Six Straight Years of Failed Striped Bass Spawning
Maryland and Virginia reported their 2024 juvenile young of year indexes for striped bass. There’s no other way to put it: failure. That’s six straight years of dismal reproduction in the most important nursery for wild Atlantic striped bass. And that should have alarm bells ringing at the ASMFC.
Female striped bass reach sexual maturity between four and eight years. That means the 2017 and 2018 year classes—the last two that were above average—are not showing up to reproduce as hoped. The ASMFC already admitted that the good 2015 year class is a lost cause, and so there are very few breeders left available to return in the spring. Yet the harvest continues to be focused on breeder-sized fish.
Right now, Maryland’s Juvenile Striped Bass Index looks a lot like it did in the mid-1970s when the striper population collapsed. The action that changed the fish’s fortune then was a harvest moratorium, and even though not every state chose to do so, it was the moratorium that brought the fish back from the brink. Let the ASMFC know that they can’t wait fifteen years. Now is the time to do the right thing and enact a coastwide equitable (recreational and commercial) harvest moratorium.
ADDITIONAL LINKS
- MD Department of Natural Resources: Results of Chesapeake Bay 2024 Young-of-Year Striped Bass Survey Show Little Change
- Virginia Institute of Marine Science: A poor year for juvenile striped bass in Virginia waters in 2024
