The Recreational Fishing Alliance was a key player, and the most active sport fishing proponent, in pressing the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) to approve Amendment 1 to the Atlantic Herring Fishing Management Plan.
One of the major elements of the new plan, crafted by the New England Fishery Management Council, was to address mid-water trawling of herring in the area known as 1A, the near-shore (out to 30 miles) Gulf of Maine stretching from Cape Cod to the Canadian border. Heavy trawling pressure, including pair trawling (where two boats tow a single net hundreds of yards wide), during the past several summers has resulted in “localized depletion” of herring in a number of key areas where this important forage fish congregate. “The boats, most of which are 80 feet or longer, are just too efficient and remove so much herring in a particular area that there’s little left to provide feed for tuna, cod, other important fish species, and marine mammals,” said Capt. Barry Gibson, RFA’s New England Regional Director. “This has had a devastating effect on recreational, party and charter fishing, as well as the whale watch industry, as predator species have simply moved far offshore or to other areas looking for feed. Sport and small-scale commercial bluefin tuna fishing, for instance, has pretty well been eliminated in the Gulf of Maine due to this industrial-scale removal of herring.”
The new plan will ban herring trawling in Area 1A from June 1st through September 30th annually. During this period herring can only be harvested by purse seining, a more environmentally-friendly type of netting that typically only takes a portion of any particular herring school, leaving the rest for predators. “We’re very hopeful that recreational fishing will improve significantly in New England waters next summer due to the new restriction,” said Gibson, “which will also help provide a needed economic boost to the area’s boat and motor dealers, marinas, and tackle stores.”
The RFA, part of a broad-based coalition of fishing and environmental groups that pushed hard for the plan, coordinated support from a number of regional recreational and party/charter groups, and was not timid when it came to speaking out. “Barry Gibson, who has two decades of experience in fishery management at the federal level, wasn’t afraid to stand up at a public hearing dominated by commercial herring fishermen and demand that the trawling restriction be approved,” said RFA’s Executive Director Jim Donofrio. “We’ll do whatever’s necessary to protect the interests of recreational fishermen and our industry.”
