A group of more than 100 fishing, conservation and other organizations on Thursday announced they signed and submitted a letter to U.S. Secretary of Commerce Gary Locke requesting urgent action to protect river herring and enforce bycatch regulations.
The list of organizations, which included the Marine Fish Conservation Network, National Coalition for Marine Conservation, Cape Cod Commercial Hook Fishermen’s Association and the Massachusetts Striped Bass Association, urged the U.S. government to take emergency action to monitor and minimize river herring bycatch in ocean fisheries.
The letter suggested several action options including imposing seasonal gear restrictions, mandatory bycatch reporting, increasing observer coverage and dockside sampling and prohibiting the dumping of catch at sea.
“The number of groups signing this letter sends a powerful message to the Secretary of Commerce and federal fishery managers in New England and the Mid-Atlantic that we want to see a serious effort made to restore river herring,” said Brooks Mountcastle, Mid-Atlantic representative for the Marine Fish Conservation Network.
River herring, which refer to both alewife and blueback herring that spawn in rivers then migrate to sea, were designated as a concern in 2006 by the National Marine Fisheries Service.
“The recreational fishing community supported a moratorium on river herring harvest almost five years ago, and there has been no significant improvement made since then,” said Patrick Paquette, past president and government affairs officer for the Massachusetts Striped Bass Association. The Massachusetts Department of Marine Fisheries reported only 1,170 herring migrated up the Merrimack River in 2007, a sharp decline from the estimated 388,000 that migrated in 1989.
On May 6, the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission, which manages the herring fishery, approved an amendment to the Interstate Fisheries Management Plan for Shad that agreed to close all directed in-river fisheries by 2012 unless proven sustainable.
The ASMFC also called on the New England and Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Councils to better monitor river herring bycatch and asked the Secretary of Commerce to take emergency action and implement river herring bycatch monitoring measures.
River herring bycatch in federally regulated ocean fisheries exceeds the in-river landings of river herring on the entire East Coast. In 2007 there were an estimated 1.7 million pounds of river herring bycatch in the Atlantic.
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