Responding to growing concerns about declining striped bass populations, fishery managers this week voted to slash Bay striped bass harvests next year by 20.5 percent and the East Coast catch by 25 percent.

The cuts, approved by the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission during a nine-hour meeting on Wednesday, are aimed at stemming a decade-long decline in the striped bass population, which is close to slipping below its “overfished” threshold.

The population has declined primarily because of a series of below-average years of reproduction since the mid-2000s. The goal of the action is to increase, over time, the number of adult females — or spawning stock — with the hope that they will produce more young fish.

Fishery managers from Bay jurisdictions had sought to have the cuts spread over more years, but ran into opposition from many East Coast states.

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