My take on the ASMFC hearings on Addendum II

[JakeF]

I did a quick search and didn't see any feedback from anyone who personally attended these hearings, so I will post up my synopsis of the meetings for your review. There are 2 very important and separate issues in play here and if you are at all interested in the health of the striped bass fishery, I would urge you to read through this post carefully. I apologize in advance for the length of it, but there's a lot of information to be covered.

I will here attempt to summarize Monday night's hearing in Dedham, MA.

There were 33 people in attendance. It seemed all were recreational fishermen, except for maybe 1 or 2. The Mass Striped Bass Assn. made a strong showing and though most (if not all) members who showed were recs, they indicated that they represent a large number of comms in their organization. Also present were John Redman (Striped-Bass), someone from ReelTime, several members of Plum Island Surfcasters, several from Stripercoast Surfcasters Club, and several others who's affiliations I did not catch. Interestingly enough, I don't believe the MBBA and Stripers Forever were officially represented.

Paul Diodati (sp?), the MA appointee to the ASMFC was host.

Nichola Meserve gave a good presentation on the current draft of Addendum II to Amendment 6, fielded questions, and moderated the public comment portion of the meeting. She handled the meeting very well.

For those who have not read the Addendum, you can find it HERE. I had studied all of these details ahead of time, but wanted to hear the ASMFC presentation for myself just to make sure that I was, in fact, understanding everything correctly. I'm glad I did, as it did clarify a few things for me.

The Addendum is basically broken into 2 parts, or 2 separate issues.
Both issues were discussed separately in Ms. Meserve's presentation, and the public comment section was also split into 2 parts discussing each issue separately.

Issue #2, the less controversial issue was discussed first, so I will touch on that first for you all. This question under Issue 2 is basically whether or not to redefine the method for determining recruitment failure of the Juvenile Abundance Index (JAI). The JAI is essentially an estimate of the success of the spawn for any given year.

Currently under Section 3.1.1 of Amendment 6, the data used to determine recruitment (spawning) failure, includes ALL data known, including data from early years before the methods were standardized (and some years where data is actually missing i.e. VA JAI), as shown circled in RED below in the New Jersey JAI history:



Removing these years from the data set would result in the bar (black line above) being RAISED. This is a good thing in my opinion. Management action (i.e. reduction in comm harvest and/or rec harvest) is triggered if 3 consecutive years fall below the line. By raising the bar here, management action would be triggered more quickly, while the stock is still actually healthy enough to rebuild quickly.

Here is where the bar would be set on the NJ JAI chart if those early years were removed from the data set.



Also included in this option would be the recommendation to FIX the bar at this level, so that it is not a constantly moving target that changes every year as data is added. It is recommended by the Technical Committee that the current data set is ideal and a moving target is not in the best interest of the fishery in this regard. I agree with this assessment.This is huge, and I think misunderstood by most.

Here's the deal. Status Quo on this issue means that a bar that is already low, is also variable. The bar is set at 75% of the average of all years in the data set. Let's say for example that for the next 10 years we have consistently low JAI indices (slightly above, or right at the current bar, or just one year out of every 3 slightly above the line keeping the trigger from being tripped), because those new numbers for the 10 bad years become part of the average, the bar will gradually get lower and lower as the average JAI in the data set goes down.

By FIXING the bar at its current level, or recalculated higher level, 10 bad years won't cause the bar to drop, resulting in a what could be a sliding curve toward the bottom, never quite tripping the trigger. Without this being redefined, and fixing the bar at conservatively reasonable level, the fishery could be in real trouble before either the JAI or the SSB triggers are tripped.

Public comment on Issue #2 described above showed 100% of the meeting attendees in support of the Technical Committee's recommendation to redefine recruitment failure as outlined above.
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The floor was then opened for public comment on Issue #1 of Addendum II to Amendment 6, which is basically this. Under Issue #1, we have 2 options on the table.

Option 1 = Status Quo, under this option commercial quota would remain unchanged. However, the Committee requested comments the idea of simply reallocating some of the recreation catch (through min size increase, reduced bag limit, or closed season/area) to the commercial sector. So that the overall take would remain approx. the same, but with a larger portion of it allocated to the comm sector.

Option 2 = Under this option the Management Board would select a specific percent increase (yet undefined!!!) to be applied to the coastal comm quota established in Amendment 6. Each jurisdiction (state) would be responsible for deciding whether or not to actually implement the increased quota level. In other words, any state could chose to NOT increase their commercial allowance in spite of a go-ahead from the ASMFC to do so.

Public comment was 100% in favor of Option 1, Status Quo, no commercial increase, this includes those representing the commercial sector in MA. No one spoke up in favor of a commercial quota increase. In addition many people strongly recommended not only no commercial increase, but also a reduction in recreational allowance to 1 fish per day with a slot limit.

Some of the arguments presented against commercial quota increase were as follows:

1. MANY people present reported an overwhelming absence of small fish over the last couple years. This goes along with the ASMFC's graphs in Addendum II which show a steady decline in JAI, especially in the Maryland/Chesapeake numbers.

2. Several people pointed out that while the ASMFC's female spawning stock biomass assessment is currently above the threshold they've set to determine whether or not the stock is being overfished, their chart also shows a fairly steady decline in the Total Abundance of striped bass since 2004. This is another indication that the lower JAI numbers need to be taken seriously, as small fish are not filling in to keep the overall abundance high. Once the current Female Spawning Stock Biomass is gone, there are few small fish coming along behind them to fill in the gap.
This is reflected in the below graph taken from Addendum II.



3. Juvenile Recruitment levels (age 1 fish) shown above showed steady decline from 2005-2007, with only a small recover in 2008. 2009 numbers not shown on the above graph also indicated decline.

4. Mark Pirani from Stripercoast Surfcasters Club spoke about the potential devastating effects of mycobacteriosis in the Chesapeake. When asked, Ms. Meserve stated that an estimated 75% of the entire coastal biomass comes from the Chesapeake. She also confirmed estimates that at least 70% of those fish are believed to be infected with Mycobacteriosis. She also said that the long term affects of the disease is yet unknown (i.e. whether or not it is always fatal, whether or not a fish can ever fully recover, the rate at which growth is slowed, etc... all unknown). Mark urged the board to look at this very conservatively, and consider the worst case scenario,,, which is this. The ASMFC's graph above shows the SSB to be just over 60 million fish. If 75% of those fish come from the Chesapeake, that's 45 million female spawners in the Chesapeake. If 70 percent of those fish are infected with Mycobacteriosis, that is 31.5 million female spawners that are possibly infected with myco in the Chessy alone,,, more that half of the entire SSB on the eastern seaboard. If this disease does turn out to be fatal, we will be loosing more than 50% of all the breeders in the next few years, which would crash the stock to WELL below the threshold set by ASMFC for urgent management action. Mark said that increasing any quota at this time would not be wise or in the best interest of the fishery. Several others echoed Marks comments.

5. Poaching. Ms. Meserve said that the ASMFC is in the process of developing more accurate models of estimating the amount of unreported poaching that is going on, but said those numbers are not yet available. Several people spoke of the KNOWN poaching that is going on and that the actual take, especially from the commercial sector, is far above what is indicated by the ASMFC's numbers. It was also mentioned by myself and 1 or two other people, that the commercial fishing industry, and the legal sale of striped bass in general, are fueling the rampant poaching that we all know is going on and it was recommended that the only way to truly stop large scale poaching operations, such as the ones recently discovered in Maryland and Virginia, is to stop the legal sale of striped bass coast wide. I personally have in my hand a stack of printed articles from unbiased news sources and the USDOJ showing that in the last year alone 111,553 lbs of illegally caught striped bass were confiscated. That's just the articles I found in about 30 minutes of searching, and is nearly equal to all of Maryland's annual quota! To increase the commercial quota at all, especially at a time when the ASMFC admits to not having a handle on even a remote estimate of the number of poached fish is unwise. If they can estimate how many fish I take home legally each year without even asking me, surely they can come up with at least a ballpark figure on poaching and factor that into their figures.

I think we got our point across loud and clear.

Fishermen and other interested groups are encouraged to provide input on the Draft Addendum, either by attending public hearings or providing written comments. The Draft Addendum can be obtained via the Commission's website at www.asmfc.org under Breaking News or by contacting the Commission at (202) 289-6400. Public comment will be accepted until 5:00 PM (EST) on October 1, 2010 and should be forwarded to Nichola Meserve, FMP Coordinator, 1444 Eye Street, NW, Sixth Floor, Washington, DC 20005; (202) 289-6051 (FAX) or at nmeserve@asmfc.org (Subject line: Striped Bass Addendum II). For more information, please contact Nichola Meserve, Fishery Management Plan Coordinator at (202) 289-6400 or nmeserve@asmfc.org.