The Facts on Barred Sand Bass
As anglers, it’s our duty to ensure our favorite fisheries are healthy and thriving for future generations. And at Fish On, our role is to provide fellow-anglers the information to do so. Fishery management that often favors short-term economic interests over long-term health for people and the planet, along with environmental change, have led to the demise of many beloved fisheries around the world. We’re committed to barred sand bass not being among them. So, we combed the science and consulted the experts and here are the facts:
We have catch rates on barred sand bass along with tons of data that are independent from the fishery catch rates—SCUBA surveys, larval surveys, tag and recapture studies, hydroacoustic surveys… All of the available sources collectively show the decline of the fishery from 2007-2012 and the sustained collapse from 2012-2023. Commercial interests argue that the decline in catch rates is due to a shift in targeting species like bluefin tuna, but the shift to offshore species began in 2015, after barred sand bass aggregations had already disappeared. This means that the barred sand bass decline was not the result of shifting to other species and that the fleet can successfully operate with a closed spawning season for barred sand bass.
Most species managed by the state of California are managed without stock assessments. Given the volume of peer-reviewed studies on barred sand bass and the multiple independent data sources available, a stock assessment will likely tell us what we already know—the situation is dire for sand bass. Based on the science we already have, we can act now to rebuild the fishery while we gather more information. A fishery closure can easily be reversed (like rockfishes, for example), a collapse of the fishery cannot. The Marine Life Management Act also requires that marine resources "...be managed sustainably and on the basis of the best available scientific information," and we have a ton of scientific information on barred sand bass—much more than most of California’s nearshore species. Waiting for a stock assessment when we know as much as we do is not supported by the law and is an unnecessary risk.
Overall, the best available science shows barred sand bass are not migratory beyond seasonal spawning-related movements. Since 2010, there have been at least eight published studies using sand bass tagging data, and all of these studies indicate that barred sand bass simply migrate between their summer spawning grounds and nearby non-spawning grounds (mostly within 10s of kilometers; 8-10 miles on average). After decades of tagging and many thousands of fish tagged, none have been observed to travel farther south to central Baja.
This is a rare and clear opportunity to support the long-term health of a nearshore fishery to the benefit of subsistence and shore-based anglers who are often overlooked in decision-making. Nearshore catch quality—from both a public health and species preference perspective—has significantly declined over the decades and a closed season may have short-term impacts on commercial sportfishing, but will benefit everyone in the long-term. Marginalized fishing communities have the most to gain from a healthier fishery in the long run.
A closed spawning season would be in the summer months when there are numerous other species to target and opportunities to introduce new anglers to fishing. A 0-bag limit season also does not preclude catch-and-release of the species. Barred sand bass being an “easy-to-catch fish” also highlights just how vulnerable these spawning aggregations are and that we need to allow them to reproduce so future anglers can continue to enjoy this fishery.
In the mid-2010s there was a period of high juvenile recruitment of barred sand bass. (Juvenile recruitment essentially means we have young fish that will later become large enough to be caught and kept.) This resulted in the recent increase in legal size catch. After more than a decade of no sand bass spawning aggregations, it’s easy to mistake this as a recovered, healthy population. However, recruitment isn’t always consistent, it happens in pulses—sometimes with many years in a row of no recruitment at all—so we cannot manage the fishery as if new recruits will always be there. In other words, we can’t change whether or not we have a strong recruitment year, but we can change how much we take. Protection of spawning aggregations has the greatest potential to result in higher annual recruitment and sustain the fishery longer-term.
Sportfishing fleets are claiming that effort has shifted to other species in the summer months anyway as an explanation for reduced catch of barred sand bass. This would also mean that a seasonal closure will not cause significant hardship to commercial interests. A fishery collapse, on the other hand, will have worse and longer-term implications for sportfishing and all fishing communities. A decade of fishery evidence from 2013-2023, when sand bass aggregations were absent, shows that a seasonal closure would not add any hardship that hasn’t already been successfully navigated by commercial interests for the last decade.
