Due to another setback the New England Fishery Management Council (NEFMC) was not able to make their recommendation for Amendment 1 to the Atlantic Herring Management Plan to the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) earlier this month. Following the November 2005 meeting the council came up with a draft of Amendment 1 to the Herring FMP: Summary of Final Management Measures, which can be found on their website www.nefmc.org/herring.
NEFMC will now meet later this month to iron out further questions that were raised, one of which is the qualifying time period for all limited access permits. The meeting is scheduled to take place at the Holiday Inn by the Bay in Portland, Maine from January 31 through February 2. There is a chance now that this amendment will not make it in time to be implemented for the 2006 fishing year.
The real question is whether these changes will be enough to protect herring in the long run. Understanding the complexities of fisheries management is only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to understanding herring and the effects of the herring fishery. There are nearly as many perspectives as there are players from fisherman to policy makers to scientists. Herring are not only a major player in the center of the food web for many species of fish, mammals, birds and lobsters, they can also be equated to the web of jobs that depend on herring for a livelihood.
Jim Wilson, Professor of Marine Sciences and Resource Economics at the University of Maine, states that herring spawned all along the coast of Maine as far west as the Kennebec and now it is not clear that there are any spawning grounds left along the coast.
Herring are anadromous, meaning they spend most of their lives in salt water, but return to freshwater streams to spawn. “Historical records indicate that Maine rivers and bays were full of alewives and herring. Shifting from small scale fishing to large trawlers has changed the spatial patterns of stocks which have left inshore spawning grounds,” says Wilson.
Wilson continues, “On the broad scale the herring fishery looks to be thriving, but for how long with the current fishing technology and with the loss of inshore spawning grounds.”
Research in the Bay of Fundy by Rob Stevenson, a fisheries scientist at the Department of Fisheries and Oceans at St. Andrews Biological Station revealed that herring stocks home to specific sites and if those stocks are depleted those sites and stocks are lost.
How the loss of herring could affect other species also worries scientists. “When the herring fishery crashed in Newfoundland this had a dramatic affect on cod, which were found to be basically starving,” said Ted Ames, scientist and former groundfisherman. “Something similar happened on Georges Bank where the herring fishery was destroyed by foreign mid-water trawling fleets 25 years ago and it took nearly 18 years for herring to recover. This also affected the haddock fishery in that haddock require high levels of fats and proteins for spawning that they get from eating herring row or eggs. When the herring were gone the haddock stock also became depleted.” Groundfish such as haddock and cod, which are being nursed back to recovery, spend their early juvenile stage in the midwater column. Because of this and other reasons midwater trawling makes Ames and many others nervous not only for herring, but for the survival other groundfish as well. “The key is where to trawl when talking about coastal self nursery areas,” he says.
Other scientists such as Les Kaufman, Professor of Biology at Boston University, feel strongly about cyclic events in fisheries. Kaufman states that there seems to be a correlation between sand lance and other species, when there is a boom of sand lance the mackerel and herring fishery is down and then the opposite occurs nearly seven years later. Sand lance is now in a decline and herring seems to be up. “It would be nice to understand what is driving these cycles. The problem is with management if you over fish at the wrong time you will kill the system, timing is crucial. In coming years we will have richer information to make wiser decisions,” says Kaufman.
Kaufman is not alone in his view about current fisheries management practices. “Maintaining sustainable fisheries with management at the local level is key. It is a matter of how to use our technology and not to destroy our resources or the food web that the rest of the animals rely on,” says Ames.
Jennifer Litteral is the Marine Programs Officer at the Island Institute.