Mahi? Sea Bass! ..and a long FaceBook report 7/24/24

Pics on FaceBook..
Mahi Trip (advertised with sea bass as a "back up" Thank Goodness!) 7/24/24 - And a letter, a prediction of sea bass decline, I have made over and over since 2006 - but here with clarity on 6/7/22..

Today's Report:
Tied her loose into glorious morning sun and as calm a calm sea as one might imagine.
That part of the day didn't last though.
Nope.
Sunshine asking too much; bit of always increasing SSW breeze & overcast skies that wouldn't quite rain became our day.
Sure beat an all day rain I guess.
Young Clark (age 7 who needed no instruction on using his rod and hooking his fish!) and Dad pushed two pyramids over at Pete Maugans Reef as we worked our way off to where I thought we might see some mahi.
Thought.
Sea bass wanted to chew the bottom off the boat though. Well OK then. We let em try.
With Chris bagging the first of four limits, and Wayne taking the pool with a jumbo, it was the best day of sea bass fishing I've had all year.
Sakes.
That should have happened in May - steady boat limits.
But..... Because NOAA/Councils/& Commissions are all stuck on using recreational catch data they know isn't true? Management's result is worse than a loaded roulette wheel. Fish, fishers, scientists, and professional fishery managers all lose.
Not making it up. Have researched and complained about recreational catch estimates since 1998. Figured out why our stunning sea bass recovery had fallen off a cliff in 2006.
Every bit of work I've done since has only reaffirmed my convictions. Protogynous hermaphrodites (fancy words for fish that change from Female to Male to balance a discreet reef's spawning population! eg.. sequential hermaphroditism in reef species with habitat fidelity where some females will become male so as to balance each reef's spawning population) - those fish, and there are many species like sea bass, can be made incredibly more abundant by forcing their youngest age at maturity.
I'd wager everything I own on it.
Everything.
But managers are unwilling to risk a paycheck, let alone .guv retirement. To them it's LAW - what they see on their computer screens showing how Virginia Private Boats averaged 2K sea bass annually; then, Wow!, 20K! - Then, WOW!! Private Boats in VA killed 200K sea bass? Two years in a row?!?
Boy! Now that's overfishing!
..So we lose ten days of October sea bass season in the DelMarVa region last year and this. The closure will have no more effect than the Mayan culture's many live human sacrifices - science and management's integrity is beheaded that NOAA's recreational catch data appears pure..

I've seen and predicted this behavior several times since 2006.
Make sea bass spawn at age one and they multiply exponentially.
Make sea bass spawn at age three and four? Spawning production doesn't keep up with fishing's extractions..

I wrote this email on 6/7/22...
{What I want you few readers to see is mainly this section: "Once 10, then 12; now within 15 miles of OC's inlet the dearth of sea bass is astounding. Next will be an arc at 19 miles. Maybe 22.. Soon too.
A dead fishery inshore, yet we see a few even to twenty inches at every piece of structure tight to the beach. Those are the fish - the big ones - they control the urge to spawn in the youngsters - turn it off.
I was right about the surge and predicted it at the fishery's nadir.
I'll be right about the coming collapse too - a new nadir." }}

Written in June 2022 to fisheries top brass..
Hello Across the Top of Fisheries..
Know this: Make sea bass spawn as though there's been a catastrophe and their numbers swell.
Make sea bass believe there's too many big guys - that resources are threatened - and their numbers dwindle.
Biological instincts borne of uncountable generations cannot be made to understand GPS, spectra and flourocarbon - plus sidescan and multibeam sonar charts given away by government: Sea bass's urge is to seize habitat that's available - and maintain populations upon each area of reef.

Sea bass off DelMarVa will collapse sooner than I thought.
We enjoyed several great years of fishing after the burst of spawning owed to the MD Wind Area's recolonization.
Wonderful. Most of you received emails in 2016/17 predicting the surge as age one fish again participated.
But that surge never came inshore. Habitat fidelity isn't well understood in sea bass.
Now the half-day boat style of absolute pressure -where a reef's population is cut perfectly at size limit- the very pressure that enlivened spawning production in the mid-1990s/very early 2000s when all their throwbacks were in the spawning cohort (population): with age at maturity made older by two years, that absolute pressure then becomes the death of the fishery as each reef complex's spawning potential is decapitated. It's happened reef complex by reef complex since 2004. The pressure just keeps going further out to the edge of remaining production After a couple years the edge is further off still.
(((((note 7/24/24 - it's an economic necessity for fishers to get to fish. What I'm saying is if ALL throwbacks are already spawners? The population skyrockets. When only a few of the throwbacks are spawners? That same population declines swiftly. After an incredible ascension from 1992 to 2003, I watched sea bass decline in the mid 2000s, (we were saved back then by a surge of fluke/summer flounder that I never saw coming!) then I predicted a strong surge in 2016 with years of limits followed by their decline again in the mid-2020s as reefs grew in with mature males.
My work on sea bass goes hard against the ill-thought broad fisheries science blanket of BOFF (big old fecund females) making populations sustainable. But no - in sea bass and likely southern hermaphroditic (sex switching) reef species too? We want management to achieve spawning as in mahi. Mahi spawn young and frequently so populations flourish. With regeneration less regulation is needed.
Ask anyone who targets sea bass for a living - the following prediction was spot on!
Now back to my June, 2022 email!))))

Millions and millions (billions?) of sea bass have been squandered - not spawned - because MRFSS & MRIP ((NOAA's recreational catch estimating programs the last 45 years)) ran the show.
I could probably take a stab at my own economic losses, but coastwide? Man..

Once 10, then 12; now within 15 miles of OC's inlet the dearth of sea bass is astounding. Next will be an arc at 19 miles. Maybe 22.. Soon too.
A dead fishery inshore, yet we often see a few even to twenty inches at every piece of structure tight to the beach. Those are the fish - the big ones - any over 12 inches will do - they control the urge to spawn in the youngsters - turn it off.
I was right about the surge and predicted it at the fishery's nadir.
I'll be right about the coming collapse too - a new nadir.
So long as every piece of structure has 3 & 4 yo cbass, spawning will be delayed to at least age three.
If you (was a letter to managers) cut the size limit to 11 inches (maybe 10.5 is the sweet spot?) then wherever there's perfect pressure they'll spawn as though that reef were newly colonized. Every throwback a spawner.
If not? Every keeper is among the only spawners.
It is absolutely your greatest tool in restorations
..and you refuse to even look at it.
((In the 1980s we would have great weeks of fishing but then? Tough! Our self regulation in 1992 made that go away entirely. Fed/state regs began at 9 inches in 1997.))
Before Fed regulation had even begun I knew regulation would work fabulously.
Did too.
Briefly.
Although we had great fishing with our self regulation; peak was 1998 to 2003..

When production exceeds extraction - population expansion.

The best production we had, by far, was with a 9/10/10.5/& 11 inch size limits and no bag/no closures.
Are you really going to crash this entire fishery because MRIP told you too?
(((They are..)))

Oh mercy..
I really doubt you'll even try to fix it. It cuts too hard against the grain. BOFF is all there is.
For sequential hemaphrodites BOFF is bad management.

The Massachusetts guys have been giving me some great feedback on boat counts. Remember that 2.5 million pounds of sea bass they caught last year and y'all managed as though it were real? What a farce.
It's unbelievable how far wrong that is.
And it just gets plug and play response.
Regards,
Monty

Capt Monty Hawkins
Mhawkins@morningstarfishing.com
Info@ocreefs.org