Saving Seafood

Menhaden, the most political fish in the Chesapeake Bay, might not be regulated by Virginia legislature anymore

January 29, 2020 — Virginia moved to keep fishing for menhaden in Chesapeake Bay, but a legislative compromise that got its first nods this week means the big boats from Reedville won’t catch quite as much.

The reason is that the most political fish of all would no longer be regulated by the General Assembly, where state Senate and House of Delegates panels say the legislature should turn the job over to the Virginia Marine Resources Commission, the panel that oversees every other fish.

Virginia faced a moratorium on the Bay menhaden fishery because Reedville-based Omega Proteins exceeded a cap on the Bay catch imposed by the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission in 2017.

That cap, of 51,000 metric tons, is 41.5% below the old limit, which is the one written into the Code of Virginia.

Read the full story at The Daily Press

ONE ROCKFISH PER DAY: VIRGINIA LOWERS STRIPED BASS LIMITS

September 3, 2019 — The Virginia Marine Resources Commission approved a set of emergency measures August 27 to help protect the struggling striped bass population in the Chesapeake Bay and along the Atlantic coast. That includes lowering the number of “keepers” for recreational anglers from two to one fish per day.

The action will reduce the amount of striped bass lost to recreational fishing in Virginia by 24%, said Alex Aspinwall, a data analyst with the state commission.

Charter boat industry leaders said the change will devastate their business for striped bass, also known as rockfish. But the move’s backers said it and the other new measures are needed to keep fishery managers from having to enact the state’s first fishing moratorium on the species since 1990.

“No one wants their ox gored,” said Steven Bowman, head of the commission. But “this ox is not just gored. This ox is lying on its side in need of treatment.”

Read the full story at the Chesapeake Bay Magazine

Virginia anglers angry over new catch limits on striped bass, say tournaments are in jeopardy

August 28, 2019 — Anglers will be allowed to keep just one striped bass instead of two a day in the upcoming season, state fisheries officials decided Tuesday.

The move is meant to protect the species by keeping large breeding fish in the water, the Virginia Marine Resources Commission said in a statement. But it could squash the charter fishing industry and a popular fall tournament scene that relied on big fish.

“It kills it,” said Mike Standing, who has run the Mid-Atlantic Rockfish Shootout for more than a decade. “It kills it all. We’ve been telling them for 10 years that there has been a problem with the population and they kept saying there wasn’t. Now they shut down the spring season and essentially shut down the fall.

“This is highly disappointing.”

Read the full story at The Virginia-Pilot

VIRGINIA: Striped bass spring trophy season cancelled in the Chesapeake Bay

Apil 26, 2019 — In an attempt to get ahead of pending changes to striped bass regulations, the Virginia Marine Resources Commission on Tuesday voted unanimously to cancel the upcoming spring trophy season in the Chesapeake Bay.

Anglers will still be able to catch and keep two rockfish measuring between 20 and 28 inches long from May 16 through June 15. All catches must be reported to the VMRC.

Late last year, the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission determined that the coastal striped bass population had been overfished and that overfishing was still taking place. The commission is expected to issue amendments to its regulations that will force states to cut back on their catches.

Read the full story at the Daily Press

Virginia Cancels Trophy Rockfish Season, Urges Other States to Follow

April 24, 2019 — It’s official- there won’t be a trophy rockfish season in Virginia this spring. Virginia Marine Resources Commission (VMRC) has voted unanimously to enact an emergency closure because of worrisome new research about the striped bass population on the Bay.

Bay Bulletin reported in early April that VMRC’s biologists called for the spring season to be canceled. And on Tuesday, the commission voted 7-0 to eliminate the spring striped bass trophy season in the Bay from May 1 through June 15, the Coast from May 1 through May 15, and the Virginia tributaries to the Potomac River from April 29 through May 15. Starting May 16 through June 15 fishermen will be able to catch and keep two striped bass from 20 to 28 inches.

The emergency action comes after recent scientific research showed the rockfish population “has been below the sustainable threshold for the past six years and overfishing has been occurring sine 2010.”

Read the full story at Chesapeake Bay Magazine 

VIRGINIA: Quick action urged to end striped bass overfishing

April 22, 2019 — Virginia and two New England states are urging other East Coast fishery managers to move quickly to curb striped bass catches in the wake of a new assessment that found the prized species was being overfished.

The Virginia Marine Resources Commission is poised to act as soon as Tuesday when it is scheduled to take up a staff recommendation for an emergency shutdown of the state’s spring striped bass trophy season, which targets the largest fish in the population.

Big striped bass, or rockfish, is a popular springtime catch for anglers. But the larger fish also happens to be the most productive egg bearers.

The action comes in the wake of a new stock assessment that found striped bass along the East Coast were in worse shape than previously thought and had been overfished for several years.

Read the full story at the Bay Journal

Striped bass fishing season could be canceled in Virginia as population declines

April 12, 2019 — Virginia officials are weighing whether to cancel this year’s fishing season for large rockfish in the Potomac River and the Chesapeake Bay out of concern for its dwindling numbers.

The rockfish season in Virginia will begin April 20 along the Potomac River tributaries, then days later in the bay. But indications that the population of the fish, also called striped bass, is declining raised concerns that further catches could have a long-term effect on its survivability.

“Striped bass aren’t doing as well as we thought,” said Ellen Bolen, deputy commissioner for the Virginia Marine Resources Commission. “We’re taking fish out faster than they can reproduce.”

Bolen’s group, which helps manage and oversee fish populations in the state, is expected to vote April 23 on an “emergency proposal” that would recommend canceling the trophy-size rockfish season, when anglers can keep rockfish that measure 36 inches or longer.

Read the full story at The Washington Post

Regulations likely to stiffen after stock assessment determines striped bass are overfished

April 10, 2019 –Many angling old timers remember the days 30 years ago when keeping striped bass was off limits because of a moratorium on the species.

Even more will remember the benefits that later came from shutting down the fishery.

Striped bass action was spectacular for years.

Lately it’s been been anything but. Catches have been on the decline the last few years and blame can be dished out to anyone and everyone involved with the catching of striper.

So guess what? Change is coming and likely sooner rather than later.

The fisheries management staff at the Virginia Marine Resources Commission has recommended an emergency shut down of the spring trophy seasons that start in May. The VMRC will meet April 23 to discuss the possibility.

The move is being looked at as a way to proactively get ahead of reductions planned by the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission for next year. In its 2018 stock assessment, the ASMFC determined that striped bass are overfished.

Read the full story at the Virginian-Pilot

 

Overfishing assessment may lead Virginia to ban recreational fishing for striped bass

April 8, 2019 — The Virginia Marine Resources Commission is considering banning recreational fishing for trophy-sized striped bass this spring in the state’s portion of the Chesapeake Bay, its coastal waters and Potomac River tributaries because of indications that the species has been overfished.

Striped bass, locally called rockfish, are among the most popular species with regional saltwater anglers. Hundreds of charter captains and thousands of recreational fishermen target the fish throughout the Potomac and Chesapeake Bay region.

In Virginia’s spring trophy season, which is set to run May 1 through June 15, anglers are allowed one striped bass 36 inches or longer per day.

The commission is scheduled to take up the proposed ban at its April 23 meeting, with a proposed effective date for the emergency regulation of April 29. The rationale for the moratorium is an expected final determination in May by the Atlantic Striped Bass Management Board that the large, mostly female rockfish that do most of the spawning are being overfished.

A preliminary assessment delivered to that board showed the estimated overall fishing mortality exceeded the established standard in 2017. Additionally, female spawning stock biomass (the estimated total weight of all spawning-size females) was 151 million pounds, significantly below the 202 million pound threshold.

Read the full story at The Free Lance-Star

Virginia: A big, but cautious bay role for the General Assembly

January 26, 2018 — Issues involving crabs, oysters and fish sometimes need to age a bit in Virginia’s General Assembly, even though the unusually large role in fisheries management it has assumed makes the questions seem familiar.

So, as the couple of dozen aging holders of crab scrape licenses struggle harder to make ends meet dragging softshell crabs from bay eelgrasses, Eastern Shore Del. Rob Bloxom’s notion of letting them keep any hard-shell crabs they haul from the bottom won a nod this week from the House Agriculture, Natural Resources and Chesapeake Bay Committee.

And, though nobody necessarily wants to admit it, the idea that those watermen, mainly based on Tangier Island, are getting older may have been a factor in why Bloxom let slide his first pass at the issue, which also would have allowed them to run bigger scrapes. You have to haul them up by hand, after all.

A newer notion about crabs — that the Virginia Institute of Marine Sciences has found a way to help them escape from abandoned pots — had less luck this week, though.

State Sen. Monty Mason, D-Williamsburg, has been talking enthusiastically for months about VIMS’ research on biodegradable panels for crab pots. The idea is to keep the thousands of ghost pots dotting the bottom of the bay from trapping so many crabs, which die there because they can’t escape.

“They’re basically competing with watermen,” Mason told his fellow senators. A few years back, a $4.2 million effort to scoop up the abandoned pots netted nearly 35,000, which trapped an estimated 3 million crabs a year, Mason said later.

“When one of those drop, it is harvesting and fishing till the end of time,” Mason said. The cost to watermen in terms of crabs not caught and crabs not reproducing amounts to millions of dollars a year.

But neither the watermen, who flooded senators with phone calls opposing the measure, nor most of the Senate itself were convinced.

At $1.50 a panel, times two, times installing them twice a year, times several hundred pots, Mason’s proposal to require two biodegradable panels on all crab pots by 2020 would pose a significant financial burden on watermen, said state Sen. Bill DeSteph, R-Virginia Beach.

State Sen. Lynwood Lewis, D-Accomack, said the first tests of the new panels were limited and produced only mixed results.

Mason said he’s going to keep trying to make the economic case. He’s already talked to Secretary of Natural Resources Matthew J. Strickler about reviving a ghost pot recovery effort, and plans to ask the Virginia Marine Resources Commission to push for more testing of the panels.

Read the full story at the Daily Press