Very nice piece from SJ Blog on Striped bass and ASMFC

[MakoMike]

Originally Posted by Slipknot

Mako Mike, I'm not buying that, I thought the stock assessment said they are on their way to overfishing next year, yet they chose to do nothing until 2015.

2014 is not here yet, why can't they make at least a change to 1 fish per day for 2014? it is not in the middle of the season yet!

1st, lets be clear about what it said. it said that sticking with the current fishing mortality there is an 80% chance that we will overfish next year. It also said that there is a 100% chance that they will NOT be overfished in 2015. That has to do with the recruitment of the 2011 year class.

Why can't they go to 1 @ 28 for 2014? Well, for one thing no one knows what going to 1 @ 28 would mean as far as achieving the F target. The only thing we do suspect, is that it is unlikely to be enough to meet the F target. So should they adopt an addendum that fails to achieve the target and then adopt yet another addendum, that does achieve the target?

Maybe, but even if they did that, the regs wouldn't kick in until about half way through the season for many areas. If they adopted that addendum at the last meeting, they would still have to vote on approval and the release of the associated public information document at the next meeting in March. Then there has to be a series of public hearings along with a comment period. Then they could vote to approve the addendum, maybe at the May meeting. The states then have a period time to adopt their new regulations, so, at best we would be looking at new regs in the June - July time frame, and in some states, where the regs have to be adopted by legislative action (like NJ), they likely wouldn't go into effect until much later.

Instead the board voted to move forward with a comprehensive revision of the regs that will achieve the revise F target. I'll wager that they will go to 1 @ something, possibly along with other restrictions (I'm in favor of specified seasons). So they will probably adopt new measures in May, then go to public hearings followed by adopting the new measures in the fall of 2014 with an effective date of Jan. 2015.

IOW they are pursuing a course of "ready, aim, fire"! Rather than a course of "ready, fire, aim."