Why It Matters: With more than 7 million anglers pursuing Atlantic striped bass, it is the most economically and culturally important recreational fish species from North Carolina to Maine. It is vitally important to communities along the mid and upper Atlantic Seaboard that striped bass are sustainably managed for abundance and access by the angling public. Recent changes to management measures are working and the population is rebuilding, but additional restrictions being considered by the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission (ASMFC) threaten to bite anglers again. The Congressional Sportsmen’s Foundation (CSF) recently urged the ASMFC not to make any additional changes to striped bass management as overfishing is not occurring.
Highlights:
- Even though striped bass recruitment in the Chesapeake Bay has been poor in recent years, the population continues to rebuild under the current management framework.
- CSF is opposing a new proposal to implement unwarranted season closures and even tighter restrictions on recreational anglers pursuing striped bass.
Last week, CSF submitted formal comments to the ASMFC on Draft Addendum III to Amendment 7 of the Interstate Fishery Management Plan for Atlantic Striped Bass supporting some of the proposed measures while opposing any efforts to further reduce recreational fishing effort. The draft addendum, which the ASMFC will take action on later this month, is proposing an additional 12% reduction in fishing mortality, which includes further seasonal closures, to only very slightly improve the odds that the population rebuilds by 2029, which CSF believes is unnecessary.
Striped bass removals are at a 30-year low, and the number of larger fish in the population continues to grow towards the rebuilding target, despite several consecutive years of unsuccessful striped bass spawns and poor recruitment in the Chesapeake Bay.
The basis of CSF’s opposition to further restrict recreational angling includes:
- Outdated rebuilding assumptions – the ten-year timeline to build the spawning stock biomass (SSB) above the target level is an arbitrary timeline and not based on striped bass life history. Furthermore, the rebuilding target assumes the same conditions exist in the Chesapeake Bay today that were in existence 30 years ago on which the SSB baseline is set.
- The proposed reduction in fishing effort is trying to achieve very precise estimates of fishing mortality using highly imprecise MRIP catch data – the difference between the estimate of fishing mortality to rebuild the population and the estimated fishing mortality rate from 2024 was only 0.01 or 1%. The Draft Addendum is reacting to a statistically insignificant difference.
- Higher spawning stock biomass ≠ higher recruitment – history has clearly demonstrated that there is no relationship between the SSB (number of large females in the population) to the number of young striped bass seen in the Bay the following year. Environmental conditions, not fishing effort or the number of big females in the population, are driving the poor recruitment.
While opposing efforts to reduce angler access to the striped bass fishery, CSF is supporting several of the recommendations in the Draft Addendum, including:
- Standardizing how striped bass are measured for regulatory compliance across all states, ensuring fairness and enforceability.
- Tagging commercially caught fish at the point of harvest to aid enforcement of commercial quotas and increase accountability within the commercial sector.
- Changing the Maryland striped bass seasonal structure to provide more angling opportunities in the spring, reduce post-release mortality concerns in the summer months, better align with Marine Recreational Information Program (MRIP) waves, and provide better clarity for anglers and enforcement authorities.
Since 2019, several striped bass management measures to reduce fishing-related mortality have already been implemented. To reduce fishing mortality further, segments of the season will have to be closed to effort in some fashion, denying access for anglers. However, given that the current regulations have already reduced striped bass removals to its lowest level in 30 years and the SSB is, in fact, rebuilding under the current framework, no additional restrictions are necessary.
