- Division of Marine Fisheries
This past January, the interstate Striped Bass Management Board approved Addendum II to the management plan with the goal of keeping the stock on a positive track to rebuild by 2029. The Addendum, which all states implemented by the May 1 deadline, continued the 28–31" slot limit for the ocean recreational fisheries that was adopted by emergency action in 2023. Additionally, the addendum established new Chesapeake Bay recreational limits (1 fish in a 19–24” slot limit); set standards for states that allow filleting in their recreational fishery; reduced commercial quotas coastwide by 7%; and adopted a provision allowing the Board to more expediently respond to a future stock assessment with new management measures if the stock is not projected to rebuild on time. Collectively, the newly established 2024 fishing limits are expected to result in fishery removals—at least for this year—approximating the target fishing mortality rate needed for stock rebuilding.
In Massachusetts, Addendum II results in an ongoing 1 fish at 28 to <31” slot limit, year-round, for our recreational fishery. In 2023, these regulations placed Massachusetts in the top four states for striped bass harvest, overall catch (harvest plus releases), and fishery removals (harvest plus dead discards). It’s estimated that over 4.5 million striped bass were caught by recreational anglers in Massachusetts in 2023. With similar amounts of harvest and dead discards (both over 300,000 fish) contributing to our recreational fishery removals, it’s never been more important that anglers follow best practices for reducing post-release mortality. These include:
- Limiting fight time and handling time
- Dehooking with the fish in the water or at least using wet hands or rag
- Holding fish under the belly and at the tail fin, never at the eyes or gills
- Releasing fish gently, in a horizontal position, head facing into the current, and holding there until revived
- Using tackle that minimizes injury. (This last one is an area of active study by DMF’s Striped Bass Citizen Science Project, as discussed below.)
On the recreational filleting issue, Addendum II mandates that states allowing filleting require the racks (or carcasses) of filleted fish be retained on the vessel and that no more than two fillets per fish be possessed, to aid in compliance and enforcement with size and possession limits. For striped bass, Massachusetts has only ever allowed at-sea filleting in the for-hire fishery, where captains or crew of chartered vessels can fillet their customers’ catch for them as an added service. Now, the racks of these fish must be kept onboard the vessel until it docks and the customers have departed. State rules already limited the customers’ possession of striped bass fillets to two. (See the Regulatory Updates section for information on other changes to the state’s private vessel/shore angler filleting rules.)
As for the commercial fishery in Massachusetts, Addendum II’s 7% quota reduction lowers the state’s baseline quota from 735,240 pounds to 683,773 pounds at the existing 35” minimum size limit. (The term “baseline” is used to refer to the state’s initial annual quota which may be reduced by a prior year quota overage in a pound-for-pound payback as required by the interstate plan. Such an overage occurred in 2022 which meant that Massachusetts’ effective quota in 2023 was 700,379 pounds. No overage occurred in 2023, so the commercial fishery has the full 683,773 pounds available for 2024.) This combination of minimum size and quota, if taken in full, is expected to amount to about 34,000 fish being harvested commercially in Massachusetts (based on an average weight of 20 lb/fish). In response to this quota reduction, the Division reduced the number of open commercial fishing days from three to two (Tuesday and Wednesday), although a third day (Thursday) will be added on August 1 if at least 30% of the quota remains. The season opened Tuesday, June 18 this year.
With the dust largely settled on Addendum II, the Management Board’s attention has turned to the pending 2024 stock assessment. The last assessment in 2022 indicated that spawning stock biomass (SSB) remained below its threshold level in 2021—resulting in an overfished designation—but that fishing mortality was at a level allowing for stock regrowth. Of course, that was followed by the unexpected increase in recreational harvest in 2022 that resulted in the emergency action in 2023 for fear of a repeat performance jeopardizing that trend.
This year’s assessment will include data through 2023 and tell us whether overfishing actually occurred in 2022 and if the combination of resource availability, fishing effort, and new management measures in 2023 was enough to make it just a one-year blip. There is some optimism here because preliminary coastwide recreational catch estimates for 2023 show a 25% reduction in recreational harvest, as well as a 13% reduction in dead discards, combining for a 20% reduction in recreational removals compared to 2022.
The assessment will also project future years’ stock biomass and fishing mortality under the management measures implemented in 2024 through Addendum II. These projections simulate the aging of the current population, accounting for natural mortality and fishing mortality, while also adding in new year classes of fish (i.e., recruitment). Of course, no one has a crystal ball that can tell us how many juvenile fish will successfully recruit to the population in any given year; this is among the largest sources of uncertainty in stock projections. Year-class strength is randomly generated in the model from the observed history of recruitment; which at this time for striped bass is pulled from an abbreviated set of years (post-2008), reflecting a period of lower recruitment. Spawning stock biomass is still plentiful enough to generate a strong year-class, but we’ll need several of them to make up for the five poor year classes coming out of the Chesapeake Bay (the primary spawning ground) between 2019 and 2023. These weak year classes will negatively impact the projections of spawning stock biomass as they age and reach maturity (beginning in 2027).
The 2024 stock assessment and projections will shape the fate of striped bass management for the next two to three years (until the next stock assessment). The Management Board is due to review the results this October. If the stock projections indicate that the stock is not likely to rebuild by 2029, the Board will need to correct for this through one of two approaches that prioritizes either stakeholder engagement (an addendum which includes a public comment period) or management expediency (a Board action which can change measures in time for 2025 rather than 2026). If action is needed, the Board has signaled that it will be focusing, at least in part, on recreational release mortality. In May, the Board agreed to establish a Workgroup to discuss the topic and produce a report in time for the October 2024 meeting (coinciding with the assessment results). Specifically, the Workgroup’s plan includes reviewing available information on no-targeting closures and gear modifications (two possible tactics for reducing release mortality), identifying modeling approaches to evaluate tradeoffs between reducing the number of releases versus reducing the release mortality rate, and considering methods to still incorporate public input into management decisions should the Board want to fast-track a response to the stock assessment.
On the subject of gear modifications that could reduce release mortality, the Workgroup will be reviewing data collected through DMF’s Striped Bass Citizen Science Project. We are in year two of collecting information from anglers about the tackle they use, other factors about their catch (e.g., temperature, fight time), and the injury sustained by the fish. The more anglers participating, the better these critical data will be. Go to mass.gov/striper to sign up and help supply the science needed for the sustainable management of this magnificent natural resource.
By Nichola Meserve, Fisheries Policy Analyst and ASMFC Striped Bass Board Member
