Experts Say Chesapeake Bay Is Crucial to Revival of Prized Striped Bass

The East Coast’s prized striped bass population dwindled further in North Carolina coastal waters this season, but it may be increasing in the Chesapeake Bay.

Once an important fish commercially--and the premier game fish along the coast from Maine to the Outer Banks--the striper or “rock” fish has been in trouble for over a decade.

A battle still rages over who, or what, is at fault. The sports fishermen blame the commercial fishermen, the commercial fishermen blame water pollution and the experts say both water quality and overfishing play a role.

Paul Perra of the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission in Washington said the outlook for the striper population along the Eastern Seaboard is a “mixed bag,” but “we expect in the next couple of years the Chesapeake will respond (to conservation programs already in place) and will do well.”

Bay Considered Crucial

The Chesapeake, where various forces are struggling to control pollution, is regarded as crucial to the striper since the bay is estimated to contribute up to 90% of the coastal migratory striper population.

To help save the striper, Maryland and Delaware have completely banned taking of the fish and in Delaware, Rhode Island, New York and Connecticut, fishermen can take only one a day, on hook and line, and it must be over 33 inches.

Only three states allow commercial trafficking in stripers--North Carolina, Virginia and Massachusetts--and strict regulations hold down the harvest in waters of those states.

New York’s Hudson River has become one of the most prolific spawning grounds for stripers, but ironically the fish there have been found to be contaminated with cancer-causing PCBs (polychlorinated biphenyls) and authorities have banned sale of the fish and cautioned residents against eating too many of them.

Commercial Landings Plummet

In contrast to the growing numbers of stripers in the Hudson, commercial landings of the fish in North Carolina’s Albemarle Sound for January and February of this year plummeted to 26,824 pounds.

This compares to 100,421 pounds during the same period of 1987 and to 1,111,614 pounds during January and February, 1970, before the decline started.

Still worse, Fred Harris of the North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission says “you can almost write off natural reproduction completely on the Roanoke River,” the chief spawning grounds for the stripers in North Carolina.

The Wildlife Commission and the state Division of Marine Fisheries are at odds over how to deal with the problem of the state’s declining striper population.

“We think it is being overfished, and we think the commercial fishery in the sound (Albemarle) is contributing to that overharvest,” said Harris.

The Wildlife Commission has jurisdiction over inland waters, such as the Roanoke, but Marine Fisheries has control over coastal waters, including the Albemarle.

Spawning Grounds Protected

The Wildlife Commission has banned commercial fishing on the Roanoke spawning grounds and had asked Marine Fisheries to let the commercial season on stripers in the Albemarle end this year on schedule, March 31, rather than extending it for 25 days, as was done last year.

Instead, Marine Fisheries extended the season through April 9.

Harrel Johnson, northern district manager of Marine Fisheries, said this was done so commercial fishermen could continue to fish for shad, without wasting the striped bass they would catch in their nets at the same time.

“Once a striped bass is caught in a gill net during this period, they’re dead,” Johnson said. “Those fishermen could not tolerate continuing to fish for shad and having to throw striped bass back when there was no conservation coming from it.

“So we looked at our water temperatures, we looked at the shad run, and we decided this year to go on a nine-day extension only.”

Johnson said while the sports fisherman might prefer that the Albemarle be managed with the striper uppermost in mind, the commercial fisherman is financially driven and has no favorite species.

“There are white perch, catfish, shad, river herring. . . . We have this approach that we try to manage this fishery as a whole, as a multi-species fishery,” said Johnson.

Points to Pollution

Ricky Nixon, a fisherman and fish dealer in Edenton, N.C., says the problem is pollution, not season closing dates.

“If you don’t get this water cleaned up on the Chowan River and the Albemarle Sound, there’s never going to be any fish,” Nixon said.

He said the Chesapeake was making some progress with its pollution problems because the federal government stepped in.

“The local governments aren’t going to do anything,” Nixon said. “They are worrying about tax dollars and the political part of it.

“These pulp mills and these chemical plants and everything that’s on these rivers, they don’t want to look (for causes) there because there’s too much money coming in from taxes.”

Harris said North Carolina has gone for more than 10 years without having a successful reproduction season for stripers on the Roanoke River, where a series of dams form three reservoirs.

He said his agency believes river flow may be part of the problem, since the dams, built primarily for flood control, also are used to produce electrical power.

Studies Under Way

Water levels fluctuate widely, he said, as the plants switch in and out of production to meet peak demand loads. Studies are under way to determine how to achieve a more optimum river flow.

The Wildlife Commission has been raising striper fingerlings in hatcheries and releasing them into the Albemarle to try to maintain the striper population, but Harris said the program isn’t succeeding.

“We don’t think stocking is the answer,” said Harris. “We think the population needs to maintain itself through natural reproduction. The number of young fish is at a very low level . . . and we think it needs more harvest restrictions.”

Johnson noted the Chowan River experienced extensive blue-green algae blooms this past summer and that there had been significant problems with “dead,” or oxygen-starved, water patches in Albemarle Sound.

These problems, usually traced to pollution, coupled with drought, a cold spring and erratic water flows on the Roanoke have reduced the Albemarle striper populations to low levels, but Johnson said he does not think the species is on its way out in North Carolina waters.

“Should water factors ever be correct, and we get a control on (the) fishing effort . . . the population will come back,” he said.

Helping in Other Ways

While North Carolina is having trouble trying to decide how to handle the stripers in Albemarle Sound, it is helping out with the overall problem in other ways.

At the request of the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission and the governor of Maryland, it closed all striped bass fishing in its Atlantic waters in 1985.