April 25, 2019 — On Tuesday, Virginia did what Maryland should: close its 2019 spring recreational striped bass trophy season.
“The recent stock assessment shows that early action is needed to slow the decline and restore this fishery to sustainable levels,” Virginia Marine Resources Commissioner Steven G. Bowman said in a statement.
Yet Maryland, one of the worst offenders when it comes to overfishing Atlantic striped bass — what we like to call “rockfish” — has chosen to go forward with a trophy season this year despite mounting evidence of the dangers.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) just released a peer-reviewed report that finds striped bass are overfished and that manmade overfishing — taking too many fish too fast — is accelerating the decline. (When a fish population is overfished, there are fewer fish in the water than that population needs to replace itself.)