Last Thursday the Department of Natural Resources announced a proposal to greatly expand fishing seasons for rockfish in Maryland waters, a plan based on conservative thinking and parity between recreational fishermen and charterboat customers.
The announcement came 10 years and a day after the state closed rockfish seasons for a five-year period, which was followed by a closely monitored fishery through last fall.
That expanded seasons are expected to be allowed starting late in April this year is good news; that recreational and charterboat fishermen will have the same creel limits in spring, summer and fall seasons is good news as well.
The best news of all, however, is that rockfish have made a remarkable recovery -- and that even the expanded seasons being proposed to the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission and Maryland fishermen are designed to ensure that recovery continues.
The ASMFC, a federal watchdog group that oversees marine fisheries in states from North Carolina to Maine, agreed last year that as of Jan. 1 rockfish populations would be considered recovered from years of overfishing and the management plan for rockfish could move to the next step of the plan, Amendment 5.
"Because the stock is recovered, we can raise [our catch] from 20 percent of the catchable population to double that," said Pete Jensen, chief of Maryland's Tidewater Fisheries Division. "What we have chosen to do is more conservative than that; and if all goes well in the next few years, we will increase [the catch rate]."
But, Jensen said, fisheries managers are still feeling their way with new formulas for measuring populations of rockfish and the catch rate of fishermen. It was, after all, Jensen said, traditional methods of measurement and practices that threatened the rockfish in the first place.
"We want to stay away from the historical comparisons, because they were bad numbers," Jensen said. "We are basing the new numbers on what we have here now."
Which in the simplest terms means starting over with a contemporary view of rockfish populations from the spawning grounds to the offshore migrations, from fish that are four years from catchable size to the breeders that have come and gone from the Chesapeake Bay each year for well over a decade.
If there is an important phrase in all this, it is "catchable size." In the fall fishery, when Chesapeake anglers fish for rockfish that are at least 18 inches long and when the largest number of rockfish have been taken since the end of the moratorium, there still is a comfortable cushion to protect the fish.
At 18 inches or about 4 years of age, 35 percent of males and 50 percent of females have left the bay to join the coastal stocks, and are somewhat protected along the coast because there they are not yet of "catchable size."
In the years before the moratorium, when the minimum size ranged up to 14 inches or 2-year-old fish, 90 percent of females and males remained in the Chesapeake year-round, and the bay is the primary spawning ground for most of the Atlantic Coast rockfish population. Before the moratorium, large numbers of rockfish were taken out of the population before ever joining the coastal population -- much less reaching breeding age.
"That is when we really got into trouble," Jensen said, explaining that the catch rate was virtually eliminating year classes as soon as they reached "catchable size."
The result was a collapse of coastal stocks that necessitated the moratorium and the rebuilding process.
"[The recovery] is one of only two or three successes like this in the country," Jensen said. "It has worked, and no one can fail to give credit for it. Throughout the process, everyone has recognized the importance of the resource, and the importance of conservatism on the part of [state] advisory boards, the ASMFC and our own staff.
"But we don't want to push the envelope."
This year, if all goes according to plan, Chesapeake rockfish seasons will include 168 days between April 29 and Nov. 19, with most of July and all of August excluded to protect fish from high hooking mortality when water temperatures are high in the bay.
Along Maryland's Atlantic coast, the season is expected to run 240 days with a 28-inch minimum length. Exact dates have not been decided.
ROCKFISH PROPOSALS
CHESAPEAKE BAY
($2 rockfish permit required for any or all seasons)
Spring trophy season
April 28 through May 31, 32-inch minimum size, 1 fish per day, five per season. Tags and telephone check-in required. Cap to be determined. Fishing area to be expanded to include mainstream bay north to Brewerton Channel cutoff near the mouth of the Patapsco River. Spawning areas remain closed to fishing.
New June-July season
June 1 through July 4, 26-inch minimum, 1 fish per day. No tags required. Fishing area to include bay and rivers, except special areas such as Susquehanna River from Deer Creek to Conowingo Dam. Cap to be determined.
Fall season
Sept. 1 through Nov. 19, 18-inch minimum size, two fish per day for recreational and charterboat fishermen. No tags required.
Fishing area open except for special closures.