The Virginia Marine Resources Commission approved a staff recommendation calling for a significant reduction in next year’s annual coastal quota of striped bass during its Dec. 9 meeting at commission headquarters in Newport News.

The reduction is for the conservation of coast-wide striped bass spawning stock that the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission projects will be overfished in 2015 at current fishing mortality rates, VMRC spokesperson Laurie Naismith said.

VMRC established the commercial coastal quota for striped bass, also known as rockfish, as 138,640 pounds, Naismith said, a 25 percent drop from this year’s quota of 184,853 pounds. In addition, the commission set the annual commercial Chesapeake Bay quota at 1,064,997 pounds, down 20 percent from the 2012 harvest of 1,339,619 pounds. Both reductions were in keeping with ASMFC guidelines.

In a related matter, Naismith said VMRC established the recreational coastal daily possession limit as one fish per p...