Masters of the Fly’s Amendment 7 Comment Letter
As many of you know, we are in the critical public feedback period following the Atlantic Marine Fisheries Commission’s release of its Draft Amendment 7 to the Atlantic Striped Bass Management Plan. Your feedback and input are truly critical to ensuring a positive outcome of the process. Here are instructions for writing your own, personal letter commenting on Draft Amendment 7:
It’s important to note that the ASMFC specifically cited the high volume of letters it received from the public during the process as an important factor in final form of the Draft Amendment 7. Your input and opinion matters! Please send a letter!
The deadline for submission is 11:59 (EST) April 15, 2022
You can email your comments to comments@asmfc.org
You can mail your comments to:
Emilie Franke
Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission
1050 N. Highland Street, Suite 200 A-N
Arlginton, VA 22201
If you email your letter, be sure to copy stripercomments@gmail.com and you will be automatically entered into the American Saltwater Guides Association (ASGA) raffle, and a chance to win a lot of cool stuff!
For those interested in more detail on Amendment 7, please take a look at:
For your reference, here is Masters of the Fly’s comment letter, based on recommendations from our friends at ASGA. When writing your own letter, please be sure to personalize it as best you can. We have heard from ASGA that ASMFC disqualified hundreds of letters because they were deemed to be “form letters.” Given that Draft Amendment 7 is a whopping 149 pages long(!); however, we hope this draft letter with our thinking behind it will help you with your own letter. Our suggested approach is that you write a short personal statement about what the striped bass fishery means to you at the beginning of the letter:
To the Advisors and Board members of the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission:
As an organization serving the broad community of conservation-minded recreational saltwater anglers residing in and spending thousands of hours annually fishing the coastal waters along our Atlantic states, we welcome the opportunity for public commentary on the proposed Amendment 7 to the ASMFC Atlantic Striped Bass Management Plan. Protecting our striped bass stocks, safeguarding the recreational angling industry that relies on these fish, and ensuring that future generations of anglers can enjoy catching our coastal fishery are paramount to us. With this said, we wish to support the following options in the current Amendment 7 draft:
On 4.1 Management Triggers, we support:
Tier 1: options A1, B1 and C1 to maintain the current thresholds and required actions related to striped bass mortality
Tier 2: options A2, B1 and C1 to ensure timely management action in the case spawning stocks (SSB) falls below the threshold
Tier 3: options A2 and B2 to set meaningful thresholds for juvenile stock health, and require measurable actions
Tier 4: option A to maintain the current requirement that immediate management action be taken - rather than deferred - when management triggers are tripped
On 4.2.2 Measures to Address Recreational Release Mortality, we support:
Options C1 and C2 to restrict the use of lethal devices (e.g. gaffs) to remove striped bass from the water and to require the release of any striped bass caught by any unapproved method
Option D2 to promote education and outreach to inform the angling public about striped bass handling and release practices
On 4.4.1 Recruitment Assumptions for Rebuilding Calculation, we support:
Option B to use the more realistic and conservative low recruitment regime assumptions to rebuild female SSB target levels no later than 2029. We recognize this option may require more restrictive management measures than option A, which we support
On 4.4.2 Rebuilding Plan Framework, we support:
Option B to allow the Board to take direct management actions as well as require public input, if the upcoming 2022 striped bass stock assessment update shows a less than 50% probability of rebuilding the stock by 2029
On 4.6.2 Management Program Equivalency, per the Draft Amendment 7, “Management program equivalency (also known as “conservation equivalency” or CE) refers to actions taken by a state which differ from the specific requirements of the FMP, but which achieve the same quantified level of conservation for the resource under management.”
We believe in restricting the use of conservation equivalency (CE) based on stock status. Specifically, we support:
Option B1-a, which would prohibit CE programs until stock biomass is above the threshold level
Option C3, which would prohibit CE proposals from using error-prone Marine Recreational Information Program estimates
Option D2, which would require an uncertainty buffer of 25% for proposed CE programs for non-quota-managed fisheries
Option E2, which would require CE programs to demonstrate equivalency to the Fisheries Management Program (FMP) standard at the state-specific rather than merely coastwide level
Thank you for providing the opportunity to comment on Amendment 7. We look forward to learning the outcome of the upcoming stock assessment and to reading the final version of the Amendment.
Masters of the Fly
March 6, 2022
East Hampton, New York
