STRIPED BASS

STRIPED BASS: PAST, PRESENT & FUTURE

Above us the northern cross hangs high in the night sky, cupped in the ancient glow of the milky way. We have been on the beach since dusk and even now in the small hours, no one wants to head home. Hundreds of stripers feed quietly less than fifty feet from the shore. I have yet to see one landed under ten pounds and many are better than twice that. These are big, strong fish, coastal migrants following a timeless epic northward up the coast.

As you release one of these thick shouldered warriors, you can't help but feel a surge of emotion. For beyond the pure electricity of being near these magnificent creatures, every angler amongst us is also intensely aware of something equally poignant. Tonight a small piece of history unfolds before our eyes. After twenty long years, striped bass stocks have finally risen from a dark abyss. And with luck we now stand at the threshold about to enter the halcyon years, the finest hours for striped bass the coast has ever seen. Your gut reaction is to uncork the champagne and scream from the highest dune, toasting these wild fish on their way. Still there are hidden currents yet to wade. Stripers are back, but what will be their future ?

If history is any judge, the road ahead is a dangerous one, full of twists and turns. The last time striped bass returned after a long hiatus was back in the 1930's. They were greeted then with enthusiasm but hardly respect or common sense. For roughly the next forty years we whacked their critical spawning grounds with an endless barrage of insults including: toxic contaminates, agriculture runoff, poor sewage treatment and out right destruction. But our most powerful weapon was overfishing. We hit them hard and often in an insane fiasco fired by monetary incentive on the one hand and aided by a ridiculously short sighted fisheries management on the other. And don't think for a moment that only full time commercial fisherman were to blame. Dollar signs glazed over the eye of many so called sport anglers, who set out night after night to convert every bass they could catch into cash.

Naturally we all hope that people are going to be smarter this time around, but you can't just sit back with your fingers crossed. For one thing with bluefish on the down swing and weakfish only a distant memory, courtesy of commercial practices in North Carolina, recreational anglers near shore are forced to focus heavily on bass. Remember too that commercial fishermen coast wide are in serious economic trouble after having depleted one species after another. You can bet your finest rod these returning bass will draw their attention. And if that were not enough, believe it or not, I have already heard people complaining that bass are going to be a real nuisance. Expect to hear them whine that stripers will eat too many flounder or too many shad or too many crabs or even the paint right off the bottom of your boat. And if that doesn't work, they will swear that herds of stripers are crossing shoreline roads late at night and causing numerous accidents.

I feel strongly that if we want to keep our waters teeming with stripers we need to go to work. First we absolutely must demand that fisheries management people allow the public a greater say in how the resource is used. Too often the future of striped bass and other fish is decided behind closed doors. Here is an example. The Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission (ASMFC), the regulatory body that sets striped bass management, voted to declare striped bass stocks fully recovered as of this coming January 1995. That in turn allows them to remove the present level of conservation and greatly liberalize the rules. To that end they are putting the finishing touches on what they call Amendment 5# to the Striped Bass Management Plan. It provides the official framework for managing a restored striper population and recommends doubling the present harvest.

Amendment 5# was to undergo a complete series of public reviews by November 30th of last year. With a couple of isolated exceptions it never happened. The ASFMC then rescheduled the public hearings for April of this year, but again failed to organize them. My home state of Connecticut was fortunate enough to have one preliminary hearing back in January. About 100 anglers attended on a cold snowy night and resoundingly rejected the idea of doubling the harvest. At the time we all thought that when full hearings took place along the Atlantic, anglers in other states would do likewise forcing the ASFMC to rethink the plan. Yet it appears that full public hearings may never to be held and the final plan simply voted into place far from the maddening crowd.

Photo by Phil Farnsworth

At the same time we convince the fisheries people to be more open we must also convince them to be far more conservation minded. Too often they have listened to the drum beats of the commercial fishing industry and turned a deaf ear to common sense. As a direct result many marine species are in grave trouble and a few, like haddock, are even judged commercially extinct. Truth be know, striped bass are the only species the ASMFC has ever saved and there they had throw up their hands and ask Congress to do the real work. Somehow we have to stop this endless over-exploitation of our precious resources.

Lastly it's time to make striped bass a game fish along the entire Atlantic coast and in so doing remove once and for all the financial incentive to kill wild stripers. Many enlightened states have already done so including Maine, New Hampshire, Connecticut, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, the District of Columbia, South Carolina, Georgia and Florida. But in Massachusetts, Rhode Island, New York, Virginia, North Carolina and especially Maryland, home to the primary spawning ground, the story is different.

One solution is for anglers in those states to work hard to change the laws. But another answer exists too. There is a bill in the US House of Representatives that would stop all commercial fishing for striped bass along the Atlantic. It is called HR 393 and resides in the Subcommittee on Fisheries Management. How can you defend such legislation? Easy. We already raise over 7 million pounds of striped bass for the market place through fish farming in this country. So there is no real market need to kill wild striped bass. And coastal stripers, unlike bass raised in aquaculture, are contaminated with PCBs. In fact, at the moment there really isn't enough market to fully support a large increase in the wild bass harvest. It means that increasing the catch under Amendment 5# will likely just lower the price per pound.

Furthermore recreational salt water fishing contributes a far greater economical impact to the coast than does commercial striped bass fishing. It is estimated that salt water anglers in the United States spend 5 billion dollars annually on retail items. In 1991 we spent 635 million dollars just on bluefish items alone. It is easy to see that a wild striper is worth more swimming in the surf than dead in a net. Still to make it fair, I personally feel a modest compensation package for those commercial fisherman most effected can be worked out. Striped bass is presently bringing between a $1.25 and $1.50 a pound at the dock. Deduct expenses and waterman may be earning around a dollar a pound. Multiply that times the 1.7 million pounds presently harvested or even the 3 or 4 million pounds of stripers they might get under Amendment five and you see that it is not an insurmountable amount. I venture to say that if every recreational salt water angler on the Atlantic coast chipped in fifty cents to a buck per year, we easily could buy the commercial striped bass fisherman rights. And then we could turn to our fisheries people, stare them straight in the face and demand the best damn fishery on earth.

More on the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission

If you live along the Atlantic seaboard be aware that your state regularly sends representatives to the ASMFC. Call your Department of Natural Resources and ask who these individuals are. Furthermore, ask if anyone from your state sits on the ASFMC's Striped Bass Management Committee. Next contact them and let them know you are interested in stronger marine conservation. Let them know that you and your fishing club are eager to be kept informed about changes marine regulations and how your state's delegate to the ASMFC vote on the various issues.

You call also contact the ASMFC directly writing to Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission, 1776 Massachusetts Avenue, Washington, DC 20036. The phone number is 202-452-8700.

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