- Division of Marine Fisheries
In October 2025, the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission (ASMFC) approved Addendum III to Amendment 7 to the Interstate Fishery Management Plan for Striped Bass. Addendum III includes several new requirements to improve the efficacy of the existing coastwide management measures. However, it does not aim to directly reduce fishery removals through commercial quota reductions and recreational fishing seasons as had been proposed. As a result, Massachusetts’ 2026 commercial and recreational fishing limits will be unchanged from 2025.
Specifically, Addendum III adopts a standardized method of measuring striped bass for compliance with recreational and commercial size limits and modifies the existing commercial tagging program requirements. By January 1, 2027, all states’ regulatory definition of total length must specify that: 1) it’s a straight-line measurement (i.e., not over the curve of the body); and 2) the tail is squeezed to obtain the longest length. This measure is meant to uphold the intended conservation, consistency, and enforceability of the interstate plan’s prescribed size limits.
Additionally, prior to January 1, 2029, all states with a commercial striped bass fishery must have in place a commercial tagging program that requires harvesters to tag each commercially harvested fish prior to offloading and/or before removing the vessel from the water (or immediately upon possession if shore fishing). This replaces the allowance for states to have harvester or dealer tagging programs and is intended to further reduce the risk of illegal commercial harvest and enhance accountability in the commercial fishery.
The addendum also includes an allowance for Maryland to alter its recreational striped bass season in the Chesapeake Bay in a manner estimated (as best as possible) to be conservation neutral. Maryland requested the inclusion of this issue in order to simplify its regulations and increase fishing access while reducing release mortality. Maryland has until the end of 2025 to notify ASMFC whether it will adopt the new season or not.
Massachusetts Impacts
Massachusetts is already compliant with Addendum III’s total length definition requirement, having added the tail squeezing aspect in 2025 (Advisory) and with a straight-line measurement being a long-standing part of the definition. DMF made the tail squeezing modification after determining that how the tail is oriented—pinched or fanned out—can affect the measured length of a striped bass by over an inch. DMF brought this to the attention of the Striped Bass Management Board and asked for the addendum to consider standardizing the method of measurement. During the draft addendum’s development, several other differences among the states’ definitions were identified and ultimately the Management Board selected the two components most important for obtaining an accurate measurement.
In contrast, Addendum III’s commercial harvester tagging requirement is a significant departure from the state’s current dealer tagging program. Fundamental changes will be needed affecting how many people can participate in the commercial striped bass fishery in order for the state to effectively administer a harvester-based tagging program. Massachusetts is one of two states (along with Rhode Island) with active fisheries that have opted historically for dealer tagging). The remaining jurisdictions with active commercial striped bass fisheries have had harvester tagging programs in place for years (i.e., New York, Delaware, Maryland, Potomac River Fisheries Commission, and Virginia).
Every state with a commercial striped bass fishery has been required to have a commercial tagging program (in which all commercially harvested striped bass are tagged with single-use, traceable tag) since 2014 as a measure to limit illegal harvest. Importantly, the interstate management plan gave states the flexibility to implement either a point-of-harvest or point-of-sale tagging program in consideration of the differences between the states’ fisheries and the administrative cost on state agencies. Notably, only those states with limited-entry permits and individual fisher quotas for striped bass implemented point-of-harvest tagging programs. Massachusetts implemented commercial tagging at the point-of-sale in 2014 to avoid having to limit entry into the then very healthy striped bass fishery.
To date, DMF has managed the commercial striped bass fishery without any restriction on the number of harvesters. This results in a large number of commercial striped bass permit endorsements being issued each year—generally between 4,000 and 5,000—although only about a quarter of them report any commercial sales. It would be—back then or now—extremely challenging if not impossible for DMF to implement a point-of-harvest tagging program in which tags would have to be distributed and accounted for across thousands of permit holders. Instead, as a point-of-sale tagging state, DMF has distributed and accounted for tags that are issued to roughly 125 primary buyers of striped bass each year (who tag the fish upon purchase from harvesters). Although our program has resulted in 99% of issued tags being accounted for, the Management Board supported further standardizing the states’ tagging programs in Addendum III with the harvester-based tagging requirement to maximize tag traceability and fishery integrity, especially under declining quota levels. Due to the administrative and regulatory necessities of this transition, the states were given up to three years to come into compliance with this aspect of the addendum.
DMF has taken the first step towards being able to administer a harvester tagging program with recently enacted regulations to freeze the issuance of new striped bass permits in 2026. We anticipate following this up in 2026 with a proposal to further reduce permits in 2027 based on activity criteria. This proposal will also include options to manage new access to the fishery. DMF can then focus on developing and implementing a harvested tagging program by the 2029 deadline.
Stock Outlook
What Addendum III does not change is the primary commercial and recreational fishing limits (i.e., commercial quotas and size limits, and recreational bag, size, and season limits). Draft Addendum III had considered changing some of these management measures to support stock rebuilding. Specifically, the options were focused on commercial quota reductions and recreational closed seasons to achieve a 12% reduction in fishery removals (i.e., harvest plus dead discards). The 12% reduction was based on the 2024 Stock Assessment’s projections on the likelihood of the existing measures leading to a rebuild stock in 2029, as defined by spawning stock biomass (SSB, the weight of reproductively mature females in the population) exceeding its target level.
The stock projection used to develop Draft Addendum III’s options suggested that the existing measures had a 30% probability of rebuilding the stock by 2029 and that a 12% reduction in fishery removals was needed to increase that probability to 50%; otherwise, SSB would not reach the target level until 2032—three years after the rebuilding deadline. It’s important to understand, however, that projections are inherently uncertain as they require assumptions to be made about future conditions (e.g., fishery catch, year-class strength). One of this projection’s assumptions in particular caused consternation about the reliability of the forecast by the time the Striped Bass Management Board met to take final action on the addendum. Whereas the projection had assumed a one-year increase in fishing mortality in 2025 as the last above-average year-class from 2018 aged into the 28–31” coastal recreational slot limit, the preliminary and partial year (through June 2025) recreational catch estimates available at the time of the Management Board’s meeting indicated a decline in striped bass harvest and releases compared to 2024. If the rest of 2025 follows this trend it suggests that fishing mortality may be closer to the rate needed to rebuild the stock than estimated by the projection. (However, less than 40% of the coastwide harvest generally comes from the first half of the calendar year, with nearly the same amount attributed to just November/December fishing activity in recent years, so it won’t be until spring 2026—when final, full-year catch data are released—that the assumption about 2025 fishery performance can be reliably judged.)
On the other hand, juvenile recruitment data newly available at the time of the Management Board’s meeting suggest another of the projection’s assumptions to be overly optimistic about the stock’s future. The projection assumes that future recruitment will be similar to that from the last 15 years in the stock assessment (i.e., 2008–2023). However, in mid-October, Maryland and Virginia released the results of their 2025 juvenile surveys for striped bass in the Chesapeake Bay, with both finding below-average recruitment. This marks the seventh consecutive below average year class in the Maryland survey (and third in the Virginia survey). With the Chesapeake Bay producing about 75% of the coastwide striped bass population, these results are an alarming red flag for the stock’s outlook. Recruitment has not been this consistently low since the stock was last considered overfished (leading to widespread harvest moratoria) in the 1980s. A separate projection assuming that future recruitment is similar to just 2019–2024 levels predicts that SSB will still trend up for a few years but then begin to decline again shortly after 2029—without ever getting to the target level.
Ultimately, after extensive debate, the Management Board voted against taking a reduction at this time and to instead form a workgroup to prepare for anticipated future management needs based on this lower stock productivity. That debate—which took into consideration public comment received through 17 public hearings attended by over 1,000 people and resulting in roughly 4,500 written letters—also reflected upon the socio-economic impacts of the proposed measures and interest to first re-evaluate stock status through the 2027 Benchmark Stock Assessment given several expected changes in major inputs. For example, the recreational catch estimates generated by the Marine Recreational Information Program (MRIP) are expected to be revised in 2026 after a study found evidence that part of the survey protocol was likely overestimating private vessel and shore-based angler effort. Additionally, DMF’s ongoing research into recreational post-release mortality may revise the discard mortality rate applied to the number of released fish. The Benchmark Assessment provides an opportunity to review the latest research that may affect other assessment parameters like natural mortality, to evaluate new data sets and alternative modeling approaches, and to assess the suitability of the biological reference points in a changing environment.
However, the ongoing weak year class production and what this means for the future of the fishery helped catalyze the Management Board’s support to prepare for what comes next through the workgroup’s formation. Specifically, it was acknowledged that future stock projections should likely assume even lower recruitment, and that while SSB is expected to increase in the near future to a level at or near the target at least temporarily, stock abundance (the number of fish or all sizes) is on a declining trend, having already reached levels similar to that of 1990. Fishery participants have already begun to notice the declining abundance of smaller fish in the population and the abundance of larger fish will eventually follow suit due to fewer fish entering the population than exiting it if recruitment does not improve. Ultimately it may not be possible to return to the type of fishery conditions enjoyed in the 2000s or even to maintain present-day conditions. These realities will be the focus of the forthcoming workgroup and its likely topics of discussion about management objectives and approaches and preparing stakeholders for these changes.
By Nichola Meserve, Interstate Fisheries Policy Analyst
