Striped bass are also called rockfish, greenhead, squidhound, stripers, and linesides. They are anadromous, which refers to saltwater fish that spend most of their lives in the sea but depend on fresh water estuaries, rivers and streams for reproduction. In the Atlantic, stripers range from the Gulf of St. Lawrence to the St. Johns River in Northern Florida, and into the Gulf of Mexico. In 1879, striped bass were introduced into the Pacific where their range now extends from British Columbia to Mexico, and later into some inland lakes. As the population of North America exploded, the populations of striped bass on the Atlantic plummeted. The federal fishery was closed in 1990 to eliminate overfishing, and reopened in 1995 after the stock recovered.