Where are the Striped Bass?

[plugginpete]

A
t this writing, the statistics for the

recreational striper catch in 2008 are

considered preliminary, but the numbers


are appalling.

Coastwide, anglers landed (that is, released or killed) 14,107,835


fish, the worst year since 2000. Along


the Atlantic coast, some guides had to


cancel their seasons. Maine was down


from 1,004,780 fish in 2000 to 518,988


in 2008; New Hampshire from 213,868


to 91,433; Massachusetts from 7,563,326


to 4,001,795; Virginia from 1,357,299 to


647,542; North Carolina from 293,080


to 136,699. In a commercial fishery, the


value of fish increases as they get harder


to catch, so you may see more fish caught


as a stock declines.

Recreational landings,


on the other hand, tend to follow stock


abundance; and, in fact, stock assessments


are based on recreational landings.


The managers explain the dreadful fishing


with anecdotal evidence of their own,


claiming the stripers were just everywhere


anglers weren’t. One—a decent, competent


man and a fine scientist—told me


this: “Reports were that the fish were


offshore in New York and New Jersey.


Supposedly the water temperature was a


bit below average [keeping them south];


and they had record recreational catches


down there.” But the preliminary recreational


stats (which I don’t believe he had


seen) reveal no such thing.


Each year, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife


Service coordinates a cooperative trawling


expedition for wintering striped bass off


North Carolina.

[plugginpete]

This is not a population
survey; it is strictly a tagging operation.
Still, it’s a good indicator of abundance.
Since 1990 the best catch was 6,275 fish
in the year 2000; the worst was 147 in
2009. The average from 1987 to 2006
was 2,212, but the average for the last
three years was 516.

Even if the anecdotal evidence that
the fish are just hanging out elsewhere is
accurate, something is terribly amiss—
most likely a lack of food in their historic
range. Grossly malnourished bass showing
up in ever increasing numbers, especially
in Chesapeake Bay, which produces 75
percent of the coastal population, would
seem to confirm this.

I have never understood why managers
think they can minister to a predator
without taking care of its prey. Eighty percent
of a wintering striper’s diet by weight
is (or used to be) Atlantic menhaden. But
one company—Omega Protein out of
Reedville, Virginia—has been allowed
to plunder menhaden to the point that a
substantial part of the striper population
is starving. In 2006 ASMFC reluctantly
established a menhaden harvest cap for
Chesapeake Bay of 109,020 metric tons—
ineffective because, since then, landings
have averaged 30 percent below that.

A study by the Chesapeake Bay Ecological
Foundation, ongoing since 2004, has
found that large, migratory female striped
bass are remaining in the upper bay all
winter, further depleting menhaden and
thereby further stressing resident stripers.
The big females are there, explains
foundation president Jim Price, because
they can’t find menhaden along the coast.
“Winter is the most critical time in a striper’s
life cycle because it has to feed heavily
to develop its gonads,” he says. “But
many of the fish we see have shrunken
belies and are emaciated. In summer
commercial fishermen have to throw out
maybe ten percent of their bass. The fish
are in such bad shape that the fillets are
thin and white, not fit to eat.”

[plugginpete]

Tag-recapture data from spring spawning
grounds in Maryland and Virginia
indicate a precipitous and continuing
drop in striper survival. Fish captured
in autumn are physiologically indistinguishable
from fish starved in the lab
for two months.

This stress makes them
vulnerable to mycobacteriosis, a disease
that causes loss of scales, skin ulcers,
severe weight loss and lesions on head,
spleen, kidney, liver, heart and gonads. At
least 60 percent of the stripers in Chesapeake
Bay are infected.

Apparently the plague is being assisted
by commercial net fishermen who handle
and release diseased fish, and then handle
and release healthy shorts (non-legal-sized
fish). It is moving quickly up the coast,
and it seems to be transferable to humans,
at least in the form of “fish-handler’s
disease,” which manifests itself with
lymph-node swelling, Lyme-disease-like
joint stiffness and bacterial infection. As
I write I’m looking at it on my left thumb.
Believe me, you don’t want it.
F

ishing guides spew anecdotal information

like squid ink; but when they all
are saying the same thing independently,
even managers need to listen. Two of the
best and most experienced striper guides
on the East Coast are Capt. Doug Jowett
and Capt. David Blinken. Jowett, who has
the perspective of guiding both in Maine
and Massachusetts, offers this: “My contacts
all the way to North Carolina are
singing the same song—striped-bass fishing
is in dramatic decline due to poor numbers
of fish in every year class out there.

The decline isn’t just a one-year event. The biomass
and year-class distribution have been
declining for the past five years. There are
certainly plenty of ASMFC failures. Seems
like every fish they touch is or has been in
serious trouble. Nobody says there aren’t
any striped bass. We’re saying there’s a
problem looming for the stock. The system
allows for fishing the biomass down.”
And this from Blinken, who guides in
New York and Massachusetts with forays

into Rhode Island and Connecticut: “I
think stripers are in massive decline. I
saw fewer fish on the flats in 2008 than
in any of the 17 years I’ve been guiding.
Montauk (N.Y.) fishing was magical,
but if you distribute those fish across the
[migratory] range, that’s not a lot.

The guys were coming over from Rhode Island
and Connecticut because there was nothing
on their side. The year before we were
all getting a lot of big fish. Typically a
year or two before the collapse of any
fishery you get big fish; then it bottoms
out. It’s like what happened with cod; the
managers said there were plenty, but the
inshore guys were seeing fewer and fewer
fish. Last year was frightening. A good
day on the flats you used to get 20 bass; in
2008 a good day was maybe seven.”

[plugginpete]

S

o what to do? First, the managers need

to sharply reduce the fishing mortality
rate, which (because they’ve plugged it into
a logarithmic equation) they call “F.” But
convincing ASMFC to do this is a task no
less challenging than summoning Neptune
from the deep. Currently F is .31, which
equates to removal of maybe 27 percent
of the population. That’s above what the
managers claim to be the safe target of .30
but below what they claim to be the danger
threshold of .34. It’s a tight squeeze, but
this is how managers think—maximize
protein extraction.

Last summer, after implementing a new
model, they reduced the danger threshold
from .41, a statement based on their
highly questionable supposition that there
are even more fish than they had previously
imagined. And in February 2009
half the ASMFC board backed a proposal
by North Carolina to increase the commercial
fishery by 25 percent, a measure
that failed because of a tie vote.
There isn’t a more reasoned, temperate
striped-bass advocate than **** Brame,
the Coastal Conservation Association’s
Atlantic States Fisheries coordinator. “The
danger threshold and the target are too
close,” he submits. “With all the potential
for error you could be over your threshold
and not know it. And it’s clear that
fishing at F .30 does not allow the stock
to fully recover its age structure. You need
F at .20 or .25 to get any appreciable
numbers of those older fish.

The plan says age structure will be restored to the
extent practical, which means lowering
F. However, ASMFC allows a large harvest
of smaller fish in the producer areas.
That doesn’t get you there. You can’t kill
fish twice—when they’re young and when
they’re old. You’d be surprised how many
managers want to do this. They want to
maintain a high population level, which
implies lowering F, then allow this smorgasbord
of size and bag-limit slots up and
down the coast so you can’t see what the
population’s doing. The striped bass is
the ASMFC’s crown jewel; and in my
opinion it’s becoming tarnished. At this
point they’re not willing to do anything

about it.

There are a lot of things we
don’t understand; and uncertainty calls
for caution.”
One source of mortality managers
don’t factor in is the enormous illegal
kill fueled by a thriving black market
that, in turn, is fueled by commercial
harvest and sale still permitted in Massachusetts,
Rhode Island, New York,
Delaware, Maryland, Virginia and North
Carolina.

Only on those extremely rare
occasions when enforcement agencies
make a major bust does the public begin
to perceive the problem.

We got a glimpse in February 2009 when
five watermen, nabbed by state and federal
undercover agents in a five-year sting
operation, pleaded guilty to poaching $2.1
million worth of striped bass (or something
like 600,000 fish) from Chesapeake
Bay and the Potomac River and illegally
selling the fish to wholesalers with whom
they conspired to generate phony receipts.
Many more arrests are expected.
Hurtful as they are, at least the commercial
striper fisheries in Maryland and
Virginia target mostly small, nonmigratory
males.

Elsewhere breeding stock is being
slammed. By far the biggest commercial
slaughter occurs off Massachusetts,
where half the population of Atlantic
striped bass summers. The Massachusetts
commercial season (by rod-and-reel) is
perpetuated by Paul Diodati, director of
the commonwealth’s Division of Marine
Fisheries, over the objections of anglers
along the entire coast save about 4,000 in
Massachusetts who pay only $65 to sell
bass at least 34 inches in length.

[plugginpete]

W

hen last I complained about the

Massachusetts “recremercial”
striper season, as it is called in striper
conservation circles (see “Plundering
Stripers,” FR&R January/February 2007),
we got a nastygram from one of the most
articulate, dedicated and effective striper
activists on the East Coast (“Mort,” I’ll
call him) blasting me mostly for calling
Massachusetts “commercial striper fishermen”
recreational anglers in disguise.

We’d have run the letter had we not

published an even angrier, longer screed

from the Recreational Fishing Alliance,
which I’d offended by reporting facts
it didn’t want to know. So I’ll take this
opportunity to jointly make an important
point and respond to Mort:

Dear Mort:

Even the “real Ted Williams,”

as I have heard him called to my
chagrin, didn’t bat 1,000. So I’ll comfort
myself in the knowledge that you have
approved of my past striper articles (and,
in fact, been quoted in most). You might
have approved of this one too had you
not missed the central point.

You are correct
that those who legally sell stripers in
Massachusetts are called “commercial
fishermen.” But I’ll remind you of Abe
Lincoln’s observation: “If you call a tail
a leg, how many legs does a dog have?”
Five? “No. Four. Because calling a tail a
leg doesn’t make it a leg.” The Massachusetts
commercial striper season is a
grotesque charade performed, with few
if any exceptions, by recreational anglers
who take advantage of backward management
by the Massachusetts Division of
Marine Fisheries.

[plugginpete]

At the stubborn insistence
of that agency’s director recreational
anglers can send in their lousy $65 and
kill off and carry breeding-age females at
the rate of 30 per day.
Director Diodati at least gets an “A” for
honesty. Unlike the recremercial fishermen
he caters to, he doesn’t pretend the season
is legitimate. “The commercial [striper]
fishery,” he writes, “has also changed by
attracting thousands of non-traditional
participants who are lured by the thought
of subsidizing an expensive hobby.”
In 2008, Massachusetts recremercial
fishermen reported landing 1,157,814
pounds of striped bass, 104.5 percent of
their quota. Of the 3,599 who purchased
permits only 1,207 reported landing even
one fish.

“You know that’s BS,” declares Brad
Burns of Stripers Forever. “Those other
2,392 guys didn’t buy their permits just
to look at them. All they have to do
is fork over that money, and they can
legally transport up to 30 big striped
bass at a time. Instead of requiring tags
Massachusetts uses the
honor system. It escapes
any reasonable thinking
to imagine that there isn’t
terrible abuse. On top of
not wanting to report
their catch and hitting their quota they
want to avoid income taxes. Only 102
[recremercials] reported catching at least
3,000 pounds of stripers which, at $3 a
pound, is $9,000 in gross income.”
Massachusetts Rep. Matt Patrick
(D-Falmouth) has recently introduced HD
245, a bill that would ban “commercial
harvesting and sale of wild striped bass”
in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts,
reduce the recreational bag limit from
two to one fish per day, and impose a
slot limit between 20 and 26 inches or
over 40 inches. (While a locked slot limit
can severely damage weak year classes,
Patrick tells me he’ll talk to managers and
keep an open mind about making necessary
amendments.)

This desperately needed bill has the recremercials
shrieking like Sabine virgins.
“We are deeply concerned about what
we consider to be the privatization of our
rights of access to the resources we all
own and the current trend towards private
ownership of our fisheries,” proclaims the
Cape and Islands Inshore Fishermen’s
Association under the apt site logo of
a striper inside a red circle and crossed
out by a red line. “This bill will do little
more than place 100 percent of the access
to striped bass in Massachusetts into the
hands of an elitist group.”

The association goes on to bemoan possible
loss of the public’s “right” to walk
into any fish market and purchase wild
stripers, this despite the fact that farmraised,
white-bass-striper hybrids are
readily available for about the same price
(an indication that there is little difference
in flavor), are available all year instead of
The Massachusetts
commercial striper season
is a grotesque charade...

just summer and contain few of the PCBs
that have led to health advisories from
Maine to North Carolina for consumption
of wild stripers. Men and boys aren’t
supposed to eat wild striped bass more
than once a month; and young girls and
women who are pregnant or may get that
way should consider never eating them.

[plugginpete]

Why do commercial fishermen, recreational
anglers pretending to be
commercial fishermen and their state
and ASMFC facilitators and apologists
imagine that people who don’t fish have
a “right” to eat wild stripers? If such a
right exists, should not the general public
also be able to purchase wild black bass,
wild brook trout, wild Atlantic salmon,
wild deer, wild moose, wild ducks, wild
doves, wild turkeys, wild woodcock and
wild grouse?

Virtually no species of commercially
harvested fish is in good shape, stripers
included. Commercial striper harvest
doesn’t make sense morally, biologically
or economically.

But all efforts in the U.S.
Congress to make striped bass a gamefish
get shouted down by commercial interests.

It’s hardly a radical notion; 6 of the
12 states under ASMFC management
have already done it.
Director Diodati of the Massachusetts
Division of Marine Fisheries avers that
Rep. Patrick’s bill hasn’t got a chance, and
maybe he’s right. But when, echoing his
fellow managers coastwide, he assures all
hands that the stock of America’s most
important marine gamefish “continues
to look good,” maybe—in fact, probably—
he’s wrong.

In any case, I can’t help
recalling the record of his and other state
agencies in the days when Congress used
to let them set their own standards for
striper management. And I can’t help
recalling the famous defense uttered by
Chico Marx in the face of both anecdotal
and prima facie evidence: “Who you

gonna believe, me or your own eyes?”

[stripercrazy]

This is not a population

survey; it is strictly a tagging operation.
Still, it’s a good indicator of abundance.
Since 1990 the best catch was 6,275 fish
in the year 2000; the worst was 147 in
2009. The average from 1987 to 2006
was 2,212, but the average for the last
three years was 516.

Even if the anecdotal evidence that
the fish are just hanging out elsewhere is
accurate, something is terribly amiss—
most likely a lack of food in their historic
range. Grossly malnourished bass showing
up in ever increasing numbers, especially
in Chesapeake Bay, which produces 75
percent of the coastal population, would
seem to confirm this.

I have never understood why managers
think they can minister to a predator
without taking care of its prey.

Wow, sobering figures, even if they're only from one area of North Carolina.

[mick2360]

The bottom line is that the menhadden are being slaughtered to make fish oil capsules. Without prey fish, stripers will soon be a rarity, once again. What a shame.

[finchaser]

The bottom line is that the menhadden are being slaughtered to make fish oil capsules. Without prey fish, stripers will soon be a rarity, once again. What a shame.

There are more bunker around than there have been in years ,we were out yesterday and saw bunker schools that ran for miles. some of these schools were top to bottom in 60 feet of water on the recorder. There biggest threat was dolphins.

One of the main problems is in Virginia and NC they net big fish all winter. The real shame is when the fish start to migrate, the snag and drop guys are there to greet them killing the big breeders to fill ego's. Lagoons and dumpsters are full of big dead whole fish that are discarded. Most people don't have coolers big enough to keep them fresh so they are dumped over board at the dock after the photo shoot. Many marinas, do to this, do not allow carcasses of any kind to to be thrown in the water any longer.
The amount of bass around could never eat the amount of bunker that are around.

The massacre of big fish each spring now is far worse than prior to the collapse just before the moratoriums went into effect. Just do to the amount of so called anglers and things like bonus tags for 28" fish things are going down hill fast.

So if bass become a rarity again it will be do to man not the lack of bunker for food ,and lets not forget the sand eel explosion the last 2 years. The main reason the blue fish are not really on the bunker schools. There is plenty of food around for bass to eat were just killing them faster than they can reproduce. the big fish that are being killed today are from the moratorium breeding years

[DarkSkies]

One of the main problems is in Virginia and NC they net big fish all winter. The real shame is when the fish start to migrate, the snag and drop guys are there to greet them killing the big breeders to fill ego's. Lagoons and dumpsters are full of big dead whole fish that are discarded. Most people don't have coolers big enough to keep them fresh so they are dumped over board at the dock after the photo shoot. Many marinas, do to this, do not allow carcasses of any kind to to be thrown in the water any longer.

The massacre of big fish each spring now is far worse than prior to the collapse just before the moratoriums went into effect. Just do to the amount of so called anglers and things like bonus tags for 28" fish things are going down hill fast.


There is plenty of food around for bass to eat were just killing them faster than they can reproduce. the big fish that are being killed today are from the moritoium breeding years

Great points, finchaser.

Whenever I have a large problem looming in front of me, I always try to solve it by taking it one step at a time. If so many guys say they are concerned about the future of bass, how many would be in agreement in entirely eliminating the 28" bonus bass tags? It wouldn't be much, but at least it would be a start.

Is there anyone here who might know who to talk to, or how to get this organized, to see if we have a consensus of support to begin this process?

[stripercrazy]

Great points, finchaser.

, how many would be in agreement in entirely eliminating the 28" bonus bass tags? It wouldn't be much, but at least it would be a start.

I think you guys in Jersey are wack to begin with, How the sportsmen didn't fight to have that 28" bonus tag struck down I'll never know. We have to put up with one bass at 28" and one over 40", which means that most guys only keep one bass unless they're on a charter boat. So why can't that be the limit coastwide, one at 28" and one at 40", no bonus tags even for charters? And the charters should all be required to follow the same regs, no extra becasue they have a boat. I think the most distasteful thing to me as a sportsman is that I have to follow the regs for my state, while other states have different regs, as finchaser said. It really should be uniform, maybe then we can all rally together and feel like we're actually making some progress. My .02.

[bababooey]

I picked up some interesting stats sifting through that-


1.Two of the best and most experienced striper guides on the East Coast are Capt. Doug Jowett and Capt. David Blinken. Jowett, who has the perspective of guiding both in Maine and Massachusetts, offers this: “My contacts all the way to North Carolina are singing the same song—striped-bass fishing is in dramatic decline due to poor numbers
of fish in every year class out there.

The decline isn’t just a one-year event. The biomass and year-class distribution have been declining for the past five years.

2. And this from Blinken, who guides in New York and Massachusetts with forays into Rhode Island and Connecticut: “I think stripers are in massive decline. I saw fewer fish on the flats in 2008 than in any of the 17 years I’ve been guiding. Montauk (N.Y.) fishing was magical, but if you distribute those fish across the [migratory] range, that’s not a lot.

3.
A:First, the managers need to sharply reduce the fishing mortality
rate, which (because they’ve plugged it into a logarithmic equation) they call “F.” But convincing ASMFC to do this is a task no less challenging than summoning Neptune from the deep. Currently F is .31, which
equates to removal of maybe 27 percent of the population. That’s above what the managers claim to be the safe target of .30 but below what they claim to be the danger threshold of .34. It’s a tight squeeze, but
this is how managers think—maximize protein extraction.
This shows that the ASMFC is not managing for the future, they are managing for yield.

B:However, ASMFC allows a large harvest of smaller fish in the producer areas. That doesn’t get you there. You can’t kill fish twice—when they’re young and when they’re old. You’d be surprised how many
managers want to do this. They want to maintain a high population level, which implies lowering F, then allow this smorgasbord of size and bag-limit slots up and down the coast so you can’t see what the population’s doing.

4. By far the biggest commercial slaughter occurs off Massachusetts,
where half the population of Atlantic striped bass summers.
At the stubborn insistence of that agency’s director recreational
anglers can send in their lousy $65 and kill off and carry breeding-age females at the rate of 30 per day....“The commercial [striper] fishery,” he writes, “has also changed by attracting thousands of non-traditional
participants who are lured by the thought of subsidizing an expensive hobby.”...All they have to do is fork over that money, and they can
legally transport up to 30 big striped bass at a time. Instead of requiring tags Massachusetts uses the honor system. It escapes any reasonable thinking to imagine that there isn’t terrible abuse. On top of not wanting to report their catch and hitting their quota they want to avoid income taxes. Only 102 [recremercials] reported catching at least 3,000 pounds of stripers which, at $3 a pound, is $9,000 in gross income.”

(Only 102 out or 3000 registered commercial anglers reported catching at least 3000lbs of stripers? What about the other 2898? It doesn't take a rocket scientist to see that some of these guys are underreporting their catches.)


Eye opening.

[fishinmission78]

I'm in, like stripercrazy said tho, as long as it applies to everybody I'm good with it.

[lostatsea]

I'm in too, eliminate the bonus tags, and maybe go back to a slot limit. finchaser, would a slot limit work to bring the numbers back up, in your opinion? why or why not?

[BassBuddah]

I don't think this will ever be resolved until we're all on the same page. Finchaser you talked about the winter commercial fishery down south. Any ideas how that will or can be modified? The commercial lobby is strong. I don't see how you can or will defeat it. I think concessions are reasonable and will have to be made by the commercials if they want to survive, but as to the possibility of ever shutting it down? I think you have a better chance of brokering peace with the Arabs and Jews.

[finchaser]

I think you guys in Jersey are wack to begin with, How the sportsmen didn't fight to have that 28" bonus tag struck down I'll never know. We have to put up with one bass at 28" and one over 40", which means that most guys only keep one bass unless they're on a charter boat. So why can't that be the limit coastwide, one at 28" and one at 40", no bonus tags even for charters? And the charters should all be required to follow the same regs, no extra becasue they have a boat. I think the most distasteful thing to me as a sportsman is that I have to follow the regs for my state, while other states have different regs, as finchaser said. It really should be uniform, maybe then we can all rally together and feel like we're actually making some progress. My .02.

Couldn't agree more protects the most prolific breeders

[wish4fish]

bonus tags are bogus they just let the guys with the boats cheat when ever they want

[albiealert]

I picked up some interesting stats sifting through that-




4. By far the biggest commercial slaughter occurs off Massachusetts,
where half the population of Atlantic striped bass summers.
At the stubborn insistence of that agency’s director recreational
anglers can send in their lousy $65 and kill off and carry breeding-age females at the rate of 30 per day....“The commercial [striper] fishery,” he writes, “has also changed by attracting thousands of non-traditional
participants who are lured by the thought of subsidizing an expensive hobby.”...All they have to do is fork over that money, and they can
legally transport up to 30 big striped bass at a time. Instead of requiring tags Massachusetts uses the honor system. It escapes any reasonable thinking to imagine that there isn’t terrible abuse. On top of not wanting to report their catch and hitting their quota they want to avoid income taxes. Only 102 [recremercials] reported catching at least 3,000 pounds of stripers which, at $3 a pound, is $9,000 in gross income.”

(Only 102 out or 3000 registered commercial anglers reported catching at least 3000lbs of stripers? What about the other 2898? It doesn't take a rocket scientist to see that some of these guys are underreporting their catches.)


Eye opening.

I always thought this was just ridiculous. I think they called it spot on, it is a way for some hard-core fishermen to subsidize a hobby. How can you ensure those 3000 guys will all follow the honor system? There is no way to do that, it's impossible to expect accurate reporting from more than a small percentage.

This would be like if we let all the senators and representatives vote on their own personal pay increases in Congress. Oh, I forgot, we already do that. And do you see how high the budget is in Congress? Same principle, there can't be more than a smattering of honesty among the 3000 reporting their catches. It's human nature.

[williehookem]

ok I like the uniform size limits for the whole coast. How in the world could this even be a possibility? It seems like each state has their political committees and lobbyists that say how big they want the size limit to be, and the ASMMC takes that into consideration?