"Some members of the council were adamantly opposed to the new spawn criteria because they felt it shifted distribution of the catch so that the mid-water trawlers could hit the fish earlier and catch more of the quota," Pendleton reported. "They said the purse seiners and weir fishermen were meeting the 20 percent spawn criteria last year - only the mid-water trawlers couldn't do it. They thought it was a blatant political maneuver so that [mid-water trawlers] could catch the fish sooner."
Nonetheless, Maine Department of Marine Resources scientist David Libby believes the new measures provide enough protection for spawning fish, while allowing full exploitation of the resource by all gear sectors, including mid-water trawlers.
"We had to look at what we were doing," he said. "The quota doesn't call for any spawning regulations. The quota itself ensures that enough of the spawning stock biomass will be left to guarantee the sustainability of the resource. Some people are using spawning regulations to control effort. That's not what they're for."
Libby pointed out that the intention of spawning regulations was to protect spawning aggregations. He felt that past regulations, which closed the inshore waters from August 1 to October 31, have been overconservative.
"Our duty is to look at supply and demand," he said. "If we can take more fish, we need to be less conservative."
To that end the new plan calls for a series of three rolling closures of one month duration. Flexible starting dates and options for extending the closures are designed to protect the fish only when they are spawning. Less stringent tolerance levels in the amended plan allow fishing within the closed areas provided the fish landed are less than 20 percent Stage V or Stage VI spawners. Prior regulations included Stage IV spawners, but that became a problem for some fishermen.
"We had a lot of Stage IV fish showing up early," said DMR scientist Lew Flagg, in regard to the changes. "Some of the boats weren't able to move around them."

Area 1A Shutdown Predicted
According to Flagg, herring are treated as one coastal stock complex. Management is divided into three regions reflecting discrete spawning stocks: Area 1, the Gulf of Maine; Area 2, the waters from the mid-Atlantic to Cape Cod; and Area 3, Georges Bank. The Gulf of Maine has subsequently been divided into inshore and offshore zones, Areas 1A and 1B respectively. (See map.)
The large area involved calls for cooperative management, by the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission, the New England Fishery Management Council (NEFMC), the National Marine Fisheries Service, and individual states. In hopes of protecting various interests and spreading out effort, quotas are established annually for each of the four areas.
But fishermen fish where the herring are, and the increasingly mobile fleet has targeted the pre-spawning aggregations of herring in Area 1A. Over 50 percent of the 60,000-ton Area 1A quota, raised from 45,000 in mid-July, has already been caught. According to Libby, the state's inshore herring fishery will probably shut down by mid-September. "We've already sent notice to fishermen that we'll be taking days out of the fishery starting August 1," said Libby.
Bill MacDonald of the Island Institute in Rockland called it a "contradiction" that traditional herring fisheries now face a shut down, and will soon be prohibited from landing fish on Fridays, Saturdays, or Sundays, while at the same time, spawning protection is being relaxed. Fixed gear fishermen will be exempt from the days off rule, but whether they will be affected by an overall closure remains uncertain.
To resolve the issue the Island Institute supports the Downeast Fixed Gear Fishermen's Association call for changing the dates when fish are counted.
MacDonald pointed out that the current counting method offered more protection to newly developed winter and spring fisheries dominated by mid-water gear. "Right now the fish are counted starting in January," said MacDonald. "We recommend shifting that to June so that the traditional summer and fall fisheries are assured of having fish."

Lobster Bait Supply OK?
But this year the fish count started in January and the quota for 1A is nearly tapped. A shutdown seems imminent, and the timing could not be worse. Lobster-men, who buy 60 to 70 percent of herring landed in Maine, by David Libby's estimate, will be in the midst of their fall fishing.
If the inshore herring fishery closes in September, bait dealers will have to rely on the product they have stockpiled, until fish come in from offshore. Undoubtedly, lobstermen will see a rise in price.
But according to Paul York of the Portland-based bait company, The Bait Lady, there will still be plenty of supply to meet the demand. York predicts only a penny or two difference per pound if the boats go to Georges Bank for fish, provided the weather holds.
"If they get a couple of days of bad weather, it might cause a little crunch," said York. But he feels confident that the situation will remain manageable.

The Numbers Game
Winter Harbor lobster dealer Dana Rice is concerned about the long range picture. Rice wants to see the inshore stocks protected for future use, but feels regulators are playing into the hands of Glou-cester and Portland based boats, at the expense of the fish - and the people who have historically harvested them.
"Are we going to deal with a resource issue or play a numbers game?" he asks, as managers shift quota from one area to another.
Last fall, Ellen Pikitch, chair of the NEFMC's Science and Statistics Committee, warned regulators that the models used to estimate herring stock size could be off by as much as 50 percent. Her committee pointed out that fishing effort in Area 1A was already at target levels and recommended that no increase in effort be made.
Rice has advocated banning mid-water trawlers in Area 1A. "They represent an increase in effort," he said. Rice had wanted to ban mid-water gear in 1A last year, forcing them to utilize the offshore stocks that are now being allocated to foreign vessels. "I'm going to get back on the bandwagon to make at least half of 1A purse seine and fixed gear only. Even though there's a few fish around, I'm not sure it's all rosy. Spawning has been down here for several years."
Purse seiner, Glenn Robbins believes the resource can stand some added pressure, but shares a concern with many other fishermen that new spawning regulations will not protect the fishery. "We learned our lesson in the 70s when we depleted the stock by hitting the spawners too hard."
Flagg feels the new plan adequately protects discrete spawning stocks. He admits that the harvest in Area 1A is approaching Maximum Sustainable Yield, but points out that the current stock assessment shows a very robust resource overall. The offshore herring stocks are currently projected at 180 percent above the carry capacity of the ecosystem. In the event of a problem it is believed that these fish can supply markets and replenish inshore stocks.
But the trawlers have had difficulty finding fish on Georges Bank in the past. "If the trawlers go out there and don't find any fish, it's going to get interesting," said seiner, Glenn Robbins. Although regulators deny it, Robbins believes more quota will be added to Area 1A if the mid-water boats fail to find fish offshore.
While many fishermen, regulators, and industry spokespeople believe it is irrelevant where the herring are caught as long as overall abundance remains high, Libby points out the experience of Europe's North Sea herring fishery. "They wiped it out because they treated it all as one stock," he said. "They did not adequately protect individual small spawning stocks."
It might appear that the one stock rationale has been used to justify some current management measures, but Libby says: "No, the separate management areas effectively protect individual spawning stocks."
Bill MacDonald is not convinced. "The Island Institute is very concerned that there be proper protection of discrete spawning stocks," he said. Mac-Donald has been working on the Institute's Herring Spawning Project for 3 years. "We've seen spawning from mid-August to October 31," he said. "The new system of rolling closures opens up the possibility of a directed fishery on spawning stocks. The default dates would offer no protection to late spawners."
"Admittedly some spawning fish will be caught," said David Libby. But with plenty of fish around, herring regulations are being relaxed to allow greater exploitation by the most efficient operations. Nonetheless, many nearshore fishermen continue to advocate conservation, particularly of the stocks they have historically depended on.
"Here's a situation where scientists are telling us that herring are 180 percent over the sustainable levels," said NAMA's Craig Pendle-ton. "And fishermen are looking them in the eye and saying, we still want to be cautious about this. When fishermen step up to the plate and want to be more conservative, I don't know how you can go against them."
Many Maine fishermen have been actively calling for more protection of nearshore herring stocks since July of last year. But in the vast arena of this wide ranging fishery, other concerns have taken priority.