Should striped bass be declared a gamefish and closed to commercial fishing?

Some would like to see the striped bass declared a gamefish along the Atlantic Coast. Gamefish status means ending the commercial harvest while preserving the recreational catch. Another group of people—not the least of which are commercial bass fishermen—would prefer to see the fishery remain open.

Striped bass are harvested commercially in North Carolina, Virginia, Maryland, Delaware, New York, Rhode Island and Massachusetts. The total striped bass harvest in 2011 was estimated at 3.178 million fish or 32.2 million pounds. Recreational anglers harvested about 67% of those fish (2.12 million fish, 26.3 million pounds), while commercial fishermen harvested the other 33% (1.05 million fish, 6.8 million pounds).

In Massachusetts, where the debate over gamefish status has been focused in recent years, commercial striped bass fishing is a rod-and-reel fishery. The season opens in early July and continues until the fleet reaches a pre-set target quota, which is around a million pounds per year. If they go over one year, the total gets deducted from next year’s harvest. A robust final two of days in 2012 resulted in going over the quota, and the 2013 quota was reduced accordingly, to about 900,000 pounds. By comparison, the state recreational fishermen take about 4,000,000 pounds per annum.

THE ARGUMENT FOR

Spearheading the push for gamefish status is a group called Stripers Forever. Brad Burns is president of the internet-based group, who are headquartered in Portland, Maine. He says that currently “any fish that’s commercially targeted is on the ropes,” and worries that fishing for stripers is “on its way right down the tubes.”

Burns says Stripers Forever count 17,000 members from all 50 states and some foreign countries, with the largest contingents from Massachusetts and New Jersey with about 3,000 members each.

Stripers Forever member Dean Clark of Marstons Mills, Massachusetts summed up their position in a 2010 Cape Cod Times editorial: “The only way to ensure the survival of striped bass is to take the commercial price tag off their heads and make them a gamefish.”

Stripers Forever employs a full-time Policy Coordinator named Craig Caldwell in Massachusetts to work the halls of power on Beacon Hill. They have introduced and reintroduced bills into the various state legislatures advocating the ban.

While arguing that people who catch their own fish should be granted priority over people who buy them at market, they remind us that, “This is how a free society should work.”

Instead of a commercial catch, Stripers Forever would prefer to see more emphasis placed on aquaculture, where fish can be raised in relative captivity and then brought to market. They further argue that there are economic benefits to gamefish status, whereas stopping the commercial harvest will increase opportunities for recreational fishermen, who catch far more than the commercial limits already, by providing more access to what is widely considered a billion-dollar recreational industry. They argue that “employment in these recreation-based business is usually year round and employee benefits often include health and retirement plans.”

Burns says that he’s from a fishing family, both in Friendship, Maine, where he grew up, and in New Bedford, where his grandfather was dragging Georges Bank for scallops as early as the 1930s. Burns views Stripers Forever as “the keepers of the flame of for striped bass conservation,” and cites tarpon and marlin as examples of successful implementation of gamefish status.

“The recreational fishery is constrained by size and bag limits,” says Burns. “And those will not automatically change just because the commercial fishery closes. Stripers Forever’s members have repeatedly said in our annual survey that they want the fish saved by ending the commercial fishery to go to conservation instead of increased [recreational] bag limits. We need both to end commercial fishing for striped bass and significantly reduce the recreational catch.”

How States Manage Striped Bass

Stripers Forever believe that the commercial harvest is given preferential treatment by the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Council (ASMFC), a federally mandated group. The ASMFC was established by an act of Congress in 1942. Each of the 15 coastal states sends three representatives—one each of whomever is head of the state agency in charge of conservation of fisheries resources, a member of the state legislature, and a citizen with fishery knowledge to be appointed by the governor—and each state gets one vote.

Stripers Forever disagree with the current ASMFC council findings that the striped bass stock is relatively healthy, and argue instead that the group is more concerned with, and overly influenced by, powerful commercial interests.

The fight over the striped bass stretches over the decades. Dick Russell wrote a book about these struggles called Striper Wars in which he recounts the fight to bring back the striper from the brink of collapse in the early 80s.

Reasons for the 80s collapse range from those who see it purely as overfishing to a more nuanced approach that includes fishing pressure, environmental pollution, normal cyclical stock fluctuations and spawning habitat degradation. No one disagrees that the comeback of the striped bass has been a smashing success.

While Russell is not a Stripers Forever member, he says “I respect their work,” and he agrees that more needs to be done to protect stripers. To this end, he advocates the use of circle hooks and more conscientious catch and release techniques.

THE ARGUMENT AGAINST

Darren Saletta is president of the Massachusetts Commercial Striped Bass Association and says that the Stripers Forever efforts are “short sighted and irresponsible.”

Saletta says the ASMFC “has done an excellent job of managing the fishery in the past three decades and should be commended for successful management.” This management includes “triggers” which mandate management action. Saletta says that despite a downturn in biomass that the preemptive triggers are still not close to be being reached.

He derides the Stripers Forever position as an allocation grab, saying that their position “is about allocation, not conservation.”

Patrick Paquette of Massachusetts Striped Bass Association concurs. “This is really an allocation debate. Gamefish status [for striper] is really not about conservation.”

Paquette also takes exception to the Stripers Forever position of bringing the fight to the legislature. Paquette admits that steps need to be taken to protect and preserve the striped bass population, but would prefer to see any debate “happen publicly, and happen through fisheries management. Asking the legislature to regulate fishing doesn’t really make sense.” The MSBA position is that they’d prefer to focus on forage management and look at the whole ecosystem.

By the numbers, there are about 4,000 commercial striped bass fishermen in Massachusetts. (The permits, which cost $30 for residents and $60 for non-residents, are available to anyone who asks for one.)

But this number is misleading. Of those 4,000 Massachusetts commercial striped bass permit holders, only about 1,200 sell even one fish in a given year. And a mere handful of individuals—35 fishermen—each landed over 5,000 pounds in the most recent year measured. Saletta estimates that 75% of the quota is landed statewide by about 250 guys.

And even among this robust 250 guys, few if any of them earn their annual income from striped bass fishing alone. After all, the fishery is only open until the quota is reached, and that is often less than 20 days. Last year it was a mere 14 days. Unless you’re a pro football player, you can’t make a living working that many days a year.

The way it was set up, the striped bass commercial fishery was never intended to be a full time thing. “It’s not a place to go for a misplaced [commercial] groundfisherman,” says Paquette.

Consequently, the striped bass fishery is considered a gateway fishery, a stepping off point for commercial fishermen who likely hold several endorsements on their license as placeholders. Many of these same guys either sportfish as charter boat captains on the side (or, more accurately, fish commercially on the side while running a charter business) and then dig clams or scratch bait to round out their income in the off-season.

State representative Sarah Peake, D-Provincetown, has stated that “These guys are geniuses at being able to figure out how they can piece together enough to earn a living. This little bit of commercial bass that they can catch during the summer months is a make-or-break piece for them.”

An exemplar of this breed is Bruce Peters of Chatham. He has fished stripers commercially since 1990, runs Cape Shore Charters off the Chatham Fish Pier and says that gamefish status, “Wouldn’t hurt me financially, but it would take away a freedom I grew up with.”

It is something Peters feels strongly about. “Striped bass belong to every single member of the Commonwealth. The commercial guy is a tool that gets that [resource] to market,” and that taking that away is only “taking it away from the little old lady,” who wants to buy striper at a restaurant or fish market.

Curiously, it is this proverbial little old lady that each of the opposing groups site as their target audience. Both groups claim the popular mantle and they speak for the people.

Both also deride the middle-of-the-pack fisherman who fill out the ranks of the commercial bass fleet—the majority of the 4,000 permit holders, in other words.

Stripers Forever derides these “pin fishermen” who only catch bass commercially to subsidize their other recreational fishing. Peters too has some harsh words for a group he derides as, “Little nimrod college kids who live in their mother’s basement,” who fish more out of interest in writing off their expensive Whalers, trailers and fuel for the year. The pro- and anti-gamefish crowd are in agreement on very little, but both agree that these middling fishermen drive down prices by glutting the market in what is already a short season and both acknowledge that a lot of gray-market and black-market sales muddy a clear assessment of landings numbers.

Saletta bristles at the way the gamefish argument is often oversimplified as being a commercial versus recreational argument. “I’m a recreational fisherman!” he states, citing Monomoy Sportfishing, his charter fishing business that operates when commercial season is not on. Saletta has a vested interest in a sustainable striped bass fishery with an abundance of fish in the water, and has supported water quality issues and striped bass forage fish issues. In December, he traveled to an ASMFC meeting in Baltimore, Maryland to support an historic reduction in the commercial harvest of menhaden, a species considered integral to the diet of the stripers.

“The gamefish argument is about allocation, not conservation,” says Saletta. “This is a public resource, with [commercial fishermen] bringing fish to people who don’t fish.”