Denying Sanctuary To Stripers

As a resident of central Massachusetts and equidistant from the commonwealth's north shore, Cape Cod and Long Island Sound, I am blessed with quick access to the best striped bass fishing on the planet. I have been here at the wrong time, but now I am here at the right time. Atlantic stripers have recovered from near collapse in the late 1970's to current abundance that no living angler has previously seen. From early May to early November they keep me tired and late with magazine deadlines. No longer do I want to move to Montana.

For this stupendous fishery my fellow anglers and I can thank fishery managers. With the 1984 Striped Bass Conservation Act, the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission (ASMFC) acquired the power to impose a striper-fishing moratorium in any state that doesn't comply with sound management. ASMFC did a fine job, rebuilding the stock from an historic low of about five million fish in 1982 to about 50 million in 2003.

On the other hand, we can also thank managers (in this case those employed by the states) for the original collapse that made Congressional intervention necessary. In the mid 1970's they told us that limiting recreational and commercial kill wasn't necessary because there were "plenty of stripers for everyone." (That's a direct quote from the Massachusetts Division of Marine Fisheries.) So maybe you can understand why I'm leery about proposals by managers, state or federal, to radically alter striper regulations. Despite all manner of impressive-sounding formulae and elegant models, the successful management of striped bass, and all fish for that matter, is 90 percent commonsense guesswork.

On April 24, 2003 ASMFC lapsed in common sense when it petitioned the fisheries branch of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA Fisheries) to legalize recreational and commercial striper fishing in the federal part of the Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ)-the 197 nautical miles beyond the 3-nautical-mile state limits.

The striper is an inshore species, and most of the fish hang out in state waters. But in some areas-most notably Nantucket Shoals and the wintering grounds off North Carolina-the EEZ is an important striper sanctuary, especially for the big females so vital to the spawning population. Keeping the EEZ closed for the past 14 years has had a lot to do with the return of stripers along the Atlantic coast.

As wonderful as the fishing is these days, the stock wasn't and isn't "fully recovered," as ASMFC proclaimed in 1995. Recreational anglers, who account for most of the harvest, are subject to strict bag limits. In my state, for instance, you can kill only two fish over 28 inches per day; that's the standard, and, while some states are more conservative, no state is significantly less so. But strict bag limits don't do you much good when there is more and more pressure. Since stripers started doing better the number of angler days has been doubling every few years. Ease too close to a blitz off Cape Cod or Montauk and you're apt to get a bow sprint or tin squid through your windshield. Few fish are making it past the minimum size limit, so the population is grossly skewed in terms of individual age and size structure.

The striped bass evolved the ability to spawn 15 or 20 times in a lifetime as a hedge against the catastrophic spawning failures that anadromous fish are heir to. But under current management most stripers get to spawn just once. Moreover, there's good evidence that this intense pressure is selecting for slow-growing and small fish. As stripers gain weight, the number of eggs they produce increases geometrically, so there's a diminishing chance that large-fish genes will get passed on. As Lee Wulff liked to say, it's like killing everyone in your town over six feet, then trying to field a winning basketball team.

When last I wrote about stripers, in FR&R's March 2002 issue ("Striper Recovery-Not"), I quoted Gary Shepherd, NOAA Fisheries' rep on ASMFC's Striped Bass Technical Committee, as follows: "In terms of total number of eggs, the spawning stock is now probably as large as it's ever been. But the big fish are getting cropped off. Most of them are gone by the age of about 15, and stripers can live to 30. So we're limiting their life span to about half." I read him those words on August 23, 2004 and asked him if anything had changed since he uttered them. He said it hadn't.

But he meant nothing had changed for the better. Things might be changing for the worse, he allowed, when I asked about this year's stock assessment. He had only preliminary figures, and he couldn't give me anything specific until the committee released the data, but he did tell me this: "The estimates were not good for the model we used. We use different models, although the trend in all of them seems to be that mortality has increased. Whether it's increased beyond the point where we need to do something serious, we're not sure yet."

In 2003, Amendment 6 to the striped bass plan set target mortality at "F=.3," which equates to about 25 percent removal from the available population by recreational and commercial fishing. If, for any year, fishing mortality exceeds the F=.3 target, ASMFC's board may take action to reduce harvest. It hasn't, even though fishing mortality has been over target for five consecutive years. If fishing mortality exceeds the threshold of F=.41, the board must take action. "We're probably catching too many," says Shepherd, "but at least up until 2002 we didn't get to the point where the managers are required to do something. It's getting close. And the debate this time is whether we've exceeded that threshold." If the preliminary data are wrong and the threshold was not exceeded in 2003, that doesn't do a whole lot to inspire confidence in striper advocates.