Rockfish populations are on the rebound

January 18, 1999
Web posted at: 10:46 p.m. EDT (2246 GMT)

ROCK HALL, Maryland (CNN) -- A quaint town with painted wood shops and a slowly flashing traffic light, Rock Hall took its name from the rockfish.

For years its livelihood came from the fish, captured in a large mural on a downtown storefront, where a fisherman dreaming of his quarry stands beside large painted letters heralding "Legends of the Rock."

All that changed in the 1980s when rockfish, a colloquial name for striped bass in the Chesapeake Bay area, started disappearing. Then the rockfish population crashed. Scientists discovered that only one in ten fish were living to reproductive age. They put most of the blame on overfishing, and the state government banned catching or even possessing rockfish.

"It's very disastrous. It wiped this town right out. It changed the whole character of this town," says the Maryland Watermen's Association's Larry Simms, sitting in a boat in a local marina.

Rock Hall's marinas, once filled with fishing vessels, became port to pleasure boats. Residents who once worked the waters instead wooed tourists.

Commercial fishing for rockfish is permitted with limits on size and season

But for the rockfish, there is a happy ending. The restrictions worked. The ban on catching them was lifted in 1990. And the rockfish have recovered.

"This is a real success story for fishery management," Doug Lipton of the University of Maryland says.

The resurrection of Chesapeake Bay rockfish shows that fishing restrictions, while hard on fishermen, can actually save fleets in the long run.

"The lesson is that you have to pay the price in order to restore the fish stock," Lipton says.

Yet Maryland still keeps a close eye on rockfish.

"There is a seasonal limit and size limit on recreational ... and commercial fishing," the University of Maryland's Reggie Harrel says.

That combined with a continuing cleanup of the Chesapeake Bay means a brighter outlook for rockfish, and the people who catch them.

Environmental Correspondent Natalie Pawelski contributed to this report.