In Massachusetts, the Never-Ending Fight over Herring Marches On

December 6, 2023 International, International News, Mid Atlantic, National, New England, South Atlantic

On a September day in 1805, Thomas Gifford lugged a cannon onto the village green in Falmouth, Massachusetts. The 27-year-old stuffed the barrel with herring and lit the fuse. Gifford planned to spew bloody bits of fish onto the green in an act of political protest. Instead, the cannon shattered, with mangled chunks of herring and shrapnel shredding Gifford’s body. It took him days to die. Gifford’s death was the culmination of a years-long conflict. The crux of Falmouth’s so-called Herring Wars never really went away. Even after Gifford accidentally dispatched himself, the owners of commercial endeavors, from fishers to cranberry farmers, have continued to clash with herring supporters across New England. This long and tumultuous history got a new chapter in March 2022 when a federal judge overturned a decision by the New England Fishery Management Council. The agency had briefly banned midwater trawlers,,, more, >>click to read<< 13:01

"river herring, died in act of political protest, Herring Wars, massachusetts, midwater trawlers, mill owner Barnabas Hinckley, Never-Ending Fight, new-england-fishery-management-council, stuffed a canon with herring, Thomas Gifford

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The New England groundfish debacle (Part III): who or what is at fault? Nils E. Stolpe/FishNet

It took me a while to decide how to most accurately describe the situation that has been visited upon the New England fishing communities that are and since colonial times have been dependent on the groundfish fisheries.

NILS STOLPE: The New England groundfish debacle (Part IV): Is cutting back harvest really the answer?

While it’s a fact that’s hardly ever acknowledged, the assumption in fisheries management is that if the population of a stock of fish isn’t at some arbitrary level, it’s because of too much fishing. Hence the term “overfished.” Hence the mandated knee jerk reaction of the fisheries managers to not enough fish; cut back on fishing. What of other factors? They don’t count. It’s all about fishing, because fishing is all that the managers can control; it’s their Maslow’s Hammer. When it comes to the oceans it seems as if it’s about all that the industry connected mega-foundations that support the anti-fishing ENGOs with hundreds of millions of dollars a year in “donations” are interested in controlling. Read the article here

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