Action Alert:

It's Time to Fix the Herring Fishery
and the Herring Alliance Needs Your Help

At its November meeting, the New England Fisheries Management Council (NEFMC) will set it's priorities for 2008, determining which fisheries will have changes made to their fishery management plans. There's are serious problems with forage fish management in New England, where the Herring Alliance is working to reform the midwater trawl fishery for Atlantic herring. We need concerned stakeholders to ask decision-makers to fix the herring fishery now, not in two to four years when it may be too late. The New England marine ecosystem and everyone who cares about it, including fishermen, depend on a healthy herring resource and a sustainable herring fishery.

Currently, the herring midwater trawl fleet is managed with very little oversight and almost no accountability. While the industry claims that it is one of the few Total Allowable Catch (TAC) fisheries in the region, the fact is that only fish that are landed are counted towards the catch limit, making this a Total Allowable Landings (TAL) fishery- an entirely different thing when one considers that NMFS has no idea how much herring is discarded at sea. The landings themselves are poorly tracked, depending largely upon good faith hails from vessel captains which are known to be unreliable. Area and season specific TAL's are routinely overshot by thousands of tons. Observer coverage fluctuates wildly, but is always too low to allow for the most basic extrapolations of bycatch data to derive estimates of the total impact of the fleet. Even worse, these vessels regularly dump partial or even whole netfuls of fish and the few onboard fisheries observers can't inspect it first- this practice is perfectly legal and completely ignored by managers and scientists. That portion of the catch which observers are able to sample has typically been presorted by size-specific grates which shunt off larger unwanted bycatch.

Even so, past data clearly shows that this gear catches nearly every important species in the north Atlantic: whales, dolphins, seals, bluefin tuna, striped bass, scup, and multiple groundfish species including cod and haddock. In addition, there is a growing concern that these vessels are intercepting anadromous fish like river herring (alewives and bluebacks) and shad during their time spent at sea, in large numbers that cannot be accurately estimated. River herring stocks are currently in a precipitous, coast-wide decline, and more data and protections are critically needed.

The process needs to start at the NEFMC, and the first critical step is to make herring a workplan priority. In 2008 the Council should amend the herring and groundfish plans to include:

• Midwater trawl closures

•- No midwater trawling in Groundfish Closed Areas

•- No midwater trawling within 50 miles of shore

•- No midwater trawling in areas with high fixed gear interactions

• A weigh master system that provides real-time TAC monitoring
• Increased observer coverage levels
• Maximized retention of catch and bycatch by ending the practice of dumping bags at sea
• Expansion of the midwater trawl prohibition to include inshore waters off of Cape Cod and down to Long Island
• Bycatch caps monitored in real-time

How to Help

Having a healthy herring resource is critical to nearly all of New England's commercial fisheries. The purse seine fishery for herring coexisted in harmony with all the other fisheries in New England for decades. In 2008 the Council must make it a priority to fix the problems that industrial midwater and pair trawling have created - before it's too late. Please help by downloading, endorsing and submitting the action alert we have posted here or a letter in your own words. At a minimum, send it to the three decision makers listed. If you are from a New England state, consider copying your Governor so that the critical NEFMC vote controlled by your state will be positive. Also copy This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it so we have a record of your correspondence. Thanks for your support.

Address correspondence to:

Patricia Kurkul, Regional Administrator
NOAA/NMFS
One Blackburn Drive
Gloucester, MA 01930
978/281-9250/Fax:978/281-9207
email: This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it

Bill Hogarth, Assistant Administrator for Fisheries
NOAA/NMFS
1315 East West Hwy, Room 14222
Silver Spring, MD 20910
Tel: 301-713-2239, Fax: 301-713-1940
Email: This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it

Sample Letter (Download or Cut and Paste)

 herring_alliance_action_alert 19/10/2007,09:07 20.17 Kb

Patricia Kurkul, Regional Administrator
NOAA/NMFS
One Blackburn Drive
Gloucester, MA 01930

Dear Chairman Pappalardo and Regional Administrator Kurkul,

I write to encourage the New England Fishery Management Council (NEFMC) to make Atlantic herring a management priority in 2008. Herring are a keystone species and the key to a healthy marine ecosystem in New England.  Many species of marine mammals, sea birds, and fish depend on abundant populations of herring for their health and survival.

Currently, herring management and monitoring is inadequate to:

•(1)    assess bycatch in the industrial midwater trawl fishery

•(2)    account for the needs of predators that feed on herring

•(3)    determine the catch and discards of herring

Industrial midwater trawlers, towing nets longer than a football field, are currently allowed to operate with almost no observer coverage.  Even when they do have observers they are allowed to dump entire nets at sea without the observers ever seeing the fish and other marine life that dies and sinks to the bottom.  What the observers are allowed to see has been mechanically presorted with grids and grates, sifting out anything large.  This lack of accounting for bycatch is unacceptable and completely against the spirit of the Sustainable Fisheries Act.

In addition, to maintain a healthy ecosystem, catch levels need to take into account the needs of all the predators of herring and the catch and discards of herring need to be quantified.  To accomplish this, accurate discard rates need to be determined through a more robust observer program and landings need to be weighed at the dock.

To fix the herring fishery, NEFMC should initiate action in 2008 that includes:

• Requirements to bring all fish aboard for sampling (no dumping of bags at sea)
• A system of setting annual catch limits that accounts for the growing needs of predators
• A mandatory weighmaster system that reports catch and bycatch on a real-time basis

Herring are the backbone of the ocean ecosystem.  It is unacceptable to allow such an important stock to be managed in such an improper fashion. I urge you and the NEFMC to put herring on the priority list for 2008 so that management of this vital resource can be addressed in the coming year.

Sincerely,

CC: Bill Hogarth;