Striped bass season begins on the Chesapeake Bay May 16 amid mounting tensions between fishing industry groups and regulatory agencies.
A federal lawsuit has been filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia by fishing industry organizations bordering the Atlantic Ocean and its inland waterways.
Adding to the regulatory conflict, an executive order from President Donald Trump aiming to restore local fisheries’ freedoms could potentially overturn the Fisheries Commission’s previous regulations.
Captain Rob Newberry, chair of Delmarva Fisheries Association, and Brian Hardman, chair of the Maryland Charter Boats Association, are leading the charge against current Maryland state regulations, particularly those concerning striped bass.
In March, their previous lawsuit against the Fisheries Commission reached the Supreme Court, which denied a hearing of the case.
“The fight is far from over,” Newberry said. He claims the commission and state agencies are shortening the fishing season, reducing the size of removable fish, lowering commercial quotas and limiting recreational fishers on charter boats to one fish per day.
The new federal lawsuit expands beyond state agencies to include the U.S. Department of the Interior, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, U.S. Department of Commerce, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission and several environmental groups and natural resource agencies along the coast. The suit targets agencies including the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission, which coordinates conservation and management of coastal fish species in 15 states along the Atlantic.
In a press release, Newberry expressed frustrations shared by many in the fishing industry. “For too long, our industry has allowed this obscure Interstate Compact (ASMFC) founded in 1942 to help furnish the food supply behind the war effort, to transform itself into a power-hungry partnership with massive support from federal government agencies which apparently think that fish are more important than people,” he said
On April 17, Trump signed an executive order titled “Restoring American Seafood Competitiveness,” vowing to end the monopoly of foreign seafood exports and make the U.S. the world’s dominant seafood producer. The order also calls for investigation of the same policy makers that Newberry’s coalition is suing.
Regulatory agencies maintain that restrictions are not intended to harm commercial fisheries but to preserve them.
At numerous conferences, including the most recent, these agencies cited insufficient Atlantic striped bass populations based on Marine Recreational Information Program data from computer models. Their restrictions, they say, aim to address this shortage.
And I think that's true.
Many in the fishing industry dispute these claims. Newberry said striped bass stock across the entire Mid-Atlantic region “has never been more plentiful.”I agree that the data on Striped Bass abundance sucks, but, from personal observation, and those of countless other fishermen, the population has been steadily declining for many years now. Stripers are schooling fish, which mean that when you find them, you usually find more than one, often many more than one. As the population declines, the fish are still found in schools, but the schools are farther and farther apart. Commercial and charter fisherman partially overcome this with technology (have you seen what the new side scan sonars can do?) and by sharing information.
Captain Willy Hatch, president of the Cape Cod Charter Boat Association, questioned the scientific methods used to determine stock shortages.
“One major flaw in the claimed science behind this regulation is the NOAA’s Marine Recreational Information program being used to estimate recreational and for-hire catch data, which has been found to be grossly overestimating recreational catch,” Hatch said.
The Wombat has Rule 5 Sunday: Head On ready and willing to accept your clicks.
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