On October 19, the Maryland Department of Natural Resources released the results of its 2026 juvenile striped bass abundance survey. The 2026 survey recorded a juvenile abundance index value (JAI) of 5.5, the highest since 2018, but still barely half the long-term average of 10.8.
Maryland’s juvenile abundance survey data provides a time series dating back to 1957; no other juvenile abundance survey dates back as far. Each year, Maryland biologists sample a total of 22 sites located in the upper Chesapeake Bay, and in the Choptank, Potomac, and Nanticoke Rivers, with each spot sampled on three separate occasions during the late spring and summer. Samples are taken with a 100-foot seine, and only striped bass less than three inches in length are counted.
In 2026, the Maryland survey captured 723 juvenile striped bass. Although it found striped bass to be more widely distributed in 2026 than they were in immediately preceding years, the highest concentrations of juvenile bass were found in the upper bay and in the Choptank River, with lesser concentrations found elsewhere. A strong striped bass year class would typically see high concentrations of juveniles throughout the bay.
The average annual JAI for the eight-year period that began in 2019 is 3.15, the lowest ever recorded in the 70-year history of the survey. The next-lowest average for a comparable period, 3.57, was recorded during the years 1979-1986, a period defined by the collapse of the striped bass stock. The record-low 2019-2026 average is bad news for both the striped bass and for striped bass fishermen, whether recreational or commercial, for as Allison Colden, Maryland executive director of the Chesapeake Bay Foundation has observed, “What happens in the Chesapeake Bay is a prediction for striped bass’ future up and down the Atlantic Coast. Roughly 80 percent of the coastwide striped bass population spawn here in the Bay.”
Two-thirds of the juvenile striped bass produced in the Chesapeake Bay come from Maryland waters. The rest are produced in the Virginia portion of the bay, which also saw an improved juvenile abundance index in 2026.
While Virginia’s 2026 JAI, at 9.52, is being slightly above the state’s long-term average of 7.77, it’s important to note that the calculation of the long-term average includes the period from the mid-1960s through 1986, when recruitment was generally dismal. The Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission (ASMFC), trying to avoid the distortions caused by those early years, uses the years 1992 through 2006 to gauge recruitment success. Should the JAI in any of the four major spawning areas (Hudson River, New York; Delaware River, New Jersey; Chesapeake Bay, Maryland; and Chesapeake Bay, Virginia) fall below the 25th percentile of all year classes produced in a spawning area during that period, which in Virginia’s case is 8.22, for three consecutive years (recruitment trigger), the ASMFC’s Atlantic Striped Bass Management Board (Management Board) is required to take remedial action.
2026 marks the first time since 2020 that the Virginia juvenile abundance index did not fall below 8.22.
The 2026 year class, made up of bass spawned in the Maryland and Virginia portions of the Chesapeake Bay, as well as in the Delaware and Hudson Rivers, will be the last year class produced prior to the completion of the 2027 benchmark assessment of the striped bass stock. However, because the 2027 benchmark assessment will only include data through 2025, the 2026 year class will not be considered.
However, that doesn’t mean that the 2026 year class won’t have any near-term impact on the management process. Already, we’re seeing some people try to spin the Maryland JAI as some sort of victory, with one Connecticut charter boat captain, commenting on someone else’s Facebook post, announcing that “5.5 is excellent!!!”>, perhaps out of hopes that managers will not adopt more restrictive fishing regulations for the 2027 season.
Those hopes will probably be fulfilled, as it is highly unlikely that the Management Board will consider any changes to striped bass regulations before the 2027 benchmark assessment is released. The big question is what will happen after that release occurs.
The Management Board’s obligation to rebuild the spawning stock biomass to its target level by 2029 remains. But even if they accomplish that task, the poor year classes produced over the past eight years are likely to lead to another population decline. Recreational fishermen on the coast will begin to feel that decline in 2027, when the last successful year class, spawned in 2018, grows out of the 28- to 31-inch slot size limit, and few bass from the 2019 and 2020 year classes will be available to take their place.
Although individual striped bass grow at somewhat different rates, as a general rule, it takes seven years for a given year class to grow into the slot limit, although a small proportion of each year class will enter the slot as six-year-olds, and roughly half of the eight-year-olds remain under the slot’s 31-inch maximum size. So, assuming that the size limit remains unchanged, even if the striped bass manage to produce a strong year class in 2027, something that is not at all guaranteed, coastal anglers would have to wait until 3034 before those fish were widely available for harvest.
In fact, it’s impossible to predict when the next strong year class will be produced. The Maryland Department of Natural Resource has noted that
Multiple factors affect striped bass spawning in the Chesapeake Bay. Cold winters and wet springs tend to be beneficial for spawning, and while Maryland experienced a cold winter, the prolonged regional drought and resulting low river flows may have led to unfavorable conditions for striped bass eggs and larvae. High river flows increase spawning habitat, allow eggs to remain suspended in the water column, and bring larvae closer to food sources. Other variables, including a shortened spawning period, could also influence spawning success.
It’s difficult to predict when favorable spawning conditions will return, although long-range weather forecasts for the Maryland region for the three-month period beginning on December 1, 2026 and running through February 28, 2027 predict a mixed bag of conditions. Above-normal precipitation is expected, which should end drought conditions and benefit the juvenile striped bass, but at the same time, temperatures are also expected to be above normal, which could cause water temperatures to rise too high, too soon and impair juvenile survival.
At least one Maryland biologist, Carrie Kennedy, who serves as the director of the Maryland Department of Natural Resources’ Tidal and Coastal Monitoring and Assessment Division, has suggested that favorable conditions for producing a strong striped bass year class might never return.
In response to the below-average 2026 JAI, she said, “The important piece of information is that it is still below average, and it is now the eighth year of low abundance.” She raised the possibility that the current poor spawning conditions, and the current low JAIs, may constitute “the new normal,” and opined, “Maybe we need to have a conversation about new reference points and new expectations. I don’t think that we should expect the population to be where it was in the early 2000s. We have a different Chesapeake Bay. We have a different planet than we had in the early 2000s.”
But she may be giving up on striped bass too soon. The last time the striped bass stock collapsed, spawning success began to decline in 1975, and it took until 1989 before another strong year class was produced. Measured against that 14-year span, the current eight years of below-average JAIs does not seem quite as dire.
That would be particularly true if similar environmental conditions contributed to both the last stock collapse and the current decline in the Maryland JAI. A paper, “Perspective comes with time: What do long-term egg and juvenile indices say about Chesapeake Bay Striped Bass productivity?,” authored by James Uphoff and published in the October 20, 2023 edition of the journal Marine and Coastal Fisheries, suggests that may have been the case.
After comparing the bay-wide abundance and distribution of striped bass eggs appearing in plankton net tows with the JAI time series, the author came to the conclusion that
The shift to lower [JAIs] in the early 1970s was followed by a strong decline in baywide [egg abundance] a decade later. The hypothesis that the collapse [of the striped bass stock] was initially driven by recruitment overfishing was not supported by trends in [egg abundance and distribution], but low [egg abundance and distribution] during 1982-1988 indicated that overfishing contributed to poor recruitment later. Poor habitat conditions leading into overfishing explained the decline of Chesapeake Bay Striped Bass in the 1970s and 1980s based on [egg abundance and distribution] and [JAIs]. Recovery, based on higher [egg production and broader egg distribution] was accompanied by and complemented by the recovery of egg-larval survival…in the early 1990s.
Based on that conclusion, it would seem premature to declare that the past eight years’ poor JAIs represent “the new normal,” and that such JAIs justify a revision of the reference points used to gauge the health of the striped bass stock.
Instead, the research would seem to suggest that the best course forward would be to do just what the ASMFC did in 1985: Impose very conservative management measures designed to maintain the spawning stock biomass at the highest practicable level, so that when favorable spawning conditions return, the stock will have sufficient spawning potential to take full advantage of the opportunity.
