Big boats with lots of muscle and roving ways could one day precipitate a herring crash if something isn’t done to control the relatively unregulated fishery.
    Herring is not an overfished species and two assessments, although coming up with widely disparate biomass figures, show stocks in general are doing well.
    But the industry is concerned increased capacity of boats using trawl gear, as well as the potential for greater numbers of boats, could threaten stocks in the future, and has already become a problem in Area 1A, the inshore Gulf of Maine.
    “The process to do something for limited access started in 1999, and now we’re looking at 2006,” said Mary Beth Tooley, executive director of the East Coast Pelagic Association (ECPA). “It’s a capacity issue. Area 1A has closed early every year since the plan was implemented.”

    Driving along an icy road behind a truck spreading salt may not have many thinking about salt as a valuable commodity. At least not valuable enough to be used like money, as it is today by Ethiopian nomads.
    There may be comfort in knowing the salt is keeping those balding tires on the road, but who would at the same time think people have gone to prison for salt smuggling. Yet phrases and words such as “not worth his salt,” “red herring” and “salary” are remnants of and clues to salt’s once more prominent place in human life.
    Salt, it’s always on the table at home and in restaurants, a handful of packets of it are thrown in with a bag of take out. As available as paper napkins, but cheaper, it may be the cheapest thing in the supermarket. Were it not for the talk of low salt diets it might not be given a thought, it’s just there, almost like water and air.

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