NEW MENHADEN ASSESSMENT CORRECTS ERROR, CHANGES STOCK STATUS

 

A benchmark stock assessment, released in 2020, found that

“[The fishing mortality rate] in 2017 [the terminal year of the stock assessment] (0.11) was below the F_threshold (0.60) and F_target (0.22).  In addition, the stock is above the current fecundity target.  The Atlantic menhaden stock is not overfished and overfishing is not occurring.  [emphasis in original]”

A stock assessment update, released in 2022, found that stock status had not changed, stating that

“The fishing mortality for the terminal year of 2021 was below the [Ecological Reference Point] target ant threshold and the fecundity was above the [Environmental Reference Point] target and threshold.  Therefore, overfishing is not occurring and the stock in not considered overfished.”

Unfortunately, in coming to those conclusions, the authors of both stock assessments used an estimate of natural mortality (the fish that die from causes that are not fishing-related) that was too high, which resulted in an overestimate of population size and an overly optimistic evaluation of the population’s status.

A new update to the single-species stock assessment was recently completed (so recently that I received a copy in pdf form, as it has not yet been posted to the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission’s website).  It addresses the overestimate of natural mortality, and the steps used to correct it, reporting that

“The only new change for this update assessment is the inclusion of a new vector of natural mortality based on a revised analysis of the historical tagging data that was completed by the M Working Group.  The 2020 benchmark used the estimate of [natural mortality] from Liljestrand et al.’s (2019) analysis of the tagging data to scale the Lorenzen (1996) curve of [natural mortality]-at-age, assuming that the [natural mortality] estimated from the tagging data represented the [natural mortality]  for age 1.5 menhaden, based on the size of the tagged fish.  During the 2025 benchmark assessment process, Ault et al. (2023) submitted a working paper to the Atlantic menhaden [stock assessment subcommittee] and the Ecological Reference Points Work Group (ERP WG) that re-analyzed the historical tagging data and produced an estimate of M=0.56, significantly lower that the M=1.17 reported by Liljestrand et al. (2019).

“However, Ault had used a different subset of the data and a different approach to handling key parameters, which made direct comparisons with Liljestrand et al. (2019) difficult.  The [stock assessment subcommittee] formed a working group to review the datasets and methods in consultation with the primary authors to determine the best estimate of [natural mortality] for use in the Atlantic menhaden stock assessment.  The [M Working Group] and [stock assessment subcommittee] determined that the main cause of the difference in [natural mortality] estimates was the handling of the magnet efficiency parameter [related to the detection of magnetic tags], which was equivalent to the tag reporting rate in conventional tagging models.  The [M Working Group] and [stock assessment subcommittee] found that Liljestrand et al. (2019) had overestimated the magnet efficiency rate in their analysis, but did not agree with the stepwise estimation approach proposed by Ault et al. (2023) to estimate this parameter.  In the end, the [M Working Group] and [stock assessment subcommittee] recommended a revised estimate of M=0.92 from the tagging study, based on the corrected magnet efficiency rate and updated effort and landings datasets, which was lower than the value used in the 2020 benchmark, but higher than the value estimated by Ault et al.’s (2023) method…”

To put that in simpler terms, the 2020 benchmark assessment assumed that about 69% of the adult menhaden are removed from the population by natural causes each year, while the 2025 assessment update assumes a natural mortality rate of about 60% (while rejecting the conclusion of another team of scientists that only 43% of the population succumbs to natural mortality each year).

The difference between 60% and 69% might not seem very large, but it is large enough to cause the estimate of the Atlantic menhaden population to drop substantially.  A memorandum prepared by the Atlantic Menhaden Technical Committee and Ecological Reference Point Workgroup, addressed to the Atlantic Menhaden Management Board and dated October 9, 2025 (which was attached to the copy of the 2025 stock assessment update that I received), notes that

“the lower [natural mortality rate] used in 2025 resulted in a lower biomass compared to the 2022 update.  The time-series average of age-1+ biomass for the 2025 update with the lower [natural mortality rate] was 37% lower than the time-series average in the 2022 update.  In addition, the 2022 update showed a large increase at the end of the time-series that not present at the end of the 2025 update.”

That 37% reduction, plus the absence of a large biomass increase near the end of the time series, was enough to change the status of the stock from one with a fishing mortality rate below the target level and a fecundity level above the target to one with a fishing mortality rate and a fecundity level that sits between target and threshold.  

That’s a big change, but not catastrophic, for while managers should always attempt to maintain both fishing mortality and biomass/fecundity at or near target levels, the fact is that for most species, most of the time, fishing mortality will often stray above target while biomass often remains below.  Things only get truly serious if a stock becomes overfished or overfishing occurs.

So far, that is not the case for Atlantic menhaden, and the 2025 assessment update noted that

“Short-term projections at the current Total Allowable Catch (TAC) of 233,550 [metric tons] were provided.  Under a constant TAC of 233,550 mt, [fishing mortality] will be between [the fishing mortality target] and [the fishing mortality threshold], with a 4% probability that [fishing mortality] will be above the [Ecological Reference Points’ fishing mortality threshold] and a 100% probability that it will be above the [fishing mortality target] in 2028.”

While that might not seem too dire, there are some important facts that it leaves unsaid.  One is that, as noted in the October 9 memo,

“the 2021 biomass that was projected forward to inform the 2023-2025 TAC options was approximately 60% higher than the 2023 biomass, which is informing the 2026-2028 TAC.”

So the Management Board is going to have far fewer fish to work with when setting the overall TAC, as well as individual state quotas, this time around.

As a result of the corrected, smaller population size, the 2025 assessment update found that 2023 fecundity was just 71% percent of the target level and, more significantly, just 105% of the fecundity threshold.  So while the Atlantic menhaden stock might not have been overfished in 2023, fecundity needs only fall a few more percentage points, to anywhere below 100% of the threshold, for menhaden to become overfished.

That should be setting off alarms at the Atlantic Menhaden Management Board, and making it clear that maintaining status quo—in the form of a 233,440 mt Total Allowable Catch—is neither a prudent nor a viable option. 

For while the current TAC might not lead to overfishing, it could very well lead to an overfished stock, which is not an acceptable outcome.

Thus, if the Management Board is to be a responsible steward of the menhaden resource, it must make a substantial reduction in the menhaden TAC for the years 2026-2028.

How large should that reduction be?

If we want to get fishing mortality back down to its target level, the TAC must be cut by more than 50%.  The October 9 memo presents a number of options, built around the likelihood of exceeding the TAC in the upcoming years.  The most liberal of the options presented, a 110,000 mt TAC for the entire 2026-2028 period, that would carry a 60% probability of exceeding the fishing mortality target, represents about a 52.5% reduction in TAC compared to the TAC currently in place (although the reduction compared to 2024 landings would be less, as such landings were about 20% below the existing TAC).

A more prudent TAC, that would have just a 50% probability of exceeding the target—and so represent a sort of mirror image to the usual process of setting harvest at a level with a 50% probability of not exceeding the mortality level needed to achieve management success—would cut landings back to 108,450 mt, nearly a 54.5% reduction from the current level.

As a practical matter, the difference between a 54.5% reduction and a 52.5% reduction is trivial, and hardly worth arguing about.  But we can be sure that the findings of the 2025 stock assessment update, and the recommendations in the October 5 memo, are going to set off an intense debate between the menhaden industry and the folks who want to shut most of that industry down.

It is extremely likely--it is a virtual certainty--that the menhaden industry will howl and complain that it can’t absorb a 50%-plus cut in harvest, and that the Management Board should adopt a new TAC that is very close to the one now in place.  It might—or might not—be willing to accept a 20% TAC reduction, given that the menhaden fishery only landed about 80% of its quota last year, and a TAC of around 187,000 metric tons would be larger than the TAC for 2013-2014, and about equal to the 187,880 mt TAC that was in place for 2015-2016.

But that level of landings would almost certainly mean that the fishing mortality target would be exceeded, and when managers go to the trouble of setting a target—essentially saying that, ideally, “fishing mortality ought to go no higher than this,”—they do have an obligation to the public to at least try to achieve that goal.  Each person might have a different definition of “try,” but it’s probably fair to say that if you adopt management measures that, more likely than not, will lead to a fishing mortality target from being exceeded, you’re not really trying at all.

The menhaden fishing industry will be on shaky ground if they argue for keeping the menhaden TAC at or near its current level, or at or near current landings.  Throughout the debate over the proper level of, and methods used for, menhaden harvest, the industry has regularly called for following the science, rather than giving in to emotional arguments.  Now that we have the science telling us that menhaden fecundity was hovering just above the threshold that denotes an overfished stock in 2023—it could conceivably have slipped below that threshold since, although we lack the data to know if it has—and telling us that we need to cut the TAC by more than 50% to achieve the target fishing mortality level, the industry has the choice of staying true to its previous messaging, and going along with what the science appears to demand—even if that means taking a serious economic hit—or suddenly saying that the science isn’t the only consideration, and looking like hypocrites.

We can’t know for certain which course they’ll choose, although “follow the money” is usually dependable advice.

On the other side of the table, we’ll undoubtedly see the folks who worship at the menhaden's altar, and have regularly made irrational and scientifically unsustainable calls for the elimination of the menhaden reduction fishery, increase the volume of their yowling, and use the 2025 assessment update as an excuse to redouble their efforts, never seeming to realize that a menhaden that dies in a pound net is just as dead, and has the same impact on the stock as one that dies in a purse seine.

By focusing on eliminating a gear type instead of on reducing the TAC, such persons will make it easier for the industry to prevail, as they open the door to equally emotional arguments that the reduction industry is unjustly targeted, that ending the reduction fishery would kill an economically important business in a generally depressed area of the coast, and that closing that fishery would deny employment for people—including many people of color—in a region that offers few viable alternatives.

And it will be easy for the industry to argue that, even with the population size revised downward, the menhaden stock is not in anywhere near as bad condition as the industry's opponents maintain.

The October 9 memo shows that menhaden landings—and, in particular, menhaden reduction landings, have been relatively stable since 2000.  During that time, overall landings ranged between a low of 169.4 metric tons in 2013 to a high of 270.05 metric tons in 2001, with landings in 2023, the last year in the time series, coming in closer to the low end, at 181.75 metric tons.  

Similarly, reduction landings ranged from a low of 124.60 in 2020 (and 131.02 in 2013, the lowest non-COVID year) to a high of 233.56 in 2001, with landings in the last three years of the time series, 2021, 2022, and 2023, coming in near time-series lows, at 136.69, 136.70, and 131.80 metric tons, respectively, even though the ,menhaden TAC has been increasing in recent years.

At the same time, the 2025 assessment update revealed that current spawning stock biomass is higher than it has been for most of this century, that the current fishing mortality rate is near the middle of its range for the past 30 years, and that current recruitment is better than it has been in most years since 1990.  However, it also indicates that both age-1+ biomass and fecundity are either at, or not far from 30-year lows.

So, after discounting the demands from both stakeholder extremes, what should the Management Board do when it meets on October 28?

The need to cut the TAC—sharply—is clear.  Ideally, the 2026-2028 TAC should be reduced to no more than 108,450 metric tons, although its unlikely the Management Board will have the appetite to get that done over the course of a single year.  In the real world, some sort of phase-in is likely, but so long as there is a fixed schedule to get the TAC down to that level over the course of a few years—ideally by 2028—no one will have too much reason to complain.

Of course, the industry almost certainly will complain anyway.  They’ll argue that a cut of more than 50%, even if phased in over the course of three years, is too sudden and extreme for them to bear.  But the fact is that the TAC should never have reached 233,550 metric tons.  It got that high only because the biologists made a mistake, and adopted a natural mortality rate that was too high, and so skewed previous stock assessments.

No one was really to blame for that error—not the scientists doing the stock assessment, who relied on what they thought was accurate data; not the Management Board, who relied on the assessment when setting the TAC; and not the fishermen who relied on the Management Board to set the TAC at the proper level..  But blame isn’t the issue.

The simple fact is that the menhaden industry was killing more menhaden than they should have been, and now that we know that to be true, the Management Board needs to get landings down to a more sustainable level.

One might borrow a concept from civil law, and argue that the menhaden fishery was “unjustly enriched” by the error in the stock assessment and received a benefit, in the form of far more fish, than they were entitled to.  If that had happened in a financial context—if, for example, someone’s bank made an error and credited their account with $100,000. instead of $1,000.00 because someone put a decimal point in the wrong place—the party who was unjustly enriched would have to return all of the assets that they weren’t entitled to.

But no one is suggesting that the menhaden industry make pound-for-pound paybacks of the extra fish that they harvested as a result of the earlier stock assessments’ error.  

No one is suggesting that they make any sort of restitution at all.

But now that we know that the earlier natural mortality estimate was wrong, it’s neither unreasonable nor unfair that the Management Board reduce the TAC to what it should have been all along.

THE PROBLEM WITH THE STRIPED BASS HEARINGS

 

What a field day for the heat

A thousand people in the street

Singing songs and a-carrying signs

Mostly saying hooray for our side.

                              From “For What It’s Worth”

                              by Buffalo Springfield, 1966

 

When the song “For What It’s Worth” was recorded back in the latter half of the 1960s, I was still very young, growing up in a nation riven by internal conflicts over the Viet Nam War, civil rights, and the first stirrings of feminism and the environmental movement.  Traditional values were being challenged by a public growing ever less willing to accept the status quo. 

Although the song was originally a response to a curfew imposed by the City of Los Angeles, California, intended to reduce late-night crowds patronizing various music venues, the lyrics became, and still are, an anthem and--if you listen closely enough, also a caution--for advocates who challenge the established governing system and work toward some sort of reform.

As I’ve grown older and more cynical, I’ve also noted to myself that some of its lyrics could apply as much to a fisheries hearing—and particularly, in my part of the world, a striped bass hearing—as to a debate over other, more broadly applicable policy matters that raise the public’s ire.

Certainly, the current debate over the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission’s Draft Addendum III to Amendment 7 to the Interstate Fishery Management Plan for Atlantic Striped Bass for Public Comment seems to fit.

At its heart, Addendum III is a simple document, born out of a simple need:  The last benchmark striped bass stock assessment, which the ASMFC accepted in early 2019, found that the striped bass stock was overfished.  Amendment 6 to the Interstate Fishery Management Plan for Atlantic Striped Bass, which was still in effect at that time, required the ASMFC’s Atlantic Striped Bass Management Board to rebuild the overfished stock within 10 years, thus establishing a 2029 rebuilding deadline (Amendment 7 to the Interstate Management Plan for Atlantic Striped Bass, adopted in 2022, includes the same requirement).  Last October, a 2024 update to the stock assessment was released, which informed biologists and fishery managers that the stock was unlikely to meet the rebuilding deadline unless removals (the combination of landings and release/discard mortality) were reduced.  At the August 2025 Management Board meeting, the ASMFC’s Striped Bass Technical Committee informed the Board that, in order to have a 50% probability of meeting the rebuilding deadline, striped bass removals would have to be reduced by 12%.

Although it also addresses some ancillary issues, the primary purpose of Addendum III was to implement that 12% reduction.

Efforts to reduce removals, regardless of the species involved, are always controversial, but Addendum III’s relatively modest harvest cuts drew particular rancor because, for the first time, they called for a closed recreational fishing season in the ocean fishery (which includes all recreational striped bass fisheries outside of the Chesapeake Bay).  

With the bag limit already reduced to a single fish, and a narrow, 28- to 31-inch slot limit already in place, such closed season represented the only practical way to achieve the necessary reduction.  But that didn’t mean that anglers were going to accept the closure easily, particularly when it might shut down fishing at the most productive times of the year.

Commercial fishermen rejected any quota reduction outright, and disclaimed any responsibility for the striped bass’ current depleted condition.  They adamantly insisted that they were only responsible for 10% of all removals—rarely mentioning that their share of the removals increased to 16% in 2024. 

New York’s Bonnie Brady, the head of the Long Island Commercial Fishing Association, whined that

“It’s the commercial fleet that takes the cut,”

even though the same 12% reduction would be applied to the commercial and recreational fisheries, and claimed that

“Commercial and for-hire fishermen did not create this problem,”

even though, in 2024, the combined commercial and for-hire fisheries accounted for more than 20% of all striped bass removals.

Instead, Brady blamed the shore-based and private boat anglers, and particularly those who practiced catch-and-release, for any woes that might be besetting the striped bass stock.

Her comments were in line with those made by the rest of the commercial fishing community, some of whom even said things like

“Why haven’t you considered giving us 12 percent back instead of taking?”

and

“I’ve been doing this for 60-plus years.  You come in for one day, trying to run this industry…Had a 12,000-pound quota when this all started.  When you’re done with this one, I’ll have seven.  Take a 50 percent cut in your salary, see how long you sit there.”

The for-hire fleet, for the most part, also sought to evade any responsibility for rebuilding the striped bass stock, even though, on a per-trip basis, they harvest more striped bass than any other segment of the recreational community (an analysis of data made available by the National Marine Fisheries Service indicates that shore-based anglers harvest, on average, 0.025 striped bass per directed striped bass trip, private boat anglers harvest 0.185 striped bass per directed trip, and anglers fishing from for-hire vessels harvest 0.777 striped bass per directed trip).

By and large, the party boat fleet and the traditional “six-pack” charters opposed any landings reductions, and actually sought to increase their harvest by widening the ocean slot limit to 28 to 33 inches, with an equivalent adjustment made to the recreational slot in the Chesapeake Bay, for anglers fishing from their vessels.  

The fact that adopting the wider for-hire slot would force shore-based and private boat anglers to cut back their removals even more, and face a longer closed season, did not seem to bother most of the for-hires at all.  (It should be noted that the smaller light-tackle boats, often colloquially referred to as “guide boats” rather than “charters,” generally supported the 12% reduction and opposed the special for-hire slot, with the American Saltwater Guides Association recommending that the Management Board adopt the former while rejecting the latter.)

The fishing tackle industry also opposed the reduction in removals proposed in the draft addendum, apparently afraid that both shops and manufacturers would lose sales if a closed season was imposed.  The American Sportfishing Association tried to rally anglers in opposition to the proposed reductions, arguing, in part, that

“The recreational striped bass fishery drives billions of dollars in economic activity, supports tens of thousands of jobs, and sustains countless small businesses up and down the Atlantic coast.  An additional 12% reduction would devastate the recreational fishing economy while doing very little to improve the health of the fishery.”

In an exhibition of unintended irony, the American Sportfishing Association alleged that

“ASMFC is reacting to short-term swings in the recreational catch estimates,”

only to have Michael Waine, its spokesman on East Coast fishery matters, call in to an Addendum III hearing held in Kings Park, New York, and argue in favor of maintaining the status quo, because recreational striped bass catch appeared to be off by 50% in the first half of 2024—an argument that could only be called a reaction to a short-term swing in recreational catch estimates.  

A big on-line New Jersey tackle shop also asked its customers to support status quo.

And some Garden State anglers clearly did, as the New Jersey angling press reported that many recreational fishermen attending New Jersey hearings also opposed any reduction in landings.  In other places, the majority of anglers seemed to support Addendum III’s conservation measures.

But in most instances, whether comments were made by recreational fishermen, commercial fishermen, for-hire operators, or members of the fishing tackle industry, most of those comments seemed to focus on how the proposed harvest reductions would impact the person making the comments, or that person’s industry or sector.

Outside of many—but far from all—of the recreational fishermen, the comments were strictly partisan, and didn’t focus on the most important factor of all—the health of the striped bass stock.

In the end, things could be summed up with another set of lyrics:

There’s battle lines being drawn

Nobody’s right, if everybody’s wrong

And in the Amendment III debate, just about everyone has been wrong to a greater or lesser degree.

There are the folks involved in the various businesses—commercial fishermen, for-hire operators, and the tackle industry—who can’t seem to shift their focus from their short-term profits and possible losses onto their likely long-term gains if the bass stock can be rebuilt and maintained at a higher level of abundance.

They seem to lack the ability to contemplate what might happen to their businesses should the bass stock, instead of being rebuilt, go into a further decline and, perhaps, even a collapse.

Given the last six years of historically low levels of recruitment, such decline and collapse are not impossible outcomes.

Yet the businesses' wrongheaded focus on the short term continues.

The many anglers who want to see the bass stock rebuilt often criticize the commercials and for-hires for their resistance to needed management measures, but the recreational sector is also far from blame in that regard.  That has been painfully obvious in their reaction—and their opposition—to the proposed closed seasons.

Since the idea of closed seasons was originally broached, many anglers, most particularly those in states between Maine and New Jersey, complained that the proposed closures would unfairly hamper their ability to fish for striped bass.  

While, to some extent, I could sympathize with the folks from northern New England—they kill relatively few bass, compared to states farther south, and nature has already allowed them the shortest fishing season of any states within the striped bass’ range—the fact remains that everyone has contributed to the species’ decline, and everyone should expect to contribute to its recovery.

So Maine anglers complain about midsummer closures, which hit them at their peak season, while New Jersey fishermen whine that, even though they may catch bass for ten months of the year, closures that impact Wave 3 (May/June) and Wave 6 (November/December) would cause them unacceptable harm.

Here in New York, anglers complain about different possible seasons, depending upon where they fish.  Those who fish on the East End of Long Island abhor the idea of a midsummer closure, but would accept closed seasons in the spring and late fall, while anglers on the western half of Long Island, in Westchester and in New York City share the concerns of New Jersey fishermen, and might grudgingly accept a midseason closure, but don’t want their activities impaired in the spring and the fall.

The need to rebuild the striped bass seems to take second place to anglers’ desires to catch them.

That fact becomes even more clear in the debate between “no-harvest” and “no-target” seasons.

A “no-harvest” season would prohibit anglers from taking fish home, but would not prevent them from practicing catch-and-release; New York’s current striped bass season operates in just that way.  A “no-target” season would prohibit anglers from even trying to catch a striped bass during the closure, regardless of whether or not the fish was released.

Because catch-and-release fishing results in some striped bass dying after being returned to the water, a no-target closure would be shorter than a no-harvest closed season.  However, as a practical matter, no-target seasons are not enforceable, as it is extremely difficult to prove, beyond a reasonable doubt, that an angler was actually trying to catch a striped bass and not a bluefish, weakfish, or other species that might be caught at the same time in the same waters using the same angling technique, so the mortality savings attributed to such no-target seasons are largely illusory.

In addition, no-target seasons would unnecessarily deny anglers the social and recreational benefits offered by a catch-and-release fishery, while denying angling-related businesses the economic benefits that accrue from anglers catching and releasing striped bass.

Thus, most recreational striped bass fishermen rightfully argue for no-harvest closures and against a no-target season.

However, far too many anglers are opposing no-target seasons so intensely that they are forgetting that the most important issue being considered isn’t the nature of the closed season, but instead the need to reduce striped bass removals by at least 12%, so that the stock can have a reasonable probability of rebuilding by 2029.  

By de-emphasizing the need for such reduction, those anglers are implying that avoiding a no-target closure—something that could be accomplished merely by taking no management action at all, and so maintaining the current status quo—is more important than rebuilding the stock.

They don’t understand that even ae partial reduction, dependent on a flawed and unenforceable no-target closure, is better than no reduction at all.

And that, too, is wrong.

It is time for everyone involved in the fishery—recreational, commercial, for-hire, and related businesses—to understand that there is nothing more important to all of them than the long-term health of the striped bass stock, and that even if it comes at some temporary cost to business and/or to recreational opportunity, a rebuilt stock will, in the end, benefit everyone.

It is time for everyone to understand that, in the long run, drawing battle lines, and cheering on their own side, rather than coming together for the good of the striped bass resource, only makes it more likely that, in the end, we—and the striped bass—are all going to lose.

Yet it seems that, for far too many, that understanding will never come.

 

 

 

WILL NEW JERSEY GO OUT OF COMPLIANCE WITH STRIPED BASS ADDENDUM III?

 

Because I write this blog, and am fairly involved in the fisheries management process, people often tip me off when something interesting, controversial, or newsworthy is going on somewhere along the coast.

Thus, about 10 days ago, I received a text and a follow-up phone call telling me that “New Jersey”—it wasn’t exactly clear who, just “New Jersey”—had decided that, if the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission’s Atlantic Striped Bass Management Board approves Addendum III to Amendment 7 to the Interstate Fishery Management Plan for Atlantic Striped Bass when it meets later this month, the state would not comply with its management measures, or at least, not with those imposing a closed season on the ocean fishery.

The rumor went on to say that there was some sort of meeting of New Jersey fishing clubs, perhaps under the aegis of the Jersey Coast Anglers Association, but whether that meeting involved New Jersey regulators, and whether those regulators had committed to noncompliance, or just failed to discount the possibility, was unknown.

As any state’s noncompliance with a fisheries management measure can have a serious negative impact on the affected stock all along the coast, a threat of noncompliance is a significant management issue, so I began trying to chase the rumor down, reaching out to contacts in the New Jersey recreational fishing community in an effort to root out the truth.  For a while, my efforts did not yield results, but finally a friend in the Garden State, who happens to be a charter boat captain committed to fisheries conservation, whom I had not contacted in my initial round of inquiries, reached out to me and provided some of the details.

I was told that the decision to go out of compliance with Addendum III was made by the New Jersey Marine Fisheries Council, which had met, in part to discuss that issue, on September 10.  [NOTE:  Since this post was published, I received another comment from an person, who chose not to identify himself, who provided a different version of what took place at the meeting.  He reported, in part "the Council met to discuss the situation and subsequently submitted a comment letter to ASMFC during the open public comment period indicating which management options on the table that they favored and stating their rationale for the options that they favored; the letter did not state that NJ would not comply with any decision made by the ASMFC, nor did it urge the State to currently take such a position on the matter."  His entire message can be found in the comments following this post.  I do not know which version more accurately reflects what went on.]

The New Jersey Marine Fisheries Council was established by the state legislature.  It is composed of 11 individuals, nine of whom are appointed by the state’s governor, and must be confirmed by the state Senate.  Four of the nine persons subject to Senate confirmation must represent the recreational fishery, two must be active commercial fishermen, one an active fish processor, and two shall represent the general public; the other two Council members are the chairmen of the two sections of the state’s Shellfisheries Council.

The Council neither promulgates regulations nor drafts fisheries management plans, although it advises the Commissioner of the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection on such issues and contributes to the development of management plans.  However, what makes the Council’s decision to go out of compliance with Addendum III very significant is its power to

“disapprove, within 60 days of the proposal thereof and the submittal thereto, any rule or regulation or any amendment thereto proposed by the commissioner pursuant to this act except for any rule or regulation adopted pursuant to subsection (c) of section 4 of the ‘Administrative Procedures Act.’”

Thus, even if New Jersey’s fisheries management professionals want to comply with the ASMFC’s decision on Addendum III, the Council has the authority to veto that decision and force the state into noncompliance.

And from what I was told occurred at the September 10 meeting, the Council intends to do just that.  No minutes of that meeting are yet available, but my contact is knowledgeable enough, and tuned in enough, that I feel comfortable taking him at his word.

I was also told that, of all the fishing clubs and other organizations that belong to the Jersey Coast Anglers Association, all but two—the Berkley Striper Club and Menhaden Defenders—voted to either support the JCAA encouraging the Council to promote noncompliance or endorsing its decision not to comply (the sequence of events isn’t completely clear).

Thus, if the ASMFC ultimately adopts Addendum III, and additional striped bass management measures, at its Annual Meeting, which is scheduled for later this month, there is a very good chance that the Council will either convince state regulators to go out of compliance, or disapprove any compliant regulations.

Either way, New Jersey would not adopt any new and necessary restrictions included in the new addendum.

Technically, even given the Council decision, New Jersey would not be out of compliance with the ASMFC’s striped bass management plan at any time this year, as it is all but certain that, if Addendum III is adopted, it will include a January 1, 2026 compliance date.  Assuming that is the case, all of the states with a declared interest in striped bass will have until then to put the required measures in place.

Thus, the ASMFC and its Atlantic Striped Bass Management Board is going to face a number of decisions, two at its October meeting and, depending on what it decides then, as many as three when it meets again in February 2026.

In October, it will have to decide whether it really believes that New Jersey will go out of compliance and, if it thinks that it will do so, whether to adopt Addendum III and risk a confrontation that it might very well lose, or whether it should either delay the vote or decide to discontinue work on the addendum altogether, in order to avoid a bad outcome.

Right now, it’s impossible to say what path it would take, given the strong fishing tackle industry opposition to Addendum III, coupled with similarly strong opposition from the for-hire and commercial sectors, might be enough to convince some Management Board members that if adopting the addendum, in the face of such opposition, will lead to a compliance battle that it might very well lose, then abandoning Addendum III is the wiser course.

We saw the American Lobster Management Board make such a decision at last February’s ASMFC meeting.

But if the Atlantic Striped Bass Management Board adopts Addendum III in October, and the New Jersey Marine Fisheries Council makes good on its threat to go out of compliance, then the ASMFC will face as many as three decisions in February 2026.

The first is whether the Management Board should move forward with a noncompliance vote, or whether to refrain, tolerate New Jersey’s noncompliance, at least for a while, and not risk undercutting the Commission’s authority by losing a noncompliance fight.

If it decides to find New Jersey out of compliance, and the ASMFC’s Interstate Fishery Management Plan Policy Board endorses its decision, an additional decision arises:  Which law should govern the noncompliance finding?

To date, as far as I know, all of the ASMFC’s noncompliance findings have been made pursuant to the Atlantic Coastal Fisheries Cooperative Management Act, which provides, in relevant part,

“The Commission shall determine that a State is not in compliance with the provisions of a coastal fishery management plan if it finds that the State has not implemented and enforced such plan within the timeframes established under the plan…

“After making a determination [that a State is not in compliance] the Commission shall within 10 working days notify the [Secretary of Commerce] of such determination.  Such notification shall include the reasons for making the determination and an explicit list of actions that the affected State must take to comply with the coastal fishery management plan.  The Commission shall provide a copy of the notification to the affected State…

“Within 30 days after receiving a notice from the Commission…and after review of the Commission’s determination of noncompliance, the Secretary shall make a finding on (1) whether the State in question as failed to carry out its responsibility under [the fishery management plan]; and (2) if so, whether the measures that the State has failed to implement and enforce are necessary for the conservation of the fishery in question…

“Upon making a finding…that a State has failed to carry out its responsibility under [the fishery management plan] and that the measures it failed to implement and enforce are necessary for conservation, the Secretary shall declare a moratorium on fishing in the fishery in question within the waters of the noncomplying State.  The Secretary shall specify the moratorium’s effective date, which shall be any date within 6 months after declaration of the moratorium.  [formatting omitted]”

The Atlantic Coastal Fisheries Act became law in 1993, and for the first 24 years of its existence, the Secretary of Commerce routinely endorsed the ASMFC’s noncompliance findings, and used the moratorium as an incentive to bring states into compliance with the ASMFC’s management plans.

But that all changed during the first Trump administrationwhen, in 2017, the State of New Jersey (yes, them again) decided to go out ofcompliance with the ASMFC’s summer flounder management plan, betting thatpolitical connections (its then-governor, Chris Christie, was an early Trumpsupporter, and so had some political influence within that administration)would trump good science and lead to a favorable decision.

The gamble paid off, as Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross became the first Commerce Secretary in history to override the ASMFC’s finding of noncompliance and excuse a noncompliant state’s actions.

It is not at all unlikely that, if New Jersey went out of compliance with striped bass and a noncompliance finding was made under the Atlantic Coastal Fisheries Act, the same thing would happen again, if for different political reasons.

Thus, the ASMFC might well be reluctant to initiate noncompliance proceedings under that law.

But it may have another, more viable alternative.

In 1984, Congress passed the Atlantic Striped Bass Conservation Act, which actually provided a template for the later law, but differed in an important respect.  Under the Striped Bass Act, if a state went out of compliance with the ASMFC’s striped bass management plan,

“The Commission shall immediately notify the Secretaries [of Commerce and the Interior] of each negative determination made by it…

“Upon receiving notice by the Commission…of a negative determination regarding a coastal State, the Secretaries shall determine jointly, within 30 days, whether the coastal State is in compliance with the Plan and, if the State is not in compliance, the Secretaries shall declare jointly a moratorium on fishing for Atlantic striped bass within the coastal waters of that coastal State…  [formatting omitted]”

The Striped Bass Act has fallen into obscurity since the passage of the Atlantic Coastal Fisheries Act, as the latter addresses all ASMFC-managed fisheries, including that for striped bass.  But the Striped Bass Act was never repealed by Congress, and remains on the books, and it may offer the ASMFC a far better chance of enforcing its noncompliance finding, because it does not require that the Secretary of Commerce (or the Interior) determine whether the provisions that as state has not complied with are “necessary for conservation.”  A mere finding that a state is not in compliance with the striped bass management plan is enough to require that a moratorium be imposed.

Of course, things probably wouldn’t go that smoothly.  The secretaries might well try to impose a “necessary to conservation” standard for political reasons, even though it wasn’t explicitly stated in the statute, and New Jersey might well choose to litigate if the secretaries imposed a moratorium without addressing the necessity of the management measures in question. 

Still, the best evidence of Congressional intent is the plain language of the statute, and “if the State is not in compliance, the Secretaries shall declare jointly a moratorium” is pretty plain and clear.  There’s not much room for interpretation.  If Congress really wanted a “necessary to conservation” standard to apply to the Striped Bass Act, all they would have had to do was write one in--which, after all, they did it in the Atlantic Coastal Fisheries Act.  The fact that they didn’t include similar language in the Striped Bass Act surely suggests that they chose not to do so.

Hopefully, things won’t get that far.

Hopefully, the New Jersey Marine Fisheries Council isn’t quite as determined to go out of compliance as the stories I’m hearing suggest, and hopefully, New Jersey will choose to be a responsible member of the ASMFC that respects the Commission’s decisions, even if they don’t go New Jersey’s way.

But history suggests that expecting New Jersey to act responsibly is expecting too much, and that the state might well choose to place its own short-term interests ahead of the interests of the striped bass resource and all of the anglers, commercial fishermen, and fishing-related businesses lining the coast between Maine and Virginia, that depend on a healthy striped bass stock.

2017 isn’t that far in the past, a Trump administration is again in the White House, and there isn’t any reason to believe that New Jersey doesn’t hope that history will repeat itself if it goes out of compliance again.

So, should New Jersey again decide to act irresponsibly, it’s nice to know that the ASMFC might have an option that could see the latest round of noncompliance, should it occur, bring the consequences such actions deserve.

 

 

HAS THE STRIPED BASS FISHERY REACHED A NEW INFLECTION POINT?

 

In 2022, the big 2015 year class of striped bass entered the 28- to 35-inch ocean slot limit, and recreational landings soared.  For that one year, driven by those recreational landings, the fishing mortality rate exceeded the fishing mortality threshold, and overfishing occurred.

Fishing effort also showed the impact of the 2015s entering the slot, rising from nearly 15.7 million trips in 2021 to slightly over 20.4 million trips in 2022.

But at the same time that was happening, something else was happening, too.  The number of striped bass caught on each trip was beginning to go down, falling from 1.95 bass per trip in 2021 to 1.62 bass per trip in 2022.  And the decline didn’t stop there.  In each subsequent year, the average number of bass caught per trip continued to fall, to 1.61 fish in 2023 and 1.33 in 2024.

There’s still a lot of 2025 to go, and we only have catch and effort data available through the end of June, but so far this year, the average number of bass caught per trip has fallen even farther, to just 0.82—less than a single fish for each trip taken.

That doesn’t mean that such a low success rate will continue throughout the year.  Over the past few seasons, we have seen bass migrating down from New England and eastern Long Island stall off western New York and northern New Jersey late in the season, providing very fast fishing that might—if it recurs again—push the success rate over the one-fish-per-trip mark for the entire season, although it’s probably unlikely that the rate will come close to equalling last year’s 1.33 bass per trip.

But the other thing that we need to think about is that the number of directed striped bass trips taken in the first six months of 2025 is also the lowest in the past five years—by far.  Trips during that six-month period peaked at 7.93 million in 2022, but by the time 2025 rolled around, they had fallen to slightly less than 4.75 million, which was a substantial reduction in angling effort.

2023 and 2024 effort in the first half of the year had declined modestly, to 6.79 and 6.34 million trips, respectively.  But the sharp drop in 2025 effort seems to signal that something new is going on, that is causing anglers to lose interest in the striped bass fishery. 

Some angling industry and “anglers’ rights” advocates will undoubtedly argue that anglers are losing interest in striped bass fishing because more restrictive regulations are making it more and more difficult for anglers to catch a legal-sized fish. 

While that may have contributed to the declining effort in 2023 and 2024, when the new, 28- to 31-inch slot size in the ocean fishery put many of the fish in the 2015 year class off-limits to catch-and-keep anglers, in 2025, the above-average 2018 year class entered the ocean slot limit in large numbers, and should have spurred increased angling activity, just as the larger 2015 year class spurred increased activity in 2022.

In making the projections needed to rebuild the stock, the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission’s Striped Bass Technical Committee predicted that the availability of the 2018s would lead to more fishing effort, and cause 2025 recreational removals—landings and release mortality combined—to increase by 17 percent compared to 2024.

But that didn’t happen—at least not yet.  Instead, recreational effort for the first half of the year is down by 25 percent, while total catch is down even more, having fallen about 48 percent from 2024 levels.

Why?

While no one can say for sure, it is very possible that we have finally reached the point where the declining availability of striped bass is discouraging anglers from going fishing.

Although some members of the recreational fishing industry continue to deny it, striped bass are largely pursued as a sport fish, rather than merely for food.  Saltwater fisheries managers still have problems making such distinctions, and still tend to focus on yield when managing fisheries, employing the same philosophies whether managing striped bass or scup, bluefish or black sea bass.  They have yet to learn what their freshwater counterparts learned years ago--that most anglers who seek sport fish such as muskellunge or native brook trout have different attitudes and different motivations from those who target bluegills and bullheads.  Unlike marine fisheries managers, inland managers understand why it is wrong to apply the same management approaches to every species, without first considering the motivations of the anglers who pursue them.

The data is clear that striped bass are not primarily pursued for food.  The ASMFC notes on its website that

“The recreational fishery is predominantly prosecuted as catch and release, meaning the majority of striped bass caught are released alive either due to angler preference or regulation (e.g., undersized, or the angler already harvested the daily bag limit).  Since 1990, roughly 90% of the total annual striped bass catch is released alive…”

When managing a catch and release fishery, one should not manage for yield, but for abundance, as the ability to find and catch fish, rather than the ability to kill fish and bring them home, is the primary driver of angler effort.

That is illustrated by the recreational striped bass effort data for the years 1995 through 2014.  During all of that time, recreational regulations were relatively stable along the coast.  Most states adopted a two-fish bag limit and 28-inch minimum size, and even those states that did not—for example, Maine’s regulations allowed anglers to retain only one fish, that either fell within a 20- to 26-inch slot or measured over 40 inches in length—remained relatively consistent during that time, so changing regulations had no impact on angler behavior.  Yet angler effort varied during that time.

In 1995, when striped bass abundance was, by definition, right at the biomass threshold, anglers took about 13.0 million directed striped bass trips.  By the time that spawning stock biomass peaked in 2002, trips had increased to 20.8 million, although they didn’t peak, at 24.8 million, until 2006, when a combination of larger fish from 1989, 1993, and 1996, along with numerous undersized bass from the very strong 2001 year class, provided anglers with both quality bass and fast action.  But then, as the stock’s decline became more noticeable, effort declined as well, falling to 19.3 million in 2014, the last year of the coastwide 2@28 inches rule.

Now, we’ve reached the point where first-half effort has fallen well below 5 million trips.  Given that, for the years 2021-2024, directed striped bass effort through June 30 accounted for roughly 40 percent of all directed trips for they year, we should expect total directed striped bass effort to fall below 12 million trips in 2025, the lowest number of directed trips in over 30 years.

So we must ask hether the striped bass fishery has finally reached an inflection point.  

That is, have we reached the place where anglers have decided that a fishery that only sees them catch, on average, a mere eight-tenths of one striped bass per day is a fishery that they no longer want to be a part of?  

Have we gotten to the point that anglers have decided that fishing in a largely empty ocean—at least, an ocean largely empty of striped bass—in not a particularly enjoyable activity, and not an activity that they want to engage iny?

Right now, we can't answer that question with any certainty, but I strongly suspect that the answer is yes.  People whom I know—some hardcase surfcasters, others anglers old enough to have fished through the last stock collapse, the sort of diehards who refused to stop hunting unicorns throughout the early 1980s—are saying that they just aren’t bass fishing as much as they did just a few years ago.

Some have stopped fishing because the fish just aren’t there.  Others fish less often out of a sense of responsibility to the resource, feeling that if the striped bass stock is not doing well, they shouldn’t be adding to its troubles by heading out to kill fish, even if the fish that they kill are only some of the estimated 9 percent of striped bass that die after being released.

Another factor that might be coming into play is that, as striped bass become less abundant, their distribution begins to get spotty.  

The center of striped bass abundance during the summer months seems to extend from, perhaps, the East End of Long Island, New York to Cape Cod, including Cape Cod Bay.  When striped bass abundance is high, competitive pressure causes quite a few fish to spend their summers outside of that core range.  At those times, anglers are able to find a few summer holdovers on the New Jersey shore, and some wide-ranging fish up in northern Maine.  There aren’t as many fish out on the fringes as there are in the core range, but there are enough to provide a worthwhile angling experience, at least for those who know where to find the fish and how to catch them.

But when striped bass abundance declines far enough, the population contracts into the core range.  There is less competition between individuals, and so less need for fish to spread into adjacent waters.  As abundance declines further, even fishing in the core areas gets spotty, with good fishing in a few areas—maybe the Montauk rips, Block Island, the outer Cape, and/or Boston Harbor--but hit-and-(largely) miss everywhere else.

At that point, anglers who don’t live and fish near the productive areas tend to turn to other species--provided that other species are available, which is not always the case—or just stop fishing until the spring and fall migrations bring a temporary abundance of striped bass to their section of coast.  And even those spring and fall runs become shorter and less productive as the population shrinks.

2025’s sharp drop in directed striped bass trips may be the first real signs that significant numbers of anglers are leaving the fishery.

Some will doubtless leap upon the decline in effort as an excuse to maintain the status quo, and take no further action to rebuild the striped bass population.  The American Sportfishing Association—the largest recreational fishing industry trade group—has already argued that

“Additional seasonal closures are not necessary.  Strict recreational fishery management using a narrow slot limit has effectively lowered fishing mortality to a 30-year low which is well below the target and threshold needed for rebuilding,”

while Michael Waine, the American Sportfishing Association’s East Coast spokesman, called in to a recent ASMFC hearing held in New York, to speak against a 12 percent reduction in striped bass removals, arguing that the striped bass catch for the first six months of 2025 was only half what it was for the same period in 2024, and so no further reductions in landings were needed.

But maybe the ASA, along with the rest of the recreational fishing industry, ought to take a long, hard look at what they’re asking for.  For as the American Sportfishing Association has already noted,

“The recreational striped bass fishery drives billions of dollars in economic activity, supports tens of thousands of jobs, and sustains countless small businesses up and down the Atlantic coast.”

If the decline in striped bass catch is occurring not because of more stringent management measures—and management measures have now been unchanged since the spring of 2024—but rather because anglers are losing interest in a fishery where, due to declining abundance, they are often unable to catch even a single fish over the course of a trip, it’s not going to be very long before those “billions of dollars in economic activity” begin to dry up, those “tens of thousands of jobs” are put at risk, and many of those “countless small business up and down the Atlantic coast” are forced to close their doors.

If 2025 truly marks an inflection point, where many anglers are beginning to walk away from a badly deteriorating striped bass fishery, then the economic benefits of the striped bass fishery will also wane, and the very people and businesses that the American Sportfishing Association was formed to support will suffer as a result.

If 2025 truly marks an inflection point, we can expect fishing effort to continue its slide, and the businesses that the striped bass fishery to decline in harmony with the reduced number of striped bass trips.

The only remedy for the woes of striped bass-related businesses is the same remedy that will aid the striped bass itself:  Reduce fishing mortality to whatever level is needed to rebuild the stock, so that renewed abundance will convince estranged anglers to rejoin the fishery, and entice anglers who have been fishing less, due to reduced striped bass abundance, to increase their efforts in response to increased opportunities to encounter fish.

A failure to adopt such remedy is likely to push the striped bass stock into further decline, and to condemn many striped bass-dependent businesses to a slow but still avoidable death.

 

 

 

 

 

 

HERE WE GO AGAIN: LOUISIANA SABOTAGING GULF AMBERJACK MANAGEMENT

 

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote a piece about the National Marine Fisheries Service failing to close the recreational amberjack season in the Gulf of Mexico, despite anglers catching more than 200 percent of their annual catch limit last year and having to pay back the overage—which is larger than the entire annual catch target for the recreational sector in 2025.

Although NMFS never provided any reason for keeping the 2025 season open despite such a massive payback requirement, rumors from generally reliable sources suggested that the cause didn’t arise within NMFS, but higher up in the Department of Commerce hierarchy, where someone apparently convinced an influential bureaucrat that recreational fishermen needed something to fish for, the amberjack population wasn’t in bad shape (although the most recent stock assessment found it to still be overfished), and that the season could remain open without doing serious harm.

As noted in my recent piece, the Gulf Fishery Management Council disagreed, and wrote a letter to NMFS decrying its failure to enforce the provisions of the management plan.  That letter, and other public comment in favor of closing the season, apparently convinced the agency (or someone higher up in the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration or Commerce) to at least close the season early.

As a result, the 2025 recreational season for Gulf amberjack closed yesterday, September 27, and will not open again until September 1, 2026.

Most states are conforming their seasons to the federal action, and shutting down as well.  Florida recently shut down its season by executive order, and will keep its season closed through August 31, 2026.

However, Louisiana is refusing to join the National Marine Fisheries Service and the other Gulf states in their efforts to conserve the amberjack resource.  Instead, it issued a release that read,

“NOAA is closing the federal waters of the Gulf of America to Greater Amberjack recreational harvest at 12:01 a.m., local time, Saturday September 27, 2025.

“NOAA states that the 2024/2025 Gulf greater amberjack recreational landings data indicate 882,451 lb were harvested, 478,451 lb greater than the 2024/2025 annual catch limit of 404,000 lb.

“Recreational harvest of Greater Amberjack in Louisiana state waters (out to 9 nautical miles) will remain open until October 31.

“’Prior to state management of Red Snapper, anglers were faced with shortened seasons and reduced access.  This untimely closure of federal waters for Greater Amberjack is another prime example of the need for state management using state data programs,’ said [Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries] Secretary Tyler Bosworth.

“Governor Jeff Landry and Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries (LDWF) Secretary Tyler Bosworth sent a letter to NOAA Fisheries earlier this month, requesting that management of Greater Amberjack be transferred to the state level.  Seasonal landings at the state management level would be conducted through LDFW’s more precise recreational saltwater landings data collection program, LA Creel.  The use of LA Creel has been crucial in developing state management of Louisiana’s recreational Red Snapper season.  The near real-time data provides Louisiana the ability to set flexible fishing seasons that allow anglers to take full advantage of available fishery resources.  State management of Greater Amberjack would provide more flexibility in setting seasons and regulations, allowing greater ability to tailor state-specific management.  [emphasis in original]”

Anyone reading that, who can also recall the red snapper debates of a dozen or so years ago, can only think, “Here we go again.”

The red snapper situation was similar in many respects.

Anglers were grossly overfishing their annual catch limit (a meaningful annual catch target had not yet been put in place).  Paybacks were an annual occurrence—although red snapper overages never exceeded a year’s ACL—and seasons were shortened in an effort to keep the recreational landings within the catch limit.

Anglers weren’t happy with the situation, and convinced state fisheries managers to ignore the federal red snapper season and allow longer seasons in state waters, where federal recreational regulations did not apply to anyone except federally permitted party and charter boats.  So when federal waters closed, anglers could still land red snapper that were allegedly caught within state waters (although it was an open secret that plenty of anglers, knowing that federal law enforcement resources were stretched very thin, often ventured out past the state line).

The longer state seasons assured that recreational fishermen would chronically exceed their annual catch limit.  And because Gulf red snapper—just like Gulf greater amberjack—are managed on a Gulf-wide basis, with a single catch limit in force from southwest Florida around to the Rio Grande, if more red snapper were being caught in state waters, the federal season would have to be shortened in order to compensate for those higher landings.

At one point, the federal season only lasted three days.

And that might have been fine, as far as it went, if everyone was honest and aboveboard about what the problem was and why it existed.  But that would be asking too much, as the various recreational fishing industry and angling rights organizations put their own spin on the situation.  Instead of placing the blame where it belonged, on the state fishery managers who decided to take their states out of compliance with the federal red snapper regulations—and on themselves, who encouraged the state managers to do so—they blamed federal fisheries managers and the federal management system for imposing unnecessarily short seasons, while holding up the state managers, and the longer state seasons, as paragons of the management system, who could provide more “access”—their euphemism for more dead fish in anglers’ coolers—for the recreational sector.

Thus began the drive to take the authority to manage the recreational red snapper fishery away from federal fisheries managers, who were bound by the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act to base their decisions on the best available scientific information, and hand it over to state managers who were able to base their decisions on whatever political considerations were most important at the time, regardless of what the scientists advised.

Louisiana’s latest action certainly makes it appear that the same game will play out with Gulf amberjack.

Although there’s little hard information out there, it’s hard not to suspect that the same people who drove the effort to take red snapper away from federal managers are behind the effort to hand amberjack management to the states.  The Louisiana release even uses similar language to that used by the anglers’ rights crowd the last time around, talking about the superiority of state recreational data programs compared to the Marine Recreational Information Program used by NMFS.

But when we look at the red snapper data provided by MRIP, and compare it to that used by LA Creel, we don’t find a lot of difference.  In 2022, NMFS published regulations intended to calibrate state recreational data programs so that their estimates could be compared to one another and to estimates produced by MRIP.  It turned out that the MRIP and LA Creel red snapper estimates were almost identical, although LA Creel landings estimates were just slightly higher.  Thus, Louisiana’s claim that LA Creel is “more precise” than MRIP lacks objective support.

What LA Creel can do is provide landings estimates somewhat sooner than MRIP can.  But when we already know that a stock is overfished, and that required paybacks are large enough to cancel out the entire 2025 fishing season, the speed with which estimates can be produced is completely irrelevant.

In the end, the only relevant issue is the fact that, pursuant to the fishery management plan governing greater amberjack in the Gulf of Mexico, anglers exceeded their annual catch limit so badly in 2024 that they were required to pay back 478,451 pounds in 2024, an amount well in excess of their 404,000 pound annual catch target.

Thus, Louisiana is completely unjustified in calling the September shutdown of the 2025 recreational amberjack season in federal waters an “untimely closure,” blaming such closure on federal fisheries data, and keeping the state season open through October 31 when, in reality, the 2025 recreational amberjack season should never have been opened at all.

The sad reality is that, in keeping its state waters amberjack season open, Louisiana is setting the stage for the same sort of debacle that occurred with red snapper a decade ago.

Louisiana anglers will continue to catch amberjack through October 31, 2025.  Since the 2025 annual catch limit was already landed—in 2024—those Louisiana amberjack will constitute an overage for the 2025 season, which will have to be paid back in 2026, resulting in a shortened 2026 Gulf amberjack season.  Anglers, almost certainly encouraged by the various anglers’ rights organizations, will complain that federal managers are unreasonably shortening—perhaps, if enough Louisiana amberjack are combined with those landed during the abbreviated 2025 federal season, even completely closing—the 2026 recreational season, at which point the various organizations will begin to issue shrill press releases and point their fingers at federal managers, who were only following the dictates of the fishery management plan, and blame them for preventing anglers from fishing, while never blaming, and most likely lauding, the real culprits behind the shortened season, the Louisiana state managers who, in failing to close the state waters season, caused the overage to balloon.

At that point, the same angling industry, boating industry, and anglers’ rights groups that excoriated NMFS over red snapper management will again bludgeon the agency of its management of Gulf amberjack, thus furthering their goal of weakening the federal fisheries management system and moving the management of important recreational species to the states, where politics, rather than science, governs management outcomes.

Thus, by failing to close its state waters season to prevent further excess landings, Louisiana has committed a significant act of sabotage against both federal amberjack management and the federal fishery management system itself.

It is very hard to believe that Louisiana wasn’t aware of that fact when it chose not to close its amberjack season.