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As you can see in the article below, we are going to public hearings about the new striped bass amendment. The date, time and place for the NJ public hearing are below. I don’t have room in this month’s newspaper to include all the information from the ASMFC winter meeting. The summaries and motions are in this article, and you can listen to the actual board meetings if you want. If you want to see striped bass managed differently, it is up to you to attend the public hearings and make your concerns known. If you are on the line listening to the webinar, I need to hear your comments. That will help me share your concerns with others. I hear strongly from the people who want to catch and release only but not from those of you who want to take a striped bass home to eat. It is important I hear from all sides. This is not a good time to be the silent majority. There are many more hearings coming but you can sign up at the ASMFC website to get all their press releases. The joint ASMFC & MAFMC meeting summary is also below and as usual they further restricted the recreational needlessly over my objections. There were almost no recreational anglers on the webinar to speak out against it. If you listen to the meetings you can you see what I am talking about. We dig our own holes by not being involved.
The Press releases, meeting summaries and motions from the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission’s 2022 Winter Meeting Webinar are now available at this link. The document can also be obtained on the Commission website on the Meeting Archives page. The majority of presentations and audio files from this week’s meetings has also been posted and are available here (under the respective Board header). The remaining files will be posted on Monday.
The Atlantic coastal states of Maine through Virginia have scheduled hearings to gather public input on the Atlantic Striped Bass Draft Amendment 7. Some hearings will be conducted via webinar and some hearings will be conducted in person. To register for a virtual hearing, please click here.
The Draft Amendment is available here or via the Commission’s website. All those interested in the management of Atlantic striped bass are encouraged to provide input either by participating in public hearings, which may be conducted via webinar, or providing written comment.
The Draft Amendment is available at this link. Written public comment will be accepted until 11:59 PM (EST) on April 15 and should be sent to Emilie Franke, FMP Coordinator, at 1050 N. Highland St., Suite 200 A-N, Arlington, Virginia 22201; 703.842.0741 (fax) or at comments@asmfc.org (Subject line: Draft Amendment 7).
To see all the motions and who made them go to this link.
Meeting Summary
In December 2021, the Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council (Council) and the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission’s Summer Flounder, Scup, and Black Sea Bass Management Board (Board) jointly approved a 28% reduction in coastwide black sea bass harvest compared to the 2018-2021 average. This reduction was deemed necessary to prevent exceeding the 2022 recreational harvest limit (RHL). They also jointly agreed to use the conservation equivalency process to waive federal waters measures and allow states to work together as regions to develop measures to collectively reduce harvest to prevent a 2022 RHL overage.
The Commission’s Summer Flounder, Scup, and Black Sea Bass Technical Committee (TC) met several times in January 2022 to develop an agreed upon methodology for states to use when developing regional proposals for recreational black sea bass measures. The TC considered methodologies for identifying and smoothing outlier recreational harvest estimates at the state, wave, and mode level for 2018-2021. As a result of this analysis, the TC recommended a modified coastwide harvest reduction target of 24% but agreed that reductions ranging from 20.7% to 26.8% could be justified based on its outlier analysis.
At the Board-only meeting hosted on the Council’s February Meeting webinar, the Board met to review TC recommendations and approved a revised harvest reduction target of 20.7% to be used by regions when developing proposals for 2022 recreational measures for black sea bass. States within each region are now expected to work collectively to develop measures which are designed to achieve this coastwide reduction in harvest to meet, but not exceed, the 2022 recreational harvest limit of 6.74 million pounds. The Board will meet again in mid-March to review regional proposals. The exact date for the meeting has not yet been set; the details of which will be released when they become available.
The Board also approved non-preferred coastwide measures, which were modified to reflect the revised harvest reduction target of 20.7% and are intended to be waived in favor of regional measures that would collectively prevent an RHL overage. The revised non-preferred coastwide measures include a 14-inch minimum size limit, a 5 fish possession limit, and an open season of May 15-October 8. The Council and Board’s December 2021 recommendation for precautionary default measures, consisting of a 16-inch minimum size, a 3 fish possession limit, and an open season of June 24-December 31, remained unchanged. These measures are intended to be implemented in any state or region that does not put forward a proposal that can be approved by the Board through the Commission’s conservation equivalency process.
For more information, please contact Dustin Colson Leaning, Fishery Management Plan Coordinator, at dleaning@asmfc.org or 703.842.0740.
The Council and the Commission’s Interstate Fisheries Management Program Policy Board (Policy Board) met to review the range of alternatives in the Recreational Harvest Control Rule Framework/Draft Addenda. The goal of this proposed action is to establish a process for setting recreational bag, size, and season limits for summer flounder, scup, black sea bass, and bluefish such that measures aim to prevent overfishing, are reflective of stock status, appropriately account for uncertainty in the recreational data, take into consideration angler preferences, and provide an appropriate level of stability and predictability in changes from year to year. The options under consideration include various methods to allow for greater stability in measures and more explicit consideration of stock status when setting the measures compared to the current process.
The Council and Policy Board requested that the Council’s Scientific and Statistical Committee (SSC) provide a qualitative evaluation of the potential effect of each of the five primary options in this proposed action on the SSC’s assessment and application of risk and uncertainty in determining acceptable biological catch levels. The intent is to provide the Council and Policy Board with information to consider the tradeoffs among the different alternatives with respect to the relative risk of overfishing, increasing uncertainty, fishery stability, and the likelihood of reaching or remaining at the target biomass level.
The Policy Board approved its draft addenda for public comment, with public hearings to take place in the coming months. The Commission will distribute a press release on the Draft Addenda’s availability and public hearing schedule once the hearing details have been finalized.
For more information, please contact Toni Kerns, Policy Director, at tkerns@asmfc.org.
