Striped Bass Study Points to Future Shortages

[Ted Pietz]

In an article in On The Water  that I found recently they talk about how striped bass are on the decline.  This is something I know about because I lived through the decline and eventual moratorium in the 1980's.

 

Allow the download to upload and check out the graph that is included. You can see that in recent years the spawn rate is very similar to what happened in the 80's.  You can also see that after the moratorium there was a rise in the population. 

 

Are we looking at another moratorium to help the striped bass population?  Does anyone have any ideas that would help avoid a complete moratorium?

 

What are the factors at play in regard to striped Bass. Why are they in such a decline? I have my thoughts in regard to factors that are causing the decline but we should all have a voice in this. This is your chance to voice your thoughts.

 

Thank you,

Ted

 

Poor Spawn is Bad News for Striper Stock - On The Water (1).html

[sytheteacher]

What we will need is a complete moratorium on sport Striper fishing and commercial fishing 

[Dan Tinman]

Just now, sytheteacher said:

What we will need is a complete moratorium on sport Striper fishing and commercial fishing 

Maybe but it'll never happen.  Too many people depend on fisheries for their livelihood.

[Dan Tinman]

5 mins ago, sytheteacher said:

What we will need is a complete moratorium on sport Striper fishing and commercial fishing 

What we need is better management and more responsible users of the fisheries.  We obviously didn't learn from the last crash.

Edited January 14 by Dan Tinman

[Nekowa]

Didn't we have record YOY year of young spawning in the 80's?

[Skunkoff]

IMO:

 

Strictly C&R would be a good start.  Might not solve the problem but a good step in the right direction.  There are arguments that the recs have more impact than coms, and that C&R is somehow more wasteful,  but if stripers are C&R only, the populations might start to increase.  No rec or com harvests.  Harvest is willful removal, bottom line.

 

I predict this thread to get ugly at some point.

[changed]

49 mins ago, Skunkoff said:

I predict this thread to get ugly at some point.

[jps1010]

The template on how to correct this was devised in the 80s.  Moratoriums in some places and 1@36 in others.  This was in place until the numbers turned around.  It worked.  I went from catching bass that were 15 to 20" for a couple of weeks in the spring and fall to catching fish 15 to 20lbs in the same spots for months in the spring and fall.  A healthy population of striped bass is one that is up and down the coast and is not dependent on whether or not sand eels appear.

 

My home waters on the SS will, for the most part, have poor fishing for the years to come while west and north of me will fare much better due to the much better YOY for the Hudson River.  I do not think we need a moratorium now but a 1 @ 36 would have been a good start.

 

Edited January 15 by jps1010

[CWitek]

13 hours ago, Nekowa said:

Didn't we have record YOY year of young spawning in the 80's?

No.

 

Highest Maryland YOY (which is the index that best tracks coastwide abundance) was 25.20 in 1989, about the same size as the year class produced in 2015, which was 24.20.  Second-best of that decade was 8.45 in 1982, which was the year class that was protectred by Amendment 3 to the management plan, which began the recovery of the stock,.

 

Highest on record was 1996, at 59.39.  Also had 50.75 in 2001.

 

Since then, we had three other "dominant" year classesm 34.58 in 2011 (although Year 1 recruitment of that year class was lower than expected, and lower than the much smaller 2015 year class), 25.75 in 2003, and 24.20 in 2015.

 

On the other hand, we had 0.89 (the lowest ever recorded) in 2012, 2.20 in 2016, 3.37 in 2019, 2.48 in 2020, and 3.20 in 2021.

 

Long-term average is 11.4

 

Average Maryland YOY for the past 6 years is actually lower than the YOY for the 6 years immediately preceding the stock collapse of the late 1970s/1980s.

Edited January 15 by CWitek
"past 6 years" previously read "past 10 years" which misrepresented the calculations that i had made

[55555s]

9 mins ago, CWitek said:

 

Average Maryland YOY for the past 10 years is actually lower than the YOY for the 10 years immediately preceding the stock collapse of the late 1970s/1980s.

 

oooph.  

[CWitek]

On 1/14/2022 at 9:03 AM, Ted Pietz said:

In an article in On The Water  that I found recently they talk about how striped bass are on the decline.  This is something I know about because I lived through the decline and eventual moratorium in the 1980's.

 

Allow the download to upload and check out the graph that is included. You can see that in recent years the spawn rate is very similar to what happened in the 80's.  You can also see that after the moratorium there was a rise in the population. 

 

Are we looking at another moratorium to help the striped bass population?  Does anyone have any ideas that would help avoid a complete moratorium?

 

What are the factors at play in regard to striped Bass. Why are they in such a decline? I have my thoughts in regard to factors that are causing the decline but we should all have a voice in this. This is your chance to voice your thoughts.

 

Thank you,

Ted

 

Poor Spawn is Bad News for Striper Stock - On The Water (1).html

Thew thing to remember when we talk about a moratorium is that, back in the 1980s, there never was a complete coastwide moratorium on striped bass fishing.

 

Massachusetts and New Jersey, two important striped bass states, never closed their fisheries. 

 

The states that did adopt moratoriums did so at different times, and for different reasons, and imposed them for different lengths of time.  New York, for example, closed its fishery in 1986, not for conservation purposes, but out of concern for PCB contamination in Hudson River fish.  The New York moratorium lasted less than one year.

 

Maryland and Delaware closed their fisheries between 1986 and 1989,.  Virginia didn't close its fishery until 1989, when rebuilding was already well underway, and it was only in place for a year.  Connecticut and Rhode Island imposed their moratoriums in 1986; not suyre when they were lifted, but believe it might have been '89 as well.

 

But today, managers already know what needs to be done to rebuild the stock.  I've been following the Plan Development Team meetings, where biologists from the Atlantic Striped Bass Technical Committee provide advice.  And their advice has been simple and clear:  If we want to increase the spawning stock biomass, fishing mortality must be reduced.

 

Whether the Management Board has the will to do that remains to be seen.

[CWitek]

5 mins ago, 55555s said:

 

oooph.  

I need to correct that, and will as soon as I respond.  It was actually the preceding six years, not ten, that I included in the calculation, to capture the 2015 year class that everyone is depending on.

 

But the basic message is the same.

[Nekowa]

Just checked in the Hudson 87 to 90 were some of the highest ever recorded YOY data. Bass opened with a 36" recreational limit in 89, and several years later commercial was 24 to 36". This was really a perfect storm for the recovered stock of the 90's. I remember a 300.00 fine per fish. An Easthampton Bayman lost his whole rig because of poaching. Draggers were confiscated and the DEC amassed much equipment. In Flanders Bay there is a huge winter over bass population. Get 2 or 3 days of 50's and sunny they move and become active. You catch these year old 12"fish by the dozens in early spring. Same for estuaries out east. What seems to get ignored is water quality. CCA lumber creosote, copper, and arsenic was the initial formula. This with the building boom  where every waterfront home was not complete w/o a chlorine puking pool in the back yard. Another favorite is the golf course which is incorporated into and partially subsidized by park and nightfishing passes on LI. The brown tides of the 80's originated first by the golf courses that border the Peconics, with in a week this water comingled and the bay system was a chocolate brown that broke up with the large water mass east of Guardiners Island. In the early 90's we had Pikes Inlet that busted thru Dune Rd. In Westhampton. This was a dream come true, after years of brown tide that not only killed eel grass, shellfish ( think of millions of little filters ) this caused crabs and other preditory critters from feeding on the juvenile shellfish stock. Shellfishing rebounded on the whole island. I got a little long winded the point is repect the environment, and all is interconnected. I believe what is being done to the environment is more detrimental than any group. In the 90's the DEC was in it's infancy. Gov. Potacki threatened to disband them if they could not get profitable. The skies have eyes, and we are in an Era of surveillance. Clean up the water and stocks will be back.

[Nekowa]

26 mins ago, CWitek said:

No.

 

Highest Maryland YOY (which is the index that best tracks coastwide abundance) was 25.20 in 1989, about the same size as the year class produced in 2015, which was 24.20.  Second-best of that decade was 8.45 in 1982, which was the year class that was protectred by Amendment 3 to the management plan, which began the recovery of the stock,.

 

Highest on record was 1996, at 59.39.  Also had 50.75 in 2001.

 

Since then, we had three other "dominant" year classesm 34.58 in 2011 (although Year 1 recruitment of that year class was lower than expected, and lower than the much smaller 2015 year class), 25.75 in 2003, and 24.20 in 2015.

 

On the other hand, we had 0.89 (the lowest ever recorded) in 2012, 2.20 in 2016, 3.37 in 2019, 2.48 in 2020, and 3.20 in 2021.

 

Long-term average is 11.4

 

Average Maryland YOY for the past 6 years is actually lower than the YOY for the 6 years immediately preceding the stock collapse of the late 1970s/1980s.

I was talking about NY, the Hudson. According to charts it shows pretty high rates. I remember there were fin tags, with small cash bonuses for cutting out and sending data from the fish. A Mr. Vecchio was in charge of bass with the DEC in NY. He was both knowledgeable and enthusiastic.

[CWitek]

10 mins ago, Nekowa said:

Just checked in the Hudson 87 to 90 were some of the highest ever recorded YOY data. Bass opened with a 36" recreational limit in 89, and several years later commercial was 24 to 36". This was really a perfect storm for the recovered stock of the 90's. I remember a 300.00 fine per fish. An Easthampton Bayman lost his whole rig because of poaching. Draggers were confiscated and the DEC amassed much equipment. 

I find your comments about confiscations interesting, because there is no current New York law authorizing the confiscation of vessels involved in poaching finfish.  The only confiscation statute applies only to clams (and possibly other shellfish, I don't recall).

 

Ten or fifteen years ago, a trawler off Brooklyn was written up twice for serious fisheries violations--sturgeon, bass from prohibited waters, etc.  I spoke with the then-head of the DEC's Marine Enforcement Unit about the possibility of asking the legislature to enact a confiscation bill.  The DEC at that time didn't favor it, because of the cost, saying that they would need a safe place to store confiscated vessels prior to trial, where they couldn't be accessed and possibly vandalized by anyone, perhaps including their owners.

 

Thus, I'm curious what authorization was used back in the '90s to justify confiscation.