Tag Archives: Bob Wood

Taking the Long View – The Fall & Rise & Fall of Stripers

Striped bass, for thousands of years, have been coming back to the great spawning rivers of the Chesapeake Bay. And scientists, for decades, have been trying to figure out why striped bass reproduce so well during certain eras and so poorly during other eras. Bob Wood (above) has come up with a new theory that may answer these old questions. Credit: top, David Harp; bottom, Michael W. Fincham.

That’s a twist worthy of the old gods out of Greek myths. Every gift they ever gave us mortals carried a dark side. As mere mortals trying to manage the natural world, we instinctively try to maximize all the fish that matter most to us. We want a Bay full of stripers and a Bay full of menhaden. But that may not be an option. continued