herring Archives - Page 37 of 43

Regulators to Discuss Localized Depletion of Herring

November 16, 2016 — CHATHAM, Mass. – The New England Fishery Management Council will meet in Newport, Rhode Island tomorrow and an organization that supports local fishermen will push for a buffer zone to move midwater trawlers further off shore.

The Cape Cod Commercial Fishermen’s Alliance is looking to move the large herring trawlers at least 50 miles from the Cape and Islands to protect the ecosystem and small-boat coastal fisheries.

The management council will discuss ways to address “localized depletion” in the herring fishery, which is a key source of food for whales and larger fish.

“Our concern is that they are depleting the forage species that we need for tuna, stripers, cod, haddock, dogfish, the whales – all of that stuff is the food chain and they are sucking up the lower end of it,” said Bruce Peters, an Orleans fisherman from the vessel Marilyn S.

Current regulations allow for the midwater trawlers to fish beyond three miles from shore from Provincetown past the Islands.

A vessel tracking program showed about a half dozen trawlers about three or four miles off the Coast of Orleans and Eastham along the back side of the Cape earlier this week.

“They have huge boats. They can go to Georges Bank. They can go offshore. They can fish herring pretty much anywhere,” Peters said. “Our small-boat fleets are 30 to 40-foot boats. We don’t have the luxury of being to go way, way offshore like that.”

Read the full story at CapeCod.com

MASSACHUSETTS: Herring trawlers just offshore anger Cape fishermen

November 16, 2016 — ORLEANS, Mass. — They were visible from shore for most of Tuesday, seven vessels of between 140 to 170 feet in length, four miles off Nauset Beach.

Some worked in tandem, towing a huge net between them, scooping up mackerel or herring right on the Cape’s doorstep and making local fishermen like Bruce Peters angry.

“They suck up all the herring and mackerel, the forage fish we need for the cod, tuna, stripers, the whales, what we need for the food chain,” said Peters, a longtime commercial cod and groundfish fisherman, who now runs a charter boat business and fishes commercially for tuna. “We need a 50-mile buffer zone to keep these guys offshore.”

Buffer zones that prohibit the herring fleet from fishing within anywhere from 6 to 50 miles from shore are part of a new amendment to the herring fishery management plan that will be outlined at the New England Fishery Management Council meeting Thursday in Newport, Rhode Island, and voted on at the January meeting in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. The council — a representative body of fishermen, industry representatives, environmental organizations and state and federal fishery officials — draws up plans to sustainably manage fish and shellfish stocks in federal waters. They received 238 pages of comment, much of it in support of requiring the herring fleet to fish farther from shore.

Read the full story at the Cape Cod Times

The Bycatch That Gives You a Haddock

November 4, 2016 — Starting in October, the federal government began a pilot project to test electronic monitoring on midwater herring trawlers fishing in “groundfish closed” areas off the coast of New England, two of which are in the rich spawning grounds on the continental shelf known as Georges Bank. The yearlong project will help regulators decide whether cameras can replace people as observers to regulate herring trawlers’ catch of haddock.

But before the study is finished, the New England Fishery Management Council will be working to loosen the rules on how much haddock herring trawlers can catch.

Since 2011, government observers have been required on any trips trawlers make to those areas, as part of a program to limit incidental catch, often called “bycatch,” of untargeted fish species. In the case of herring fishing, the biggest bycatch concern on Georges Bank has been haddock, a species on the rebound after the groundfish collapses of the mid-1990s.

But the monitoring program has been expensive. A recent amendment to all Northeast fisheries plans required the industry to assist in funding its overseers, increasing pressure to bring down costs.

Federal regulators believe electronic monitoring could be the answer.

“This year we’ll get really good (human) observer coverage — 440 sea days — so we’re going to compare what the observer sees and what the camera sees,” said Daniel Luers, a monitoring expert at the Greater Atlantic Regional Fisheries office of the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). “The contractors will watch all the videos, and then NMFS (National Marine Fisheries Service) will watch to confirm that what the contractors have seen correlates with the observers.”

What they’re looking for are “discard” events, where fishermen dump unwanted fish back into the sea — rather than reporting the bycatch and facing fishing closures.

Read the full story at Eco RI News

ALASKA: Budget cuts take bite out of herring harvest

October 25, 2016 — ANCHORAGE, Alaska — The Alaska Department of Fish and Game is buckling under deep budget cuts, and now the state’s largest herring fishery is feeling the squeeze.

ADFG has canceled vital abundance studies and surveys for several fisheries, meaning fishermen won’t get to prosecute the full amount of otherwise healthy stocks.

Last year, based on 17,337 tons harvested in all Togiak herring fisheries and an average price of $100 per ton, the total ex-vessel value for the Togiak herring fishery was $1.52 million. The season allowed for a harvest of over 32,000 tons.

This year’s harvest will be less.

ADFG will allow for a harvest of 26,170 tons, or 57.6 million pounds, of a forecasted biomass of 287.9 million pounds.

Read the full story at the Juneau Empire

Herring shortage over, price of fish still vexes lobstermen

October 21, 2016 — PORTLAND, Maine – Herring fishermen have begun catching herring in the waters far off New England, ending a shortage of the fish that has vexed the region’s lobster industry for months.

The Portland Press Herald (http://bit.ly/2esLoXg ) reports the price of the bait fish has remained high through the end of the peak lobster season, anyway. Lobstermen say the shortage has hurt their bottom line this year.

The shortage has not trickled down to affect consumer prices, although lobster prices have been higher than average at times this year.

Read the full story from the Associated Press at ABC 6

13 Benefits of Taking Fish Oil

October 20, 2016 — Fish oil is one of the most commonly consumed dietary supplements.

It’s rich in omega-3 fatty acids, which are very important for your health.

If you don’t eat a lot of oily fish, taking a fish oil supplement could help you get enough omega-3 fatty acids.

Here is an evidence-based guide to fish oil supplements and their health benefits.

What Is Fish Oil and Why Should You Care?

Fish oil is the fat or oil that’s extracted from fish tissue.

It usually comes from oily fish such as herring, tuna, anchovies and mackerel. Yet sometimes it’s produced from the livers of other fish, as is the case with cod liver oil.

The World Health Organization (WHO) recommends eating 1–2 portions of fish per week. This is because the omega-3 fatty acids in fish provide many health benefits, including helping protect against a number of diseases.

But if you don’t eat 1–2 portions of fish per week, fish oil supplements can help you get enough omega-3s.

Herring fishing shut down along New England coast

October 19, 2016 — PORTLAND, Maine — Herring fishermen are nearing their quota along New England’s coast and the fishery will be shut down until further notice.

The National Marine Fisheries Service says fishermen in the inshore Gulf of Maine have caught about 90 percent of their quota and the fishery was shut down early Tuesday morning. The inshore fishing zone ranges from Cape Cod to the eastern edge of the Maine coast.

Herring are an important bait fish, especially in the lobster fishery. A shortage of the fish in offshore waters caused a bait shortage in New England during the summer.

Read the full story from the Associated Press at The Daily Progress

Herring Fishing Shut Down Along New England Coast

October 18, 2016 — PORTLAND, Maine – Herring fishermen are nearing their quota along New England’s coast and the fishery will be shut down until further notice.

Herring are an important bait fish, especially in the lobster fishery. A shortage of the fish in offshore waters caused a bait shortage in New England during the summer.

Read the full story at Maine Public Radio

Why Is Fish Good for You? Because It Replaces Meat?

October 7, 2016 — Articles often mention that eating any kind of fish (not just fatty fish) twice weekly reduces various health risks. Is this because it replaces red meat, or is there some other reason?

Many fish, especially oily, darker-fleshed fish like salmon and herring, are rich in heart-healthy, polyunsaturated, omega-3 fatty acids, but healthful fats are not the only reason to eat fish. Dietary guidelines in the United States encourage adults to eat eight ounces of a variety of fish and seafood each week – roughly two meals’ worth – because of the “total package of nutrients in fish,” which includes lean protein, vitamins A and D as well as B vitamins, and a host of minerals such as iron, iodine, selenium and zinc.

Women who are pregnant or breast-feeding are urged to eat as much as 12 ounces of seafood to improve infant outcomes, but should steer clear of fish that’s high in methyl mercury. (The Food and Drug Administration recommends avoiding king mackerel, tilefish, shark and swordfish and limiting tuna; the nonprofit Environmental Working Group advises against a broader list of fish in its Consumer Guide to Seafood.)

“Fish is very low in saturated fat and low in cholesterol,” said Jennifer McDaniel, a spokeswoman for the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics, and people who follow a Mediterranean style diet that incorporates seafood appear to be at lower risk for obesity, “but a lot of people don’t think about that and just focus on omega-3s.”

Read the full story at The New York Times

Part of New England’s herring fishery to be closed

September 29th, 2016 — Herring fishing off part of the New England coast will be shut down for most of October.

The closure begins Sunday and lasts until Oct. 29. It is the product of a spawning forecasting method that interstate regulators approved earlier this year.

Regulators say an analysis of samples necessitates a closure of the Massachusetts/New Hampshire spawning area for most of October. The area stretches from the north side of Cape Cod to southern Maine.

Vessels will not be allowed to possess Atlantic herring caught in the area during the closure.

The herring fishery is a key source of bait fish as well as food. The New England fishery struggled with low supply this summer, which resulted in a shortage of bait for some lobster fishermen.

Read the full story from the Associated Press at The Portland Press Herald