October 2, 2023 — The following was released by the New England Fishery Management Council:
The New England Fishery Management Council has agreed to develop an amendment to the Atlantic Herring Fishery Management Plan (FMP) to minimize user conflicts in the fishery and address other issues.
In preparation for this action, the Council also agreed to develop a scoping document and schedule a series of scoping meetings to receive initial input from stakeholders on the potential range of alternatives to be considered in the amendment.
HERRING AMENDMENT 10: The Council has been working on an action that previously was referred to as “revisiting the Inshore Midwater Trawl Restricted Area that was developed under Amendment 8.” The restricted area was implemented but subsequently vacated by a federal court on March 29, 2022.
During its September 25-28, 2023 meeting in Plymouth, Massachusetts, the Council voted to change the title of the new action to “an action to minimize user conflicts related to the Atlantic herring fishery.”
The Council already had approved a problem statement to guide this work, and it expanded the scope of the action when it met in June in Freeport, Maine.
At the September meeting, the Council took the additional step of designating the action as an amendment to, more specifically, “address spatial and temporal allocation and management of Atlantic herring at the management unit level to minimize user conflicts, contribute to optimum yield, and support rebuilding of the resource.”