Maine Wakes Up to the Problem With Stripers

The Maine Monitor, With a shortage of young striped bass, Maine anglers fear for their sport’s future

For now, the fishing is good, with plenty of big stripers around to catch (and mostly, release). But a current of anxiety runs underneath the sport and the industry.

Captain Marco Lamothe, who runs Keeper Charters out of Saco, went on more than 100 fishing trips this year and caught plenty of larger, older striped bass, which can live to 30 years or more. But he worries about the fishery’s future because he’s not seeing as many smaller, younger fish.  Of the hundreds of striped bass he caught this year, only one measured less than 28 inches.

That's bigger than the majority of the fish we catch here, where 22-25 inches seems to be the median size, at least where Pete has been fishing. But it makes sense that sea run fish are larger.

“The tourists were abundant, and the fish were cooperative, and we had a lot of really successful fishing trips,” Lamothe said. But, he added, “We’re just not seeing any small- to medium-sized fish. So it’s concerning.”

Zachary Whitener, a senior research associate at the Gulf of Maine Research Institute and a former charter boat captain himself, put it more strongly. “It’s terrifying,” he said. “Once those big fish are gone, there’s nobody to refill the population.”

The factors behind this decline are complex, Whitener said. But one major factor is rainfall in the Chesapeake Bay watershed. Some striped bass spawn in the Kennebec River watershed here in Maine, but most stripers are born in the Chesapeake and migrate up and down the East Coast each year.

 

For nearly a decade, there haven’t been very many young stripers.

The latest survey from the Maryland Department of Natural Resources, released on Oct. 19, shows that striped bass recruitment was low for the eighth year in a row. Results from the Virginia Institute of Marine Science survey were better, showing average recruitment in the southern half of the bay this year. The scientists noted in their report, however, that “low recruitment in recent years remains a major concern.”

I don't know, but I've been told, that their is pretty decent crop of young stripers up in the northern end of the bay. Not the great masses we used to see all over but at least a smattering of undersized, but catchable fish. But I was a little concerned to see this:

Carrie Kennedy, acting associate director of the Maryland Department of Natural Resources’ fishing and boating services, said she wonders if fisheries managers like herself need to adjust their expectations for striped bass as their environment changes. Kennedy oversees Maryland’s fish monitoring efforts, including the juvenile striped bass survey. “The likelihood of making that 2029 rebuilding seems less and less likely every additional year we have low recruitment,” Kennedy said.

Striped bass isn’t the only sea-run fish — fish that spawn in freshwater but live as adults in the ocean — struggling with recruitment, Kennedy pointed out. White perch and yellow perch show similar trends over the same time period. “I think it’s a pretty good indicator that fishing isn’t the problem,” she said.

Instead, Kennedy pointed to the large-scale ecosystem shifts currently underway due to climate change and other factors, such as development on land that affects streams, rivers, estuaries and ultimately the ocean, too. “It’s not the same Chesapeake Bay. It’s not the same planet that we had 20 years ago when we had really great recruitment,” she said.

She may be right, and I've had the same thought about oysters, but I hate to MDDNR turning their back on the possibility of restoring healthy striper populations.