I’m a lifelong fisherman and Mainer and your recent story about the closing of the sardine cannery in Prospect Harbor, Maine has made me feel that I should add my thoughts (“Closure of last U.S. sardine cannery ends way of life in Prospect Harbor,” The Working Waterfront, April issue).
It is well documented that it’s terrible that so many jobs will be lost in an area with very little opportunity. There is also another side to this story that should be told.
The fisheries management council manages all fisheries through science, and the recent stock assessment on herring shows a possible problem with the herring stock. With a high uncertainty in the assessment, the science center recommends a reduced quota; this gives federal managers very little room in which to work.
There is also a major issue, in my opinion, with the way these fish are caught. Large trawl ships, called midwater trawlers, use large nets with very small mesh. Some of these nets are so large that two ships are needed to pull these nets though the water fast enough to catch the herring. The catching power of this type of fishing gear can have the ability to fish out the quota at very fast rate.
In my opinion these practices are not good for the fish or the fishing communities that rely on the sea for their livelihoods. Another problem with this type of fishing gear is the catching of unwanted fish, called bycatch. Bycatch can consist of groundfish stocks such as haddock, cod and pollock. Additionally, at times marine mammals may be accidently caught.
In the past there has been a practice of dumping or slipping a set of fish when it contains too much bycatch-this behavior has to change. In the not so distant past if a dumping event happened, those fish were not counted against the quota, and I think they should have been. This has been due to the lack of at-sea monitoring that needs to be in place in the future. If all the dumped fish were accounted for, the stock could be in better shape than is currently estimated, but with insufficient data, scientific uncertainty rules the day.
If there were more science available for this stock, then perhaps all the people that rely on herring for a livelihood, such as lobstermen who use herring as bait for lobsters and canneries like Stinson’s in Prospect Harbor, wouldn’t be facing the cuts necessary to help protect these stocks. These forage fish are a very important resource and support not only people but also ground fish stocks, striped bass, blue fish, whales, seabirds and other marine mammals. The herring resource demands to be looked after better in the future.
Mid-water and pair-trawl gear is also used in habitat areas that are closed to other fishermen. This is a thing that makes no sense to me, why is this type of gear allowed in closed spawning areas? This practice needs to be changed in my opinion. Closed spawning areas should be left closed to all gear types. This will allow our fisheries to recover more quickly with no interactions with gear in critical fish habitat and spawning areas.
More sustainable types of fishing gear have been used for hundreds of years to catch herring. During this time, the fishery has had ups and downs, but has sustained itself, and unwanted catch has historically been very low.
The type of sustainable gear I’m referring to is the use of purse seine or weirs. A purse seine is a net that is fished on the surface of the water at night when the herring naturally rise to the top of the water and unwanted catch can be released alive. A weir is a fixed type of fishing gear that the fish come to on their own around islands and coves or inlets with very little bycatch, that can also be very easily released.
I think that if the herring stocks were in better shape, then perhaps Stinson’s owners, Bumble Bee, might have kept the cannery open. But personally I think the closing of the cannery was going to happen regardless.
It’s too bad that Bumble Bee used the excuse that fisheries managers have put them out of business due to a lower quota compared to the quotas that they have enjoyed in years past. But big companies do things like this to protect their bottom line. With luck, this factory can be used for something else and bring jobs back to this part of Maine.
Gary Libby is a groundfisherman and a member of the Midcoast Fisherman’s Association