Herring Protections Seek Ecosystem/Fisheries Balance

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“There are severe economic consequences with whatever control rule we pick.”– David Pierce. “The ability of small ports to access herring as bait will be greatly diminished. It’s the smaller communities that will feel a much greater impact with these measures.” – Pat Keliher, DMR. Fishermen’s Voice photo.

“That’s close to no fishery,” Weiner said.

“We’re struggling to understand what any of these alternatives are going to mean for the lobster fishery,” said Patrice McCarron, executive director of the Maine Lobstermen’s Association. “We predict it’s going to be devastating.”

NEFMC also decided to ban boats using midwater trawl gear from within 12 miles of the shore from the Canadian border to Connecticut. If approved by the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS), midwater trawling would be prohibited inside that zone year-round.

“This will kill us,” said one fisherman, who runs a midwater trawler out of Gloucester, Mass. “We won’t survive this….We go where the fish are. Any buffers will create more problems with bycatch. It’s going to make everything worse than it already is. Any one of the buffers you’re proposing will definitely put us out of business.”

NEFMC also asked NMFS to develop an in-season action to set 2019 specifications for the herring fishery.

Control rule

According to a NEFMC press release, the acceptable biological catch (ABC) control rule is a formula that will be used to set annual catch limits. NEFMC considered close to a dozen alternatives that would allow different levels of fishing mortality depending on the estimated level of herring biomass in the ecosystem. In the end, NEFMC adopted a revised version of Alternative 4B, which is a control rule that caps overall fishing mortality at 80 percent of “sustainable levels.” Previously, fishermen were allowed to harvest up to 100 percent of sustainable catch levels. But under the proposed control rule, a portion of the available catch would be set aside to explicitly account for the role of Atlantic herring as forage within the ecosystem. The new control rule is also intended to better address uncertainty in year-to-year variation in biomass estimates.

“While the control rule will reduce catches in the near term, it has a lower probability of resulting in overfishing than previous methods used to set catch limits,” the release said.

The actions are part of the Amendment 8 to the Atlantic herring fishery management plan. According to NEFMC documents, the goals of the plans are:

• To account for the role of Atlantic herring within the ecosystem, including its role as forage;

• To stabilize the fishery at a level designed to achieve optimum yield;

• To address localized depletion in inshore waters.

According to NEFMC, commenters who preferred the status quo, when it came to the control rule, had the following observations:

• Current processes are sufficient to account for herring’s role in the ecosystem.

• Atlantic herring recruitment and abundance are more influenced by environmental factors.

• More conservative management would prevent achieving optimum yield in the fishery.

• Localized depletion is poorly defined and scientifically unproved.

• Herring migrates too much for localized depletion to occur.

• There may be unintended consequences of additional restrictions; shifting effort to other gear types, areas and seasons may do nothing to resolve the concerns that prompted Amendment 8.

Comments in support of taking action included:

• Need precaution given 2018 Atlantic herring assessment.

• Need to ensure enough supply of herring to benefit predators and all fisheries that depend on herring.

• Concerned about river herring and shad depletion.

•Federal fishery undermines inland restoration efforts;

• Unfair that herring fishery catches river herring and shade as bycatch while directed river herring and shad fisheries are prohibited in most areas.

• Localized depletion by, and/or user conflicts with, midwater trawl vessels is occurring.

• Hope for more herring nearshore.

FV Providian, Portland, ME. “Say the other dealers, combined, come up with 10 million pounds. Say we mange to cut our use in half. We’re still 40 million pounds short. There’s no one other than the lobster industry that has more at stake with having long-term sustainability of the herring resource.” – Patrice McCarron, MLA. © Joel Woods photo.

• Some saw Amendment 8 as a matter of fairness, wanting smaller-scale (predator) fisheries to survive.

According to NEFMC documents, the alternative chosen would allow 21,26 metric tons of catch in 2019, 16,131 mt in 2020, and 30,659 in 2021.

The original proposal called for capping overall fishing mortality at 70 percent of sustainable levels. But NEFMC’s herring committee voted to revise that to 80 percent.

“I thought setting aside 30 percent for forage was too much,” said NEFMC member Doug Grout.

Erica Fuller with the Conservation Law Foundation said the foundation tentatively supported the motion, but at 70 percent.

“The stock’s in trouble and there are some red flags, including the fact that, in the last 10 years, recruitment is lower than the last crash in the ‘70s and ‘80s,” Fuller said. Catch of age-1 fish is decreasing and weights-at-age are decreasing, she said. “This population is stressed and we need to start building resiliency rather than make short-term decisions.”

“We’re all in this room to do the best we can to build the herring population,” said Richard Hittinger, 1st vice president of the Rhode Island Saltwater Anglers Association. “Everybody who fishes for them, as well as those of use who would like to use them as forage fish – we all want to see the number increase. Everyone will benefit. We believe they’re key forage fish.” Hittinger said the species his association’s members fish for eat herring as a major part of their diet. He said the association favored Alternative 2, which would prioritize herring predator forage needs but would mean more-severe cuts to the fishery.

“We favor Alternative 2 because we think it’s the only alternative that adequately addresses herring as a forage fish, that adequately looks at their place in the ecosystem,” said Hittinger. “But Alternative 2 would effectively shut down the fishery for three years and it’s politically difficult to do that. But we did that with striped bass, and striped bass was a big success story after we were required to shut down the fishery.”

Mary Beth Tooley, with the O’Hara Corporation in Rockland, said that setting an ABC for three years was not prudent. “The correct choice would be the status quo,” she said.

McCarron said the association opposed Alternative 4B.

“There’s no one other than the lobster industry that has more at stake with having long-term sustainability of the herring resource,” McCarron said. All of Amendment 8’s alternatives, she said, “are extremely conservative and the risk of overfishing is very low in all of them. We would really support no action on this, but seeing that’s not going to happen, we prefer to see Alternative 1 go forward.”

According to the draft amendment, Alternative 1 is a control rule that would resemble “no action,” but would be converted into a long-term policy having the parameters needed to set ABC in all cases of either increasing or decreasing herring abundance. It includes a maximum fishing mortality rate of 90 percent and no fishery cutoff.

Alternative 4B would result in a loss of 77 million pounds of herring, she noted. “I don’t know where we come up with 77 million pounds to make that bait.” To make things worse, she said, that loss is in fresh herring normally harvested during the peak season for lobster landings. It will result not only in a loss of bait but in infrastructure bottlenecks as the lobster industry tries to identify alternative sources of bait fish, she said.

McCarron said the association has met with bait suppliers, including O’Hara, which has said it could source 10 million pounds of replacement bait. “Say the other dealers, combined, come up with 10 million pounds. Say we mange to cut our use in half. We’re still 40 million pounds short. The result will be that people will not able to fish. If you do get bait, you’ll be on rations and the price is going to skyrocket.”

Maine’s lobster industry, she said, has already absorbed a 50 percent reduction in herring landings since 2013, and the cost of bait has correspondingly gone up 50 percent, with Maine fishermen paying up to $50 per bushel and fishermen on the islands paying $60 per bushel. “We anticipate that will double next year,” she said. “A lot of people will go out of business. We’re not going to be here to see the long-term impacts of this control rule.”

Beth Casoni, executive director of the Massachusetts Lobstermen’s Association, agreed with McCarron’s observations. “The lobster industry will bear the brunt,” Casoni said.

But Zack Klyver, a member of NEFMC’s herring advisory panel and chief naturalist with the Bar Harbor Whale Watch Company, said that, in his 30 years as a guide with the company, he’s seen indications of a significant fall-off in herring.

“I’m not here to harm the lobster industry,” said Klyver. “I’m a huge advocate for the lobster industry. But I want to report on what I’m seeing as an observer the last two years especially. It’s been a different world out there. My concern is that we have a control rule that heads off a regional demise of a fishery that’s so important to maintaining an abundance of life that’s in the ocean.”

Klyver said he opposed Alternative 4B in favor of a stronger control rule. “I would hope that the herring stock stays abundant so that we wouldn’t lose a lot of fish over the long term, in support of the lobster bait industry,” he said. But a drop-off in whale sightings on the company’s tours indicate a drop in herring forage, he said. Whereas the company in the past had an 80 percent success rate for whale sightings, the rate last year was 34 percent, he said.

Department of Marine Resources Commissioner and NEFMC member Pat Keliher said his agency supported Alternative 1.

“We all know the herring stock is in pretty rough shape and trying to find a path forward is the end goal today,” Keliher said. Alternative 1, he said, projects a strong rebounding of biomass while maintaining herring as a directed fishery and bait resource.

“The recent results from the Atlantic herring benchmark stock assessment say recruitment is at a low spawning stock biomass but has a high reproduction potential with a notable presence of age 1 and 2 herring,” he said. One year of above-average recruitment, he said, can return herring to a healthy biomass. The other alternatives, he said, “will result in substantial negative impacts on communities that rely on the herring resource. The ability of small ports to access herring as bait will be greatly diminished.

It’s the smaller communities that will feel a much greater impact with these measures.”

Keliher said there’s no “one size fits all” control rule. “However,” he said, “Alternative 1 performs the best economically, allows for a practical short-term ABC,” and still results in a good median estimate of spawning stock biomass.”

But Terry Stockwell, also with the Department of Marine Resources and a NEFMC member, said he favored Alternative 4B-revised.

“Coming from midcoast Maine, I understand the severe economics to the two fisheries and the communities involved,” Stockwell said. “But this council has been working on Amendment 8 for a number of years, and I’m not willing to back away from addressing the two primary goals – to account for the role of herring in the ecosystem as forage, given the last five years of low recruitment, and the benefit of leaving more fish in the water to increase biomass”for the benefit of multiples fisheries and ecosystems in general.

NEFMC member David Pierce agreed with Stockwell. “There are severe economic consequences with whatever control rule we pick,” Pierce said.

“I don’t favor weakening this thing at all,” agreed Harwich, Mass. fisherman Mark Leach. Leach said he’s a displaced groundfisherman who now fishes for lobster. “It seems we’re fighting over divvying up the last few bits,” he said of the herring fishery. “In the meantime, the fleet of 60 boats that dates back to the turn of the last century is permanently displaced. There’s no more groundfishery of any meaning. There are a lot of factors, but the lack of forage in those areas has kept the fish from coming back.”

Localized depletion

NEFMC also considered numerous alternatives to address potential localized depletion and user conflicts in the herring fishery. According to the NEFMC press release, NEFMC approved a blend of two modified alternatives, which resulted in the following.

If approved by NMFS:

• Midwater trawling would be prohibited year-round within 12 nautical miles of the territorial sea baseline from Maine to Connecticut. The outer boundary of this

“buffer zone” is the same as the territorial sea limit;

• Midwater trawling also would be prohibited year-round within two 30-minute squares eastward of Cape Cod, which are known as blocks 114 and 99. The second step essentially expands the width of the buffer zone to roughly 20 nautical miles east and southeast of the Cape.

Other alternatives had 6-mile, 25-mile, and 50-mile prohibitions.

Stockwell said the action was based on the five years of extremely low recruitment in the herring stock and the need to minimize detrimental biological and social/economic impacts to the stock as well as to other commercial, recreational, and ecotourism industries.

But Meghan Lapp of Seafreeze Ltd said she opposed the 12-mile prohibition. “I’m very concerned about the precedent this motion sets for all fisheries,” Lapp said. She said none of the buffer zone alternatives were based on science. “We’re talking about exclusion alternatives that provide no quantifiable benefit for one set of users, but very quantifiable impact for other users.” She said she also opposed including Area 2, off Cape Cod, in any exclusion zone, because of potential cumulative impacts as the offshore wind establishes itself there. “This is a unique situation for Area 2,” she said. “South of the Cape, millions of acres are being slated for offshore wind development on or adjacent to herring and mackerel fishing grounds, and it’s all outside of 12 miles.”

Hittinger said his association originally favored a 25-mile buffer. But, he said, “We believe the 12-mile buffer gives us most of what we’re looking for, so we would support that option. We believe a buffer is necessary to include all of southern New England, including Area 2.” That’s due to the disappearance of herring and predator species in waters off southern New England, he said. “In the winter, we used to have a significant cod fishery. The party and charter boat industry used to do very good business fairly close to Block Island and from Block Island out to Cox’s Ledge. This was a winter fishery, where the fish were primarily feeding on herring stocks.” But pair trawlers wiped out the herring resource in the area, he said. “That fishery is basically gone. You have quite a few businesses that are suffering because of it, so we support a 12-mile buffer.”

Tooley said she opposed the action. “The idea that you can go out and find fish in other places – that’s a falsehood,” she said. “That’s not how it works. Fish move around. Fishermen stick with he schools and it’s not going to work. The majority of the fishing takes place within 12 miles.”

Casoni said she was concerned that a buffer zone would set user group against user group.

But others said the buffer zone should be 50 miles.

“When midwater boats come through, the fishery is over,” said Peter Murphy, a commercial cod and tuna fisherman, biologist, and vice president of the Stellwagen Bank Charter Boat Association. “This is a brutal fishery. It belongs 50 miles offshore. And I’m very disappointed that it seems like you’ve already decided it’s 12.”

Amendment 8 next goes to NMFS for review and potential approval. NMFS will publish a proposed rule, and the public will have another opportunity to provide comments. The agency then will review those comments, approve or disapprove the amendment, and, if approved, publish a final rule. Timing for implementation of the final rule is uncertain but is expected sometime in 2019.