The attached story is awful in more ways than one. The story points out that 79% or more of Chesapeake stripers are infected by this infectious wasting disease. They state that it is causing a great increase in the mortality of stripers that would otherwise live to become coastal migrant size. None-the-less, they claim that there is no reason to lower the quotas to protect the population. It also quotes VA fishery managers - assumedly the same ones who rejected menhaden harvest caps - as saying how little they see of this disease in the commercial landings. They then claim the disease is hard to see even in fish with fairly advanced stages of it. The advise is not to eat the diseased fish, but they have already admitted that it is hard to tell if they are diseased. Decide for yourself, but if we ever read anything that was blind cheerleading of commercial fishing interests by a government agency - even at the likely expense of unknowing consumers - this is it.
