Striped Bass

Equating the stocking of menhaden in Maryland's waters to a set of traffic lights, Mike Waine sees the current plight somewhere closer to red than green. Waine, the fisheries management coordinator for the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission, said Tuesday's two-hour hearing in Annapolis helped gauge the public's view on the overfishing of menhaden — and the future management of the species. Once considered a delicacy, menhaden are now more highly regarded as the main forager of unwanted algae as well as a source of food for the region's striped bass population.

After tons more striped bass were found to be caught illegally on Maryland's waterways this year — and 60 recreational fishermen were recently contacted by officials of the Department of Natural Resources informing them they could face the prospect of losing their licenses — two open houses have been scheduled for this week so the public and other interested parties can learn of new regulations being considered. Gina Hunt, deputy director of the Fisheries Service for the DNR, said Friday that the open houses are a more relaxed setting "similar to a show at an art gallery" than a public hearing, at which officials take questions and hear comments from interested parties.

Someday, perhaps as early as March, Maryland's striped bass may join the main ingredients of Europe's Filet-O-Fish sandwich on the list of fish known worldwide as abundant, well-managed and caught in environmentally friendly ways. The state has spent more than $131,000 and countless hours of study in a bid for the Marine Stewardship Council's seal of approval, a symbol of sustainability held by about 10 percent of the world's fish species and fish products — including the cod, haddock, hoki and pollock sold by 7,000 McDonald's restaurants in Europe.

SALT LAKE CITY - This was going to be about fun and games. That's what drives the Outdoor Retailer trade show, the twice-annual event that fills the city's Salt Palace with the gear and goodies that you, dear consumer, will be lusting after next year. But despite a record number of people at the show, there's a sense of the same old, same old. Maybe we're on another technological plateau, where the only changes to the average consumer's eye are in the colors and dazzling variety options offered on a given product.

It will be hard to leave the pizza, the pool and the ice cream when Wednesday rolls around for Andres and Duvan, two orphans from Colombia who spent a month soaking up the things we take for granted. But they'll always have the Chesapeake Bay, which threw a giant going away party Thursday that they won't soon forget. A cavalcade of rod-bending striped bass will do that to you, no matter how old you are. But there were other moments, too. There wasn't a lot to cheer about when the boys and their host families boarded a charter boat in Solomons.

State fisheries officials outlined a sweeping plan they hope to implement by December to curb commercial striped bass poaching in the Chesapeake Bay. The announcement Wednesday night came just four months after miles of illegal nets filled with 13 tons of fish were discovered by police in the waters off Kent Island. Among other things, the proposal would require real-time reporting by phone and electronically of when commercial boats leave the dock and return, and how many striped bass they caught along with the sequential numbers on the tags that watermen must attach to each fish and a positive identification system for nets.

Let's say you have a product that people automatically associate with you. Except for one hiccup in the timeline, it's been on the market since before Capt. John Smith rowed a boat around the Chesapeake. And it's so popular that people will do crazy things to get it, like sneak around at night and break the law. There's even a black market supplied by crooks willing to risk going to jail to feed the beast. But instead of treating this treasure like, well, a treasure, you keep it in a filthy hovel.

The folks who decide how we gather and protect the Chesapeake Bay's bounty may need to borrow Capt. Jack Sparrow's wacky compass to keep their bearings. Clearly, the headline-grabbing activities of poachers last year and this year have presented the state and its fisheries managers with a window of opportunity to make sweeping changes that address sustainability, accountability and enforceability, not only on the commercial side but on the recreational side, too. But given the attention span of our lawmakers, that window won't be open very long.

About 3.3 tons of dead and decaying striped bass were recovered by Natural Resources Police Tuesday from an illegal net submerged in the waters off Tilghman Island. It was the second largest seizure of poached fish this year. The net, the 10th seized since Feb. 1, was found on Sunday by a recreational fisherman whose lines became fouled in the tangle of mesh and fish. Police believe it had been in the water since the beginning of the year. It took an 80-foot work boat with a crane several hours to gather up the nearly mile-long net and the ensnared fish, which averaged 15 pounds.

The Chesapeake Bay's bounty was turned into a macabre tableau Monday morning as an illegal net at least 600 yards long and filled with decaying striped bass and other fish was partially pulled from the waters off Tilghman Island. As a crane whined and strained against the load, the net broke the surface and revealed a tangled web of large silver fish and brightly colored lures both caught up in the poacher's gear. A recreational angler whose fishing lines became ensnared in the mess Sunday morning alerted Natural Resources Police.