Salt Water Sportsman
March 2005

The State of the Striper

Is one of America's greatest gamefish in trouble again?

By Rip Cunningham

Striped bass have been a prized fish since Colonial days when John Smith wrote that the "bass was so plentiful that a man could walk dry shod across their backs." Since then they have had their ups and downs, as any population of fish has naturally, with human interference causing those natural cycles to be exaggerated.

Striped bass are prized as table fare, and the trophy-sized cows are prized also as wily and worthy competitors. Since my grandfather's days around the turn of the century at the Pasque Island Club, one of the early striped bass clubs that catered to "sports," we have loved to catch striped bass. As the old saying goes, we may be loving them to death.

I am not ashamed to say that during the late 1950s and early '60s, I spent my summers sending what seemed like substantial number of these great fish to market. I am not ashamed since we were being told at that time that we could not fish them out. By the late 1970s and early '80s, striped bass were so overfished by commercial and personal-use fishing that I was beginning to believe that my som would never catch one of these great fish.

The Long Road Back

In 1984, striped bass became the focus of the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission and the 1984 Atlantic Striped Bass Conservation Act. For the next 11 years, the striped bass became the most researched and highly managed fish on the East Coast and perhaps in the entire United States. The effort paid of handsomely as the fish was declared fully recovered in 1995 and soon became the jewel in an otherwise tarnished crown of fisheries managers. Striped bass continues to be one of the most highly managed finfish that we have.

Luckily, the fisheries managers have a number of mechanisms in place to minimize the possibility of having the steep population decline we experienced in the 1970s and early 1980s. If the management measures in place to not get the job done, there are triggers that cause more restrictive measures to be activated automatically. One ofthose triggers may soon be pulled.

Fisheries management is basically driver by statistical analysis of existing numbers from which the future is predicted. It is a little like driving a bus forward by looking in the rearview mirror.

The most recent striped bass stock assessment, completed for the 2003 fishing year, indicates that there is some potential trouble brewing. What the assessment says is that the overall mortality, which consists of catch mortality for striped bass, release mortality and natural mortality, is too high. Fishing mortality, or "F" in scientific terms, is measured in a number of ways. The two main ways of measuring it are with tagging surveys and with Virtual Population Analysis [VPA]. For 2003, one method says everything is okay, while the other says it is not. In the past, there has been some correlation between these two measurements, although they never come out with the same exact results. In 2003, the VPA showed that the mortality on eight-plus-year-old fish was F=.62. (It should be noted that these numbers do not correlate directly to percentages.) The target F is .30. The 2003 mortality number for three- to eight-year-old fish is .29, so that port of the population is within the plan.

Too Much Fishing?

The problem occurs when one compares these numbers to the tagging survey results. Those results came in much lower: one measurement was right on target and the other was below it. When compared to other indices, the 2002 VPA numbers tracked with five out of eight indexes. The 2003 numbers tracked with only three out of eight. So there appears to be some anomaly with the 2003 mortality figures. What they do indicate is that mortality on eight-plus-year-old striped bass needs to be reduced and that overfishing has been occurring for several years.

The easy thing to do would be to blame the commercial harvest, which has seen some increases in recent years, since Amendment 6 to the striped bass plan increased the commercial quota by 42 percent. Unfortunately, the figures still show that the personal-use catch and the release mortality associated with this fishery account for 76 percent of the toat catch or 3.6 million fish. We say "unfortunately" because the personal-use catch will likely be blamed for this overfishing, yet the average striped bass angler takes home fewer than one fish per year. While this publication has long supported the idea of gamefish status for striped bass, this situation indicates that continued management controls would be necessary even with just a personal-use fishery.

Managers are most concerned over the indication that the highest overfishing appears to be in the eight- to 11-year-old fish and these make up the heart of the spawning stock biomass (SSB). These are the geese that lay the golden eggs. Pound for pound, the bigger fish will deposit more eggs, and eggs that are more viable, than smaller spawners. The SSB has declined over the last few years and is now just above the desired threshold of 12,726 metric tons. It appears to have peaked at around 18,000 metric tons several years ago. If this type of trend is allowed to continue, theoretically, all fish above the 28-inch size limit for coastal waters would be caught every year, eliminating any sort of trophy fishery. While managers are not likely to, nor are they supposed to, allow this to happen, it is a cause for concern.

Several major factors appear to be causing this overfishing of spawning-age fish. First, there are the commercial fisheries that target these older fish - such as Massachusetts, which has a 32-inch minimum size for landings. Next, the personal-use fisheries, which have 28-inch minimum size limits with no maximum, are also problematic.

One additional problem that is only just being quantified and understood is the discard mortality of big fish taken in the otter trawl fishery for groundfish in the Great South Channel off Cape Cod in the fall. Generally, these fish are mature breeders and the currect observed data indicate that substantial numbers of these fish are being caught and discarded. Some estimates put the discard just below 300,000 pounds, with mortality that is close to 100 percent. Major conservation organizations, such as Oceana, are pushing for measures to resolve this unnecessary waste. There are some who feel that this discard problem may be the reason that the VPA and tagging figures are so far apart. The 2003 tagging survey had a substantial number of tags in larger fish just disappear and it is possible that this is where they went.

Some factors are currently having an impact on the overall population, and there are still more potential factors to take into account if existing regulations change.

First is the impact of forage-base declines, particularly in the Chesapeake Bay area. Menhaden are being fished heavily in the mid-Atlantic and this has affected the size and health of the average strped bass, primarily in the Bay. The striper population is showing evidence of this stress by a high incidence of Mycobacteriosis which causes lesions on the skin of the fish. This is fatal in a small segment of fish, but is a tangible indication of a potentially serious problem.

Another potential problem is the opening of teh Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ), from three to 200 miles offshore, to the taking of striped bass. While there are a whole host of pros and cons to doing this, the main reason not to do so is that it will increase the catch and mortality of bigger fish. We believe that at the time this is being written there is enough concern over the projected mortality of big fish that the National Marine Fisheries Service will back off their push to open these waters.

Could this spell disaster for striped bass? Possibly, but not likely, because as was indicated earlier, striped bass is one of the most studied and managed fisheries.

But it does say that fisheries managers need to take a new look at how this fishery is managed. Perhaps there is a case to be made for gamefish status, but the managers will never make that decision. It will have to be done legislatively and pushed through by personal-use striped bass enthusiasts.

Managers may need to implement a wider use of slot limits along the coast, so that mortality pressure can be taken off the larger fish. Along with slot limits, there could be some mechanism allowing for trophy fish to be landed. Some have suggested a sort of tag system.

It may mean that managers will need to close areas along the migratory route of these fish to commercial fishing gear that has the capability to catch striped bass, at certain times of the year. It may mean that striped bass and their forage fisheries will be kept in better balance through ecosystem-based management approaches.

This is the classic good-news-bad-news scenario. The bad news is that overfishing is occurring with striped bass. The good news is that the fisheries managers know that this is happening and will be forced to act to reverse it. Just don't expect them to act as fast as you would like. That rarely happens. So in the meantime, there will likely be a lot of noise about the sky falling.

While there are problems with striped bass, they can be solved. On the other had, we must remain vigilant. If you are a striped bass enthusiast, stay up to date on what the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission (www.asmfc.org) is doing, and why it is doing it, and be ready to keep these fishery managers' feet to the fire.

Article courtesy of Salt Water Sportsman

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