Amendment to Protect Herring as Forage Moves Forward

by Laurie Schreiber

PORTLAND—The New England Fishery Management Council (NEFMC) moved forward Amendment 8 to the herring management plan, at its June meeting.

Amendment 8 goals are to: account for the role of Atlantic herring within the ecosystem, including as forage; stabilize the fishery at a level designed to achieve optimum yield; and address localized depletion in inshore waters.

The plan uses a new Management Strategy Evaluation (MSE) process to develop a long-term control rule for specifying the herring fishery’s Acceptable Biological Catch (ABC).

At the meeting, some speakers said the plan’s proposed performance metrics, an outcome of an initial workshop in May on the topic, were confusing.

“The list of ideas under the performance metrics represent everything including the kitchen sink, basically, and don’t necessarily reflect any one option over another,” said Lund’s Fisheries’ Jeff Kaelin. “It recalls the broad discussion where literally everything everyone suggested was adopted by the group at this stage.”

Erica Fuller, with the Herring Alliance, said the alliance supports including all recommendations by all stakeholders.

NEFMC also reviewed correspondence regarding the amendment.

Beth Goettel, refuge manager with the Maine Coastal Islands National Wildlife Refuge, wrote that the refuge seeks to ensure the continued availability of herring as a high-lipid quality food source to support nesting birds, by setting catch limits on herring.

“Although our birds do eat a wide variety of other fish, on some islands in some years in the past, herring has made up close to 80% of what they are feeding their chicks, with corresponding high productivity rates in those years,” Goettel wrote.

For the American Bluefin Tuna Association, executive director Rich Ruais wrote, “It is important for the MSE process to be 100% transparent to all at the beginning of this process and consequently we believe the widest possible net should be thrown for the purpose of accumulating stakeholder input and confidence. This includes the localized resource depletion issue for all concerned about adequate forage.”

Ruais noted that Atlantic herring is a primary food source for such species as bluefin, silver hake, pollock, cod spiny dogfish, fin whale, minke whale, humpback whale, pilot whale, harbor porpoise, white-sided dolphin, harbor seal and grey seal.

Ruais said ABTA recommended an MSE approach that establishes an ecosystem-based strategy through the development of a “multispecies/multi-sector MSE” model or a “limited ecosystem MSE” model.

“A limited ecosystem MSE” is more appropriate but will no doubt engender conflicts among stakeholders and will certainly add to the complexity of the MSE exercise,” he wrote. “It would also have the benefit of providing clear recognition of the costs to the ecosystem and fisheries from overabundant low value predators and overpopulated marine mammals.”

The MSE should also incorporate a localized resource depletion parameter to ensure herring provides sufficient forage for fished predator species in locations where foraging has historically taken place, he wrote.

Michael Colleary, a Pembroke, Mass., resident and an associate member of the Stellwagen Bank Charter Boat Association, wrote, “This note is to express my interest in protecting Herring from being overfished by large commercial vessels. The forage fish like Herring are a resource that are a foundation to so many marine species. I fish commercially for Bluefin Tuna as a Crew member and Recreationally as a customer of Charter Boats. The livelihoods of so many are impacted when fish like Herring extracted in mass quantities. Please consider this message a request to keep Large Commercial Trawlers offshore.”

David Waldrip, president of the Stellwagen Bank Charter Boat Association, wrote to support efforts to protect herring as forage in inshore waters, and to encourage NEFMC to address “the specific problem of inshore depletion caused by the midwater trawl fleet.”

Waldrip continued, “Though the summer buffer zone (Purse Seine/Fixed Gear Only rule) has done an enormous amount of good, it has not been enough to protect the areas our members rely on. First, many problems occur every October when the summer buffer zone expires and the boats can come back in. Last year was a prime example, as they fished hard around the tuna fleet off of southern Jeffrey’s Ledge as soon as the area reopened. Then, after the Area 1A quota was filled, they fished for mackerel for weeks on Stellwagen through exemptions they are now being given under the Research Set Aside program—and they did so with almost no observer coverage. Second, these big boats can fish just miles off Cape Cod year-round, another area that is critical to many of our members. This happened most recently in May.

“Instead of fishing well offshore, where you would expect 150-foot pair trawlers to fish, they are constantly fishing right off the beach. And they often choose areas that are supporting fleets of small inshore fishermen at the time. While the exact location may change from year to year, the result is always the same. The herring is wiped out, thepredators are driven away, and the fishermen suffer. The trawlers also cause long-term problems for the area that is chosen-these areas are not the same for years after they are hit hard. This fleet has shown time after time that they cannot use this gear without hurting everyone else in the area.”

Waldrip said NEFMC can end to the situation by keeping the midwater trawl fleet out of inshore waters year-round.

NEFMC also received a petition, with over 550 signatures, that asked NEFMC to “keep the largest vessels in the herring fishery offshore. This will help Atlantic herring by limiting industrial fishing in their spawning grounds, protect river herring when they are in our coastal waters in the spring and fall, and allow predators like striped bass and tuna to have food available in the times and places they need it most.”

The petition requested alternatives in Amendment 8 that would prohibit the use of all midwater trawl gear in a “buffer zone” that extends 50 miles offshore for the entire New England coast, including Southern New England; implement a control rule that accounts for herring’s unique role in the ecosystem as a food source for large fish, seabirds, and marine mammals when setting catch limits; and include a range of options for a target biomass and a cutoff that stops directed herring fishing when biomass gets too low.

NEFMC expects to hold a second MSE workshop in December. Public hearings on Amendment 8 are expected to occur in 2017, for implementation in 2018.