herringalliance.org - Our Mission

Mission

Our Mission

The Herring Alliance

is a coalition of environmental and other public interest organizations dedicated to protecting and restoring marine wildlife populations and Northeastern U.S. marine ecosystems by reforming the Atlantic herring fishery.

Atlantic herring is a vital source of food for commercially and recreationally important fish stocks such as tuna, haddock, cod, striped bass, whiting, and dogfish as well as for seabirds, whales, seals, dolphins and porpoises.

Unfortunately, industrial midwater trawling for herring is managed with little regard to the ecological importance of herring in the marine food web. Catch limits are set sometimes in excess of scientific advice and always based on industry demand for herring rather than through a thorough process of understanding the needs of the ecosystem and then allocating any excess to industry needs. Moreover, because herring predators feed on the same schools of herring the trawl fleet targets, bycatch of predator species is well documented despite being extremely poorly monitored and regulated.

The mission of the Herring Alliance is three-fold:

To establish ecosystem-based catch limits which leave sufficient herring in the ecosystem as forage for other marine predators.
To spatially and temporally apportion herring trawling using buffer zones and time and area closures which both minimize bycatch and avoid localized depletion to ensure sufficient herring is present when and where it is most needed by other predators.
To fully monitor and minimize bycatch of commercially and recreationally important fish stocks – including juvenile or spawning Atlantic herring and depleted river herring and groundfish – as well as whales, seals, dolphins and porpoises.

The Herring Alliance was formed in May 2007 and includes the following organizations: