Steep Declines in River Herring

Federal protection snarled by lack of data

by Laurie Schreiber

PORTSMOUTH, N.H. – River herring and shad are anadromous fish that split their time between freshwater and saltwater environments.

As federally designated species of concerns due to factors such as directed fishing, incidental fishing/bycatch, habitat loss, predation, and climate change, ocean hazards include being swept up by industrial fishing boats that are harvesting Atlantic herring and other fish.

In recent years, environmentalists and others asked the New England Fishery Management Council (NEFMC) to include river herring and shad (RH/S) as stocks in the Atlantic herring fishery. That designation would initiate federal management of RH/S stocks as fisheries—specifically, as bycatch in the Atlantic herring fishery, and could have resulted in additional protection for the stocks.

But at its January meeting, NEFMC decided against the action and opted to revisit the issue in three years.

Greater Atlantic Regional Fisheries Office (GARFO) chief John Bullard said the triple pillars of fishery management—science, regulation, and enforcement—are already hampered by limited funds.

“Making something a stock in the fishery is not a magic wand,” Bullard said. “It doesn’t all of a sudden solve these three pieces.”

NEFMC herring plan coordinator Lori Steele said the difficulty is compounded by the complexity of factors specific to RH/S. These include their presence in local, state, and federal domains; and issues such as water quality and fish passage that are regulated by states, all making it difficult to fold RH/S into a federal fishery management plan (FMP) or set up a separate federal plan for the stocks. Adding these stocks to the Atlantic herring fishery or initiating a separate FMP is likely to result in a reallocation of resources away from other management plans, she said.

Peter Baker—representing the Pew Charitable Trusts and the Herring Alliance, comprising about 95 nonprofit groups from Maine to North Carolina—condemned NEFMC’s decision as demonstrating “a lack of interest and commitment to stop river herring from eventually going extinct.”

“River herring” refers to species of alewife (Alosa pseudoharengus) and blueback herring (Alosa aestivalis). “Shad” refers to species of American shad (Alosa sapidissima) and hickory shad (Alosa mediocris). They spend the majority of their adult lives at sea, only returning to freshwater in the spring to spawn. Historically, RH/S spawned in virtually every river and tributary along the coast. The oceanic ranges of the species extend from Nova Scotia to Florida.

According to a 2012 stock assessment performed by the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission (ASMFC), examining 52 stocks of alewife and blueback herring, the status of 23 stocks was determined to be depleted relative to historic levels, and one stock was increasing. Statuses of the remaining 28 stocks could not be determined.

A coastwide American shad assessment in 2007 found the stocks are at all-time lows and do not appear to be recovering, NEFMC said. According to NEFMC, primary causes for stock decline are a combination of overfishing, pollution, and habitat loss due to dam construction.

“In recent years, coastwide harvests have been on the order of 500-900 metric tons, nearly two orders of magnitude lower than in the late 19th century,” NEFMC said.

Restoration options include a reduction in fishing, enhancement of dam passage, mitigation of dam-related fish mortality, stocking, and habitat restoration.

Currently, directed fisheries for river herring and shad occur almost exclusively in state waters and are therefore managed by the ASMFC, which in 2009 required states to close all RH/S fisheries by Jan. 1, 2012, as a precautionary measure, with exceptions for systems with a sustainable fishery.

River herring was identified as a “species of concern” by the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) in 2006. Populations have exhibited drastic declines throughout much of their range. For example, at the fishway at the

Holyoke Dam on the Connecticut River, river herring dwindled from approximately 600,000 in 1985 to only 1,300 in 2003. The Gilbert Stuart run in Rhode Island declined from 290,000 fish in 2000 to 17,000 in 2004, a 95 percent decline in abundance. According to NMFS, factors for decline include loss of habitat due to decreased access to spawning areas from the construction of dams and other impediments to migration; habitat degradation; fishing; and increased predation due to recovering striped bass populations.

According to NMFS, “The river herring fishery is one of the oldest documented fisheries in North America, dating back over 350 years in some areas. Until the

late 1960s, it was exclusively a U.S. inshore fishery.” In the late 1960s, distant-water fleets began fishing for river herring off the Mid-Atlantic coast. Countries such as

Cuba, Bulgaria, Germany, the Netherlands, Poland, Spain, and the former USSR reported landings of river herring in the 1960s, ‘70s, and ‘80s.

Principal fishing gears used in the direct river herring fisheries are fish weirs, pound nets, and gill nets. River herring are taken as bycatch in other ocean fisheries in various gear types including gillnets, bottom otter trawls, and menhaden purse seines, NMFS said. NMFS said accurate population estimates for most river systems in which river herring are present are not available.

“River herring populations are declining throughout their range and yet, no single factor can be identified as being responsible for this decline,” NMFS said. “As such, it is necessary to determine the extent to which habitat loss/destruction, alterations in flow and other important habitat characteristics, increased predation by recovering species such as striped bass, bycatch in ocean fisheries such as the Atlantic herring fishery, and climactic changes are affecting these species. Additional genetic analyses are also needed in order to determine if distinct populations exist.”

NEFMC developed a management action in March 2014 established RH/S catch caps for vessels participating in the Atlantic herring fishery.

In the end, NEFMC determined that RH/S should be removed from its list of management priorities for the Atlantic herring fishery for now, but it would revisit its decision in three years.

Erica Fuller, an attorney with Earthjustic, said the difficulty of collecting data for RH/S doesn’t relieve NEFMC of the obligation to do so and to manage the stocks.

“ASMFC management has not rebuilt these populations yet, and cannot do so without more effective management in federal waters,” Fuller said.

“The fish is caught, it’s landed, it’s sold. We have a legal mandate to manage it,” agreed one NEFMC member.