Island herring managers say they are optimistic for the dwindling species, following a recent decision by a regional fishing agency to pass a number of measures intended to help rebuild both sea and river herring populations and reduce the bycatch of river herring.
The New England Fishery Management Council (NEFMC) passed three motions in June, tasking a team to assess the data availability for time and area closures, catch caps, and bycatch estimates, and develop changes that would encourage restoration and co-existence between the sea and river herring fisheries.
River herring, once a vibrant fishery for food, bait, and fertilizer, have long ceased migrating to Island ponds in large droves, and can no longer be harvested anywhere across the state. Island runs, which annually ferry herring to their natal ponds to spawn, have seen an exponential decrease in population.
Some Island stewards of the runs attribute the decline to climate change, habitat destruction, and predation, but most fiercely to overfishing by offshore sea herring trawlers that net river herring as bycatch, the collateral capture of another species. Sea herring are bigger than their river cousins, live only in saltwater, and remain a lucrative commercial fishery.
“You can’t possess this animal in the state of Massachusetts, but you can catch it as bycatch by the metric ton,” Jacobs said.
Instigated by a large number of concerns over the dwindling resource, the council met on June 24 and carried three motions that ask a development team to do further research into developing new time and area closures for the sea herring fishery in the south coastal area and Georges Bank, as well as to revise river herring catch-cap values to reflect the shrinking populations. It also carried a motion, with one opposition, that called for recommendations on improvements to accuracy on catch estimates of river herring by the sea herring fishery.
Though an amendment, called amendment 10, would affect the sea herring management plan in name, the council’s motions primarily focused on river herring.
It’s not immediate action, but for local stewards, the willingness to move forward with research is a step in the right direction.
“We’re not out of the woods yet,” Andrew Jacobs, laboratory manager and environmental technician for the Wampanoag Tribe of Gay Head (Aquinnah), said. “It’s wonderful that they’re willing to look at the problem.”
In April, The Times reported that the river herring population has sharply declined at runs between Edgartown and Aquinnah. An environmental laboratory team for the tribe, which sees river herring as an important cultural and sustenance resource, and is the only group allowed to harvest river herring, counted only 8,709 herring as of May 23 at the tribe’s run connecting Menemsha Pond and Squibnocket Pond. That was half as many as the same time last year.
It’s not a new problem, but is one that seems to be getting worse. The state placed a moratorium on the harvesting of river herring in 2005 to aid the declining population, but it has never bounced back. Donovan McElligatt, shellfish constable and herring warden for Oak Bluffs, likened it to a state of emergency. McElligatt oversees the Richard F. Madeiras Herring Run, where herring swim from Vineyard Sound through Lagoon Pond and into Upper Lagoon Pond.
Cheryl Andrews-Maltais, chairwoman of the tribe, wrote a letter to NEFMC on April 22, asking the council to include management measures that prohibit commercial fishing of sea herring in the south coastal area and Georges Bank, create a new inshore coastal trawling zone with a buffer from the Island’s shores, and lower bycatch caps.
She also urged the council to reinstate onboard and portside observers on sea herring trawlers, to track river herring bycatch.
The council’s recent motions touch on each of those points.
Jacobs was happy to hear that a lot of the sea herring fishermen are in favor of bycatch observers, as they currently self-report bycatch. The problem is, as usual, money. Who’s going to pay the observers? Two different monitoring programs were disbanded after funds were depleted.
This year, the Cape Cod midwater trawl had a catch cap of 32.4 metric tons of river herring and shad, another anadromous fish, but has already exceeded that by 3.8 metric tons, according to tracking by the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). The cumulative catch equates to almost 80,000 pounds, which means about 160,000 river herring or shad, each around half a pound, were caught.
The NEFMC has previously tried to mitigate the problem.
Amendment 8, which set inshore midwater trawl-restricted areas, was initially approved by the NEFMC, and implemented by NOAA in March 2022. But a court order found that the amendment wasn’t factually based. “It was found to be based on people’s testimony, rather than facts,” Jamie Cournane, lead fishery analyst for Atlantic herring at NEFMC, said.
The council decided to revisit concerns for sea herring management, and started the process for amendment 10, the newest proposed revision to the management plan, last year.
“They were very specific on laying out reasons why the council’s original action wouldn’t hold up. We don’t want to go back and do all this work for the same result,” Janice Plante, public affairs officer for the NEFMC, said.
The council’s motions task the Herring plan development team (PDT) to collect and analyze data to draft options for an amended management plan. The team plans to work on the motions this summer and fall. They’ll also receive a river herring stock assessment in August from the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Council (ASMFC) to aid the research. The PDT will give a progress report to the council later in the year.
Jacobs and the laboratory team also gathered data they hope will aid the council’s decision to approve the amendment.
In order to help determine that Island herring has been caught as bycatch by sea herring trawlers, Jacobs and the rest of the laboratory team collected two genetic samples from 70 herring over four nights this past spring. They sent one fin clipping to the department of ecology and evolutionary biology at the University of California Santa Cruz, so researchers can compare their genetic makeup to bycatch, and the other to the U.S. Geological Survey, the government’s largest science agency, to compare the genetic composition of the Aquinnah herring run to those caught elsewhere along the Atlantic Seaboard.
The analysis can take months, but Jacobs said they’ll provide the council with the findings as soon as they’re available.
Plante said there’s a possibility that the PDT will draft alternatives for the management plan when the council meets in December, and by January, the council can decide to approve draft alternatives for further development. This may be put off by the PDT’s other obligations for the development of sea herring catch quotas for the next three years, which are turning out to be more time-consuming than initially planned, Plante told The Times Monday night.
“It’s a long process, because it’s a really big action,” Plante said. “Amendment 10 was always envisioned to be a multiyear undertaking, so this really isn’t putting us off-track under our original targets.”
Even once the council approves a proposal, it has to send the new management plans to NOAA, which implements, monitors, and enforces fishery regulations, for another approval. The whole process can take several years.
Regardless, Jacobs is happy with the council’s decision. He feels that the willingness to do new research and contemplate new policies have the potential to bring both sea and river herring populations back.
“You bring them both back, everyone’s going to succeed, everyone’s going to be successful,” he said. If runs overflowed with herring and the moratorium lifted, Jacobs said that ecologically and economically, the Island would benefit. Local runs full of bait that could be legally caught would make the bottom line cheaper, he said.
“We have had a major decline in this fishery that for some reason we have not been able to learn from,” Jacobs said. “We need to put all of our effort into research and make sure we’re managing this appropriately.”
“It appears on the surface as an absolute win,” Jacobs said. “But it’s not a reason to stop the fight just yet.”
wow this is excellent reporting thank you. I will save this article for reference, I agree it’s a very important issue and any momentum behind more research and actionable remedies is welcome.
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