TOLCHESTER BEACH -- After a year of boom and a year of bust, striped bass reproduction is running slightly below average this year, according to preliminary estimates by state fisheries biologists.
"It doesn't look like a disaster, but it is not what we hoped for," said Donald T. Cosden, a biologist with the Department of Natural Resources, as his eagle eyes picked out a young striped bass among a net full of silver sides, perch, anchovies and other species during a day's search on the bay.
"The good news is that we are on the rebound. The bad news is we are still below the long-term average."
Average is relative, however. In only two of the past 10 years has the species been able to muster a better-than-average reproductive year. The 1980s were filled with years of steep drops in reproduction that spurred most East Coast states to ban striped-bass fishing.
Each summer for the past 30 in Maryland, biologists have swept the Chesapeake Bay's shallows with nets
searching for evidence of the reproductive success of the striped bass.
They spend six weeks getting to 22 locations on the bay, pulling seine nets at each site twice, counting thousands of fish and collecting hundreds of specimens.
It is a lot of hoopla for one fish species.
But the striped bass, sometimes called rockfish, has come to symbolize the bay's decline and its restoration.
And the results of this annual rite of summer are hot news for another species -- the Atlantic coast sports fisherman, found between Albermarle Sound in North Carolina and the coast of Maine.
The striped bass is closely watched each spring as it enters the Chesapeake and heads back up its natal waters to spawn. What happens in the nursery grounds of the bay will to a large degree determine the health of the entire species.
This year, the biologists found a large brood stock, the term they use to describe the female striped bass that are round and ripe and ready to deposit their eggs at the edge of the tidal regions of rivers.
This year's weather was perfect for the spawn, said Richard K. Schaefer, assistant leader for the striped bass project at DNR, who spent days watching the oily slick of eggs float along the surface of the water on spawning grounds.
This spring there was a gradual increase in temperature and no sudden rainstorms that would cause the water temperature to dip suddenly and kill the baby fish.
