Saving Seafood

The Atlantic Herring Area fishery regulations include seasonal spawning closures for portions of state and federal waters in parts of Maine, Massachusetts and New Hampshire

October 26, 2017 — The following was released by the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission:

The Atlantic Herring Area 1A (inshore Gulf of Maine) fishery regulations include seasonal spawning closures for portions of state and federal waters in Eastern Maine, Western Maine and Massachusetts/New Hampshire.

Samples from the Massachusetts/New Hampshire spawning area indicate a significant number of spawning herring, defined as 25% or more mature herring by number in a sample that have yet to spawn. As a result, the Massachusetts/New Hampshire spawning area will re-close for two additional weeks, starting at 12:00 a.m. on October 29, 2017 and extending through 11:59 p.m. on November 11, 2017. Vessels in the directed Atlantic herring fishery cannot take, land or possess Atlantic herring caught within the Massachusetts/New Hampshire spawning area during this time and must have all fishing gear stowed when transiting through the area. An incidental bycatch allowance of up to 2,000 pounds of Atlantic herring per trip/ calendar day applies to vessels in non-directed fisheries that are fishing within the Massachusetts/New Hampshire spawning area.

The Massachusetts/New Hampshire spawning area includes all waters bounded by the Massachusetts, New Hampshire and Maine coasts, and 43° 30’ N and 70° 00’ W.

For more information, please contact Toni Kerns, ISFMP Director, at tkerns@asmfc.org or 703.842.0740.

To learn more visit their website at asmfc.org.

 

MASSACHUSETTS: ‘We’re not dying yet. But …’

January 8, 2016 —  Gerry O’Neill looks at the water world spinning around him, a world of regulation and re-regulation and over-regulation — in other words, the modern world of commercial fishing — and thinks that he’s seen this movie before.

Two days removed from the public comment hearing at the state Division of Marine Fisheries offices on Emerson Street on potential changes to rules governing the scope and the schedule of the herring season, O’Neill sits in his office on Jodrey State Fish Pier and wonders if his two 141-foot mid-water trawlers Challenger and Endeavour and the Cape Seafood fish processing and sales operations that collectively employ almost 40 full-time workers — and even more when the product is flowing — will survive the future any better than the nearly decimated Gloucester groundfish fleet.

“At the end of the day, the groundfishermen are struggling and everybody knows that and it’s because of over-regulation as well,” O’Neill said. “We’re not dying yet. But if they keep doing what they’re doing, we’re going to go the same way as the groundfishermen.”

Given the state of the groundfish fleet, that is a chilling phrase, made even more-so by his matter-of-fact delivery in the soft brogue of his native Ireland and his admission that he favors regulations that will sustain the fishery even when they cost him fish and money.

Fishery not broken

His voice was steady and calm, just as it was at Tuesday’s session in which David Pierce, the executive director of DMF and the state’s representative on the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission which governs the Northeast herring fishery, conceded the fishery remains robust.

“The stock remains rebuilt and over-fishing is not occurring,” Pierce told the approximately 20 stakeholders that attended. “The mortality seems to be under control and the stock appears to be in a good shape.”

Read the full story at the Gloucester Daily Times