River herring are small fish with a big impact on our river and marine ecosystems. Massive industrial fishing boats began targeting Atlantic herring in ocean waters in the mid-1990s, and scoop up an alarming number of river herring. A new river herring stock assessment confirms that ocean bycatch is a serious threat to river herring recovery.

Unfortunately, their life history (they’re born in freshwater streams but spend most of their lives in the ocean) has river herring falling through the cracks of the management system, and has led to an inadequate patchwork of state, interstate, and federal rules.

Check out our map detailing this river herring robbery and write a letter to help protect these fish!

For Immediate Release

BOSTON, MA (MAY 2, 2012) – A new stock assessment confirmed that river herring- alewife and blueback herring- along the Atlantic seaboard are depleted, with many populations in a dangerously diminished state.

“The report confirms what many in the community already knew about our all-time low numbers of river herring,” said Steve Pearlman, coordinator of the Watershed Action Alliance of Southeastern Massachusetts. “We need better management measures, supporting the calls of commercial and recreational fishermen, watershed groups, bird watchers, conservationists, and other groups that care about these important fish.”

River herring are in the on-deck circle to extinction.

For generations, Cape Codders knew it was spring when daffodils bloomed, robins warbled and herring runs were thick with silvery fish. All along the Atlantic coast, spring runs of herring were a rhythmic reminder all was well.

But now the herring are in desperate trouble. And it happened fast.

Since the 1980s, river herring populations have dropped by more than 95 percent, according to the Herring Alliance.