Black Sea Bass

Black sea bass is managed jointly by the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission and the Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council (Council) under Amendment 13 to the Summer Flounder, Scup and Black Sea Bass Fishery Management Plan (FMP; August 2002) and its subsequent addenda (Addenda XII-XXXVI). The objectives of the FMP are to reduce fishing mortality to assure overfishing does not occur, reduce fishing mortality on immature black sea bass to increase spawning stock biomass, improve yield from the fishery, promote compatible regulations among states and between federal and state jurisdictions, promote uniform and effective enforcement, and minimize regulations necessary to achieve the stated objectives.

The recreational fishery is currently managed on a regional basis using a combination of minimum size limits, bag limits and fishing seasons to achieve a harvest target determined by the Percent Change Approach, as described in Addendum XXXIV. The coastwide commercial quota is divided among the states annually. Specific management measures for the commercial fishery are set by each state, which may include 1) minimum size limits, 2) minimum mesh requirements for trawls or 3) a moratorium on entry into the fishery and closed seasons.

In December 2018, the Board approved Addenda XXXI and XXXII to the FMP. Addendum XXXI adds to the suite of tools available for management, with particular focus on enhancing the compatibility of state and federal regulations, by allowing the use of conservation equivalency for recreational management starting in 2020. Conservation equivalency allows recreational management measures in federal waters measures to be waived, and instead requires recreational anglers to abide by the measures of the state in which they land their catch. The Board and Council will annually decide whether to enact conservation equivalency.

Addendum XXXII establishes an annual specifications process for developing recreational management measures. The Board will approve regional measures in early spring each year, based on technical committee analysis of stock status, resource availability, and harvest estimates. Public input on specifications will be gathered by states through their individual public comment processes. The specifications process will provide the Board more flexibility in adjusting measures, if necessary, to constrain harvest to the annual coastwide recreational harvest limit (RHL). Further, the process will enable the Board to consider a host of factors, including: regional equity; regulatory stability; species abundance and distribution; and late-breaking recreational harvest estimates.

In June 2021, the Board and the Council jointly approved final changes to the management program for black sea bass commercial fisheries. These changes include modifying the state allocations of the commercial black sea bass quota, adding the state allocations to the Council’s FMP, and modifying the regulations for federal in-season closures. The Board adopted the new allocations through Addendum XXXIII to the Summer Flounder, Scup and Black Sea Bass FMP, while the Council recommended to NOAA Fisheries these changes through Amendment 23 to its FMP. These actions address significant changes in the distribution of black sea bass that have occurred since the original allocations were implemented under Amendment 13 in 2003 and also account for the historical dependence of the states on the black sea bass fishery. In August 2023, NOAA Fisheries partially approved Amendment 23, by approving changes to the commercial in-season quota trigger, but disapproved adding the state-by-state quota allocations to the Federal FMP. However, the state-by-state quota allocations for black sea bass remain in effect through the Commission’s Addendum XXXIII.

In December 2021, the Board and the Council took final action on a joint amendment to reevaluate the FMP’s commercial and recreational allocations. This action aimed to address the allocation-related impacts of the revised recreational catch and landings data provided by MRIP. The changes were effective January 1, 2023.

In June 2022, the Commission’s Interstate Fisheries Management Program Policy Board (Policy Board) and the Council approved a new process for setting recreational measures (bag, size, and season limits), referred to as the Percent Change Approach, as well as modifications to the recreational accountability measures for summer flounder, scup, black sea bass, and bluefish. The Policy Board adopted these changes through Addendum XXXIV to the Summer Flounder, Scup, and Black Sea Bass FMP and Addendum II to the Bluefish FMP. The Council and Policy Board also agreed to continue to work on developing an improved approach to setting recreational measures for summer flounder, scup, black sea bass, and bluefish. The Percent Change Approach was implemented in 2023, and will sunset at the end of 2025.

In April 2025, the Policy Board and Council adopted Addendum XXXVI to the Summer Flounder, Scup, and Black Sea Bass FMP and Addendum III to the Bluefish FMP, which made further modifications to the process for setting recreational measures and accountability measures for these four species. The changes, which include modifications the Percent Change Approach based on lessons learned over the past few years, will be implemented in two phases.

The first phase of changes aims to better account for stock status when setting measures and will create more opportunities for stability in management measures. The current system uses three biomass categories to guide whether measures should change; the revised approach adds a fourth category for stocks near their biomass target and establishes a separate process for overfished stocks. These changes will take effect starting with the 2026 recreational measures for summer flounder, scup, and black sea bass. The Council and Policy Board delayed the implementation of these changes for bluefish until 2028 to allow time for development of an appropriate methodology for evaluating the impacts of measures on bluefish harvest and discards. The bluefish stock has been under a rebuilding plan since 2022, and recreational measures will continue to be set based on the rebuilding plan until the stock is declared rebuilt.

The second phase of modifications, which will be implemented for setting 2030 recreational measures and beyond, will update the process to use a catch-based target. Unlike the current process – which focuses on achieving a specific level of predicted harvest – a catch-based approach aims to achieve a target level of total dead catch, including both harvest and dead discards. This approach will allow for more explicit consideration of how measures affect discards. The Council and Policy Board delayed the transition to a catch-based target until 2030 to allow time for additional analysis on the potential impacts to measures.

The Board approved specifications for the 2025 fishing season are status quo from 2024, including a 6-million-pound commercial quota and a 6.27-million-pound RHL. The Council approved more restrictive specifications, based on projections from the most recent management track assessment, with a 4.78 million pounds commercial quota and a 4.46-million-pound recreational harvest limit.

Black sea bass (Centropristis striata) inhabit Atlantic coastal waters from the Gulf of Maine to the Florida Keys, concentrating in areas from Cape Cod, Massachusetts to Cape Canaveral, Florida. A temperate reef fish, black sea bass commonly inhabit rock bottoms near pilings, wrecks, and jetties. Black sea bass rely on their large mouth and swift ocean currents to catch prey, which include fish, crabs, mussels, and razor clams. Two distinct stocks of black sea bass exist along the Atlantic coast with overlapping ranges. The northern stock migrates seasonally. Black sea bass summer in northern inshore waters at depths of less than 120 feet and winter in southern offshore waters at depths of 240 to 540 feet. Spawning occurs off of New England in the late summer.

Black sea bass are protogynous hermaphrodites, which mean they start life as a female and then change sex to become males when they reach 9-13 inches (2 – 5 years of age). Thirty-eight percent of females in the Mid-Atlantic demonstrate sex reversal between August and April, after most fish have spawned. Even though some fish are males when they reach sexual maturity, most produce eggs when they first mature. Following transition, a sea bass will either become a dominant male, characterized by a larger size and a bright blue nuchal hump during spawning season, or a subordinate male that has few distinguishing features.