Three decades after an outright ban on fishing for the species properly known as Atlantic striped bass helped it recover from near-extinction, scientists, anglers and the commercial fishing industry are raising alarms that the bay’s supreme and delectable swimmers are again being overfished.
www.baltimoresun.com
After reading articles like this, I can't believe a slot that starts somewhere mid-20s and ends somewhere mid-30s isn't paramount in the regulators' collective minds. OK so the stock survey will be approved, and a critical part of that study is the huge mortality of released fish so the regulators are saying recs are killing more fish by returning them to the water than the ones they harvest. Oh, and BTW, this 35" size limit being proposed only has a 50% chance of being successful, so it's a "Hail Mary" ploy at best.
Before I start my rant, I need to clearly state that I do feel the bass population is dropping. To me the biggest unknown here is WHY this is happening. If we don't know the WHY, how can we really fix it??? Without clearly knowing what you're up against, you're lost.
Fishery Management depends on population models. Everyone needs to consider how this modeling works and how much depends on "hard" and "soft" data. Regrettably, the amount of hard data here is extremely limited and only includes 2 major sources.
- Actual surveys done by individual States' DECs done by netting fish - the ONLY source of information that tells us how many fish we actually have
- Commercial fish sales data - the only indisputable source of one of the factors removing fish. A wonderful accounting tool here is commercial tagging, a real nice handle on what's been caught. When I lived in the Midwest I'd look forward to this time of year to see nice 10 lb stripers on ice with VA tags on them at my local fish department.
OK so besides commercial harvest, what other things reduce the striped bass' critical SSB (Spawning Stock Biomass)??
- Natural mortality - What is causing fish to die? Things like old age, Mycobaterium infections, starvation because of inadequate forage fish supplies, pollution, poor spawns, etc. This is a "Damned if we know" number they come up with through some statistical mumbo jumbo.
- Unreported commercial harvesting - As fish sales at the distribution levels are being more closely monitored, this number should be relatively low
- Under called commercial discard mortality - Once again, this is estimated SWAG (statistical term for Silly Wild Ass Guess) number. IF they are smart, they use different discard rates for the different fisheries, e.g. pin-hooking, gill nets, trawling.
- Natural predation - just how many fish are being eaten by cormorants, seals, great whites, etc.?? Another number they "magically deduce".
- Recreational Fishing: Yes we catch and kill striped bass whether or not they end up on our dinner table or the one we threw back and ended up on Andre the Seal's dinner table. IMHO these numbers are the flimsiest of the flimsiest numbers in a fishery managers' "toolbox" The dependence on "Interviews" is ludicrously inadequate. Why do I say this?? For these reasons:
- Serious striped bass fisherman tend to be very tight-lipped about their fishing. If someone holding a clipboard meets you in a parking lot or at a ramp asking you about how'd your bass fishing go, are you going to tell all? I'd say even the most loquacious striped bass fisherman wouldn't say much more than "Not bad".
- Survey sampling techniques tends to focus on the less serious striped bass fisherman. The "Clipboard Brigade" is usually seen during Banker's Hours at popular places. Excluding Maine, how much striped bass fishing is actually done at those times and in popular places??? Yeah, I can fish in the middle of the day and bail fish...
- Is the For-hire fleet being truthful in any surveys they answer? Let's face it, some of these folks know that they "have the right to remain silent" and that means under reporting their catches underestimates the number of bass caught so folks will think the quotas are not being met and there are more stripers around.
- In Maine, there was a single survey taker during 2018, located at the southern end of the state. That means folks like me and my "across the river, backyard neighbor" who's another LIS-trained striped bass lunatic, were never surveyed. The result? Over 3000 caught striped bass by us the past 2 seasons were not accounted for. In Maine, that is a significant chunk of the total catch.
So in the end the statisticians do their modeling and calculations, and compare how many fish they THINK the SSB should be, as opposed to what the actual surveys say it is. It seems that in this latest stock assessment these Nobel Laureates (NOT) decided that the discrepancy between the SSB model and the new SSB survey MUST be do to Recreational Discards, and did NOT consider any of the other possible causes above. IMO opinion it's probably a combination of all of the numbered possibilities above, but I have no idea how to apportion it out among all of these factors
THEREFORE the
OFFICIAL STATED CAUSE for the discrepancy between the actual and predicted biomass is
RECREATIONAL DISCARDS, their reasoning, not mine. Do they actually believe that the recreational discards are the cause or they are using discards as a smoke screen for one or all of the items above to reconcile the drop in the SSB vs what they expected per their models??
However, if we accept the survey results, we are accepting that Recreational Discards are the cause for the SSB drop. Based on this, why in Poseidon's Name would any logical person suggest to raise the size limit, which will increase discards, as the method of choice to reduce mortality???? Wouldn't instituting a slot in the mid-20" to mid-30" range, something that will lower the discard rate, and therefore reduce overall mortality, be a better, more effective course of action???
OK, just spent 2 hours on this, time to post some young lovlies in the Good Morning thread...
not to mention the big fish days, i mean weeks, or is it months, geez
