October 30, 2014 — Moving to counter worrisome declines in one of the East Coast's most prized fish, an interstate commission has ordered a 25 percent cutback in the catch of striped bass along the Atlantic coast next year and a somewhat more gradual reduction by anglers and commercial fishermen in the Chesapeake Bay.
The decision by the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission during its meeting this week in Mystic, Conn., came in response to a warning last year by scientists that striped bass — Maryland's state fish, also known as rockfish — were on the verge of being overfished. Experts predicted the number of spawning females would slip to unsustainable levels within the next year or so.
For Atlantic coast anglers, the cutback will mean they can catch only one fish of 28 inches or longer a day, instead of two. In the bay, the new restrictions likely will require increasing the minimum catchable size of the popular fish for recreational anglers, and a reduction in the number that can be harvested in the fall and winter by watermen.
While anglers along the coast, especially in New England, have been complaining for several years that the number of striped bass have dwindled, fisheries managers for Maryland and Virginia have countered that the bay population is relatively bountiful. The vast majority of spawning-age female fish are caught as they migrate along the Atlantic coast, they have argued, while the bay catch is mainly of smaller male fish.
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