A new survey by the state Department of Environmental Conservation has found that striped bass reproduction in the Hudson River is down for the third year in a row. It’s also down further south in Maryland’s Chesapeake Bay.
New York State DEC Marine Resources Director Marty Gary says the two regions account for 90% of coastal striped bass.
“We’re expecting because of this poor reproduction in the Hudson in the last three years and in the Chesapeake, that we’re going to start seeing those impacts somewhere around 2030,” he said. “As we go further into that decade, we’re going to see fewer and fewer fish.”
Why it’s down is something the DEC is still trying to figure out. Gary says he thinks it’s mostly environmental. The health of the Hudson River and its water quality is fine. But seasonal conditions aren’t right.
“What you want are temperatures that stay cool, don’t warm up early and you have a significant amount of rainfall, so it causes a lot of river flow,” Gary said. “What that does is it expands the spawning area. It gives these fish more room to spread out and spawn.”
To find solutions and try to blunt any economic damage to the fishing industry this could have, DEC made a motion to make an interstate stakeholders group. That will begin holding public meetings, later this year.
“How do we protect those fish that we still have in the population, so when the right conditions come along, we’ll have a successful spawn,” Gary said. “We tried hatcheries but there isn’t really anything that man can do that can really rival Mother Nature when it has all the right conditions.”