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This is what we Chesapeake Bay folk call a "Rock". This is a particularly good Rockfish, one of my better ones. But, catching these "rockfish" (that anywhere else along the Atlantic Coast would be called "striped bass") was once a plentiful exercise in harvest for the table for commercial and sport fishermen. About the time of my arrival in Chesapeake watershed territory, there was a general "viewing with alarm" the decrease in size and numbers of the rock in the Bay. This being unregulated tidal saltwater, no limits were observed in taking fish, even the gamefish of which this species was probably the top indicator species. Sportsmen are the group most likely to impose restrictions on themselves in order to return to point with pride once again at this wonderful resource, and they agreed to (in fact, insisted upon) regulations to stop the taking of rockfish, and also to impose both lower and upper size limits for a total take of two fish when the rockfish started to come back in significant numbers.
There are cyclic variations in big ecosystems like the Bay (the world's largest estuary), so that the oyster population fell off dramatically, as did the black duck population--around the time the rockfish numbers dwindled. But the biomass of the Bay probably stayed about the same, since there was an explosion of bluefish that replaced the rock, Chesapeake blue crabs that replaced the oysters, and Canada geese that took over from the ducks. When I could take three generations of Geelhoed fishermen out on the Bay fifteen years ago, we made joked about the "cockroaches of the Bay" while throwing back all but a few bluefish that were savagely eager to get caught.
Now, the times, they are achangin' again, and the blue crab population has decreased, and the sportsmen, again, have suspended the season on Canada geese (while the air over our duck blinds is filled with swans and countless snow geese.) Man's control is usually a minor bit player in a much greater cycle of biorhythms we understand poorly, and what effect man has had has usually been very unhealthy for the Bay and its residents--like paving over most filtering fields and forests to make shopping plaza parking lots with rapid runoff of toxic petrochemicals. But, here is one species that seems to have responded favorably to "management"--let's "point with pride" to the Chesapeake Rockfish!