>>Fishermen's Voice Monthly Newspaper, Gouldsboro Maine

Alewife harvesting equipment, Sullivan, Maine, 2007. The scale and type of alewife harvesting equipment varies. Most of it is simple gear that one or a few harvesters can handle. It is low impact gear. Many harvesters are as much engaged in helping fish over waterway obstacles as they are in catching them. Every fish that makes it to spawning ground will produce many more potential returnees. Fishermen’s Voice Photo

For Maine, the commercial harvest will continue because the state has a management plan. “We lose nothing because we already practice sustainable harvesting,” said Jeffrey Pierce of Alewife Harvesters of Maine. “It’s why we harvest 18 runs and not 41 [the total number of municipalities with alewife fisheries].” Pierce credited DMR’s Terry Stockwell for holding his ground at the ASMFC meetings. If it wasn’t for Maine pushing to keep healthy runs open, everyone on the East Coast would be shut down, said Pierce.

Amendment 2 was in response to widespread concern regarding the decline of river herring stocks. While many populations of blueback herring and alewife, collectively known as river herring, are in decline or remain depressed at stable levels, lack of fishery-dependent and independent data makes it difficult to ascertain the status of river herring stocks coastwide, according to the ASMFC.

DMR uses harvester-provided data to predict population size and structure in future years. Harvesters are working with scientists to record data such as adult and juvenile size, migration, and take scale samples for analysis of species (alewives are difficult to distinguish from blueback herring), age, spawning frequency, and seasonal growth. DMR biologist Mike Brown said that scale sampling is important for understanding the health of each run and for developing a management plan that is scientifically based.

The research is also yielding some surprises.

“In our scale sampling we had three seven-time repeat spawners, which is unheard of,” said Pierce, who manages the Mill Stream run in Dresden. “It means these fish are living much longer than we thought.” Pierce also said tagging data show that fish stay with their cohort but the timing of runs changes from year to year. “I figured they would return around the same time. I realize we don’t know anything about these fish. They constantly amaze us.”

According to the Alewife Harvesters of Maine, the state’s commercial alewife fishery employs over 300 people and earns an estimated $600,000 in revenues in a rural economic region where many people work multiple jobs in the natural resource sector. Now that the Amendment 2 process is over, alewife harvesters are shifting their focus to fish passage, especially in the Penobscot basin. The harvesters and towns are primary partners in efforts to maintain fish ladders and fish passage around dams, ensuring access to spawning habitat.

“Alewife harvesters in Maine are stewards of the runs they harvest, which are some of the largest and longest record runs in the state. If the harvesters are not allowed to fish these streams, their efforts will be focused on other sources of income,” said Pierce.

In Maine, at least, the alewives seem to be responding to all the attention. Last year’s harvest totalled 1.2 million pounds, according to Mike Brown of the DMR. This year’s run was in full force as this story was being written, and all indications were that 2009 would also be a strong year.