Stayin' Alive

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What is a Striped Bass?

Striped bass (Morone saxatilis): An anadromous fish in the family of temperate basses (Percichthyidae), cousin to white perch, white bass, and yellow bass in the U.S. and to the Japanese and European seabass. Fully grown, striped bass can weigh up to 125 pounds and be as long as six feet, although a four-foot striper is considered very big. They may live more than 30 years. They may be white, silver, copper or even greenish in body color with six to nine blue stripes along the sides. Females get bigger and older than males.

Range: Striped bass can be found in coastal waters (less than 10 km offshore) from Florida to Nova Scotia, and also in lakes and rivers. In 1879 and 1882 several striped bass were were taken from the Navesink River in New Jersey, transported to California, and released in the San Joaquin River Delta. They are now well established in San Francisco Bay and range along the Oregon coast. They have also been successfully introduced to reservoirs of the Colorado River, including Lake Powell, AZ.

What they eat: Other fishes and invertebrates. Young bass themselves are also an abundant food item for other fish.

Economic Importance: Sales of boats, tackle, and charters to anglers are important to the economy of New Jersey as well as other states. Canada and at least twelve US states, cooperating within the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission (ASMFC), have laws regulating the catch of striped bass. Some of these laws hold among states.

What kind of habitat is essential to striped bass?

Although striped bass can live in both fresh and salt water, they will not always be present in all water available to them. This is because both temporal (time) and environmental factors have an affect on whether or not striped bass can live in a particular area at a particular time. The idea that certain living space with specific conditions must be available at the right time for the continued survival of a fish species is called essential fish habitat". For example, a river in a spawning ground does not just have to have sufficient flow and oxygen; it has to have it at the time that striped bass spawn.

For striped bass and other commercially important species, essential fish habitat (EFH) is protected by law under the Magnuson Stevens Act, passed by US Congress in 1996. In order to best protect essential fish habitat for striped bass, it is necessary to understand where these fish spend their time during the day, at night, and throughout the year. Additionally, it helps to know what they receive from their visits to different habitats. For example, striped bass can live, grow, and even reproduce in fresh water reservoirs - blocked from the sea by dams. However, this is possible only if the temperature of the water is at a low enough level and the amount of oxygen in the water is at a high enough level. Because striped bass cannot leave these reservoirs, they are surrounded by land on all sides, temperature and oxygen levels have to remain at survivable levels year-round. In areas where lakes and rivers provide good conditions only part of the year, striped bass must have access to the sea as conditions change.

Habitats in coastal ocean and estuaries can provide striped bass with larger feeding grounds as they mature, and and may therefore allow for larger populations. By studying movement among habitat, we hope to learn what limits, including size and age, regulate the use of certain habitats within the coastal ocean and estuary. A daily tracking project, in which individual striped bass will be closely followed by boats will help us learn this.

How do scientists know what the habitat is like?

Scientists want to know more than just where striped bass move. They also want to understand why they move from the fish's point of view. For example, to a fish, the same piece of marsh might have a completely different environment at different times of the year. When habitat levels of light, salinity, temperature, acidity, and oxygen are taken into account, the same marsh can be a very different habitat through time!

Scientists in the JCNERR (Jacques Cousteau National Estuarine Research Reserve) currently use several different methods to gather information about fish's living environment. By using instruments in the LEO 15 (Long-Term Ecosystem Observatory), scientists can measure, for example, the amount of sunlight, water temperature, wave height, and more. The REMUS vehicle, which travels underwater, uses side-scan sonar to determine what is on or near the ocean floor and maps water currents, temperature, salinity, and acidity where there are no permanent instruments. Hand-held data collectors are used throughout the study area collect information over a wider area. By combining these data with the data from tagged striped bass movement, scientists will gain a better understanding of how contingents react to the changes in their environment. For example, the signal of a tagged striped bass detected in the estuary during the winter season could guide scientists to use the side-scan sonar from REMUS to look for other striped bass resting near the bottom. If they find large schools of striped bass resting there for the winter, they would determine both the location and the nature of this particular group's over-winter habitat.