State bill proposes to end commercial bass fishery

PHOTO BY ROB BENCHLEY Captain Josh Eldridge of the Monomoy Charters. State Representative Matthew Patrick, (D) Barnstable is proposing to end commercial fishing for Atlantic striped bass in Massachusetts through House Bill 796 in the current state legislative session.

Patrick, who filed this bill on behalf of the South Portland, Maine-based Stripers Forever, said fewer than 30 people fish commercially for Atlantic striped bass in this $24 million fishery in Massachusetts. Because of that low number of fishermen and declining striped bass stocks, he believes it makes sense to permanently close a fishery that supports so few fishermen and yet is culling out so many of the species' breeding females. This law, modeled after an identical law in Maine, if enacted, would also reduce the number of striped bass recreational fishermen could keep from two per angler per day to one fish per fisherman a day.

"It's a game fish in most other states and there aren't enough bass to make it aa viable commercial fishery [in Massachusetts] and their numbers have been dropping in recent years," said Patrick citing statistics from the Massachusetts Division of Marine Fisheries. "The thinking here is to take the pressure off the large breeding fish. The big fish that come up here from Maryland are the large breeding females. If you create the slot for the smaller fish and you let people take one of those and keep people from taking your larger fish, you're protecting your stock."

Currently, the legal recreational minimum limit for striped bass is 28 inches, but if this bill becomes law, recreational fishermen would be able to take fish 20 to 26 inches head to tail or those 40 inches or longer in length.

Commercial and recreational fishermen on Nantucket alike are, largely against the closing the commercial fishery and in support of lowering the recreational limit to one fish per day.

"The only piece of this that makes any sense is to reduce the recreational down to one fish per person per day," said Monomoy Charters Captain Josh Eldridge who added that 10 percent of all striped bass landings in the state are Nantucket-based.

Patrick said he is getting a lot of pressure from both sides of this bill, but there is still plenty of wiggle room.

"I'm not adverse to compromise and working things out," said Patrick. "There are fewer than 30 fishermen in the state that bring in fewer than 4,000 pounds per year; the commercial bass fishery is not that big."

But Nantucket commercial fisherman Doug Smith, who has fished commercially for striped bass in the recent past, refutes Patrick's low harvest numbers, pointing to the DMF's Web site, which lists the commercial quota at or around one million pounds per year, a cap that for the last seven years was met and in most years exceeded.

"I'm pretty much against it," said Smith. "There's one very important thing I have to bring to view. In the industry itself, Massachusetts allows for out-of-state commercial fishermen to get licenses. This causes great burden on the commercial guys [in Massachusetts] because we fish under a pretty strict quota system. I'm very much against the moratorium on commercial bass fishing."

Smith said the commercial striped bass season began July 11 this year. Fishing is four days a week within the state's three-mile limit from the shore seaward. Fisherman can take five fish on Sundays and 30 fish per day, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. This year's commercial quota is 1,107,118 pounds and as of July 21, 64,801 pounds have been landed.

Besides protecting the larger breeding females that keep the fishery alive, Patrick is also trying sustain the state's recreational striped bass fishery that he said nets about $1 billion year in related revenue.

"The other argument that's out there and I think it has some viability is that a lot of the tourism in the area is due to the viability of the fishery; a lot of people come here just to fish for striped bass," said Patrick.

Still, Smith sees H796 as another way of squeezing commercial fishermen out of their ever-dwindling livelihoods.

"It's just one more rung out of the ladder that makes it impossible for you to get to the top," he said.

Currently, the bill is in the Committee on Natural Resources, but a hearing has yet to be held on it and Patrick said it could be as late as August before it is heard. If it were enacted this year, the law would go into effect in 2010.

But State Representative Tim Madden, (D) Falmouth and the Islands, does not think H796 will get it out of this session, certainly not without signifi cant changes to it, because of its aim to end the commercial fishery and the absence of recreational fishing data.

"The commercial guys don't really buy the science, so there needs to be some more data," said Madden. I