Mid-Atlantic charter fishing captains are leading a federal court challenge to the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission and its decisions limiting the striped bass seasons.

The charter operators say they are taking aim at the ASMFC’s actions to limit the 2024 season “through a combination of shortening the fishing season; reducing the size of removable fish; lowering commercial quotas; and limiting recreational fishers on charter boats to one fish per day.”

In a May 14 announcement about the lawsuit in the U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., the charter captains cited Maryland Department of Natural Resources reporting after the close of the 2024 fishing season as confirming the association’s predictions “that the ASMFC rule changes would devastate the industry with a revenue drop-off of up to 75 percent.”

Maryland Charter Boat Association president Brian Hardman “confirmed those results and reported that over 50 companies have already been forced out of business and have had to put their vessels on the market at ‘fire sale prices,’” the captains say.

The ASMFC in December voted to maintain its regulations for the 2025 striped bass season that began May 16, said Capt. Robert Newberry, chairman of the Delmarva Fisheries Association, covering the states of Delaware, Maryland, and Virginia. Newberry says the “striped bass stock across the entire Mid-Atlantic region has never been more plentiful.”

The plaintiffs in the lawsuit also question the makeup of the ASMFC, which dates back over 80 years to the World War II years. The lawsuit includes as defendants the ASMFC’s 15 member East Coast states, the District of Columbia Department of Energy and Environment and the Potomac River Fisheries Commission, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

“For too long, our industry has allowed this obscure Interstate Compact founded in 1942 to help furnish the food supply behind the war effort to transform itself into a power-hungry partnership with massive funding support (up to 95 percent) from federal government agencies, said Newberry. “They apparently think that fish are more important than working people.”

The fishing association plaintiffs include operators in Connecticut, the Cape Cod Charter Boat Association, and the Montauk Boatmen and Captains Association. They assert the ASMFC structure and its mandates “violate the U.S. Constitution, federal law, the Maryland Constitution, and Maryland law going back to its chartering in 1642.

“This needless action also violates common sense,” said Capt. Jill Maganza-Ruiz, president of the Montauk Boatmen and Captains Association. “The ASMFC action was taken despite its own admissions that striped bass stock is ‘not being overfished’ and that neither the Atlantic Ocean nor its bays and other tributaries even represent a ‘fish habitat of concern’ for striped bass.”

“One major flaw in the claimed science behind this regulation is the NOAA’s Marine Recreational Information program being used to estimate recreational and for-hire catch data which has been found to be grossly overestimating the recreational catch,” the charter captains say.

“Many fish populations and fisheries have seen stocks explode while regulations on catch and size limits, season closures, etc. have decreased at

the same time. These contradictory results are next to impossible to reconcile but they are still used in management decisions instead of the ‘best available science’ which is required by law.”

“These actions threaten not only the present viability ofour businesses but also the long-term sustainability of the for-hire sector of the fishing

Industry, said Marc Berger, the head of the East Coast Fishing Coalition, comprised of over 800 “for-hire” charter boats from southern New England to Maryland. “The ramifications also extend beyond our industry, impacting businesses such as hotels, restaurants, tackle shops, and other merchants that rely on our operations to sustain their own livelihoods.”

Another Mid-Atlantic fishermen’s group, North Carolina Watermen United, said it supports the charter operator’s ASMFC challenge.

“We stand in solidarity with our fellow watermen in our opposition to the ASMFC,” the North Carolina group said in a joint statement with the charter captains.

“We too have faced the over-regulatory reaches of both federal and state agencies as our fishermen are struggling to work within the bounds on several fisheries including southern flounder, red drum, striped mullet, and spotted trout. The socio-economic hardships put on not only our captains, crew, and families, but our entire coastal communities when agencies continue to handcuff these watermen is immeasurable.”

The fishing boat associations are represented by attorneys James Butera at Meeks Butera & Israel, Washington, D.C. and by Andrew Meehan at the MacLeod Law Group, Chestertown, Md.