Plundering Stripers

And in 2003 Tallman & Mack and Point Trap, both Rhode Island trap-net fishing companies, and Lotzzo's, a Massachusetts fish dealer, were busted by agents of the National Marine Fisheries Service and Rhode Island Department of Environmental Management for illegally

selling and transporting at least 30,000 pounds of striped bass and providing false invoices. As part of their sentencing, which included major fines, the companies had to run public apologies in The Providence Journal.

No less ugly than legal and illegal commercial plunder are the wildly proliferating dead-on-the-dock striper tournaments conceived by and for recreational anglers. I know plenty of decent people who fish kill tournaments, but even they admit that these events attract, enrich and empower lowlifes and, at the same time, teach the public to kill the most and biggest. The same names have a way of popping up when you begin cross-referencing the who's who in Massachusetts "commercial" striper fishing, striper-poaching citations, and dead-on-the-dock striper tournaments. For example, one ticket for over-the-limit--issued hours before the opening of the Massachusetts "commercial" striper season--was awarded to Bill Major, superstar of On the Water magazine's "Striper Cup." Sergeant Pat Grady of the Massachusetts Environmental Police won't release any details at this writing other than to confirm that he and another officer boarded Major's boat and issued the citation.

As of August 25, 2006 (pending the court outcome, avers On the Water's Bill Dean), Major was still listed on this year's "Striper Cup Leader Board" in the following categories for the following fish: twice for "Striper of the Year": 56.15 and 50.37 pounds; first place for "Angler of the Year" (largest 5 fish cumulative pounds): 231.86 pounds; twice in "Weekly Winners": 56.15 and 50 pounds; and three times in "Pounder Club Members": 39.16; 45.93; and 40.62 pounds. With recreational anglers killing all this brood stock for money and vanity why should legislators listen when they argue that commercial fishing should be shut down?

Is coastwide gamefish status politically feasible? "Probably not now," says Charles Witek, chair of New York's Coastal Conservation Association. "But I think it's a worthwhile goal in the sense that you're dealing with a fish that's pretty high up on the food chain and that doesn't respond well to overfishing. Gamefish status is something we'd all like to see, but we have to look at why we want it. If we want it to get the nets out of the water, to remove bycatch in some fisheries, to minimize discard mortality, to reduce mortality overall, it's probably worthwhile. If we want it because instead of them catching and killing the fish we're going to catch and kill the fish, then it's not a real big benefit."

Witek wouldn't mention names, but I will: the Jersey Coast Anglers Association and the Recreational Fishing Alliance. While they do a lot of good things, one of their main goals is more meat for themselves. Thanks to their influence, New Jersey didn't accomplish as much as it could have when it made the striped bass a game fish. The law took the stripers the ASMFC had allocated to commercials and let the recreationals kill them instead. So in New Jersey you can retain a third striper until the old commercial quota is filled. The net effect, of course, has been to further ventilate the already porous case that striped bass need coastwide gamefish status.

That's a shame because the argument isn't porous by nature; it has only been made that way by the behavior of the recreational community. On the other hand, the argument for commercial harvest is based entirely on untruths and distortions. It would be unfair, contend apologists, to deprive the poor and infirm who can't catch stripers for themselves of this tasty fish. But arguing that American shoppers should have access to wild striped bass makes as much sense as arguing that they should have access to wild turkeys. And Stripers Forever offers this: "There are four times as many people alive in America as there are [wild] striped bass. One bite each and the entire population would disappear in a meal!" Finally, nonfishers already have the chance to eat striper. All they have to do is buy farm-raised fish, which are in far greater supply and virtually indistinguishable in taste.

Last year Stripers Forever released a study it had commissioned from the respected wildlife socio-economist Rob Southwick of Fernandina Beach, Florida. Southwick found that 3,018,361 anglers from Maine to North Carolina annually generate 63,278 full-time jobs, $2.41 billion in direct retail sales, $289.4 million in

federal income taxes, $18.2 million in state income taxes, and $105.1 million in state sales taxes. In all, they stimulate new economic activity of $6.63 billion a year. This compares to $250 million for commercial fishermen. Moreover, if commercial fishing ceased, recreational anglers would stimulate $1.79 billion in additional annual economic activity.

The enormous economic value of stripers appears to be declining along with the population. While there are still lots of bass, it's time for managers to try a radical new approach--acting to prevent the collapse of a stock rather than reacting to it. In 2005 the ASMFC's population model indicated that stripers were being drastically overfished. But instead of managing the population it managed the model, changing it around so that stripers appeared to be in decent shape. Because the new model is being peer-reviewed there won't be an annual stock assessment this year; so, at the moment, anecdotal evidence is the only gauge we have to measure the health of the striped bass population.