| My View: How you can help restore Ipswich River herring run |
|
The Salem News The Ipswich River Watershed Association's 12th annual river herring count recently got underway. (River herring refers to both alewives and blueback herring.) The bad news is that thousands of herring should return to the Ipswich River each year to spawn, but we are lucky if we count more than 100 to 200 herring in a season. A coalition of government agencies, non-profits and volunteers has been working to restore river herring to the Ipswich River since the mid-1990s. For about 10 years, herring from other rivers were stocked in the Ipswich to try to rebuild the herring run. The initial results were promising, showing that this approach is feasible. But the numbers of herring have not rebounded yet. For more than a century, dams blocked herring from reaching their spawning areas, almost destroying the fishery. A new fish ladder, built in the mid-1990s, partially solved this problem by allowing some herring to get past the Ipswich Mills Dam. Of course the ladder doesn't work as well as a free-flowing river would, and some other important fish species, like smelt, can't use fish ladders. The second problem in the Ipswich River is that, if flows are too low during the fall, young herring can become stranded and can't get back out to the ocean. When this happens, many of the young fish don't survive. Fortunately, we are making progress in solving this problem, and it has not been a factor in the past few years. The third problem is more recent. Midwater trawlers began fishing in New England in the mid-1990s. These industrial fishing vessels haul small-mesh nets as big as a football field, catching everything in their path. While they are fishing for other species such as Atlantic (sea) herring, they often catch and kill river herring as unintentional "bycatch." Up to a quarter-million river herring have been caught in a single tow. At the same time, the largest river herring run in Massachusetts in 2008 — the Monument River in Bourne — was estimated at 102,728 fish. The potential of industrial-type fishing practices for wiping out an entire river's herring run is alarming. You can make a difference. Join the Ipswich River Watershed Association's herring count volunteers to help document how many herring are returning. Voice your concerns to the chair of the Atlantic Herring Oversight Committee of the New England Fishery Management Council. Let him know that better monitoring of, limits on and accountability for river herring bycatch are necessary in the Atlantic herring fishery. Closing some areas to trawling during critical times of the year could help minimize the river herring bycatch, as well. For more information, e-mail IRWA at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it and visit www.herringalliance.org. • • • |
