STRIPED BASS: THEY RELEASE FISH IN THE CHESAPEAKE, TOO

As the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission’s Atlantic Striped Bass Management Board begins its first unsteady steps toward a new amendment to the striped bass management plan, anglers can only hope that it bases such amendment on science and statistically-demonstrable facts, and not on instincts, opinion and political considerations.

The recently-released report of the Work Group tasked with identifying issues to be addressed in the amendment provided little comfort in that regard, seeming to focus more on bureaucratic and political conveniences such as “management stability” and “flexibility” rather than on the long-term health of the stock. 

It is particularly troubling that the Work Group report seemed, in at least once case, to present unverified assertions and mere opinions as fact, and used such non-facts as one building block of its recommendations to the Management Board.  I’m specifically referring to the comment that

“The [Work Group] has acknowledged that angler behavior varies significantly on both a local and regional level.  In some parts of New England, many fish are released, while in Chesapeake Bay, anglers often wish to keep their allowable catch.”

After hearing Maryland’s Michael Luisi—who, perhaps not coincidentally, was a member of the Work Group that produced the report--repeatedly attempt to undercut conservation efforts by allowing a bigger kill in the Chesapeake Bay, and argue for reducing the female spawning stock biomass target and so permanently reduce the size of the Atlantic striped bass population, it’s easy to believe that such assertion is true.

But is that really the case?  Do the numbers actually support a philosophical divide between New England and Chesapeake Bay anglers with respect to catch and release?

I decided to take a look at the data and to see what it might tell us. 

In order to focus on current angler behavior, under a set of regulations that was more-or-less consistent along the entire coast and throughout the entire time series, I looked at data for every state between Maine and North Carolina for the five years beginning in 2015 and ending in 2019—the span of time when recreational striped bass regulations were governed by Addendum IV to Amendment 6 to the Atlantic Striped Bass Interstate Management Plan, when coastal anglers (except in a few “conservation equivalent” states) were subject to a 1-fish bag and 28-inch minimum size, while anglers in the Chesapeake Bay fished under regulations that were supposed to reduce their fishing mortality by 20.5 percent, when compared to 2012, but actually allowed such mortality to increase to more than `150 percent of what it was in that base year.

The data revealed that the Work Group’s assumption was false.  

While the highest catch and release rates did generally occur in New England, Maryland’s overall release rate for the five-year time period hovered just a few percentage points below the coastwide average, while that of Virginia anglers, who also fish in the Chesapeake Bay, very slightly exceeded that average.  The lowest release rate occurred not in the Chesapeake Bay, but right in the center of the striped bass’ rang, in the State of New Jersey, which the Management Board favored with regulations that facilitated such higher striped bass kill.

For the period 2015-2019, striped bass anglers released about 92 percent of the fish that they caught.  Only three states had anglers who released a lower proportion of their catch, New York (89 percent), Maryland (89 percent) and New Jersey (81 percent).  Given the imprecision inherent in state-level catch, harvest, and release estimates, it’s safe to say that, in every state but New Jersey—but including the Chesapeake Bay jurisdictions—striped bass anglers release about 90 percent of all fish that they catch.

Thus, contrary to the assertions made by some Management Board members at the Board’s August meeting, the recreational striped bass fishery can realistically be considered—and managed as—primarily a release fishery, in which high abundance and ready access to fish are paramount, rather than as a meat fishery, in which lower abundance and less access is a reasonable tradeoff to gain a higher level of landings.

It also means that, in terms of catch and release, there is less of a north/south difference in catch and release than people seem to think.  While New England does have higher catch and release rates than the rest of the coast, ranging from nearly 99 percent in Maine down to 95 percent in Massachusetts, the states with the highest total recreational striped bass catch over the five-year period, Maryland (50 million fish), Massachusetts (36 million fish) and New York (21 million fish) all have release rates in a broadly similar ballpark, 89 percent, 95 percent, and 89 percent, respectively.

That pretty much throws the notion that Chesapeake Bay anglers want to harvest more fish out of the window, particularly when one realizes that the Chesapeake Bay anglers were generally fishing on a two-fish bag limit, rather than the single fish bag that applied to Massachusetts and New York.  Such bag would mean that Maryland anglers could, if they had wanted to, retain a higher percentage of their catch than anglers in New York and Massachusetts.

But the similarity between the release percentage in Maryland and the release percentage in New York suggests that they didn’t want to.  And the Virginia release percentage for the five years in question, 92 percent, just about equal to the average coastal release rate, seems to further discredit the claim that “in Chesapeake Bay, anglers often wish to keep their allowable catch.”

After all, a large part of Virginia’s coastline, and a large part of its striped bass catch, falls within the bounds of the Chesapeake Bay.

However, where we do see some big differences in the harvest to release ratio is between the for-hire and other sectors.  In most states, the for-hire sector is much more harvest-oriented than other anglers. 

Over-all, for-hire boats released just 69 percent of the bass that their anglers caught, which was 23 percentage points lower than the release rate for anglers as a whole.

Once again, there was no clear distinction between the New England and the Chesapeake Bay states.

Maine led all of the states in the proportion of fish released, with its for-hire boats returning more than 97 percent of their fish to the water (technically, Delaware for-hires actually earned first place, releasing 100 percent of the fish that their clients caught; however, because that state’s for hire boats only caught about 500 bass during the entire 5-year period, they were not included in the standings).  New Hampshire for-hires came in right after Maine, releasing nearly 95 percent of their striped bass.

But after that, the percentage of fish released by New England for-hires falls off fairly quickly, with Rhode Island boats releasing only 47 percent of the bass caught, a low for the entire coast.  New Jersey had the second-lowest for-hire release rate, 59 percent, followed by Maryland and New York, at 62 and 66 percent, respectively.  Virginia, Maryland’s partner in the Chesapeake Bay recreational fishery, saw its for-hires release 80 percent of their bass, placing them well above the coastwide average.

It’s also worth looking at is how the effort is spread across the sectors.  

Generally, the for-hire sector makes up an extremely small percentage of the total recreational trips taken, accounting for fewer than 2 percent of all targeted striped bass trips coastwide, yet it consistently takes far more than 2 percent of the fish landed.  

When we again look at the three states with the largest recreational striped bass catch, we find for-hire trips comprising about 1.5 percent of the recreational effort in Massachusetts, 4.5 percent in Maryland, and a little over 2 percent in New York.  However, because the for-hire’s release rate is so low, that sector accounted for about 9.5 percent of the harvest in Massachusetts and New York, and over 15 percent in Maryland.

 So yes, some people in the Chesapeake Bay may want to keep the fish that they catch, but those people seem to be disproportionately represented in the for-hire fleet.  When for-hires are removed from the equation, the release rate of Maryland’s shorebound and private boat anglers, who account for more than 95 percent of all striped bass trips taken in that state, is slightly above 90 percent.

Looking at the hard numbers, it’s easy to refulte the claim that Chesapeake Bay anglers are significantly more likely to kill their fish than are anglers farther north.  

If any pattern emerges at all, it is that the State of New Jersey, releases a lower proportion of fish than do anglers either to the north or south of that state.

But that's hardly surprising, given that New Jersey regularly finds ways to finagle supposedly “conservation equivalent” regulations out of the Management Board, in odrder to allow its anglers to land more fish than their counterparts elsewhere on the coast. When a state’s policy is designed to facilitate landings, rather than encourage conservation, it's not hard to understand why such state will have the lowest release rate on the coast.

But, New Jersey aside, anglers' tendency to catch and release their bass is evident everywhere else, from Massachusetts (95 percent) and Rhode Island (96 percent) in the north to Virginia (92 percent, including the Chesapeake Bay) and North Carolina (96 percent) in the south. 

In between there are some outliers, but no clear regional trends.

Despite some language in the Work Group report, and some comments made by particularly fish-hungry members of the Management Board, throughout its range, the striped bass is a fish that supports a largely recreational, largely catch-and-release, and overwhelmingly surf/private boat fishery.

As such, it should be managed conservatively, for a stable and abundant stock, and not for the highest sustainable harvest.

Managing for landings instead of abundance would place the short-term economic interests of a handful of stakeholders ahead of the long-term interests not only of the vast majority of stakeholders, but of the striped bass itself.

That’s just the wrong thing to do.

SALTWATER FISHERIES MANAGERS IGNORE THE BENEFITS OF CATCH AND RELEASE

An operational stock assessment, released in August 2019 (Bluefish Assessment) advised that bluefish are overfished.

 

In response, the Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council (Council), in conjunction with the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission’s (ASMFC) Bluefish Management Board (Bluefish Board), is preparing a Bluefish Allocation and Rebuilding Amendment (Rebuilding Amendment). Pursuant to the provisions of the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act, that amendment must be implemented by the fall of 2021, and must rebuild the bluefish stock to its biomass target within ten years after implementation.

 

East Coast anglers had noticed a decline in the number of bluefish over the past few years, but many were still surprised by the Bluefish Assessment’s conclusions, as recreational fishermen account for most of the bluefish landings, and anglers release about two-thirds of the bluefish that they catch.

 

Yet one of the curious features of the bluefish management plan is that anglers are effectively penalized for releasing fish.

In most fisheries, anglers release all or part of their catch in order to help conserve heavily fished species, and maintain or even increase abundance. But in the current bluefish management plan, if anglers don’t harvest their entire quota, the Council and Bluefish Board may agree to transfer that unharvested quota to the commercial sector.

 

Thus, in the bluefish fishery, catch-and-release doesn’t accomplish its intended goal; fish released by anglers don’t necessarily lead to increased abundance, but merely to a larger commercial kill.

Many anglers had hoped that the Rebuilding Amendment might change that strange situation. They argued that a fishery dominated by recreational fishermen, who released the greater share of their catch, should be managed for abundance, and not for yield. That argument appears to have fallen on deaf ears. When the Council and Bluefish Board met on May 6, 2020 to consider options that should appear in the Rebuilding Amendment, they did not include an option that would end the transfer of recreational quota to the commercial sector.

 

The only consideration they gave to the release fishery came in the form of an option that would allocate bluefish based on catch, rather than on landings, but even that concession was illusory. The option defines “catch” as a combination of landings and dead discards, which amount to about 15 percent of all releases, but omits all bluefish that anglers catch which subsequently survive release. Even if the option is adopted, and anglers receive a larger share of the overall quota, the end result will remain the same, for unless anglers kill their entire allocation, unharvested bluefish quota may still be transferred to the commercial sector.

The Council and Bluefish Board never seemed to acknowledge, or even accept, the value of the catch and release fishery, even though such fishery provides real recreational and economic benefits. By reducing the number of fish killed on any given trip, anglers can spend more time on the water, without overfishing the stock. And the more time anglers stay on the water, the more money they’ll spend on fishing.

Saltwater fishery managers just seem oblivious to such benefits. They focus solely on harvest, and maximizing each year’s yield.

In freshwater, things are very different.

The rivers that flow through New York’s Catskill Mountains are some of the most revered trout streams in the world. They receive heavy angling pressure. And in many portions of them, catch and release is the rule, and anglers aren’t allowed to keep any fish at all. In other places, harvest is permitted, but discouraged by both anglers and fishery managers.

A sign on the Delaware River expresses the prevailing attitude. It reads:

This River is Not Stocked! This is a wild fishery, which means all trout are spawned and grow to catchable size within the river system. It takes several years under widely varying and adverse conditions for a trout to grow to large size. Obviously and most importantly, every trout that is killed is one that will never spawn again. Please respect this as a top-notch sport fishery and not as a food supply. By practicing catch-and-release you are doing your part to keep this unique fishery excellent.

 

The river’s trout anglers generally respect that sentiment. As a result of the catch-and-release policy, whether it is legally or culturally enforced, the Delaware watershed holds many large trout, and hosts a correspondingly large number of anglers, who fish the river from spring through the fall, and provide substantial benefit to a region that would otherwise be dependent on hardscrabble farms, a waning resort industry and a ski industry that is already feeling the effects of warming winter weather.

Yes, there are anglers who aren’t happy with catch-and-release fisheries, who rue the lack of stocked fish, and who even, at times, poach some large fish from a no-kill section of river. But on the whole, New York’s freshwater fisheries managers appreciate the impact of catch-and-release fishing on trout and other fish populations. The state’s fresh water fishing regulations guide lists over 100 different waters where only catch-and-release fishing is allowed, at least for some species.

 

New York’s freshwater fishing guide even goes so far as to advise anglers that, “Although a good fish dinner can be the climax of a great fishing trip, more and more anglers have come to realize that quality fish populations can only be maintained if catch and release angling is practiced. This is particularly the case for large gamefish that are typically rare in a population and usually take an extended time to grow to a quality size.”

States don’t make similar efforts to promote catch-and-release in saltwater fisheries. The benefits of catch-and-release apply to those fisheries, too, where overharvest can also frustrate efforts to maintain quality fish populations and eliminate most of the so-called “BOFFFs,” the ” Big, Old, Fat, Fecund, Female” fish that are critical to maintaining a sustainable spawning stock. Yet, except in the case of fish with little or no table value, such as Florida tarpon, saltwater managers rarely if ever manage fisheries for catch-and-release.

Instead, the emphasis is always on maintaining landings at the highest level that can be prudently maintained and, often, a bit beyond that.

Bluefish may be the most blatant example of such harvest-oriented approach, given the quota transfer provision in the management plan, but the pro-harvest philosophy affects many different species. We see it in the striped bass fishery, where recreational fishermen account for 90 percent of all fishing mortality, and about 90 percent of anglers’ catch is released.

 

Such a fishery would seem to be a prime candidate for catch-and-release oriented management, but that’s not what we see at the ASMFC’s Atlantic Striped Bass Management Board (Bass Board). While some Bass Board members are very conservation-minded, others still cling to the goal of maximizing the kill.

At the October 2016 Bass Board meeting, after a stock assessment update indicated that fishing mortality was very slightly below the fishing mortality target, some Bass Board members immediately attempted to relax striped bass regulations in order to increase landings, even though the female spawning stock biomass remained below the target level.

Even after a more recent benchmark stock assessment found the striped bass stock to be both overfished and subject to overfishing, there was resistance to limiting harvest. In Maryland, managers went so far as to eliminate the spring catch-and-release season, so that anglers fishing from for-hire vessels may continue to keep two bass per day, when every other angler on the entire East Coast is subject to a one-fish bag limit; Maryland regulations also include a so-called “trophy” season that targets the largest, most fecund females, fish that are off-limits to anglers everywhere else.

 

Once again, harvest was given priority, even over a recreational catch-and-release fishery that anglers had enjoyed for years.

A long time ago, freshwater fisheries managers began distinguishing between “panfish” such as perch, sunfish, and bullheads, which are abundant, fecund, and caught primarily for personal consumption, and “gamefish” such as trout, muskellunge, and the various black bass which, while they can be eaten, are pursued primarily for sport. Regulations have long reflected that distinction, managing panfish for yield, and gamefish for abundance and recreational opportunity.

Saltwater fisheries have yet to recognize the difference between panfish and gamefish, and use the same management approach for striped bass, bluefish, and weakfish as they use to manage panfish such as flounder, snapper, and croaker.

It is well past time for that to change.

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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/ 

MENHADEN ERPS: A WATERSHED FOR FORAGE FISH MANAGEMENT?

Last Wednesday, the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission’s Atlantic Menhaden Management Board agreed to adopt “environmental reference points” to govern menhaden management.  Wednesday’s actions are arguably the conclusion of a twenty-five year long battle to wrest menhaden management away from the industrial menhaden fishery and hand it over to professional fishery managers who will now manage menhaden primarily as a forage fish, emphasizing its role in coastal ecosystems, rather than as feed stock for a reduction industry that converts menhaden into fish meal, oils and other products.

Congratulations go out to the many conservation groups, angling organizations, and private citizens who gritted it out and saw this fight through to what will hopefully be its desired end.  I got involved with menhaden in the late 1990s and know that there were people already engaged in the debate for years before that.

Thanks go out to the professional fishery managers and others who sit on the Management Board and made this happen, to the scientists on the ASMFC’s staff and elsewhere who prepared the stock assessments and other analysis, and to everyone else who contributed their time and their knowledge to the effort.  That includes Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross and his staff, who refused to let the Virginia Legislature look the other way while Omega Protein exceeded the ASMFC’s cap on menhaden in the Chesapeake Bay, and to Virginia Governor Ralph Northam and his natural resources staff, who looked beyond Virginia’s parochial interests in the reduction fishery to menhaden’s importance to all of the states on the coast.

Having said that, what does last week’s menhaden decision really mean, and what does if portend for the management of other forage species?

That is an interesting question.

The ecological reference points adopted for menhaden tie the target menhaden biomass, and target fishing mortality rate for menhaden, to the biomass of menhaden that will maintain striped bass at its target females spawning stock biomass.  Studies indicated that striped bass, along with certain birds, were the species most sensitive to menhaden abundance, so biologists believe that a menhaden biomass that will support the striped bass will also be adequate to support bluefish, weakfish and spiny dogfish at their target levels.

In some ways, the Atlantic Menhaden Management Board’s actions were notable, because Atlantic menhaden support one of the largest commercial fisheries in the nation; ecological reference points have the potential of limiting that fishery’s landings.

But at the same time, the current estimated fishing mortality rate for Atlantic menhaden is slightly below the environmental reference points’ fishing mortality target, so no cuts in menhaden landings would currently be required (that could change in October, when managers will set the 2021 annual catch limit, although there is no reason to believe that a harvest reduction is currently on the table).

Another factor that probably militated in favor of the environmental reference points was that most of the commercial Atlantic menhaden fishery is concentrated in Virginia.  There are menhaden fisheries in other states, but Virginia gets nearly 80 percent of the quota; New Jersey, which receives slightly less than 11 percent of the quota, sits in a very distant second place.  The other 9 percent or so is shared by fourteen different jurisdictions, making it very easy for the representatives of those jurisdictions to listen to the science and their constituents’ comments, and vote for ecological reference points.  They could do so with the confidence that their local fishermen probably wouldn’t be hurt by such vote and, if a few more menhaden were needed, they could probably shave them off Virginia’s quota.

That’s not necessarily true of other forage species, and in that regard, the debate leading up to the Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council’s Unmanaged Forage Omnibus Amendment is instructive.  In preparing that amendment, the Mid-Atlantic Council recognized that

“Forage fish are small fish and invertebrates that feed on smaller marine organisms such as plankton and are in turn eaten by many species of fish, sea birds, and marine mammals.  Forage species play an important role in sustaining the productivity and structure of marine ecosystems by facilitating the transfer of energy from the lowest level of the food chain to higher levels.”

That all sounds good, but it should be noted that the Unmanaged Forage amendment, both as it was adopted and as it exists today, largely protects only unfished, as well as unmanaged, forage species.  There was considerable debate over including chub mackerel, a species that only began to see significant Mid-Atlantic landings in 2013.

Even though the mackerel weren’t a traditional commercial target in the region, the fact that a fishery was beginning to develop was enough to make their inclusion in the Unmanaged Forage amendment a temporary one; a recent amendment has included chub mackerel as a species covered by the Atlantic Mackerel, Squid, and Butterfish Fishery Management Plan.

So chub mackerel are forage fish, and Atlantic mackerel, squid, and butterfish are forage fish too, but all of them support lucrative commercial fisheries that operate out of a number of different states, so you probably won’t see any of them being managed for their value as forage at any time soon.

Instead, what you’ll probably see, in the case of forage fish that support significant fisheries, are occasional measures to avoid localized depletion of particular forage species, when fishermen become convinced that a lack of forage is contributing to a lack of larger, more valuable fish.  The New England Fishery Management Council’s proposed Amendment 8 to the Atlantic Herring Fishery Management Plan is an example of that approach, where

“NOAA Fisheries proposes regulations to implement Amendment 8 to the Atlantic Herring Fishery Management Plan.  The New England Fishery Management Council developed Amendment 8 to specify a long-term acceptable biological catch control rule for Atlantic herring and address localized depletion and user group conflict.  This amendment would establish an acceptable biological catch control rule for Atlantic herring that accounts for herring’s role in the ecosystem and prohibit midwater trawling in inshore federal waters from the U.S./Canada border to the Rhode Island/Connecticut border.  Amendment 8 is intended to support sustainable management of the herring resource and help ensure that herring is available to minimize possible detrimental impacts on predators of herring and associated socioeconomic impacts on other user groups.”

That’s not as bold a step toward ecosystem management as the ASMFC took with Atlantic menhaden, but it’s still a reasonable step in the right direction.

So, right now, it looks like the ASMFC’s adoption of ecological reference points was a big win for the conservation community, although we won’t know for certain just how big a win it was until the ASMFC’s October meeting, when the Atlantic Menhaden Management Board sets the annual catch limit for 2021. 

If it sets that catch limit at or below the fishing mortality target, the celebrations can really begin.  On the other hand, if it decides to be “flexible,” as the Menhaden Fisheries Coalition, an association that includes the largest menhaden harvesters, urges, and allows fishing mortality to exceed the target level, we’ll know that there is still more work to be done.

Thus, newspaper articles which declare that

“Menhaden decision marks a new era in Atlantic fisheries management”

are exaggerating the impact of the ASMFC’s actions.  While it certainly marked a new era in Atlantic menhaden management, its impact on Atlantic fisheries management will probably be somewhat less.

But that shouldn’t detract from our enthusiasm over the ASMFC’s actions.  The ASMFC clearly took the right action based on the science and based on its own five-year plan, which supports a move toward ecosystem-based management.

Mackerel, herring and butterfish might not benefit from the ASMFC’s actions.

But menhaden, and its predators, most certainly will.

 

ASMFC'S UPCOMING STRIPED BASS AMENDMENT: GET READY FOR A TOUGH FIGHT

Last Tuesday, the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission’s Atlantic Striped Bass Management Board voted, 15-1 (New York was the only state opposed) to begin a new amendment to the striped bass management plan.

The wording of the motion, which was made by Maryland’s Michael Luisi, was

“I move to initiate an Amendment to the Atlantic Striped Bass Fishery Management Plan focused on the following management topics: 1) Fishery Goals and Objectives; 2) Stock Rebuilding/Timeframe; 3) Management Triggers; 4) Biological Reference Points; 5) Regional Management (Recreational Measures, Coastal and Producer Areas, Regional Reference Points); 6) Recreational Dead Discards; 7) Conservation Equivalency; 8) Recreational Accountability; and 9) Coastal Commercial Quota Allocation.  Each of these topics will be presented in a Public Information Document in order to solicit stakeholder comment focused on prioritizing the importance of each topic for continued development and inclusion in the Amendment.”

The motion touches on just about every important aspect of striped bass management, and relies heavily upon the ASMFC Work Group document that I discussed a week ago.  Luisi argued that everything should be considered in a Public Information Document, and that the Management Board should then be guided by the comment that the public makes.

That all sounds good, until you realize a few things:

First, the Management Board gets to decide on the options that receive comment, and how those options are worded. 

It can, if it chooses, leave questions completely open, and say things such as “What do you want the striped bass stock to look like in the future,” and “What is more important to you, having large numbers of striped bass, having large striped bass, or being able to harvest more striped bass?”

It can also offer specific options, asking whether the reference points used to gauge the health of the stock (fishing mortality target and threshold, and female spawning stock biomass target and threshold) should be based on 1995, when the stock was declared recovered, on 1993, when the female spawning stock biomass was smaller but still produced a strong year class, or on various models that have not yet passed peer review, but might allow for a bigger kill in the Chesapeake Bay, which is something that Luisi is always trying to achieve.

But without going into great detail on the risk each set of reference points might pose to the long-term health of the striped bass stock, the questions themselves could be steering the comments received from a public that is not completely informed.

A number of Management Board members expressed a concern that COVID could impact the public input process, with Dr. Michael Armstrong, the Massachusetts fishery manager, expressing his view that on-line hearings don’t work out very well, and that nothing should go out to the public for another year or so, when holding in-person hearings is less likely to be an issue. 

It’s a valid concern, for no one knows how COVID could impact the public hearing process.  Will people feel more comfortable testifying on-line rather than in person, with so many commenting that they inadvertently jam up the process, and so impact other people’s ability to be heard?  Will those who don’t like some aspect of striped bass management—whether on the pro-conservation or pro-harvest side—intentionally try to interfere with the process, perhaps by getting so many people to sign on that the hearing can’t be held at all ?

Some states may have regulations preventing large gatherings, making hearings in those venues effectively impossible.  In other states, where hearings may be held, will the comment be biased because those who don’t believe the medical advice on COVID are largely congruent with those who don’t believe the scientific advice on striped bass, so they will come out to present their positions while the more scientifically literate, and perhaps more conservation-oriented, stakeholders stay home?

And will the Management Board consider that when crafting the new amendment, or will it take all comment at face value, without considering its source?

We might have reason to worry, because the New Jersey reps were pushing hard to hold virtual hearings, and we know how they always come out with respect to bass conservation…

But the big worry is that, based on the Work Group report, the process appears to be stacked against striped bass conservation.  The three “themes” that emerged from the Work Group process were management stability, flexibility, and regulatory consistency.  None of those things are particularly good tools for effective, adaptive management in the face of a troubled striped bass population.

The striped bass has already suffered from too much management stability, in situations that saw the Management Board unwilling to adopt regulations in response to a declining biomass.  Consider the words of Tom Fote, New Jersey’s Governor’s Appointee, at the November 2011 Management Board meeting, after a stock assessment update informed the Management Board that the stock would become overfished by 2017.

“…how can I be a hypocrite and go out to my public in New Jersey and basically say, oh, by the way, we’ve been doing so great with striped bass and there is really no—we haven’t hit any of the [management] triggers [in the fishery management plan that require Management Board action if fishing mortality is too high and/or the striped bass biomass is too low] and now I’m going to reduce your catch by 40 percent.”

If I was sitting in his place, I’d consider a warning that the stock would become overfished a call for corrective action, but even giving Fote the benefit of the doubt, and agreeing that no management document then required the Management Board to take action, look at his reaction in May 2014, after the 2013 benchmark stock assessment informed the Management Board that the fishing mortality rate had been over target for a number of years, and that the female spawning stock biomass was below target in some of those years as well, conditions that tripped management triggers calling for both ending overfishing within one year and rebuilding the stock within ten.

“At 33 percent or whatever we’re going to wind up as a reduction here, at that level is a huge amount of reduction in one year.  I mean, we have a recreational fishery and a commercial fishery that are in trouble up and down the coast, between the storms and between everything else that is affecting them, the price of gas and everything else—and there is a social and economic impact to do this.

“…I’m looking at this and if we want to do something, let’s do in incrementally because two years from now when the regression analysis says we’re not even close to mortality, I don’t have to sit here and say I told you so.”

So in 2011, he argued against adopting no regulations because no management triggers were tripped, and in 2014, after two management measures were tripped, he was still trying to prevent, or at least slow down, the adoption of needed conservation measures.  Which could lead one to believe that management triggers were never the real issue.

And, of course, we now know that after a few years had passed, and a new scientific analysis came out, the 2018 benchmark stock assessment didn’t justify Fote’s position, but instead found that things were worse than believed, and that the stock was both overfished and experiencing overfishing, which was a clear indication that, far from being unnecessary, the management measures that Fote opposed in 2014 weren’t strict enough.

But that didn’t faze Fote, for even after the benchmark assessment declared the stock to be both overfished and subject to overfishing, and so tripped yet two more management triggers, he kept fighting management measures, saying

“I’ve also been down this road before, as you made me change my slot limit years ago, when I basically go for a regulation and four years down the road, three years we find we were not in as bad shape as we thought we were.   I think there were a lot more reasons [other than a dearth of striped bass] why we saw a 25 percent reduction [in recreational striped bass landings] in 2018; if that’s the number.  I think that is going to continue because of the drop off of anglers going out, and reduction of trips again.  I would really think it’s important so we can justify, because if people see we have a 25 percent reduction when we need a 17, we average it out between [20]16, [20]17, and [20]18.  It will smooth it out some and we should have an idea with the ’18…”

The problem is that there is an institutionalized reluctance to reduce harvest on the Management Board and throughout the ASMFC.  Fote may be one of the loudest and most outspoken opponents of needed, science based management measures, but there are plenty of others who agree with his general philosophy.  That was, unfortunately demonstrated by the fact that, although four separate management triggers were tripped since the 2013 benchmark assessment was released, the Management Board completely ignored two of them; while it did adopt the minimum measures needed to bring fishing mortality down to target, it completely ignored the requirements to rebuild the spawning stock biomass.

So if the new amendment emphasizes even more regulatory stability and flexibility, you can imagine how little they’ll do to assure the striped bass stock’s long-term health.  As Capt. John McMurray, New York’s Legislative Proxy, noted at Monday’s preliminary Management Board meeting, if “flexibility” means ignoring the science, permitting overfishing and not rebuilding overfished stocks, most striped bass anglers are against it.

But that doesn’t mean that we won’t see rebuilding deadlines and management triggers diluted, and perhaps the spawning stock biomass target lowered, in the name of “flexibility,” because Fote isn’t the only Management Board member out there who wants to see a bigger kill, and the new amendment is their only vehicle to achieve that goal.

There also seems to be a strong sentiment on the Management Board to limit catch and release.

Yes, you heard that right.  Catch and release, or at least the mortality that accompany releases, was seen as the number one issue that the Management Board needs to address. 

Quite honestly, there is a lot of release mortality; the latest benchmark assessment revealed that it actually exceeds the mortality from recreational landings.  But that’s what’s going to happen when anglers release more than 90% of the striped bass that they catch; harvest declines, and release mortality increases.  Yet, even though a dead fish is a dead fish, and a bass that succumbs to release mortality is no more dead, and does no more harm to the stock, then one that is whacked on the head and tossed into a cooler, release mortality is seen by yield-oriented fisheries managers as a far greater “problem” then fish tossed in a box.

Capt. McMurray tried to explain that in a fishery that is 90% recreational, and with a 90%-plus recreational release rate, release mortality is going to seem high, but that managers should learn from other primarily catch-and-release fisheries, such as bonefish and tarpon, where release mortality is probably close to 100% of all fishing mortality. 

Predictably, Fote took umbrage at that, and characterized the striped bass fishery as catch-and-harvest, but whined that because catch-and-release kills so many fish, it leads to more restrictive regulations and prevents kill-oriented anglers from binging more fish home.

Fote’s colleague, Adam Nowalsky, New Jersey’s Legislative Proxy, jumped on the same argument, ignoring the intent of Capt. McMurray’s point that other jurisdictions have learned to manage primarily recreational, primarily catch-and-release fisheries.  He acknowledged that the data supported Capt. McMurray, but then made a tangential argument that tarpon and bonefish weren’t food fish, while the striped bass is.  So, perhaps, Capt. McMurray should have used permit, or Atlantic salmon, or the trout found in no-kill waters to make his point, because it was a valid one—fisheries should be managed for their primary uses, which in the case of striped bass is recreation.

One size—based on yield, does not fit all.

But that’s too novel a concept for most of the Management Board to grasp.

Thus, conservation-minded anglers are going to have their work cut out for them on the new amendment.  States such as Maryland, New Jersey and Delaware, along with the Potomac River Fisheries Commission, with be fighting for a bigger kill and a smaller biomass, for more flexibility and less science-based management. 

Other states will support conservation, but always with caveats.  Catch and release will likely be in many of their sights.

And complicating the entire process, the impacts of COVID-19, both with respect to data and to public input, will make informed comment more difficult.

This will likely be the last big striped bass fight of my lifetime, and the lifetimes of my contemporaries.  I’ll do what I can to win it, but understand that I’ll largely be fighting for to have a healthy striped bass stock in someone else’s future, and not in mine.

And I’ll know as I do so that there will also be folks on the other side, who don’t care if your grandkids ever see a striped bass, so long as they get their payout now.

How each of us responds to the coming challenge will likely determine who prevails.

STRIPED BASS: WHAT DOES MANAGEMENT "SUCCESS" LOOK LIKE?

In last Thursday’s edition of One Angler’s Voyage, I mentioned that I almost choked when I read the report of the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission’s Atlantic Striped Bass Work Group, and learned that the Work Group believed that

“In the post-moratorium era (ending 1990), the management of Atlantic striped bass has largely been a story of success.”

After all, the last benchmark stock assessment, which was officially released early last year, indicated that the stock is overfished, and that overfishing has been occurring for quite a few years.

In addition, recreational fishing effort has been heading steadily downhill, along with striped bass abundance.  According to the most recent benchmark assessment,

“Female [spawning stock biomass] started out at low levels and increased steadily through the late-1980s and 1990s, peaking at 113,602 mt (250 million pounds) in 2003 before beginning to gradually decline; the decline became sharper in 2012.  Female [spawning stock biomass] was at 68,476 mt (151 million pounds) in 2017, below the [spawning stock biomass] threshold of 91,436 mt (202 million pounds).”

During the same time period, recreational fishing effort increased from about 1.3 million directed trips in 1985, when the rebuilding effort began, to nearly 2.4 million trips in 1989, when the ASMFC determined that the stock was recovering, to more than 13 million trips—ten times the 1985 figure—in 1985, when the stock was declared fully recovered.  As the stock continued to grow, effort continued to increase, hitting 22 million when the spawning stock biomass peaked in 2003, and peaking at more than 26 million trips in 2008, when the spawning stock biomass had already begun to decline, but large fish from the big 1993 and 1996 year classes were abundant.

After that, due to declining abundance, effort began to tail off quickly, falling to 22 million trips in 2012 and 17 million in 2017.

So how is it possible for the Work Group to claim that subjecting a once-healthy stock to overfishing and allowing it to become overfished once again, which resulted in a steep decline in angling effort and the concomitant loss of the economic benefits associated with millions of foregone fishing trips, a success?

The Work Group seems to believe that management was successful because

“The species was declared recovered in 1995 and the fishery experienced relative stability well into the 2000s.”

But then, the Work Group notes,

“several years of poor recruitment coupled with declining spawning stock biomass beginning around 2006 raised concerns, and resulted in the implementation of coastwide reductions to fishing mortality in 2015 through Addendum IV to the Interstate Fisheries Management Plan (FMP).  More recently, concerns for the well-being of the stock have been brought forward after the 2018 benchmark stock assessment indicated the stock was overfished and overfishing was occurring.  The adoption of Addendum VI to the interstate FMP further reduced fishing mortality coastwide.”

That’s the Work Group’s argument for striped bass management “largely being a story of success.”

So is the Work Group right?  Or are they merely whistling as they pass by the graveyard, trying to ignore the fact that the current state of the striped bass stock can be viewed as a management failure?

Let’s take a look at each of the claims, and see how things stack up.

We ought to begin by recognizing that the ten years beginning in 1985, when Amendment 3 to the Interstate Fishery Management Plan for Atlantic Striped Bass was adopted, and ending in 1995, when the striped bass stock was declared fully recovered, really was an example of successful fishery management.

I’ll go even further, and declare that the ASMFC’s rebuilding of the once-collapsed striped bass stock in the late 1980s and early 1990s was arguably the greatest saltwater fishery management success ever witnessed on the East Coast, perhaps in the United States, and possibly even anywhere in the world.  The ASMFC’s adoption of a rigorous management plan intended to protect the relatively robust 1982 year class, and all other subsequent year classes, until the spawning stock biomass could be restored is a textbook example of the right way to recover a collapsed fish stock, and nurture it back to health.

After that, though, any signs of a management success are very hard to find.

I say that based on the presumption that if improvement in the stock is to be declared a management success, then that improvement must be linked to a particular management action.  And between the time when Amendment 5 to the Interstate Fishery Management Plan for Atlantic Striped Bass, adopted in 1995, substantially relaxed fishery management measures in response to the stock’s recovery, and 2015, when Addendum IV to Amendment 6 to the Interstate Fishery Management Plan for Atlantic Striped Bass imposed more restrictive regulations that attempted to reduce fishing mortality by 25%, managers took no significant actions that were intended to increase striped bass abundance, although it did adopt a few measures intended to increase striped bass harvest.

If we look at that period, we find that, in Amendment 5, ASMFC’s Atlantic Striped Bass Management Board adopted a coastal recreational bag limit of 2 fish, and a coastal size limit of 28 inches (the previous recreational limits were 1 fish at 34 inches); in so-called “producer areas,” where striped bass spawned, the recreational bag limit was set at 1 fish that was required to be at least 20 inches long.  The commercial fishery was managed by the same size limits, and by initial quotas that the Management Board could change, as it deemed appropriate, to match a change in stock size.

During the period between 1995, when the stock was declared recovered, and 2003, when the female spawning period peaked, the Management Board adopted no significant new management actions, although Addendum IV to Amendment 5 to the Interstate Fishery Management Plan for Striped Bass, adopted in 1998 in an effort to increase the number of larger females in the spawning stock, did require all states to adopt regulations intended to reduce the landings of bass 8 years and older by 14%, beginning in the 2000 season.  However, states that had maintained regulations more restrictive than those mandated by Amendment 5, as a number did at that time, were given a “credit” for their existing rules, and could reduce landings of older fish by a smaller amount, and perhaps not be required to reduce landings at all.

That being the case, it is difficult to give fishery managers credit for any “success” connected with the big 1993, 1996, 2001 and 2003 year classes that provided an abundance of striped bass to the recreational and commercial fisheries, and caused recreational effort to spike.  As Dr. Michael Armstrong, Assistant Director of the Massachusetts Division of Marine Fisheries and recent Chair of the Management Board, noted in a July webinar sponsored by the American Sportfishing Association,

“the primary cause [of variation in striped bass year classes] is…the water regime in Chesapeake Bay.  When you have flood springs, you get bad recruitment. When you get really dry springs, you get bad recruitment.  When you get nice cool, wettish springs, you get big year classes…

“We have to husband the big year classes along the best we can.  The only way to do that is to keep fishing mortality low.”

So it’s nature, and not fisheries managers, who can take credit for good year classes and a real abundance of bass.

Where management measures are needed is after those “flood springs” and “really dry springs,” where management measures are needed to “husband the big year classes” and “keep fishing mortality low.”

After 2003, striped bass entered a seven-year stretch of largely below-average recruitment.  Was striped bass management a success during those years?  

Again, let’s look at the record.

The coastal recreational bag and size limit remained unchanged until 2015.  However, Amendment 6 to the Interstate Fishery Management Plan for Atlantic Striped Bass, adopted in 2003, removed the “producer area” designation from the Hudson River and Delaware Bay, requiring them to be governed by the coastal limits, while allowing Chesapeake Bay jurisdictions to adopt a smaller, 19-inch size limit provided that they also adopted a lower fishing mortality target, F=0.27 rather than the 0.30 that applied on the coast.  Amendment 6 also increased the overall commercial quota, setting it at 100% of each jurisdiction’s landings during the 1972-1979 base period.

While Amendment 6 did not lead to significantly increased recreational landings, it did cause commercial landings to jump, increasing overall fishing mortality just as the female spawning stock began its decline.  Then, beginning in 2007, as recruitment declined and the spawning stock continued to shrink slowly, the Management Board approved a series of exceptions to the management plan, each of which increased fishing mortality by a small amount.

In August 2007, it permitted Maryland to open a brief spring catch-and-keep fishery on the Susquehanna Flats, a designated spawning area that had previously been protected.  In October, it eliminated the quota in Maryland’s so-called spring “trophy” fishery, which targets mature female bass that exit the spawning rivers; Maryland wanted the change because its anglers had exceeded the quota in previous years.

In October 2008, it approved a proposal that would allow the states of Delaware and Pennsylvania to harvest what were technically undersized fish—bass between 20 and 26 inches long—in their sections of the Delaware River, an action which caused New Hampshire Legislative Appointee Dennis Abbott to remark that

“To me what is going on is, as I would term it, is we’re dealing with striped bass management as becoming death by thousand cuts.  We keep adding little things to our management plan; we can do this in one place and we can do things in another place, and it doesn’t really affect overfishing…

“Though I appreciate what Pennsylvania and Delaware are trying to do to have a better opportunity, we’re really going off the rails here.  When we adopted a coast-wide size limit of 28 inches and 18 inches for the producer areas, that is what we said but we keep weakening that.  I just think that it’s the wrong way to go because in a lot of circles people think that striped bass fishing is not as good as it was, and continuing as a management board to do these things is not going in the right direction.”

Mr. Abbott’s statement was one of the first words warning that problems lie ahead, but it was ignored by virtually all of the Management Board.

At its very next meeting, in February 2009, despite low recruitment and a declining stock, the Management Board actually initiated an addendum that would have increased the commercial quota by as much as 50%, and so increased overall fishing mortality by a lesser amount, although that addendum, at least, was ultimately defeated.

The Management Board’s next test, and next opportunity to pursue a successful management regime, came early in 2011, after an update to the stock assessment warned that

“…Abundance and exploitable biomass of ages 8+ are expected to decline regardless of the recruitment scenario.  Female [spawning stock biomass] will fall slightly below the threshold by 2017 regardless of the recruitment scenario…  [emphasis added]”

In other words, if the Management Board did nothing, the striped bass would probably become overfished by the year 2017.

And so the Management Board did…nothing.

At first, the Management Board thought about initiating a new addendum to reduce fishing mortality, but in the end, perhaps buoyed by a good 2011 year class in Maryland, it decided that, despite the best available science saying otherwise, that striped bass represented “a green light fishery,” and allowed the spawning stock biomass to continue its downhill slide.

A year later, it got a wakeup call when the 2013 stockassessment advised that the stock was declining, with fishing mortality abovethe target level, and female spawning stock biomass below the biomasstarget.  That combination of factors tripped two “management triggers” in Amendment 6, one of which required the Management Board to reduce fishing mortality to or below target within one year, and the other requiring it to initiate a 10-year rebuilding program.

As noted in the Work Group report, the Management Board adopted Addendum IV to Amendment 6 in order to reduce fishing mortality; what the Working Group failed to mention is that the Board completely ignored its duty to begin a rebuilding plan.  And even Addendum IV was a half-hearted affair.

Reducing fishing mortality to the target level within 1 year required a 25% reduction in overall F.  However, the Chesapeake jurisdictions whined and cried, trying toconvince the Management Board to ignore the 1 year deadline in Amendment 6, andinstead phase in mortality reductions over 3 years.  When that didn’t work, they successfully petitioned the Management Board to reduce fishing mortality in the Bay by just 20.5% compared to 2012, rather than the 25% compared to 2013 that was applicable everywhere else.

And anglers in Chesapeake Bay, most notably in Maryland, failed to reduce their fishing mortality at all.  Instead, in 2015, they increased striped bass fishing mortality by more than 50%.  And they didn’t stop there.  Maryland anglers killed an estimated 716, 742 striped bass in 2012.  In 2015, that number was 1,107,991, which increased to 1,545,086 in 2016, 1,091,614 in 2017, 993,304 in 2018 and 764,137 in 2019. 

The Management Board did nothing to rein in such landings and require Maryland to achieve a 20.5% reduction in fishing mortality.  That failure was particularly disturbing given that one of the purposes of Addendum IV was to preserve the big 2011 year class until it could enter the spawning stock, and much of Maryland’s recreational landings, particularly in 2015, were 2011s.

So much for the need to “husband the big year classes…”

The failure to adopt a rebuilding plan back in 2014, coupled with a failure to enforce the fishing mortality cuts mandated by Addendum IV, undoubtedly contributed to the most recent benchmark assessment’s finding that the striped bass stock was overfished and subject to overfishing.

Granted, new recreational catch and effort estimates, unavailable prior to 2017, were also a big part of the picture, so the Management Board can legitimately argue that, without those recreational figures, it couldn’t have known how bad things really were. 

Yet having said that, as far back as 2011, they knew that an overfished stock was on the horizon, so their lack of action to prevent that can hardly be justified.

But once they knew, without doubt, that the stock was overfished, what did the Management Board do to fix things? 

Not too much, except, perhaps, to reprise 2014.  Once again, they had an obligation to end overfishing and rebuild the overfished stock.

And, once again, they made a half-hearted effort to end overfishing, adopting Amendment VI, which has a less than 50% probability of succeeding. 

And, once again, they completely ignored their duty to rebuild the stock.

So what, then, does the Work Group, and perhaps the Management Board, think that successful striped bass management looks like?

Is success raising fishing mortality, if just by a little, in the face of declining recruitment and a spawning stock decline?

Is success ignoring the best available science, when it advises that an overfished stock lies just six years down the road, if no action to prevent it is taken?

Is success failing to hold states to their obligations under the management plan, or allowing them to adopt “conservation equivalent” measures that undermine the overall success of the plan?

Is success ignoring the clear mandates of your own management plan, and making no effort to timely rebuild the stock, even though you committed to do so?

Is success adopting an addendum to the management plan that’s more likely to fail than succeed?

Or is success allowing, through your own inaction, a once fully-recovered stock to become overfished once again?

If success is any or all of those things, then yes, the Work Group is right, and “the management of striped bass [over the past three decades] has largely been a story of success.”

But if success means maintaining the striped bass stock at sustainable levels, managing around difficulties such as sub-par recruitment and excessive fishing mortality, providing an abundance of fish that fishermen from North Carolina and Maine can enjoy, and that both commercial and recreational fishermen can exploit without threating the stock’s long-term prospects, then the history of striped bass management since 1995—and particularly in the last decade—is a story of startling failure.

But no, not of failure.

For to fail, as to succeed, one most take action.

The history of striped bass for the past thirty years is more a story of stasis, of a Management Board too paralyzed, to afraid, and/or too unwilling to act, which by its inaction has failed to live up to its commitments and its duty not only to striped bass fishermen, but to the striped bass itself.