk to the striped bass population.  And Dr. Secor informs us that maintaining a broad age structure helps to maintain the stability of the striped bass stock.

Thus, it’s difficult to understand why the Public Information Document would ask

“Are the existing goals and objectives of Amendment 6 still in line with fishery needs and priorities?”

Because it’s hard to imagine anything more important--and more "in line with fishery needs and priorities"--than a heathy, stable, and sustainable striped bass stock (and if you are one of those who honestly believes that management stability and flexibility matter more than the health of the stock, you aren’t fit to be making decisions that impact a public fishery resource).

And it’s difficult to understand why the Public Information Document would be seeking comments on whether to change the biological reference points to something that would allow a higher fishing mortality rate, and reduce the number of older, larger fish in the population, knowing that by doing so, it can only increase the risk to the stock.

The title of this edition of One Angler's Voyage asks “What have we learned in the past twenty years” about managing striped bass.

What have we learned?

Sadly, when I see such questioins being asked by the Management Board, it seems that the answer is “Nothing.”

 

STRIPED BASS--THE SOLUTION IS SIMPLE

 

In his classic work On War, career Prussian soldier and military theorist Carl von Clausewitz observed that

“Everything in war is very simple, but the simplest thing is difficult.”

The same can be said about striped bass management.

I was thinking about that just a few days ago, after reading an editorial titled “The Solution is Simple” in The Falmouth Enterprise, a newspaper that has been published on Massachusetts’ Cape Cod since 1895.  The topic was striped bass, and the article noted

“There is a good deal of concern about striped bass these days.  It is evident that the numbers of these popular fish are down, especially with big fish, which makes the striper the most popular sport fish on the East Coast.

“Amendment 7 [to the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission’s striped bass management plan] is being developed to address this.

“Fisheries managers have a knack for making an easily defined problem very complex.  That much is clear in the commission’s motion to develop its new striped bass amendment [which contemplates an amendment that addresses nine different, and individually complex, issues].

“It’s mind-numbing.

“The simple truth is that the way to protect striped bass, or any species, is to protect their habitat and kill fewer of them.  The problem arises when there are competing interests…”

Thus, von Clausewitz’s quote.  For it’s those “competing interests” that makes that very simple way to conserve and rebuild striped bass—killing fewer of them—so very hard to accomplish.

As I started to think about von Clausewitz a little bit more—and, believe it or not, when your undergrad degrees are in History and English, and you’ve kept up those interests in the decades since, idly thinking about folks like von Clausewitz is the sort of thing that you do—I realized that some of his other thoughts on war were also very relevant to the fisheries arena.

Like

“There are very few men—and they are the exceptions—who are able to think and feel beyond the present moment,”

for nothing makes the simplest aspects of striped bass management more difficult to execute than too many stakeholders’—and too many fishery managers’—excessive focus on the short-term impacts of the management measures needed to assure the long-term health and stability of the striped bass stock.

There are numerous examples.  One that I frequently cite is the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission’s Atlantic Striped Bass Management Board’s response to a 2011 stock assessment update, which found that the stock would become overfished by 2017.  

The threat to the striped bass stock was clear.  There was plenty of time for the Management Board to take action to avoid the problem.  It even went so far as to prepare a suite of prophylactic measures.  But in the end, it did nothing to halt the stock's decline.

The transcript of the November 2011 meeting shows that a number of Management Board members wanted to defer action, despite the clear warning in the stock assessment update, because the declining stock had not yet hit any of the triggers for management action, and they didn't want to cause temporary problems for fishing-related businesses.  Pat Augustine, then the Governor’s Appointee from New York, most clearly articulated that position when he said

“Amendment 6 [to the striped bass management plan] gives you two major triggers.  We haven’t hit either one of them to meet that action yet…

“…we’re managing fishermen, we’re affecting livelihoods.  Yes, I understand that there is a tremendous amount of money driving the economy by partyboats and charterboats going out and fishing on these fish.

“We’ve created a bonanza for folks who have a vessel who have got a captain’s license, but how of you [sic] are taking three striped bass trips a day?  We have charterboat guys in New York who are taking three a day with six guys on each vessel.  And, oh, by the way, they can take two greater than 28 [inches].  Read the fishermen magazine in your backyard and tell me that you don’t see what the implications are.

“The minimum size is typically 28 inches.  What the heck did we expect to happen?  You’ve got all the states fishing greater than 28 except for those that have made changes where they allow for a third fish or a slot-size fish, but the reality is that’s what you’re fishing for.  You’re fishing for eight-year-old fish and older.  Wake up and smell the trees—the roses…

“…If there is an aberration in the stock and the myco[bacteriosis, a disease fatal to striped bass] goes forward and destroys the population in the Chesapeake, we’ve got an issue.  There will be a trigger [requiring management action when the stock’s condition gets worse] and we will take action, but I think we’ve got to be realistic in goals and desires to protect the most protected specie of fish in the ocean that we many [sic]; and to do it at the demise of other species of fish that are also costing livelihoods and having a negative economic impact in several states along the coast, shame on us.”

In other words, the Management Board knew that there was an incipient problem with the striped bass stock, and it knew that too many fish were being killed, but in order to prevent adverse short-term economic impacts on the fishing industry, it chose to take no action until things got worse, until a crisis occurs (“myco goes forward and destroys the population [emphasis added”) and it was forced to do something.

And things did get worse, but the Management Board did too little, even then, ignoring clear requirements to begin rebuilding the stock included in its own management plan.

That stock, as we now, is now overfished, and still the Management Board has failed to initiate rebuilding.  But then, as von Clausewitz noted,

“War is such a dangerous business that mistakes that come from kindness are the very worst.”

Fishery management may not be physically dangerous—at least, not most of the time—but they still make "mistakes that come from kindness," seeking to manage a depleted striped bass stock while avoiding short-term pain to stakeholders.  And such mistakes are dangerous, as they throw open the door to failure.

“…to introduce into the philosophy of war itself a principle of moderation would be an absurdity.”

Yet such absurdities abound in striped bass management, particularly with respect to the practice of “conservation equivalency,” which allows states to adopt management measures other than those chosen by the Management Board, provided that such alternate measures, in theory, provide the same conservation benefit.

Unfortunately, the Management Board’s desire to moderate the impacts of striped bass management—the greatest of its “mistakes the come from kindness”—cause its management efforts to fail, and leads to management travesties such as the recently-adopted Addendum VI to Amendment 6 to the Atlantic Striped Bass Interstate Fishery Management Plan, which was intended to reduce fishing mortality to the target level but, primarily because of conservation equivalency concessions the Management Board was willing to make to Maryland and New Jersey, faces a 58 percent probability that it will not achieve its goal.

In the end, there is only way to successfully manage striped bass, and that is for the Management Board to, again in the words of von Clausewitz,

“Pursue one great decisive aim with force and determination.”

And for the Management Board, such “one great decisive aim” can only be the full restoration of the striped bass spawning stock, and then maintaining the restored stock at healthy and sustainable levels in the future. 

For if they fail to achieve that biological goal, the subsidiary goals of maximizing the economic, social, and recreational benefits that flow from the bass fishery shall forever remain out of reach.

Which brings us back, full circle, to where this began, with the editorial in The Falmouth Enterprise, which concluded that

“[Needed fishery management measures] won’t be popular with everyone.  But it’s not about the fishermen, it’s about the fish.  Fisheries managers must look beyond competing interests if they are going to protect this important game fish.  [emphasis added]”

If the Management Board can accept that truth, and adopt the mindset and the principles necessary to achieve success, the striped bass spawning stock, and the striped bass fishery, can and will be restored.

But if it equivocates, tries to appease competing interests, and fails to understand that, in the end, the needs of the fish, not of fishermen, must come first, the Management Board’s efforts will fail.

Once again.

 

 

STRIPED BASS AMENDMENT 7--NAVIGATING THE PID: PART V, RELEASE MORTALITY, REGIONAL MANAGEMENT, AND A FEW RANDOM THOUGHTS

This final installment of my five-part series on the Public Information Document for Amendment 7 to the Interstate Fishery Management Plan for Atlantic Striped Bass (PID) will take a look at a few unrelated aspects of the PID, each of which is important, but none of which require a long enough discussion to warrant an entire edition of One Angler’s Voyage.  We’ll start with the one that has been getting the most attention:  recreational release mortality.

Dead is dead (Issue 7:  Recreational Release Mortality)

As most readers know, before beginning to draft the PID, the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission’s Atlantic Striped Bass Management Board created a so-called “Work Group,” and tasked it with making some broad recommendations about the issues that should be addressed in the proposed Amendment 7 to the ASMFC’s striped bass management plan.

The Work Group’s report was released ahead of the Management Board’s August 2020 meeting, and many striped bass anglers were probably surprised when it revealed that

“Multiple members of the [Work Group] indicated that recreational dead discards may be the single most important issue at this time, and addressing (or reducing discards) is [sic] the most important action that can be taken going forward.  Many [Work Group] members pointed to the fact that recreational discards accounted for just under 50% of the fishing mortality as basis for the critical need to address this issue.  Others noted that, particularly in states with primarily catch and release fisheries, the Board is running out of ways to control removals in the fishery.”

Let’s think about that paragraph for a minute, because it probably says a lot more about the mindset of some, perhaps even most, Work Group members than it does about the problems currently afflicting the striped bass stock.

First and foremost, we must never forget that the striped bass stock is now overfished.  Because of that, to me, and to most striped bass fishermen, “the single most important issue at this time,” and “the most important action that can be taken going forward” is rebuilding the female spawning stock biomass to the target level.

Reducing recreational release mortality is certainly one step toward achieving that goal.  But reducing recreational landings, reducing commercial landings, and reducing commercial discards, which collectively account for greater fishing mortality than recreational releases, would also greatly facilitate rebuilding.

Even if we just looked at landings, we see that recreational landings, which account for 42% of striped bass mortality, and commercial landings, which account for 8%, result in fully 50% of all striped bass killed, a bit more than can be blamed on recreational releases.  Based on that alone, it would seem that reducing striped bass landings should be at least as important an issue as reducing release mortality.

But that’s clearly not how the Management Board sees things.

Its original draft of Addendum VI to Amendment 6 to the Atlantic Striped Bass Interstate Fishery Management Plan, which was supposed to reduce fishing mortality to the target level, had only a 50% probability of achieving that goal.  And the Management Board was so fixated on maintaining landings at as high a level as possible, particularly in New Jersey and Maryland, that the version of Addendum VI that it finally adopted has a 58% probability of failure.

Yet somehow, according to the Work Group, recreational release mortality is the problem.  The higher level of mortality resulting from recreational and commercial landings apparently isn’t viewed as a problem at all.

Perhaps that’s why the Work Group came up with the puzzling statement that “in states with primarily catch and release fisheries, the Board is running out of ways to control removals.”

First of all, all states’ striped bass fisheries are primarily catch and release.  While the precise numbers change from year to year and from state to state, Marine Recreational Information Program data shows that for the years 2015-2019 (reliable 2020 data isn’t available thanks to COVID-19), anglers in every state released more than 80% of the bass that they caught.  The lowest release rate was, not surprisingly, in New Jersey, where anglers still returned 81% of their bass to the water.  The only other states with release rates under 90% were Maryland and New York, where only 89% of all striped bass states were let go.

Thus, trying to distinguish states with “primarily catch and release fisheries” from other jurisdictions is an effort to find a distinction that doesn’t really exist.  

Yes, catch and release may be more intensely practiced in New England, where release rates run from 95% (Massachusetts) to nearly 99% (Maine), but with the over-all release rate approximating 92%, all state recreational striped bass fisheries are primarily catch and release fisheries.

In fact, the estimated mortality rate of recreationally-released striped bass, 9%, is fairly low, lower than the release mortality rate for other recreationally-important species such as bluefish (15%), summer flounder (10%), scup (15%), or black sea bass (15%).  Yet, because anglers catch a lot of striped bass, and because the striped bass fishery is primarily a recreational, catch-and-release fishery, that 9%, spread out over millions of fish, eventually adds up to a big number.

But the fact that the number is big doesn’t mean that it’s bad.  One out of approximately every eleven striped bass released, one bass dies.  So does every bass that an angler puts in a cooler.  From a biological perspective, every dead striped bass is the same.

Dead fish don’t contribute to the spawning stock.  Whether they are intentionally killed and eaten, intentionally killed and eventually dumped after spending too long in the freezer, or die after being released, a dead bass is a dead bass.

Biologically, no death is somehow “better” than another.  

Yet to most fisheries managers, reducing mortality from the catch-and-release fishery, in order to increase permissible landings, is somehow a more important endeavor than reducing landings in order to provide greater abundance for the catch-and-release fishermen.  It is a pro-harvest bias that’s very apparent on the Management Board, but it makes little sense, for if the striped bass stock was managed for maximum economic return, it would be managed for the greatest abundance, not for the highest possible yields.

The relationship between abundance and recreational fishing effort, and so economic benefits from the fishery, is clear.  In 1985, when the stock was collapsed and rebuilding had just gotten underway, Atlantic Coast anglers took about 1.3 million directed striped bass trips.  Just one decade later, when the stock was declared rebuilt, that number increased tenfold, to 13 million trips.  Spawning stock biomass peaked in 2003, when 22 million directed striped bass trips were taken.  Abundance then began to decline, although there were still enough bass, particularly larger bass, around to keep angler interest high; recreational effort didn’t peak until 2008, with 26 million directed trips.

But after that, the decline in striped bass abundance disuaded anglers from fishing.  2012 trips fell to 2003 levels, and fell farther, to 17 million trips, in 2017.  That declined to a little under 16 million trips in 2019, when the stock was declared to be overfished.

In the context of managing for renewed abundance, and maximum economic benefit, rather than for yield, the Work Group’s comment that “the Board is running out of ways to control removals in the fishery” is patently untrue.  

Removals could be reduced by narrowing the current 28- to 35-inch slot; if a 30- to 35-inch slot were in place for 2021, it would have offered more protection to the upcoming 2015 year class, and certainly reduced landings.  A 35-inch minimum size, rejected in Addendum VI, would also probably reduce removals.  So would seasons, although they would also limit angler effort, and should be seen as a last resort.

But the bottom line is that managers still have multiple options for further limiting removals, if that’s what they decide to do.

As sportsmen and conservationists, we have an obligation to try to minimize release mortality.  Good release practices, the use of adequate tackle, and not using J-hooks when fishing with bait are all means to achieve that goal.  However, the most important issue in striped bass management today is rebuilding the stock, and to do that, fishing mortality from all sources, including but not limited to recreational release mortality, must be reduced, to or below the target level.  But recreational fishing mortality poses no more threat to the bass than does recreational and commercial landings.

A bridge too far (Issue 5:  Regional Management)

The PID asks

“Should separate regional management programs be pursued for the Chesapeake Bay and the ocean region, which includes the Delaware Bay/Hudson River stock complex?”

The most recent benchmarks stock assessment answers that question with a resounding "No!", saying

“the [peer review panel] concluded that the two stock model was not acceptable to serve as a basis for fishery management advice.’

It’s not that managing striped bass on a stock-by-stock basis is impossible, or a bad idea, or will never be done.  Biologists recently completed a comprehensive DNA study on the composition of the striped bass population, and identified six genetically distinct groups of fish between Canada’s Gulf of St. Lawrence and North Carolina.  The basis for regional management is being developed.

However, scientists still lack a reliable, peer-reviewed population model that will allow them to manage striped bass regionally.  Perhaps such a model will be developed in time for the next benchmark assessment, which we’ll probably see in 2025.  Perhaps it will take a little longer to put one together. 

Right now we just don’t know.

But what we do know is that no such model currently exists. 

Thus, the management measures contained in Amendment 7 should not be allowed to outrun the best available science.  Once a reliable regional stock assessment model has been designed and passes peer review, the Management Board might consider regional management.  Until the science underlying a regional management approach has been developed, reviewed and found adequate, regional management should not be considered viable, and a regional management approach should not be a part of Amendment 7.

Final thoughts on the PID

The Management Board’s sole reason for being is to conserve and manage the striped bass stock.  Thus, maintaining the long-term health and sustainability of that stock must be the Management Board's overriding priority, and eclips all other concerns.

Prioritizing management stability and flexibility is not consistent with the Management Board’s primary obligation to the public and to the striped bass resource. 

While management stability is a desirable objective, it must yield to concerns about the health of the stock; efforts to maintain stability must never compromise, to any degree, the sustainability of the resource.  The marine environment is inherently unstable, and in a constant state of flux.  The Management Board must at all times stand ready to adjust management measures in response to such changing conditions and the changing needs of the striped bass.

In all cases, the resource must come first.

Because it doesn't, in any way, benefit the striped bass resource, “flexibility,” which serves as a euphemism for inaction and/or undermining the effectiveness of needed management measures, is anathema to good striped bass management.  

Contrasting the success of the notoriously “inflexible” federal fishery management system with the ASMFC’s long track record of failure, overfishing, and overfished stocks provides more than ample evidence that flexibility is a bad idea.

As it moves forward with Amendment 7, the Management Board must achieve one task above all:  Rebuild the female spawning stock biomass to the current target level, and do so within no more than ten years.

Doing anything else would amount to nothing less than a dereliction of the Management Board’s duties to the public and the resource, and would represent just one more failure to be laid at the door of the ASMFC.

STRIPED BASS AMENDMENT 7--NAVIGATING THE PID: PART IV, CONSERVATION EQUIVALENCY AND ANGLER ACCOUNTABILITY

In the last three editions of One Angler’s Voyage, I dealt with what might generally be considered the biological aspects of the Public Information Document for Amendment 7 to the Interstate Fishery Management Plan for Atlantic Striped Bass.  Today, I’ll address two blatantly political aspects of the PID:  Issue 6, Management Program Equivalency (Conservation Equivalency) and Issue 8, Recreational Accountability.

I’m grouping the two topics together, because both are political issues that can best be summed up as ways that individual states, and an individual sector, can escape the full burden of their conservation responsibilities under the management plan, and push those burdens onto the shoulders of other states, or onto the striped bass stock itself.

Let’s start with conservation equivalency, the practice of allowing states to adopt regulations that differ from those adopted by the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission, but theoretically have the same conservation impacts on the managed stock.

The ASMFC’s most recent position on the use of conservation can be found in its publication Conservation Equivalency:  Policy and Technical Guidance Document, which tells us that “conservation equivalency” includes

“Actions taken by a state which differ from the specific requirements of the [fishery management plan], but which achieve the same quantified level of conservation for the resource under management.  One example can be, various combinations of size limits, gear restrictions, and season length can be demonstrated to achieve the same targeted level of fishing mortality.  The appropriate Management Board/Section will determine conservation equivalency.  [emphasis added]”

In theory, that sounds reasonable.  But the same publication also tells us that

“In practice, the ASMFC frequently uses the term “conservation equivalency” in different ways depending on the language included in the plan.”

That difference between theory and practice has already hurt the striped bass.  While both the ASMFC’s Charter and its guidance document refer to conservation equivalency measures that “achieve the same quantifiable level of conservation for the resource under management,” the PID reveals the other face of conservation equivalency which arises, “in practice,” when conservation equivalency isn’t used to achieve the same level of conservation for the resource through alternative management measures, but instead uses alternative regulations to seek the same level of harvest reduction for all states’ fishermen.

When it employs conservation equivalency in that manner, the Atlantic Striped Bass Management Board weakens the overall effectiveness of its own management measures, and makes it less likely that such measures will adequately address the problems faced by the striped bass.  We saw that in the recent adoption of Addendum VI to Amendment 6 to the Atlantic Striped Bass Interstate Fishery Management Plan which, because of conservation equivalency proposals adopted by New Jersey and Maryland, has only a 42 percent probability of achieving its management goal; such a high likelihood of failure would be legally impermissible for federal fishery managers, but isn’t given a second thought at the ASMFC.

As veteran Management Board member, and long-time conservation advocate, Dennis Abbott, the legislative proxy from New Hampshire, observed at the Management Board’s August 2019 meeting,

“Many anglers through the years have expressed to me and others the strong displeasure with varying regulations.

“Its disparity is principally due to the generous application of conservation equivalency.  I may be wrong, but I don’t know of any conservation equivalency application that isn’t really intended to increase mortality of striped bass.  In my many years in the State Legislature, I always held the belief that when one is advantaged someone else is going to be disadvantaged.

“We’re here today in part because some of us have been advantaged, and we’re all here to pay the piper…  [emphasis added]”

Conservation equivalency, when used for political and/or socioeconomic, rather than biological, reasons, can only hurt the striped bass stock.  But even when used as it was originally intended, to allow states to adopt alternative regulations that supposedly have the same conservation impact as those adopted by the Management Board, it is a flawed concept.

A big reason for that can be attributed to the ASMFC’s attachment to one of the three “themes” of the PID, management stability, in a natural environment where the only true constant is change.  

Conservation equivalent regulations try to freeze time, assuming that the striped bass population will look the same in the future as it did in the year upon which the supposedly “equivalent” regulations were based.

To see why that doesn't work in the real world, we can look at a real-world example, Maryland recreational regulations in 2015. 

Pursuant to Addendum IV to Amendment 6 to the Atlantic Striped Bass Interstate Fishery Management Plan, Maryland anglers were expected to reduce their striped bass fishing mortality by 20.5 percent, compared to 2012.  Maryland anglers primarily fish on little striped bass, with most of their harvest composed of immature fish that haven’t yet had a chance to contribute to the spawning stock.  In 2012, the Maryland size limit was 18 inches, and the fork length of the vast majority of the fish landed fell between 17 and 21 inches.  That would be roughly equivalent to 3- and 4-year old bass, from the 2008 and 2009 year classes.

Both of those year classes were below average.  The Maryland juvenile abundance index for 2008 was 3.20, and for 2009 it was 7.87, both well below the long-term average of 11.7.  So in constructing its conservation equivalency program, Maryland adopted a 20-inch minimum size, which would theoretically reduce its landings by 20.5 percent compared to 2012.

But the Chesapeake Bay striped bass population in 2015, when the new conservation-equivalent rules took effect, looked nothing like it did in 2012.

There had been a big year class produced in 2011; the Maryland juvenile abundance index was 34.58, three times the long-term average.  By 2015, those 2011 bass were four years old; that was reflected in Maryland’s landings, which were dominated by 20- to 22-inch (fork length) fish.  Because of the flood of 2011 bass into the fishery, Maryland not only failed to reduce recreational landings to approximately 570,000 bass, as contemplated by Addendum IV, but instead increased such landings substantially, to 1.1 million fish in 2015, 1.5 million in 2016, 1.1 million in 2017, 1.0 million in 2018, and a little under 0.8 million in 2019, the last year when Addendum IV was in force.

Not only did Maryland never achieve the reductions contemplated by Addendum IV, but length frequencies show that much of the harvest during the peak years came from excessive removals of the 2011 year class, the same year class that Addendum IV was intended to protect.

But the Management Board, consistent in its desire for “management stability,” did nothing to reduce Maryland’s landings.

That brings us to conservation equivalency’s companion topic:  recreational accountability.

While most the striped bass management plan places hard quotas on the commercial fishery, and even requires pound-for-pound paybacks when those quotas are exceeded, it places no such constraints on the recreational sector.  As the Maryland example demonstrates, anglers are managed only by a “soft” fishing mortality target, and face no consequences for exceeding such target, even if such overharvest continues for years.

That doesn’t help to maintain fish stocks at sustainable levels, particularly in the case of stocks which, like striped bass, see the overwhelming majority of fishing mortality generated by the recreational sector.  It undoubtedly contributes to the fact that, in sharp contrast to federal fishery managers, the ASMFC has failed to successfully rebuild a single stock of fish that is under its sole jurisdiction, and then maintain such stock at sustainable levels over the long term.

There are many keys to federal fishery managers’ success, all of which are probably contrary to the PID’s themes of “management stability” and “flexibility.”  Pursuant to the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act, federal fisheries managers must base their actions on the best available science, prevent overfishing, promptly rebuild overfished stocks, set annual catch limits for each managed species, and hold fishermen accountable when those limits are exceeded.

So long as the ASMFC and its Atlantic Striped Bass Management Board are more concerned with management stability and flexibility, and in addressing the short-term socioeconomic concerns of a handful of stakeholders, than it is with rebuilding fish stocks and maintaining sustainability in the long term, its track record of failure will probably extend far into the future.

Thus, it’s refreshing to see that the PID raises the issue of recreational accountability, and asks

“Should the Board consider implementing [a recreational harvest limit] for recreational striped bass management?”

If we really want to maintain the long-term health and stability of the striped bass stock in the long term, the answer to that question is yes.  But, as always, the devil is in the details, with the states most addicted to conservation equivalency most opposed to being held accountable when their supposedly “equivalent” regulations don’t work.

The biggest obstacle to recreational accountability is the inherent level of uncertainty in the Marine Recreational Information Program; there is always some level of error in any survey, and MRIP is no exception.  Even a manager such as Rhode Island’s Jason McNamee, who generally favors the concept of recreational accountability, has expressed concerns about how such error ought to be treated, saying at the Management Board’s February 2020 meeting that

“I really like the concept, but this is not a trivial decision…what we’re talking about, in the case of striped bass, is accountability to a statistical sampling program, specifically MRIP.  I think that would be an extremely difficult situation to put a state in, and that would be to hold them accountable to a point estimate from a statistical survey.”

However, given that MRIP's level of uncertainty, expressed as "percent standard error" or "PSE," is generally tied to the number of anglers sampled—the more samples, the lower the level of error—the problem of holding states accountable to MRIP point estimates is one that can be addressed.

When striped bass harvest data is collected for the combined Northeast and Mid-Atlantic regions, the PSE for the last five pre-COVID years—2015-2019—ranges from 6.8 to 9.9, which is certainly low enough for accountability purposes.  Such accountability, for the states that adhere to the Management Board’s recommended management measures and didn’t seek state-specific conservation equivalency, should be collective.  That is, compliance with the fishing mortality target would be calculated on a coastwide, and not on a state-by-state basis. 

Under such an arrangement, if anglers exceeded the coastwide fishing mortality target, then the Management Board would be expected to adopt more restrictive coastwide regulations to get such mortality under control; regulations would not be changed on a state-by-state basis.  

While such an approach would seem to fly in the face of the PID's theme of “management stability,” both stability and the required level of conservation could be achieved by setting, in addition to a recreational harvest limit, a recreational harvest target as well.  Based on the PSEs described above, a target, set 10 percent below the recreational harvest limit would prevent uncertainty from impacting regulations, while still protecting the bass from excessive harvest.

The approach would be different for states that opt for conservation equivalency, for they should be held accountable at the state level where the uncertainty in the MRIP data is substantially greater.  The PSE for New Jersey, one of the biggest beneficiaries of conservation-equivalent measures, during the period 2015-2019 ran between 14.0 and 25.6.  It’s understandable why New Jersey would not want to be held accountable for landings based on those numbers.

Yet such a position comes with a substantial share of hypocricy, as New Jersey has no problem seeking conservation-equivalent regulations based on such uncertain estimates.  Pursuant to Addendum VI, conservation equivalency was based on landings in 2017, when New Jersey's PSE was a whopping 24.9.  

I have not yet heard the state make a cogent argument as to why such uncertain MRIP estimates might appropriately be used to grant it a special advantage, compared to other states in the fishery, but are not appropriate for holding New Jersey accountableif its landings exceed the predicted level.

States opting for conservation equivalency should also be held accountable if their “conservation equivalent” regulations prove, in practice, not equivalent at all.

Thus, with respect to Issue 6, Management Program Equivalency, Amendment 7 should require that any proposed conservation equivalent measure “achieve the same quantifiable level of conservation for the resource under management,” and not merely address the differing impact of coastwide measures on individual states.  Conservation equivalency should only be used to address biological issues (e.g., the size of fish available in nursery areas such as the Hudson and Delaware rivers, and the Chesapeake Bay) rather than a state’s preference for a different bag limit, size limit, or season.

With respect to Issue 8, Recreational Accountability, a recreational harvest limit and, ideally, a recreational harvest target, should be established in the management plan, and anglers should be held accountable for exceeding such limits.  States that adopt the recommended coastwide management measures should be held accountable on a collective, coastwide basis, not individually.  However, states that deem their MRIP estimates accurate enough to serve as the basis for conservation equivalent measures should be held accountable, at the state level, should those measures fail to achieve the intended level of conservation for the striped bass resource.

Such an approach would end the current anarchic approach to conservation management, which allows states to adopt measures that weaken the overall impact of the fishery management plan, and suffer no consequences when such measures prove to be inadequate.

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In the next edition of One Angler’s Voyage, I’ll wander a short distance away from biology and politics, and address a philosophical issue:  Should Amendment 7 specifically address recreational release mortality and, if so, how should that be done?