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
ACTION ALERT – ASMFC 2024 Annual Meeting (Wednesday, October 23, 2024 1:30-5PM EST)
In 2022 the ASMFC adopted a new ten-year striped bass management plan, Stripers Forever was the lone voice calling for bold action beyond the scope of the available options. We called for a ten-year harvest moratorium. At the time we said:
“We are 18 years into a 10-year management plan that has utterly failed in its objective to rebuild striped bass stocks. Now the ASMFC is preparing to embark on yet another 10-year plan of compromise and half-measures, and stripers may not survive. Bold, decisive action is needed to prevent a collapse of the fishery like we saw in the late 1970s. An emergency moratorium was adopted in 1984, and is the only approach proven to work.”
We stand behind that call and today there is an opportunity to once again send a message to the ASMFC: For the sake of the survival of wild striped bass, adopt a ten-year harvest moratorium.
Environmental conditions in the most important area for striped bass reproduction have narrowed to the point where there is no room for error, as evinced by five consecutive years of spawning failure in the upper Chesapeake. Warming water, micobacteriosis, predation by invasive species, lack of forage, increased fishing pressure, gill netting, and industrial-scale poaching are removing adults faster than they can breed. Soon we will be presented with new options that amount to little more than minor, incremental adjustments that will succeed only in delaying the bold action needed to save striped bass.
It took the ASMFC 18 years to admit their previous ten-year plan had failed. We are now three years into Amendment 7 and striped bass are worse off than they were when that ten-year plan began. And with five straight years of spawning failure there are no new generations of fish coming into maturity in sufficient numbers. Yet we continue to harvest mature fish rather than preserve them. The situation is unsustainable.
As we did in 2021, it is time to go off script and let the ASMFC know that we reject their options; we reject the absurdity of trying to reverse the rapidly building momentum of an impending crash with tweaks that even they admit have, at best, a coin-flip chance of making only modest improvements. Striped bass can’t wait.
The ASMFC’s goals are to restore abundance and healthy age stratification. To achieve those goals demands a ten-year harvest moratorium that will maximize survival of the fish available today, protect what fish are spawned tomorrow, and allow these fish to grow into maturity. Please write to express your frustration with the ASMFC’s half-measures and demand the kind of bold action befitting a crisis. A harvest moratorium. Ten years of zero commercial harvest and of strict catch-and-release for the recreational fishery is the ONLY policy that has a chance of achieving the ASMFC’s stated goals and of saving striped bass.
ACTION ALERT
Submitting your comments is an easy and effective way to be part of the process. Let the ASMFC know that they must act now. As an added bonus we will be giving away 5 limited edition SFxSLP striped bass bracelets.
To be automatically be entered to win all you need to do is send your comments to comments@asmfc.org and CC us at comments@stripersforever.org.
Following the meeting on October 23rd we will randomly draw 5 winners. Winners will be notified via the email address used to send in comments.
- Get your comments in by 5 PM on Tuesday, October 15 so they will be included in the supplemental materials for the meeting.
- You must indicate in your email that you want your comments included in the supplemental materials for the meeting.
Next Wednesday, October 23, 2024 from 1:30pm to 5PM EST the Atlantic Striped Bass Management Board will meet during the ASMFC 2024 Annual Meeting. Below is the meeting agenda.
To register for the live webinar please click here: ASMFC 2024 Annual Meeting – Atlantic Striped Bass Management Board
Webinar ID: 565-353-915
Call in: +1.562.247.8422
Access Code: 953-170-135
A PIN will be provided to you after joining the webinar. For those who will not be joining the webinar
but would like to listen in to the audio portion only, press the # key when asked for a PIN.
ADDITIONAL LINKS
- ASMFC Annual Meeting: Atlantic Striped Bass Management Board – Main Meeting Materials (PDF)
- ASMFC Annual Meeting: Atlantic Striped Bass Management Board – Supplemental Materials (PDF)
- ASMFC Annual Meeting: Atlantic Striped Bass Management Board – Supplemental Materials 2 (PDF)
UMass Amherst Depredation Survey
Do you go fishing along the Atlantic coast from North Carolina to Maine? Has a predator taken your fish while fighting it on the end of the line? A team from the University of Massachusetts Amherst is conducting a survey on depredation – when a predator partially or wholly consumes an angler’s catch before it is landed. If this is something you’ve experienced, then they need to hear your views on depredation. Use the link https://bit.ly/3VipGtl to take the survey.
Dr. Andy J. Danylchuk, Professor of Fish Conservation at UMass Amherst, recently reached out regarding a survey his lab is conducting. It is being spearheaded by Evan Prasky, a PhD student. This is a survey of anglers from North Carolina to Maine and is focused on depredation. Andy is a friend of Stripers Forever and is also the Science Advisor at Keep Fish Wet, promoting the use of science-based best practices to catch, handle, and release fish. We are thrilled to help with this important survey by sharing it with you. As a bonus for your participation and help with this research project, you can enter to win a Patagonia Guidewater Backpack (retail value $299).
For those not familiar, depredation is when a predator (shark, seal, etc) takes a fish off the end of an angler’s line before it is landed. Depredation is a rapidly increasing and controversial topic, and there are important knowledge gaps that are important to fill so that our community can address these issues in an informed way. With that, this is why our survey is specifically focused on the recreational fishery between North Carolina and Maine, since previous surveys have addressed the issue further south.
ASMFC 2024 Summer Meeting (Tuesday August 6, 2024 1-2:30pm EST)
Next Tuesday, August 6, 2024 from 1pm to 2:30pm EST the ASMFC Atlantic Striped Bass Management Board will meet to get updates on a variety of items and possibly take action on several. Below is the meeting agenda.
While there are no major action items on the agenda for this upcoming meeting, there should be some interesting conversations. Hopefully there will be some recommendations from the Recreational Release Mortality work group and positive movement forward to reduce those impacts. We are also anxious to hear about any updates on the 2024 Stock Assessment Update. The future of the striped bass FMP (fisheries management plan) hinges on the results of the 2024 Stock Assessment Update. Given the 5+ years of poor spawns we have some major concerns about the health of the stock and rebuilding timeline.
As always, we will be in attendance and will provide a meeting summary as quickly as possible. If you would like to attend please use the webinar link below.
To register for the live webinar please click here: ASMFC 2024 Spring Meeting – Atlantic Striped Bass Management Board
You can also attend via phone: Webinar ID: 325-845-475 Phone: 415.655.0052 Access Code: 565-335-899
ADDITIONAL LINKS
- ASMFC Spring Meeting: Main Meeting Materials (PDF)
- ASMFC Spring Meeting: Supplemental Meeting Materials (PDF)
