MANAGEMENT BOARD TO MONITOR STRIPED BASS RECOVERY

 

A recent update to the striped bass stock assessment, which found that the female spawning stock biomass of striped bass is likely to rebuild to its target level by 2029, and do so without any change to existing regulations, came as a surprise to just about everyone who has been following the striped bass management process.

There’s no question that it’s good news, although there is a fairly large portion of the striped bass fishing community which thinks that the news is a little too good—and maybe too good to believe.

While such suspicion is understandable given the recent state of the striped bass stock, a careful reading of the assessment update makes it clear that its conclusions are valid, provided that the assumptions on which such conclusions are based remain sound.

The soundness of such assumptions is always ripe for debate.

Although fisheries scientists frequently try to predict how a stock might fare in the future, they are not clairvoyant, but instead firmly rooted in the here and now.  The best that they can do is analyze the current size and composition of the spawning stock biomass, recruitment, fishing and natural mortality, etc. and, based on current values, predict what the stock will look like two, or five, or ten years from now, with the predictions growing ever more uncertain as they reach farther out in time.

If the future values of any of those parameters shifts from what they are today (or, more accurately, what they were during the terminal year of the stock assessment), then the stock’s future status will also vary from the scientists’ predictions.

The stock assessment update’s conclusion that striped bass spawning stock biomass will be fully rebuilt by 2029 hinges on the assumption that fishing mortality during the rebuilding period will remain the same as it was in 2021, when F=0.14.  That is a fishing mortality rate slightly below the target of F=0.17.

Because of an emerging retrospective pattern in the stock assessment update, which slightly underestimates fishing mortality, we can already suspect that the true fishing mortality rate in 2021 was just a little bit higher, somewhere around F=0.15.  That will somewhat reduce the probability of timely rebuilding, but the effect will not be too great; even if the fishing mortality rate rises to the 0.17 target, the stock is more likely than not to fully recover by the 2029 deadline.

But if fishing mortality rises above target, the stock is unlikely to fully rebuild by then.

Thus, after the stock assessment update was formally presented to the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission’s Atlantic Striped Bass Management Board last Monday, some of the Management Board members expressed concern.

Massachusetts fishery manager Michael Armstrong noted that the assessment update’s projection was very sensitive to small changes in the fishing mortality rate; the 2021 rate of 0.14 provided a 78.6% chance of rebuilding the stock by 2029, but if that rate increased by just a few hundredths of a point, to the F=0.17 target, there was only a 52.5% chance of timely recovery.  And if the rate increased just three hundredths more, to the 0.20 threshold that defines overfishing, the probability of rebuilding by 2029 falls to just 30.5%, making failure more than twice as likely than success.

Thus, Dr. Armstrong advised his colleagues that

“I want the Board to be conscious…It doesn’t take a lot to change the course of this recovery.”

Emerson Hasbrouck, the Governor’s Appointee from New York, reinforced Dr. Armstrong’s comments, saying

“We’re getting close to being on the razor’s edge here.”

He asked when the next stock assessment or assessment update would be produced, and upon learning that nothing would happen until 2024, asked whether there might be an interim update next year.  ASMFC staff replied that, if the Management Board wanted such interim update, they could make a formal request to the ASMFC’s Interstate Fishery Management Program Policy Board, but also noted that the assessment schedule was already very full, and that conducting an interim bass assessment would mean that work on some other species would have to be delayed.

However, what the Atlantic Striped Bass Technical Committee can do, without unduly disrupting other already-scheduled assessments, is to wait until early next year, when all of the 2022 data is made available, and then compare actual 2022 landings estimates with the predicted landings from the assessment update.  If actual landings materially exceed predictions, there will be a need to revisit management measures in order to avoid keep fishing mortality low enough to rebuild the stock.

Such comparison would provide a good backstop to the assessment update for, as Dr. Armstrong reminded the Board,

“There are no output controls for the recreational fishery.”

That is, unlike the commercial fishery, where landings are constrained by hard-poundage quotas, the ASMFC sets no comparable annual catch limit for striped bass anglers, only a “soft” target fishing mortality rate that will hopefully be achieved through existing regulations.  If fish are particularly “catchable” in a given year, perhaps because big schools of bait are holding them near active ports, or if angling effort increases because of good weather of the comparative lack of other species, recreational fishing mortality can spike well above its target level.  Should that happen, anglers face no paybacks or other consequences for their excessive landings, and managers have no recourse that might prevent such excesses from recurring.

Dr. Armstrong noted that excessive recreational landings have doomed previous efforts to rebuild the striped bass population

“because we’ve never hit our target [fishing mortality rate], at least for any period of time.”

He further commented that

“Stocks don’t collapse overnight, but with four years of poor recruitment, we’re reaching that point.”

While it’s impossible to say just how far in the future “that point” might be, anyone who fished through the striped bass stock collapse of the late 1970s and early 1980s will recall that the first sign of impending problems was a sharp drop in recruitment; the school fish began to disappear, but because big striped bass still remained abundant, neither fishery managers nor most striped bass anglers took such warning sign seriously.

Still, there are those on the Board who saw no need for immediate action.  Stephen Train, a commercial fisherman who serves as Maine’s Governor’s Appointee, asked

“How much damage can we do if we let this go for another year?”

Similar thoughts were voiced by Tom Fote, the Governor’s Appointee for New Jersey, who stated that

“I’ve been sitting around the table for a long time.  We always say that we have to trust the science…I got involved in this whole process in ’86 because of striped bass…I agree with the stock assessment.”

At first, that seemed like a remarkable statement to come from Fote, who can usually be counted on to deny the truth of the science without offering any countervailing data or statistical support, other than a vague claim that, at some point in the past, the science turned out to be wrong.  His comment made more sense when put in the proper context:  Supporting the science would leave regulations unchanged, at least until after the next assessment is released in 2024; reviewing 2022 landings next spring could result in managers putting more restrictive regulations put in place for the 2024 season.  Since Fote is always trying to maximize the number of fish—not only striped bass, but any fish managed by the ASMFC—killed by anglers, his support of the assessment update’s conclusions was entirely predictable.

Fortunately, most of the other people in the room had more sense, and agreed that reviewing 2022 landings early next year was a good idea.  A press release issued by the ASMFC the day after the meeting quoted Martin Gary of the Potomac River Fisheries Commission, who chairs the Management Board, as saying

“This 2022 assessment was the first check-in point for progress toward stock rebuilding by 2029.  It is extremely important that we continue to monitor fishery removals and conduct stock assessments to keep evaluating rebuilding progress and stay on track.”

Such support for continued monitoring represents an important change of direction for the Management Board, which in the past tended to adopt a set of management measures, and then take no action until the next benchmark assessment, which usually occurred five years or so later, informed them that action was needed.  After the Board adopted Addendum IV to Amendment 6 to the Atlantic Striped Bass Interstate Fishery Management Plan in 2014, it took no further management action until after the most recent benchmark stock assessment, adopted in 2019, determined that the stock was both overfished and experiencing overfishing, even though the Board knew, by October 2016, that Addendum IV’s measures had not only failed to reduce recreational landings in the Chesapeake Bay, but were instead allowing such landings to rapidly increase.

While the conclusions of the stock assessment update were good news, such news was tempered by the realization that unanticipated changes in the level of fishing mortality, or perhaps other factors, could send the predicted recovery awry.

The Board’s expressed determination to continue to monitor the striped bass’ recovery, and keep it on track, should provide the striped bass’ advocates real reason for hope, and was perhaps the best news of all.

 

STRIPED BASS: IS IT TIME TO CHANGE FOCUS?

 

Since the 2013 benchmark stock assessment told us that striped bass spawning stock biomass and fishing mortality were both headed in the wrong direction—and maybe even since the 2011 stock assessment update predicted that the stock would become overfished by 2017—responsible striped bass anglers have focused on reducing fishing mortality and rebuilding the striped bass stock.

That focus only intensified in 2019, after the most recent benchmark assessment revealed that the striped bass stock was both overfished and experiencing overfishing.

But now we have a stock assessment update—it will be formally revealed at tomorrow afternoon’s Atlantic Striped Bass Management Board Meeting, but has been publicly available for about ten days—which informs us that overfishing has not only ended, but that the fishing mortality rate in 2021 was a mere 0.14, below the F=0.17 target.  While the assessment finds that the stock remains overfished, it predicts that if overfishing doesn’t recur, the stock will rise above the spawning stock biomass threshold, which defines an overfished stock, at some point in 2023; if the fishing mortality rate doesn’t exceed the 0.17 target, it is more likely than not that the stock will be fully rebuilt by 2029.

Admittedly, there is some uncertainty built into the assessment update, and there remains a substantial chance—48% at F=0.17, 21% at F=0.14—that the stock will not be rebuilt by that deadline.  However, a benchmark assessment scheduled for 2024 and an update a few years later will provide the Management Board with opportunities to put rebuilding back on schedule should it begin to veer off track. 

Even assuming the worst case, and a stock that isn’t rebuilt by the deadline, managers have already ended overfishing and reversed the long decline in the female spawning stock biomass, which are both positive steps.  If the rebuilding effort falls short of attaining SSB_target by 2029, it’s not likely to miss by much.

Taken together, that’s pretty good news.  It may lack the absolute certainty we want to hear, assuring us that the stock will be fully restored by 2029, but if you’re looking for absolute certainty, you probably shouldn't get involved with fisheries management.  The science is pretty good—and in the case of striped bass, it’s far better than that—but Mother Nature can be capricious, and some uncertainty always remains.

Even so, far too many striped bass anglers remain focused on rebuilding.  Since the stock assessment update, with its prediction that the stock is likely to rebuild under current regulations, was released, there has been a wave of angler complaints and comments attacking the assessment, those who performed it, and the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission as a whole; many recreational fishermen are unwilling to accept the scientific advice, and refuse to believe that the stock can be rebuilt without further reductions in fishing mortality.

I’ll admit that, at the gut level, I share some of their doubts.  Looking at the data presented in the benchmark assessment, knowing what I see on the water, and talking to a lot of experienced anglers who fish between Maine and the Chesapeake Bay, I expected that fairly massive harvest reductions would be needed to achieve rebuilding by the 2029 deadline. 

In fact, when preliminary information coming out of the Atlantic Striped Bass Technical Committee and Stock Assessment Sub-Committee seemed to suggest that a fishing mortality reduction somewhere in the 25% range would be needed to rebuild the stock, I felt a sense of relief, as such a reduction was probably close to the limits of what was politically and practically doable.

When I heard that the folks preparing the update determined that no management changes were needed to achieve the rebuilding goal, I was immediately taken aback.  But after having the opportunity to read the draft update, and to ask the assessors questions during one of their meetings, I understand how they came to their conclusions and why such conclusions make sense.

That doesn’t mean that I’m completely convinced that the stock will be rebuilt by 2029.  Uncertainties remain, and those uncertainties aren’t trivial.  But there seems to be little doubt that the stock will be in much better condition in 2029 than it is in today.

So, unlike other striped bass anglers, I’m not really focusing on 2029 anymore.

I’m more concerned about what happens after 2030, when threats to the striped bass stock, which might be far more damaging and harder to fix than past overfishing or missing a rebuilding deadline, could easily arise.

Ending overfishing and rebuilding overfished stocks are, in most cases, less scientific problems than political issues.  It’s not that managers don’t know how to get the job done, it’s just that they don’t always want to endure the public abuse and political pressure that always accompanies efforts to conserve fish stocks by reducing harvest.  

It doesn’t really matter what fish are involved, or what sector is most affected; impose more restrictive management measures, and someone—either commercial fishermen, anglers, or the for-hire fleet, and often some combination of the three—is not only going to complain, but will put up a spirited fight in the press, at public hearings, and perhaps even at the legislative level.

But if managers are allowed to do their jobs, they know how to end overfishing and put overfished stocks on the road to recovery.  It’s not so simple when the problems besetting a stock aren’t caused primarily by people, but by nature.  

While the ASMFC, acting through the states’ fishery management agencies, has the ability to impose its will on fishermen, it has no similar ability to dictate environmental conditions in the spawning rivers, and it is those conditions that have proven to be the primary determinant of striped bass spawning success.  Cold, wet winters followed by cool, wet springs tend to produce large year classes, while warm winters followed by early, dry springs lead to below-average spawns.

In recent years, the latter sort of weather has prevailed, and as the climate warms, such conditions may become even more common.

Over the past four seasons, the Maryland Juvenile Abundance Index, historically the most reliable predictor of future striped bass abundance, averaged just 3.16, as compared to the long-term average of 11.3.  The recent mark tied the average for the years 1983-1986, when the stock was just beginning to recover from its earlier collapse; there has not been a lower four-year average in the 65-year history of the Maryland juvenile abundance survey.  The period 2019-2022 also marks the first time in history when the Maryland JAI failed to rise above 4.00 for four consecutive years.

Right now, the striped bass stock can be rebuilt to, or at least close to, its target by 2029 because of the large 2011 and 2015 year classes, and the somewhat above average 2017 and 2018 year classes, that have already been produced.  Because female spawning stock biomass is measured in metric tons (which are generally converted to pounds in ASMFC documents) as those fish grow larger, such biomass will naturally increase, even if there are fewer overall fish in the population; given the slot limit, there shouldn’t be many removals of fish over 35 inches in the future, something that should allow the spawning stock biomass to increase more quickly, even as abundance declines somewhat.

We’re already seeing that occurring.  In 2019, female spawning stock biomass was estimated at 56,634 metric tons, while overall abundance was estimated to be 263.7 million fish; two years later, spawning stock biomass had increased to an estimated 64,805 metric tons, while overall abundance decreased to 218.9 million individual striped bass.  Those diverging trends seem counterintuitive to many anglers, but make perfect sense:  Bigger, older bass weigh more.

However, the trends can’t diverge forever.  Bass of every age and size are removed from the population each year, and there will come a time when diminishing numbers of individual fish also cause the biomass to decline.

When that will occur, and even if it will occur, can’t be determined now.  A good spawn over the next year or two can reinforce the spawning stock biomass and prevent future decline, at least for a while.  But if that good spawn doesn’t occur…

Striped bass can live for at least 30 years, so in theory, fish from the 2011 and 2015 year classes will still be around in the early 2040s.  As a practical matter, both natural and fishing mortality will have so whittled away their numbers by then that they will make up only a very small fragment of the spawning stock.  For management planning purposes, it probably makes more sense to assume a 20-year lifespan—and even that might be high; a 50-pound bass is about 20 years old, and there aren’t that many 50s still swimming around.  But assuming a 20-year lifespan, we can figure that the contributions of the 2011 and 2015 year classes will quickly taper off after the early 2030s—right after the stock is scheduled to be rebuilt.

What happens then?

So far, it seems nothing good.

Over the past decade, the average for the Maryland JAI was 8.38, a little below average, even with the large 2015 year class included; the average for the seven years after 2015 is an even lower 6.12. So beginning just after the stock is, hopefully, rebuilt, the stage is being set for a decline in abundance.

From a recruitment perspective, that doesn’t matter too much.  Successful recruitment isn’t dependent upon a large spawning stock; there is virtually no relationship between the numbers of spawners and the success of the spawn. 

Having said that, it’s still necessary to have some adult bass around for recruitment to occur.

With recent recruitment well below average, future recruitment unpredictable, and a changing climate more likely to usher in conditions unfavorable to successful spawns, it’s probably time to stop focusing on what the striped bass stock will look like at one discreet point in time—that is, whether it will be rebuilt in 2029—and start to take a longer, more extended view, and consider what it will take to maintain a healthy and sustainable striped bass stock well into the future.

If managers do that, they may well find that the current regulations, although sufficient to rebuild the stock, will not be sufficient to maintain it at healthy levels if recruitment does not improve soon. 

If that is the case, it is probably time to start considering more conservative management, that will increase the proportion of fish that survive to older ages, before too many fish from the successful year classes are removed from the stock.  Or, managers can maintain the existing regulations, and hope that a good year class will eventually come along.

I’ve always liked the expression, “Hope is not a plan.”

 

 

 

 

BELIEVE IT OR NOT: "CHANGES IN RECREATIONAL REGULATIONS HAVE RARELY, IF EVER, RESULTED IN A DIRECT FISHERY RECOVERY"

 

I first wrote about the declining fortunes of Louisiana’s speckled trout (more properly, “spotted seatrout”) population over six years ago, when I noted that some fishing guides were complaining that they were frequently releasing between 50 and 150 trout, which were under the state’s 12-inch minimum size, each day, as they tried to find legal-sized fish for their clients, with one guide saying

“My theory is that the fish aren’t getting a chance to grow up.  The minute they hit 12 inches, they’re getting killed.”

At the time, Louisiana fishery managers weren’t too concerned about the health of the speckled trout stock, even though its 10% spawning potential ratio was well below the 18% SPR that the state had set as a gauge for the stock’s well-being.  They believed that, because the species matured early and began spawning in its first year, there was virtually no risk of stock collapse.  They also admitted that

“The current limits, biologically speaking, are designed to maximize angler yield while not putting the stock into a condition where we may see recruitment overfishing,”

and that managers

“walk a tightrope between getting full public use out of a renewable resource and harming a fishery at least in the short term.”

I revisited the issue three years later, and discovered that Louisiana’s benign neglect of its speckled trout population did not do the fish any good.  A 2019 stock assessment determined that its speckled trout stock had been overfished since 2014, that the stock had experienced overfishing in six of the past ten years, and that the spawning stock biomass and the population of females at least 3 years old was the lowest on record.  As a result of such woes, recreational speckled trout landings were at their lowest point in nearly 30 years, yet angler effort continued to rise.

Even though a state fishery manager publicly admitted that

“I think everyone knows that we’re reluctant to change regulations,”

Louisiana realized that their speckled trout were in real trouble, and began moving toward more restrictive angling rules.  At the time, I didn’t criticize the state’s admitted reluctance to change the rules, but instead recognized that

“when all is said and done, changing fisheries regulations is always a difficult thing for state managers to do, at least when the regulations are being made more restrictive.  Some elements of the fishing community will always be opposed to any reduction in harvest, with industry folks claiming that they’ll lose too much business, and some anglers claiming that their ‘right’ to fish is being infringed.

“When that happens, fishery management becomes more a political process than a scientific one.  Needed changes supported by the professional fishery managers are often abandoned when politicians intervene; no matter how badly such measures are needed, managers know that they will end up in a bitter fight, not only with elements of the public, but often with higher-ups in their own department and in the governor’s office, before such rules are adopted.

“Faced with that reality, state managers are often loath to propose harvest restrictions, and delay far too long, to the detriment of fish stocks, before putting them in place.”

Unfortunately, we may now be seeing just that scenario beginning to play out with respect to Louisiana’s proposed, and badly needed, speckled trout regulations, even though state regulators went to great pains to craft regulations that would both benefit the troubled stock and be acceptable to the majority of the state’s anglers.

Soon after the 2019 stock assessment revealed the depth of the problem, Louisiana crafted multiple sets of proposed regulations that were all calculated to reduce speckled trout fishing mortality by 20%, and released them to the public for comment.  Eight public meetings were held in 2020, which were attended by 670 people, 113 of which provided comment.  In addition, surveys regarding the proposed regulations were emailed to 10,940 randomly-selected anglers; the state sent two rounds of follow-up reminders in order to get the best possible response rate.  1,259 anglers, 13.9% of those to whom surveys were sent, responded.  The same survey was also posted on the state’s web page, which garnered 1, 549 responses.

As might be expected, anglers expressed a wide array of preferences, with some wanting no change at all.  But when anglers were asked whether they were concerned about the speckled trout’s coast-wide status, about 55% of them said that they were.  There was strong support for reducing the bag limit from 25 to 15 fish, an option not originally presented in the public meetings, but which was added to the surveys due to public support.  Over all, despite its absence from the choices first provided for the public meetings, angler comment favored a 15-fish bag and 13 ½-inch minimum size, with a 12-fish bag and 13-inch minimum in second place.

Louisiana repeated the angler outreach exercise in 2021, this time relying on 10,000 surveys sent to randomly-selected anglers, and an identical survey posted on the state website.  About 1,000 anglers, somewhat less than the year before, responded to the email survey, but the response to the web survey overwhelmed the 2020 response, with more than 4,000 anglers providing their views.  An analysis of the responses disclosed that

“many fishermen felt the seatrout stock had grown worse in recent years,”

and

“a majority from both surveys indicated they were moderately to extremely concerned for the spotted seatrout stock.”

When asked about specific management options, around 38% of 2021 respondents expressed something between slight and strong support for the status quo of 25 fish and a 12-inch minimum size; even so, close to 85% of all such respondents agreed to the state adopting new regulations.  Of all of the possible bag/size limit combinations, only two, the same 15-fish bag and 13 ½-inch minimum size that was favored the year before, and a new option that featured a 13-fish bag and 13- to 20-inch slot limit, with one fish over 20 inches, received strong support.

Based on that angler feedback, Louisiana fishery managers chose to put the combination of 15-fish bag and 13.5- (or possibly 13-) inch minimum out for public comment, believing that it would have the strongest support.

And, based on the prior scoping comments, maybe it does, but there is one big voice that doesn’t particularly like it, and that’s the Louisiana chapter of the Coastal Conservation Association.  In a position paper posted on its website, the organization wrote that

“CCA Louisiana believes that a reduction in the daily bag limit to 15 fish per angler is appropriate, and feels strongly that the minimum size of 12 inches should remain intact.  This should be part of a comprehensive plan to address issues within the ecosystem associated with speckled trout.  [emphasis in the original]”

That’s fine as far as it goes.  Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, and nothing requires CCA Louisiana to agree with the state’s proposal.

But when you start reading the rationale for the CCA position, things don’t really add up.

There is, of course, the obligatory, if questionable, statement that

“Recreational anglers have always been the primary stewards of our marine resources,”

which is quickly qualified by language saying that such stewardship is accomplished

“through funding, advocacy and demanding better science and management.”

Left unsaid is that the funding generally takes the form of state fishing license fees that anglers are required to pay, the advocacy generally takes the form of shutting down commercial fisheries for some species and instituting commercial net bans for others, and that the demands for “better science and management” generally involves demands for science and management measures that would increase recreational harvest, not fish abundance.

That might be a form of stewardship, but whether it represents good stewardship is very much in doubt.

And that trend continues in CCA Louisiana’s speckled trout position paper, where the organization states, presumably with a straight face,

“Based on our experience, changes in recreational regulations have rarely, if ever, resulted in a direct fishery recovery.”

My first thought on reading that was, “Did you ever hear of striped bass?”  But then I looked at the statement again, and realized that it was just another example of CCA weasel-wording a statement in order to mislead its readers.  The qualifier “Based on our experience” eliminates fishery recoveries that occur outside of Louisiana, and in that state, restrictions on anglers are historically rare.  And what is a “direct” fishery recovery, as opposed to an “indirect” recovery? 

We can only wonder.

But we also have to realize the CCA Louisiana had little choice but to dissemble.  Historically it, along with other CCA chapters, promoted an approach to fishery management that blamed the commercial fishing industry for any and all of a fishery's ills.  

If a stock is in bad shape, CCA characteristically ignores any recreational contribution to the problem, and instead tries to eliminate gill nets, or perhaps the entire commercial fishery.  I still recall being at a meeting at CCA’s national headquarters in Houston, talking about the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission’s twenty-year failure to rebuild the overfished tautog stock, when the only response I got was “Make it a gamefish!” and eliminate the commercial fishery, which was nonsensical, given that over 90% of tautog landings were, at that time, attributable to the recreational sector.

But the organization could not, and still cannot, publicly admit that the recreational sector can have a negative impact on fish populations.

That puts it in a bad position on Louisiana speckled trout given that, over the past decade, only 0.1% of all landings are attributable to the commercial sector.  Thus anglers are, as a practical matter, solely responsible for the stock being overfished.

But to an anglers’ rights group such as CCA, accepting responsibility for a fishery’s decline is a very, very, very, very bad thing to do.  It might lead to harvest restrictions.  Thus, in the absence of a commercial fishery that it can blame for the speckled trout’s problems, CCA Louisiana must argue that

“recreational changes cannot be the only remedy.  That will not fix the problem, as there are many other factors that impact speckled trout.  Some of those factors are difficult to manage like water conditions, weather, and other environmental issues.  However, some are able to be managed, and should absolutely be considered as part of the overall plan to the address the management [sic] of speckled trout, as well as other recreational stocks.  Some of those include:  1) Coastwide and regional forage reduction, 2) Marine habitat and reef degradation, 3) Bycatch, 4) Marine fisheries restocking programs, 5) Stock evaluation protocols and programs, 6) Ecosystem level management.  [emphasis in original, internal formatting omitted]”

It’s important to note that, of the six points listed, five have no direct relationship to the recreational fishery—again, the intention is to deflect the blame—while the sixth arguably acknowledges excessive recreational landings, but would remedy the issue with “Marine fisheries restocking programs” rather than with restrictions on anglers’ harvest.

And yet CCA Louisiana has the temerity to say that

“As conservationists, we can lead the way by supporting a creel limit of 15 fish while maintaining the 12-inch size limit,  [emphasis in original]”

while admitting immediately thereafter that

“Louisiana anglers harvest less than 2 trout per trip on average…we see a reduction from 25 fish to 15 fish as a reasonable move.”

In other words, the organization is willing to grudgingly accept a change in the bag limit that will have no meaningful impact on most fishing trips, but is very unwilling to accept an increase in the size limit that might actually reduce the average fisherman’s harvest.

That’s not exactly “conservationists…lead[ing] the way…”

CCA Louisiana tries to justify its opposition to a larger size limit by suggesting that there might be an

“impact on female trout if a shift to a larger minimum size adjustment occurs,  [emphasis in original]”

but the science isn’t in accord with such concerns.  While female speckled trout do grow larger, and grow more quickly, than males, a Louisiana fishery manager noted, at the August 6, 2020 meeting of the Louisiana Wildlife and Fisheries Commission, that increasing the size limit from 12 to 14 inches would only increase the harvest of female trout by 3%.  That’s hardly a significant increase when compared to the 20% decrease in overall harvest provided by the proposed regulations.

In fact, it is the current regulations, which permit the harvest of 12-inch fish, may place a disproportionate burden on females.  The minutes of the November 4, 2021 Wildlife and Fisheries Commission meeting reveal that

“the Commissioner asked how old was a 12-inch fish and he was told that it varied, but typically an age 1 female could be 6-13 inches and a 1 year old male could be 5-11 inches with the majority of the harvest being females.  Commissioner McPherson then stated that the 1 year old males (11-11 ½”) were being thrown back but the females (12” or more) were being taken out and Mr. Adriance [the state fishery manager] felt that was a fair statement.  [emphasis added]”

So it appears that CCA Louisiana’s concerns about a larger size limit adversely impacting female speckled trout are misplaced.  That is, if such concerns exist at all, and aren’t merely being presented as a smokescreen, to avoid meaningful harvest restrictions.

The simple fact is that Louisiana’s speckled trout are overfished, and harvest needs to be reduced.  And because recreational fishermen are responsible for 99.9% of that harvest, regulations likely to achieve a meaningful reduction—a 20% reduction—in recreational landings must be imposed.

That doesn’t mean that recreational fishermen are responsible for the entire decline in the speckled trout stock.  The Louisiana marshes are shrinking, and it is entirely possible that environmental conditions are reducing the productivity of the speckled trout stock.  One can argue that any decline in trout abundance isn’t entirely the recreational anglers’ fault.

But fishery management isn’t about fault.

Whether a stock becomes overfished simply because removals have become too high, or whether changing environmental conditions also play a role, the remedy remains the same; landings must be reduced to a level that the stock, under existing environmental conditions, can sustain in the long term. 

And in the case of speckled trout, that means an increased size limit, along with a reduced bag.

That’s something that any “primary steward of our marine resources” ought to easily understand.

 

 

 

RED SNAPPER MANAGEMENT JUST GOT MORE COMPLICATED

 

Red snapper has long been one of the more contentious  issues in United States fisheries management.

In the Gulf of Mexico, an expanding red snapper population has attracted more anglers to the fishery, leading to chronic recreational overharvest, the threat of significant paybacks in some states, and militant industry and anglers’ rights organizations which seem willing to overthrow the federal fishery management system in order to put a few more dead fish on the dock.

In the South Atlantic, the population is also expanding, but is still at such a low level of abundance that bycatch in other fisheries is coming dangerously close to causing overfishing, so that the directed red snapper fishery, both recreational and commercial, has been nearly shut down.  Again, controversy prevails.

While anglers, commercial fishermen, for-hire operators, conservation advocates, and fishery managers have often been in stark disagreement about the size of red snapper stocks and how they ought to be managed, they were more or less in agreement on at least one thing:  There are two stocks of red snapper, one in the South Atlantic, one in the Gulf of Mexico.

Now, research recently presented to the South Atlantic Fishery Management Council has blurred that line, and strongly suggests that some red snapper spawned in the western Gulf of Mexico end up in South Atlantic waters, and enhance the South Atlantic population.

The presentation was based on work done by Dr. Mandy Karnauskas, et al, and presented in a paper titled “Source-sink recruitment of red snapper:  Connectivity between the Gulf of Mexico and Atlantic Ocean,” which was published in the journal Fisheries Oceanography earlier this year.  (As the paper explains, “source-sink” recruitment occurs when “recruitment of the sink population (or stock) is subsidized by larvae from the source population;” in this case, the Gulf stock of red snapper is subsidizing the South Atlantic stock.)

The researchers began with known red snapper spawning areas in the western Gulf of Mexico, and then applied models that predicted how particles (i.e., red snapper eggs and larvae) would be transported in the water column during the 26 to 30 days that pass between time when the eggs are produced and the time when the larvae settle onto the bottom.  By doing so, they determined that red snapper spawned in the Gulf of Mexico make a significant contribution to the South Atlantic stock, with the precise contribution differing from year to year.

As a result, as the abstract of the paper notes,

“effective management of the Gulf of Mexico red snapper stock, particularly the spawning population in southwest Florida, may have important consequences for the sustainable harvest of red snapper off the Atlantic coast.”

That adds another dimension to red snapper management, both in the Gulf and in the Atlantic.

In the Gulf, it means that managers can’t only be concerned with maintaining Gulf red snapper numbers.  

Right now, Gulf of Mexico red snapper—at least, those in United States waters—are managed as a single stock, whether those fish are located off Galveston, Texas or Destin, Florida.  The current goal of the fishery management plan is to increase spawning stock biomass until the spawning potential of the stock equals 26% of the spawning potential of an unfished population (26% spawning potential ratio, or “SPR”).

But if red snapper spawned in a particular part of the Gulf are also needed to bolster the stock in the South Atlantic region, then managing the entire Gulf under the same set of regulations might not produce the best possible results.  While the current targeted level of removals might make sense for red snapper caught off Texas or Louisiana—and probably off Mississippi and Alabama, too—because those fish spawn too far west to make an appreciable contribution to the South Atlantic stock, Florida red snapper may be an entirely different issue.

The study recently presented to the South Atlantic Council’s Scientific and Statistical Committee advised that larvae from red snapper that spawn on the West Florida Shelf, which is located offshore, south of Tampa Bay, makes a significant contribution to the South Atlantic stock, and may provide as much as one-third of the recruitment to that stock in some years.  In the recent past, severe overfishing had badly depleted the number of red snapper that populated, and spawned on, the West Florida Shelf, but as the overall Gulf of Mexico stock has rebuilt, the West Florida Shelf has become largely repopulated as well, a circumstance that has probably benefited red snapper in the South Atlantic region.

But given the importance of that area to the South Atlantic red snapper, and the lesser but still real contributions to the South Atlantic stock made by areas both north and south of the West Florida Shelf, does it make sense to keep managing Gulf of Mexico red snapper as a single stock?  

While all Gulf of Mexico red snapper are spawned somewhere within the Gulf (although larvae may be transported some distance from where they were spawned, while other populations are supported largely by local spawning), does the fact that many snapper spawned off the West Coast of Florida end up in the South Atlantic justify managing red snapper from Florida’s portion of the Gulf more conservatively than those caught off other Gulf states, because of their potential contribution to the South Atlantic stock?

And if the answer to that question is yes, then managers need to figure out just how to do so.

Then, there is the question of red snapper that spawn in the South Atlantic.

It appears that many of the red snapper off eastern Florida were spawned locally; the models disagree on whether the greater proportion of the snapper off Georgia and South Carolina are probably also of eastern Florida origin, or whether they were spawned locally, too.  The models seemed to suggest that red snapper spawning off North Carolina was strong enough to justify calling the area a spawning “hotspot,” although some of the models also suggested that larvae from eastern Florida, and perhaps even from the Gulf of Mexico, were settling off North Carolina in substantial numbers.

Given the significant percentage of South Atlantic red snapper recruitment that is attributable to fish spawned in the Gulf—somewhere between 11.0% and 34.5% of recruitment in any given year, depending on the ratio of egg production off western Florida compared to egg production in the Atlantic—can the South Atlantic stock be managed to a somewhat lower spawning potential ratio, given that some percentage of its recruitment comes from the Gulf, and is not affected by the South Atlantic stock’s SPR?

Or might the opposite be the case:  Because the South Atlantic stock is currently being subsidized by Gulf recruitment, should the target SPR of the South Atlantic red snapper be higher than it currently is, so that the stock might continue to support itself should the Gulf stock experience unforeseen recruitment issues?

Those are things for the biologists to decide.

Right now, the published study advises

“Our simulation results characterize the primary source and sink locations of red snapper recruits in the Eastern Gulf and Atlantic and can guide future monitoring of key areas of spawning stock biomass as well as likely areas of settlement to develop recruitment indices.  In the Atlantic, there is essentially no published information documenting the occurrence, distribution, and habitat preferences of red snapper juveniles.  Identifying red snapper probably settlement locations, as done here, is a critical first step toward developing surveys to generate recruitment indices, which could subsequently be incorporated into stock assessments.  Probably source populations in the Gulf have only recently been studied, and source-sink dynamics in the Atlantic were previously unstudied.  From a stock assessment perspective, substantial input of recruits from an external population would complicate detection of any spawner-recruit relationship…

“Our results also have implications for red snapper management, both among jurisdictions and within.  Given that productivity of the Atlantic stock seems to be significantly impacted by dynamics of recovery and exploitation in the southern extent of the West Florida Shelf, more insights into these patterns could improve management advice.  Recent research initiatives with improved monitoring in these areas may lead to additional insights into patterns of abundance and may improve predictions of recruitment subsidies in the region.  In the Atlantic, the center of biomass off the coast of Florida may be relatively robust to localized depletion, so long as it is subsidized by recruits from Southwest Florida.  The compact area of high red snapper biomass off the coast of North Carolina may be even less susceptible to localized depletion as it appears to be only a sink location; it receives substantial input from both East and West Florida centers of red snapper abundance…  [internal references omitted]”

Thus, the recently released study has opened the door on a new line of inquiry for red snapper managers.  By providing insights into the contribution of Gulf-spawned red snapper to the South Atlantic population, it has provided a foundation for additional research into the relationship between red snapper in the Gulf and the Atlantic, into new approaches to red snapper management, and into other areas germane to the health of the red snapper stocks.

At this point, there’s no way to be sure where such inquiries will lead.  Yet one thing seems certain—while red snapper management has never been easy, the new study will probably lead to a more complex, more nuanced sort of management, a sort never imagined by spokesmen for the anglers’ rights crowd, who mostly bang on the tables while seeking to take home more fish.

 

 

 

 

 

 

MARINE PROTECTED AREAS CAN BENEFIT TUNA, BUT...

 

Anyone who has followed this blog for a while probably knows that I’m a skeptic when it comes to the worth of no-take marine protected areas. 

While I believe that time and area closures, gear restrictions, and similar measures can be effective fishery management tools, I also believe that management measures should be crafted to address specific and clearly defined problems.  Prohibiting all bottom fishing over a particular set of banks, ledges, or reefs, in order to protect spawning aggregations of grouper, for example, could be an entirely reasonable management measure.  Shutting down all fishing in such a place, including trolling for billfish, dolphin, and tuna 300 feet above such protected bottom, in the surface layers where grouper never go, is unacceptable management overreach.

I’m particularly critical of such indiscriminate closures when they prohibit angling for highly migratory species in a small geographic area that such fish might transit in the course of a day, if not a few hours; such ephemeral protections provide no real protection to pelagic fish, but could work real hardship on anglers if they shut down readily accessible fishing grounds, and make it a practical impossibility for fishermen to target their chosen species without embarking on long trips or shifting their boats to ports farther from home.

Even a week ago, I would have said that no-take marine protected areas have no place at all in highly migratory species management, but a recently released scientific study shows that is not true—although the area studied differs substantially from the typical MPA.

It’s nice to know that my skepticism was shared by many in the scientific community; the paper that describes the study, “Spillover benefits from the world’s largest fully protected MPA,” which appeared in the journal Science on October 20, admits in its abstract that

“Previous work had cast doubt on the potential for marine protected areas (MPAs) to provide refuge and fishery spillover benefits for migratory species as most MPAs are small relative to the geographic range of such species.”

But it turns out that if the MPA is large enough, such benefits can occur.  Dr. Sarah Medoff of the University of Hawaii, an author of the paper, expressed surprise at her study’s findings, saying,

“I think the common perception of no-fishing zones is that they really are only going to benefit less mobile species, like corals or lobsters…And so when we found that there was this positive benefit for bigeye and yellowfin, that was completely shocking to us.”

The study focused on yellowfin and bigeye tuna, and the protections and benefits provided by the Papahanaumokuakea (formerly, the Northwest Hawaiian Islands) Marine National Monument, which is located, as its name suggests, northwest of the eight larger islands that most people probably think of when they hear the name “Hawaii.”  The national monument encompasses 583,000 square miles, an area nearly four times the size of the State of California, and is the world’s largest no-take marine protected area.

The marine national monument was only about one-quarter of its current size when President George W. Bush created it in 2006; it was expanded to its current boundaries in 2016 by President Barak Obama.  That expansion turned out to be the key to the recently-released study.

The researchers conducted the study by examining records maintained by the National Marine Fisheries Service, which recorded the catch of tuna longliners that fished within 600 nautical miles of the marine monument during the years 2010 through 2019.  It turned out that after the monument was expanded in 2016, catch rates increased substantially.

The catch rate of yellowfin tuna by vessels fishing outside the Papahanaumokuakea monument increased by 54% between 2016 and 2019, with the greatest increases seen by boats setting their lines between 100 and 200 nautical miles from its borders.  The catch rate of bigeye tuna increased by a much smaller but still significant 12%.  A similar increase was not observed in the catch rates of vessels fishing outside the original borders of the marine monument during the years 2010 through 2016, suggesting that the improved catch rates were a direct result of the monument’s expansion.

An interesting sidenote to the findings was that the monument wasn’t created to benefit the yellowfin or bigeye tuna stocks.  As researcher Dr. John Lynham of the University of Hawaii noted,

“It’s important to point out that this protected area was not created with the intent of protecting tuna…This fish benefit was a happy accident of the initial intent, which was to protect biodiversity and culturally important areas.””

As to why the tuna benefitted from the marine monument, another of the paper’s authors, Dr. Jennifer Raynor of the University of Wisconsin, suggested a pair of possible explanations:

“The protected area could be doing one of two things.  The first is that these iconic fish populations are increasing because the areas provide nurseries for baby fish, and some of them are spilling over into nearby areas.  A second reason may be that fish are just finding a safe place to aggregate, near the protected area, where they can’t be caught.”

Luck may also have played a role, something Dr. Raynor admits.  While the marine monument wasn’t intended to benefit tuna, it just so happened that its shape conforms to the east-west pattern of tuna movements.  Yet, accident or not, the Papahanaumokuakea monument has proven to be a boon to both the tuna and Hawaii’s tuna longline fleet.  There is now little question that a no-take marine protected area can, if large enough and properly oriented, benefit tuna populations.

Having said that, there is still the need to keep the study’s conclusions in context.

The Pacific Ocean is a huge expanse of water, and the scene of much recent volcanic activity; much of it is dotted with volcanic islands that rise from the deep ocean floor, with banks and seamounts that mark the location of ancient islands that have since been eroded away by the sea, and with atolls where the remains of ancient volcanoes have not yet completely surrendered to the waves.  It is a place where a national monument 1,350 nautical miles long can comfortably fit amid the islands and the emptiness, and leave more than enough room for fishermen to ply their trade.

The Atlantic Ocean is a narrower sea, and one far less amenable to such large-scale closures.  The distance between the northernmost point on the Maine coast and the southernmost tip of mainland Florida is less than 1,600 miles; a no-take MPA the size of Papahanaumokuakea would, in a north/south orientation, run almost the entire length of the U.S. East Coast.  Yet there is no evidence to suggest that anything significantly smaller would provide meaningful benefits, either to highly migratory tuna stocks or to the fishermen who pursue them.

Despite that, there are reasons to worry that various marine conservation groups still seek to create much smaller, ineffective no-take MPAs along the Atlantic coast.

The concerns arose with the 30x30 movement, an international effort to protect 30% of the Earth’s lands and waters by the year 2030.  On its face, the movement is innocuous and, in all honesty, probably a good idea.  In the United States, the concept was embodied in an executive order issued by President Joseph Biden on January 27, 2021, and later in a multi-agency report titled “Conserving and Restoring America the Beautiful,” which was a balanced and well-reasoned document, but also contained the observation that

“Ocean stakeholders also noted that many of the nation’s marine protected areas are located in the Western Pacific.”

The implication of such comment is clear; some “ocean stakeholders” are eager to see marine protected areas created in other regions, as well.  That intention was confirmed in a letter dated October 7, 2021, which was signed by 44 marine scientists and addressed to the Secretary of Commerce, the Secretary of the Interior, and other leading environmental officials.  Such letter broadly supported 30x30 and, in that context, the creation of additional no-take MPAs, saying

“We must take bold steps to halt and reverse the trajectory of the threats to our ocean and communities—now.  Marine protected areas (MPAs) represent a powerful tool to do so.  Below, we offer recommendations to leverage marine protected areas to achieve the bold, inclusive vision laid out in America the Beautiful for oceans and coasts….

“…MPAs are ocean areas set aside primarily for the long-term conservation of nature, and provide associated benefits to people such as enhanced fish stocks and cultural ecosystem services like mental and physical health, sense of place, and identity formation.  They remove direct human pressures, protecting undisturbed areas and allowing disturbed areas to recover.  Importantly, research has shown that fully-protected MPAs (where all abatable destructive or extractive activities are removed) and highly protected MPAs (where only light destructive or extractive activities with low impact are allowed) are more effective than lightly or minimally protected areas at restoring and preserving biodiversity and enhancing ecosystem resilience in the face of climate change…

“…MPAs currently cover 26% of U.S. federal and state waters, including inland bays and estuaries.  However, 99% of these protections are in the remote Pacific, leaving most of the coastal communities of the continental US and US Caribbean without access to MPAs and leaving those ecosystems and habitats vulnerable to overexploitation, degradation and destruction..

“Because highly to fully protected areas are the most effective type of MPA for delivering the goals of America the Beautiful, we recommend the Administration work to establish more of these effective conservation measures in U.S. waters…”

Thus, with respect to tuna, it seems that we have almost come full circle.  In the past, the prevailing belief was that marine protected areas were of little benefit to such highly migratory species, but recent research indicates that, if an MPA is large enough, and properly sited, it can benefit both tuna stocks and tuna fishermen.  However, as the Papahanaumokuakea-related longline data collected prior to 2016 shows, such benefits are not provided by smaller MPAs.

Yet MPAs advocates still call for the creation of fully-protected MPAs, in which fishing for all species, including tunas, would be prohibited, in areas such as the US Caribbean and the Gulf and Atlantic coasts, even though such waters lack the vast expanses that would permit the creation of MPAs large enough to benefit highly migratory species while still offering adequate fishing opportunities in unprotected waters.

Such arbitrary closures make no sense.

If very large and well-sited MPAs can provide real benefits to the tuna and tuna fishermen of the Pacific Ocean, then such existing MPAs should be maintained, and the creation of new protected areas considered.  But, where the creation of such vast closed areas is not a practical option, the notion of fully-protected ocean areas should be abandoned in favor of more directed restrictions that address the problems at hand.

 

 

 

 

 

STRIPED BASS: ANOTHER POOR SPAWN IN MARYLAND

 

Earlier this week, Maryland released the 2022 striped bass juvenile abundance index, and the news is not good.  This year’s JAI was 3.6, well below the long-term average of 11.3; it marked the fourth year in a row when the index did not rise above 4.0, something that has never before happened in a time series stretching all the way back to 1957.

The Maryland JAI represents the average number of juvenile striped bass caught in a series of samples taken throughout the summer.  All samples are taken with a 100-foot-long, hand-operated beach seine, deployed at 22 established sampling points in the upper Chesapeake Bay, and on the Potomac, Choptank, and Nanticoke rivers.  Each site is sampled three times during the summer, and two sweeps of the seine are made at each site during each sampling session.

Since the time series began in 1957, the annual index reached a high of 59.39 in 1996, and a low of 0.89 in 2012.  Typically, the index fluctuates widely from year to year with no apparent pattern.  The record high index of 59.39 was bracketed by slightly below-average years, when the indices only reached 9.27 and 7.98; the record low index of 0.89 was preceded by the highest JAI in the past 20 years, 34.58 in 2011.  In that context, it is somewhat disconcerting that the index has been stalled in a low and very narrow range, between 2.48 and 3.60, since 2019.

The four-year average for 2019-2022, 3.16, ties the lowest average for any 4-year period in the entire 65-year time series; the previous low occurred during the years 1983-1986, when the stock was just beginning to recover from its collapse in the late 1970s and early 1980s.

The question on many anglers’ minds is what the continued poor recruitment might mean for the recovery of the overfished stock, and on future regulations.

The answer to that question isn’t clear.

The first thing to remember is that striped bass recruitment isn’t dependent on the size of the spawning stock biomass.  There is no clear stock/recruitment relationship; the scientists who performed the last benchmark stock assessment set the “steepness” variable at 1, which implies that there is no stock/recruitment relationship at all.  A very small spawning stock biomass can produce a very large year class; a very large spawning stock can and has produced disappointlingly low JAIs.

Instead, striped bass recruitment seems to be driven largely by environmental conditions in the spawning rivers.  When the winter has been cold and wet, and spring comes late, there is a very good chance that a large year class will emerge.  Under such conditions, more nutrients are washed into the spawning rivers, feeding blooms of zooplankton large enough to sustain unusually strong numbers of juvenile bass.  Warm, dry winters paired with early springs minimize nutrient runoff, and what runoff occurs enters the rivers too early in the year to benefit the newly-spawned fish.

Thus, fishery management is less a matter of keeping the spawning stock biomass large enough to assure a healthy spawn, and more about making sure that the population retains enough older, larger females to be able to take advantage of favorable spawning conditions when they finally recur, even if it might take many years for such conditions to come about.  

In a paper published more than 20 years ago, “Spawning in the nick of time?  Effect of adult demographics on spawning behavior and recruitment in Chesapeake Bay striped bass,” Dr. David H. Secor argued that

“Through a moratorium on Maryland State harvests in the Chesapeake Bay, the 1982 year-class was effectively protected and became a dominant one.  Ironically, most egg production in 1982 was attributable to striped bass >10 years of age.  Old remnant females produced during the 1960s were a hedge against a long period of recruitment overfishing which occurred during the 1970s.  [citation omitted]”

In the same paper, Dr. Secor noted the advantage of having a well-stratified spawning stock, which includes both young and old females, because striped bass of different ages enter the rivers at different times, with the older, larger fish entering sooner.  Such a reproductive strategy makes it more likely that, even in years when environmental conditions are not generally favorable, some portion of the spawning stock will enter the rivers during a time when conditions are relatively good, and thus prevent a spawning failure.

The current 28- to 35-inch recreational slot limit, which protects older, larger fish, would seem fairly well suited to supporting such a reproductive strategy, although commercial fisheries in a number of states may still harvest older, larger striped bass, and Maryland’s spring “trophy” season allows the continued landing of even the largest females—fish that may not be retained by anglers anywhere else—in the heart of the Chesapeake Bay. 

The recently adopted Amendment 7 to the Interstate Fishery Management Plan for Atlantic Striped Bass also includes provisions intended to address periods of low recruitment.  It provides,

“If any of the four JAIs used in the stock assessment model to estimate recruitment (NY, NJ, MD, VA) shows an index value that is below 75% of all values (i.e., below the 25^th percentile) in the respective JAI from 1992-2006 (which represents a period of high recruitment…) for three consecutive years, than an interim [fishing mortality] target and interim [fishing mortality] threshold calculated using the low recruitment assumption will be implemented, and the [fishing mortality]-based management triggers…will be reevaluated using those interim reference points.  If [a fishing mortality]-based trigger is tripped upon reevaluation, the striped bass management program must be adjusted to reduce [fishing mortality] to the interim [fishing mortality] target within one year.

“The lower interim [fishing mortality] reference points will remain in place at least until the next stock assessment update or benchmark assessment is approved for management use.  Upon reviewing the results from the next assessment, the Board will determine which [fishing mortality] rate (target or interim target) to manage towards moving forward by considering factors such as current stock status, recent JAI data, and [Technical Committee] input.”

That all sounds fairly straightforward, but putting it into practice may not be all that simple.

The “low recruitment assumption” is based on Age-1 recruitment for the years 2008-2017 which, because survival of Age-0 fish can vary from year to year, doesn’t necessarily correspond to the annual JAIs (e.g., the 2011 Maryland year class was the highest in the last 20 years, yet its Age-1 recruitment was significantly less than that of the 2015 year class, which had a JAI roughly two-thirds the size of the 2011).  However, if we just look at the JAIs in order to more easily accommodate the recent Maryland indices, the average JAI for the years 2007-2016 was 10.9, not too far below the long-term average.

Thus, the average Maryland JAI for the years used to calculate the “low recruitment assumption” was more than triple the average JAI for the past four years.  If we extend the recent JAI out a little farther—say, out 6 and 8 years, to capture fish maturing into the spawning stock—things get a little better, with the average JAI for the past six years being 6.77 and the average for the most recent eight years being 8.38.  Still, even such 6- and 8-year averages fall below the average JAI for the years used to determine the low recruitment scenario, which suggests that the interim fishing mortality reference points used in the low recruitment assumption might not be low enough to capture what is actually happening with the striped bass stock (although the lower Year-1 recruitment of the 2011 year class may at least partially offset the higher average JAI for the low recruitment base years).

Then there is the question of setting interim reference points.

In August, the Management Board was advised that the Maryland JAI for 2019, 2020, and 2021 tripped the new recruitment trigger, but took no action to set interim fishing mortality reference points, perhaps because many Board members assumed that new management measures would be required pursuant to a rebuilding plan.  However, even if the Management Board had initiated action on interim reference points, the release and likely acceptance of a stock assessment update at the Board’s November meeting would relieve the Management Board of its absolute obligation to adopt such interim reference points, although it must still determine whether such interim reference points are needed.

The new Maryland JAI numbers would seem to trip the recruitment trigger again, and start the clock running on a new requirement to adopt interim reference points, but with a benchmark stock assessment scheduled for next fall, that requirement, too, will seemingly not survive long enough for any interim reference points to be put into effect, although the Board could set interim reference points if it felt that doing so would best benefit the stock.

As far as rebuilding goes, if the opinions expressed atrecent Technical Committee meetings hold, the striped bass stock has a goodchance of attaining its target level by the 2029 deadline.  That view incorporates a low recruitment assumption (although that assumption is still based on a recruitment level higher than what we’ve seen in the most recent years).  Most of the recent low JAIs have been incorporated into that projection.  

Because it takes striped bass a while to mature, the great majority of the fish spawned after this year will not enter the spawning stock until after 2029, making future recruitment irrelevant to rebuilding, although such recruitment will be very relevant to maintaining the stock at the target level.

Thus, whether or not the stock rebuilds by 2029 will not be determined by the 2022 JAI.

Even if the stock rebuilds by the 2029 deadline, continued low recruitment could threaten the long-term health of the striped bass resource.  Until the Maryland JAI returns to more typical levels, conservative management will be required to prevent an eventual decline in abundance.  

Although we can hope that the Management Board will be willing to maintain a conservative management regime until recruitment rebounds, whether it will actually do so remains an open question.