[Slipknot]

After the public comment has been received, it will be compiled and presented to the Striped Bass Management Board before the May ASMFC meeting, when the board will approve the final addendum. Given the sentiment at the October meeting, it is very likely that the board will incorporate the lower fishing mortality target and threshold in the management plan. The fact that the addendum will address only the reference points, and not the regulations needed to achieve the needed harvest reductions, will probably go a long way toward assuring passage. Still, it will not be a slam-dunk. The Tom Fotes of the world will not be standing still; they will be doing whatever they can to gain supporters on the management board and using every bit of the next five or so months to frustrate efforts to reduce the recreational kill.

The May meeting should also see the Striped Bass Management Board finalize another draft addendum that will present various regulatory proposals, all intended to achieve any needed harvest reductions, and this is where things will get interesting.

For years, despite anecdotal reports of a sharply declining stock, ASMFC assured anglers that the stock was not overfished and that overfishing was not occurring; often, when a concerned angler suggested that a harvest reduction was in order, more kill-oriented individuals dismissed his concerns by parroting those ASMFC assurances. And, in fact, ASMFC was correct, the stock was not overfished and overfishing was not occurring—if Ftarget=0.30 and Fthreshold=0.34 were truly the right fishing mortality reference points.

Of course, thanks to the new benchmark stock assessment, we realize that those were not the right fishing mortality reference points. If we apply what we now know to be the appropriate reference points to past harvest levels, we find that overfishing took place—that is, the fishing mortality threshold was exceeded—in 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008 and 2011—while the fishing mortality target was exceeded not only in those years, but also in 1997, 2000, 2003, 2009, 2010 and 2012. That provides a pretty good reason for why striped bass abundance has been in a continuing decline since 2004. However, it doesn’t shed much light on how ASMFC will react to the problem.

The stock assessment noted that, in order to eliminate any real possibility of overfishing, harvest would have to be cut in half. While such a cut might represent the ideal resolution, it’s unlikely that ASMFC will go that far. Instead, they will probably seek some lesser cut that substantially reduces the risk of overfishing—hopefully, makes it much less than a 50-50 possibility but, again, while federal managers, operating under the Magnuson Act, may not adopt regulations that have less than a 50% chance of avoiding overfishing, ASMFC, which is not governed by Magnuson, may accept a far higher level of risk. Whatever cuts are made will probably be based on 2013 harvest, which could be a good thing; 2012 harvest was notably lower than harvest in previous years, with F2012=0.20. If harvest reductions were based on 2012 landings, the required reductions would be relatively minor, and probably would not have constrained harvest enough to avoid overfishing in many future years. On the other hand, if the 2013 fishing mortality rate rebounds to the level typical of the past decade, when overfishing occurred in six out of ten years, reductions would be far more meaningful and more likely to have a positive impact on striped bass abundance.

What form will such reductions take? Right now, it’s hard to tell. A lot will depend on how many people who keep striped bass keep two fish, rather than one, when they go out, and how often they do so. People who don’t keep fish don’t matter, since no reduction in the bag limit or increase in the size limit can reduce their landings below zero. So what fisheries managers will do is first count up all of the fishing trips made (or, more correctly, estimated to have been made) during the year on which people kept striped bass. Then they’ll look at the number of trips on which people kept two striped bass, and calculate what the percentage reduction would have been if all of those people had only kept a single fish. If that reduction is enough to reduce fishing mortality to or below the Ftarget, in 2015 we’ll be looking at a one-fish bag limit and the current 28” minimum size.

On the other hand, if cutting the bag limit isn’t enough to achieve the needed reduction (and, depending on how much harvest needs to be cut, it very possibly won’t be, as there are a lot of people who don’t kill two bass on a single trip), a similar procedure will be used to increase the size limit. Based on the size of bass kept by anglers interviewed by surveyors working for the National Marine Fisheries Service, managers will calculate the reduction that could be achieved by a 1 fish bag limit and various increases in the minimum size. The combination of one-fish bag limit and whatever higher minimum size that (when combined with reductions in the commercial quota) would theoretically bring fishing mortality below the new Ftarget would likely comprise the regulations adopted in the new addendum.

Of course, we’re talking about fisheries management, where things are never quite that easy. It is possible (although, I think, extremely unlikely) that even with a 1-fish bag limit, the size limit needed to achieve the needed harvest reduction will be so high that managers decide to maintain a somewhat smaller minimum size, but reduce the length of the season to compensate (with the length of the season reduction again based on historical catch patterns). In addition, we have to remember that a “slot limit”, which requires that fish both under and over a specified size range be released, is popular with some sectors of the angling community. There are different opinions as to what an appropriate slot size might be; some folks would target immature bass, setting the bottom of the slot as low as 20 or 22 inches and the top end around 26 or 28 inches, arguing that such a slot would protect the entire female spawning stock. Others would choose a higher slot—perhaps 28-32”, or something roughly similar. However, any slot size would not be viewed in a vacuum. Killing smaller fish—particularly immature fish—carries a conservation penalty. ASMFC forced Maine to drop its bag limit from two fish to one when it adopted a size limit that allowed anglers to keep only those fish that fell into a 20-26” slot or were longer than 40 inches. New York commercial fishermen had their quota cut substantially when the state replaced the 28-inch minimum size with a 24-36” slot in order to keep older, PCB-laden bass out of the markets. So it’s pretty clear that if ASMFC ever adopted a slot, even with a 1-fish bag limit there would be a significant shortening of the current season.

And then there is the perennial question of “gamefish” status; eliminating the entire commercial fishery in order to allow anglers to harvest the entire allowable catch. While that might sound good in theory, the chance of ASMFC ever adopting such a strategy in the upcoming year is extremely low. The votes just aren’t there. When you consider that the state which has been most aggressively supporting reduced harvest—Massachusetts—also has the highest coastal commercial striped bass landings, you begin to understand the problem. A desire to conserve the striped bass resource and “gamefish status” do not necessarily go hand-in-hand.

If the current schedule remains on track, the regulatory addendum should be released after the May meeting, with hearings held in June and July. It will then, if all goes well, be adopted at the August meeting, with a compliance date—the date when all states must adopt new regulations—of January 1, 2015.

That’s not as early as most striped bass anglers would like, but it is certainly progress, and can only benefit the resource. In the meantime, anglers must keep informed, stand ready to write comment letters and turn out for hearings, and be ever vigilant to help assure that those who would derail the conservation effort will not succeed.

A lot of us lived through the last collapse, back in the ‘70s and ‘80s. It was not a very pleasant time. It is up to all of us to make sure that such a collapse does not happen again.



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