ACTION ALERT – ASMFC 2024 Annual Meeting (Wednesday, October 23, 2024 1:30-5PM EST)

In 2022 the ASMFC adopted a new ten-year striped bass management plan, Stripers Forever was the lone voice calling for bold action beyond the scope of the available options. We called for a ten-year harvest moratorium. At the time we said:

“We are 18 years into a 10-year management plan that has utterly failed in its objective to rebuild striped bass stocks. Now the ASMFC is preparing to embark on yet another 10-year plan of compromise and half-measures, and stripers may not survive. Bold, decisive action is needed to prevent a collapse of the fishery like we saw in the late 1970s. An emergency moratorium was adopted in 1984, and is the only approach proven to work.”

We stand behind that call and today there is an opportunity to once again send a message to the ASMFC: For the sake of the survival of wild striped bass, adopt a ten-year harvest moratorium.

Environmental conditions in the most important area for striped bass reproduction have narrowed to the point where there is no room for error, as evinced by five consecutive years of spawning failure in the upper Chesapeake. Warming water, micobacteriosis, predation by invasive species, lack of forage, increased fishing pressure, gill netting, and industrial-scale poaching are removing adults faster than they can breed. Soon we will be presented with new options that amount to little more than minor, incremental adjustments that will succeed only in delaying the bold action needed to save striped bass.

It took the ASMFC 18 years to admit their previous ten-year plan had failed. We are now three years into Amendment 7 and striped bass are worse off than they were when that ten-year plan began. And with five straight years of spawning failure there are no new generations of fish coming into maturity in sufficient numbers. Yet we continue to harvest mature fish rather than preserve them. The situation is unsustainable.

As we did in 2021, it is time to go off script and let the ASMFC know that we reject their options; we reject the absurdity of trying to reverse the rapidly building momentum of an impending crash with tweaks that even they admit have, at best, a coin-flip chance of making only modest improvements. Striped bass can’t wait.

The ASMFC’s goals are to restore abundance and healthy age stratification. To achieve those goals demands a ten-year harvest moratorium that will maximize survival of the fish available today, protect what fish are spawned tomorrow, and allow these fish to grow into maturity. Please write to express your frustration with the ASMFC’s half-measures and demand the kind of bold action befitting a crisis. A harvest moratorium. Ten years of zero commercial harvest and of strict catch-and-release for the recreational fishery is the ONLY policy that has a chance of achieving the ASMFC’s stated goals and of saving striped bass.

ACTION ALERT

Submitting your comments is an easy and effective way to be part of the process. Let the ASMFC know that they must act now. As an added bonus we will be giving away 5 limited edition SFxSLP striped bass bracelets.

To be automatically be entered to win all you need to do is send your comments to comments@asmfc.org and CC us at comments@stripersforever.org.

Following the meeting on October 23rd we will randomly draw 5 winners. Winners will be notified via the email address used to send in comments.

• Get your comments in by 5 PM on Tuesday, October 15 so they will be included in the supplemental materials for the meeting.
• You must indicate in your email that you want your comments included in the supplemental materials for the meeting.

Next Wednesday, October 23, 2024 from 1:30pm to 5PM EST the Atlantic Striped Bass Management Board will meet during the ASMFC 2024 Annual Meeting. Below is the meeting agenda.

To register for the live webinar please click here: ASMFC 2024 Annual Meeting – Atlantic Striped Bass Management Board

Webinar ID: 565-353-915

Call in: +1.562.247.8422

Access Code: 953-170-135

A PIN will be provided to you after joining the webinar. For those who will not be joining the webinar
but would like to listen in to the audio portion only, press the # key when asked for a PIN.

ADDITIONAL LINKS

• ASMFC Annual Meeting: Atlantic Striped Bass Management Board – Main Meeting Materials (PDF)