May 27, 2022 — The 2022 herring season in the U.S. state of Alaska has concluded successfully, according to the Alaska Department of Fish and Game.
In recent years, the fishery’s value has been estimated at around USD 5 million (EUR 4.7 million), down from the record of USD 55 million (EUR 51.3 million) in 1988, with most of the fish sold to Japan. Herring roe, or kazunoko in Japanese, is commonly eaten during Oseibo, the Japanese Christmas season.
May 10, 2022 — Commercial fishermen in four northeastern states will share $11million of federal government assistance.
Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo announced Thursday that the herring industry in Massachusetts, Maine, New Hampshire and Rhode Island will get financial assistance to recoup losses in the Atlantic herring industry which was declared a “fishery disaster” by the federal government last year.
Herring are a crucial part of the region’s commercial fishing industry because they are used for bait, which has been in short supply in recent years, according to federal regulators.
Maine will be getting the largest chunk of the funding, or nearly $7.2 million, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which says it will work with the Maine Department of Marine Resources to administer these funds.
“The drastic reduction in Atlantic herring quotas has caused significant losses in primary income and threatened job security for many in the herring industry,” said Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, who pushed for the federal relief funds. “This financial assistance provided through the designation is crucial to the survival of Maine’s Atlantic herring fishery.”
New Hampshire is getting $600,000 from the allocation, according to the federal agency, which was welcomed by members of the state’s congressional delegation.
Read the full story at The Center Square
May 9, 2022 — NOAA Fisheries has awarded Maine $7,191,787 to provide disaster assistance for the state’s struggling Atlantic herring fishery. NOAA Fisheries will work with the Maine Department of Marine Resources to administer these funds.
“The drastic reduction in Atlantic herring quotas has caused significant losses in primary income and threatened job security for many in the herring industry,” said Senator [Susan] Collins, in a news release. “Given the unstable status of our Atlantic herring fishery, and its role in supporting Maine’s iconic lobster industry, I advocated for the State of Maine’s commercial fishery failure declaration request. This financial assistance provided through the designation is crucial to the survival of Maine’s Atlantic herring fishery.”
May 6, 2022 — Disaster-level instability in the Atlantic herring industry has prompted the federal government to give $11 million to commercial fishermen and shore-side infrastructure in four states.
A scientific assessment in 2020 found that herring are overfished, and quotas for the fish were reduced dramatically. The federal government declared a “fishery disaster” in November, clearing the way for assistance.
Atlantic herring are vital because they’re used as bait by commercial lobstermen — who’ve been plagued by a bait crunch for years — as well as for food.
April 14, 2022 — The following was released by the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission:
The Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission has initiated a benchmark stock assessment for river herring to be completed in the summer of 2023. River herring is the collective name for two closely related species, alewife (Alosa pseudoharengus) and blueback herring (Alosa aestivalis), that return to rivers from Maine through Florida to spawn every year. The goals of the assessment are to evaluate the health of stocks along the Atlantic coast and inform management of these species. The Commission’s stock assessment process and meetings are open to the public, with the exception of discussions of confidential data.
The Commission welcomes the submission of data sources that will contribute to the goals of the assessment. This includes, but is not limited to, data on abundance including run counts and surveys, stocking, biological samples (sex, maturity, age, weight, length), life history information (growth, fecundity, natural mortality, sex ratio, spawning history), stock structure (tagging data, genetics), mortality (predator diet, anthropogenic sources such as hydropower dams), and catch (harvest, discard, fishing effort). An essential need is data to inform the stock assessment of discards and bycatch in other directed fisheries (e.g. the Atlantic herring fishery). For data sets to be considered, the data must be sent in the required format, with accompanying description of methods, to the Commission by July 1, 2022.
The Commission will hold a Data Workshop July 12-14, 2022 via webinar to review all available data sources for river herring and identify datasets to be incorporated in the stock assessment. The Data Workshop is open to the public. To register for the webinar, visit https://attendee.gotowebinar.com/register/5539956829101821456. (Webinar ID 375-897-411).
For more information on submitting data, including the appropriate format, and/or attending the River Herring Data Workshop, please contact Katie Drew, Stock Assessment Team Lead, at kdrew@asmfc.org or 703.842.0740.
April 6, 2022 — Gulf of Maine fishermen are looking to appeal a federal judge’s reversal of an exclusion zone that keeps herring mid-water trawlers 12 miles offshore.
The March 4 ruling by U.S. District Court Judge Leo Sorokin in Boston could reopen some Northeast waters to mid-water herring trawlers, reversing the 2019 rule change that shut them out of a broad swath of the nearshore Atlantic from Long Island to the Canadian border.
In November 2019 the National Marine Fisheries Service approved a measure by the New England Fishery Management Council to create an exclusion zone for mid-water trawling 12 miles offshore – with a bump out to 20 miles east of Cape Cod.
The Sustainable Fisheries Coalition, representing trawl operators, brought their appeal soon after to the federal court, arguing the New England council’s science advisors could not identify adverse impacts, and that trawling critics brought more influence to bear on the council and NMFS.
In his opinion Judge Sorokin wrote that the “localized depletion” concept put forth by those in opposition to the mid-water trawlers has not been adequately defined by NMFS, leading him to decide the exclusion zone decision violated National Standard 4 of the Magnuson-Steven Fishery Management and Conservation Act.
March 15, 2022 — A federal court ruling could reopen some Northeast waters to mid-water herring trawlers, after a 2019 rule change that shut them out of a broad swath of the nearshore Atlantic from Long Island to the Canadian border.
U.S. District Court Judge Leo Sorokin in Boston ruled Marcg 4 in favor of a lawsuit brought by the Sustainable Fisheries Coalition, a trade group representing companies that fish for herring and mackerel. In November 2019 NMFS approved a measure from the New England Fishery Management Council to create an exclusion zone for mid-water trawling 12 miles offshore – with a bump out to 20 miles east of Cape Cod.
It was a culmination of two decades of debate over the impact of mid-water trawling, and complaints from other fishermen that it caused “localized depletion” of forage fish, disrupting ecosystems and their seasonal access to groundfish, tuna and other species.
“The council recommended the midwater trawl restricted area to mitigate potential negative socioeconomic impacts on other user groups resulting from short duration, high-volume herring removals by midwater trawl vessels,” NMFS Northeast regional administrator Michael Pentony wrote in 2019 in a decision letter approving the New England council’s proposal.
But in his opinion Judge Sorokin wrote that the “localized depletion” concept has not been adequately defined by the agency. That led him to decide the exclusion zone decision violated National Standard 4 of the Magnuson-Steven Fishery Management and Conservation Act.
March 11, 2022 — The following was released by the Sustainable Fisheries Coalition:
Lund’s Fisheries, owner of the F/V Enterprise, pictured here, applauded last week’s federal court ruling.
Herring fishermen from New England and the Mid-Atlantic won a crucial decision last week when a federal judge in Boston ruled in their favor against an exclusion zone in Northeast U.S. waters. The court ruled that a National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) measure excluding the mid-water trawl fleet from productive inshore fishing grounds violated the Magnuson-Stevens Act, the nation’s premier fisheries law. The lawsuit was brought by the Sustainable Fisheries Coalition (SFC), a trade group representing herring and mackerel fishing companies.
Mid-water trawler vessels account for upwards of 70 percent of the annual herring catch. The NMFS measure would have prevented them from operating within 12 miles of shore from Long Island to the Canadian border, with an even larger buffer around Cape Cod. Analysis by the New England Fishery Management Council, the body that developed the exclusion zone, estimated that the trawlers could lose up to a third of their annual revenue.
Gerry O’Neill, owner of two mid-water trawlers and a herring processing plant in Gloucester, Mass., said that finding underestimated the area’s value.
“In recent years, we’ve relied on this area for most of our catch,” he said. “This was an existential threat to our livelihood. This decision is a huge relief.”
Thanks to the court ruling, Cape Seafoods’ F/V Endeavour and F/V Challenger, pictured here, can return to traditional inshore fishing grounds, significantly reducing their fuel costs and carbon footprint.
The New England Council recommended the exclusion zone in response to persistent complaints and advocacy by inshore fishermen, environmental groups, sport fishers, and others. They claimed that herring fishing caused “localized depletion,” a vague concept the court found not to have been meaningfully defined by the agency.
In fact, the Council’s scientific advisors were able to detect no adverse impacts from the herring mid-water trawl fishery on other marine uses. The court agreed with the SFC that the rule lacked both a scientific and conservation justification.
NMFS and the Council pushed this measure without a science basis, SFC argued, because its advocates were both persistent and politically influential. The court, by contrast, decided the matter on the grounds that the exclusion zone allocated all inshore fishing privileges to these other user groups without promoting conservation.
“The law is the only protection a small fishing sector has against a well-represented majority,” said Shaun Gehan, an attorney for the SFC. “We are pleased the judge recognized this measure lacked a meaningful conservation benefit, not to mention fairness and equity, as the law demands.”
Wayne Reichle, president of Lund’s Fisheries in Cape May, New Jersey, said that the decision “restored his faith in the law” and that he “believed all along the closures would be reversed.” Additionally, he is confident that “localized depletion” has no scientific basis, but remains disappointed that this provocative term was used to justify the original measure.
Under law, federal fisheries management must prevent overfishing. Herring and mackerel, which serve as forage for other fish and marine mammals, are managed more conservatively than other stocks of fish. Once catch levels are set, the Secretary of Commerce is responsible for providing the fishery reasonable opportunities to harvest its allocation.
The main problem with the process was that it was couched as addressing so-called ‘localized depletion,’ which scientists were unable to identify,” he said. “This is an issue of user conflicts and should be addressed as such.”
He also noted that any solution to this concern must equitably balance all user group interests and not place undue burdens on fisheries’ ability to harvest sustainable herring quotas.
March 7, 2022 — The following was released by NOAA Fisheries:
NOAA Fisheries is proposing an exempted fishing permit (EFP) to evaluate how to best administer an electronic monitoring (EM) and portside sampling program in the Atlantic herring fishery. This EFP would allow vessels issued a Category A or B Atlantic herring permit to use a combination of EM and portside sampling instead of at-sea monitoring to satisfy their industry-funded monitoring (IFM) requirements during IFM year 2022 (April 1, 2022 – March 31, 2023).
If you own a vessel issued a Category A or B herring permit and would like to be issued an EFP, please contact Patrick Williamson, the Principal Investigator for the project, no later than March 21, 2022, at Patrick.Williamson@noaa.gov or 732-691-7957.
For more information, please read the Federal Register notice and fishery bulletin describing the project
February 25, 2022 — Maine lawmakers are considering new controls for an important bait fishing industry in the state.
Maine’s catch of menhaden has swelled in recent years. That is partly because they’re used as bait for lobster traps. Herring, another popular bait fish, hasn’t been as available recently because of tighter fishing quotas.
Read the full story at the Associated Press