Striped Bass Conservation Crash

According to the conservation group Stripers Forever, the North Atlantic population of striped bass is in dramatic decline and the group is asking all its members—and fly fishers everywhere—to write to Paul Diodati, director of the Massachusetts Division of Marine Fisheries, asking him to reduce the recreational and commercial striped bass fishing quota in that state by 50 percent.

The "action alert" issued by the group was spawned by new data from the Atlantic States Marine Fishery Commission showing a "66 percent decline in the estimated recreational catch from 2006 to 2009; a 25 percent decline in estimated striped bass abundance from 2004 to 2008; and lowered recruitment in recent years." According to Stripers Forever, the newly released 2006 to 2009 numbers are already out of date as fish populations have continued to plummet. For more information, see stripersforever.org.