ASMFC Spring Meeting Coming Up Soon
On Tuesday May 13 the Atlantic States Marine Fishery Commission will meet to discuss options to reduce the harvest of striped bass for 2015. Those proposed changes will then be taken to public hearing later in the year. If you go to your state info page on our website you will easily find your three state ASMFC commissioners. If you want them to vote for strong conservation measures for striped bass contact them and tell them so. They will be very interested in your opinion.
Stripers Forever submitted the written comments below to each ASMFC commissioner, and we will be following the results of the meeting closely. As it usually always happens, most recreational groups are asking for a substantial reduction in the catch while commercial interests want the smallest cut – if any – that they can get away with. Additionally, there will be attempts to stall this reduction until 2016.
The decline in the striped bass population is clear to anyone who spends time on the water and the time for action is now.
Here are the comments Stripers Forever submitted. Feel free to use any or all of this message in contacting your state ASMFC commissioners:
5/3/2014
Comments to the ASMFC Striped Bass Management Board Commissioners on
Addendum IV to the Striped Bass Management Plan
If the wild striped bass fishery is to recover, the ASMFC must mandate
both a coast wide reduction in fishing mortality of at least 50% in 2015,
and a significant reduction in the harvest of the remaining large prime
breeders.
The regulations in place up through 2002 allowed the striped bass
population to recover from serious overfishing. But since that
time there has been a steep and steady decline in the number of
stripers available in the fishery.
The tipping point was the 40 percent expansion of the coastal
commercial quota enacted in 2003. To those of us at Stripers
Forever and to everyone else who spends time on the water fishing
for striped bass, it is crystal clear that the population has
suffered an enormous decline since that quota enhancement.
An analysis of the Chesapeake YOY data shows that the average
count from 1992 through 2002 was 21.96. From 2003 to 2013 it was
11.85. And in the five year period from 2009 through 2013, the
number dropped to 10.91. The real decline is almost 50 percent (or
even greater) and is masked by the huge number of fish born in
2010 which may very well be an anomaly. A year class of that size
was supposed to send a large number of two-year-old stripers into
the coastal fishery. We have had no such reports. The 2010 year
class should now be evident as three-year-old fish, but so far
this season, stripers of that size are very scarce. We also know
that recent year classes in the Hudson River are not trending in a
positive direction.
Current regulations have encouraged the targeting of too many
large striped bass. No one really understands the relationship
between the size of the spawning stock biomass and the success of
striper year classes. We do know that these fish were designed by
nature to grow into the largest predators in their niche and that
they routinely lived and spawned repeatedly over a great number of
years. Our current management is certainly at odds with nature’s
plan.
In summary, spawning success as measured through the YOY index in the
Chesapeake Bay has been reduced by at least 50 percent. We need to have
more consistently successful year classes if we are to return this
fishery to its previous robust state.
Stripers Forever feels that the new ASMFC management plan should mandate a
reduction in fishing mortality in excess of 50 percent — and that the
burden of the fishery should be shifted away from the harvest of large
fish which are so valuable to the striped bass gene pool.
Board of directors of Stripers Forever
