The much-anticipated Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission (ASMFC) meeting back on October 23 featured a 7-hour striped bass stock assessment. Anyone who follows striped bass will know that in 2019, the ASMFC set a goal to rebuild the spawning stock biomass (SSB) to historic levels by 2029. What has transpired in the years since, couldn’t have been scripted any worse. Year after year of failed spawns have carved quite the ravine in the fishery which will bring tougher fishing seasons and poorer future spawns.
We all remember the emergency action put into motion by the ASMFC that implemented a, coastwide, 3-inch slot limit, this was in response to the string of meager spawns and how that would affect their rebuilding goal. At this point, it looks like a virtual impossibility that a rebuild of this magnitude could happen, raising the SSB from 191 million pounds in 2023 to 247 million pounds in 2029, after 6 years of failed spawns…let’s just say, this goal is in serious doubt.
As with all things political, we find ourselves mired in a swamp of influential people and organizations who want the result of these regulation talks to go their way and want the cause to be whatever furthers their message. Some think the regulations should be steered by businesses who make their livelihoods off of putting their clients on striped bass, some within that very segment say that ‘their customers are fine with catch and release fishing and the slot limit doesn’t affect their bottom line.’ The implication there being that all charter customers must be the same… that’s where things get muddy. The current political climate has driven this obsession with the idea that our own situation is the baseline and everyone who functions outside of that baseline should change their ways to be more like us. That sentiment is – not only wrong – but it’s un-American. However, there needs to be flexibility from all sides and this is another facet of this issue, and our greater political divide, that gets really muddy, really quick.
Using this rebuild goal as an example, I think it’s safe to say that everyone involved would love to see the SSB rebuilt to a historic high. Whether you make your money off of stripers, just enjoy fishing for them, take a few home for dinner or simply love the idea of a percolating Northeast ecosystem, it would be in all of our best interests that the population be as healthy as possible. But then, the agendas begin to creep in and it becomes a game of finger pointing with the sole objective being to deflect all attention away from one segment or region of the fishery to spotlight another.
Somewhere along the way, whatever cause we personally believe is at the root of the problem supersedes the affect. But what if all of these causes are part of the problem? Right now, we’re accepting a 90/10 split between recreational and commercial fishing interests when it comes to striped bass mortality and we’re accepting that 1 out of every 11 stripers caught and released will die as a result. If this is true, odds are it has been true for decades. Maybe a slight adjustment to that 90/10 because commercial limits were higher a decade or more ago and recreational fishing wasn’t as popular as it is now. But this sudden and protracted dip in spawning success simply cannot only be related to angler-induced mortality.
Fewer spawning participants is only one reason why spawning success might drop off. Let’s consider what we know about how striped bass spawn. We know that there needs to be sufficient water flow to keep striper eggs moving for a period of days after fertilization. We also know that water temperature (57 degrees) is the trigger to begin spawning and that the survival of their eggs takes a nosedive once water temps increase to 68 degrees. It doesn’t take a climatologist to tell you that we haven’t had a real winter in a decade. Sure, we’ve had the occasional doozy of a snowstorm, but average temps have been way up through the winter, resulting in far less snowmelt which yields less runoff, leading to lower flows and higher water temps earlier in the spring. None of this is helping. We’re also hearing about a boom in the population of blue catfish throughout the network of rivers where Chesapeake-born stripers return to spawn. These invasive predators will – undoubtedly – consume striper eggs, larva and fry. I don’t know much more about the catfish situation, but they’re not helping either.
Do these factors absolve all recreational and professional fishermen from shouldering any of the responsibility for these dismal spawns? That all depends on what you choose to believe. Taking a ‘not my fault, not my problem’ approach is almost certain to result in more of the same, while we pray for a cold winter to see if it can save the spawn. I think the overarching message to remember here is that we all will benefit from a rebuild, even if it falls short of the current ASMFC goal. And there is no doubt that the ASMFC is going to act by regulating fishermen, it’s their only controllable variable. I may not like whatever regulatory change is made, but as an obsessed striper fisherman, and someone who makes his living off of the viability of Northeast fisheries, of which the striped bass is the crown jewel, I’m willing to give it a shot. Are you?
