But like many fish, herring face a veritable Pandora’s box of pressure. Habitat degradation, the damming of rivers, overfishing and pollution have cut their numbers drastically, by as much as 95 percent by some esitimates. Read more here capecodonline 13:13
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
The localized depletion of river herring around Cape Cod is hardly the environmental tragedy that it is made out to be, and the solutions to this problem are sketchy at best.
When the river herring need water to move down stream in the summer they often times don’t have enough due to the expansion of tourism, construction of hotels, and the water needs of every organization that support blaming the river herring’s demise on the few fishing vessels that remain on the ocean today.
The kind of draconian water policy that left farmers standing in bread lines in California may be the only thing that will help the poor river herring to survive in their damaged habitat. Even if the fish do make a comeback I doubt much of a fuss will be made about it.The herring have been such a valuable tool in persecuting fishermen that I hardly think any of the, “Saviors,” of these fish are going to give up their lucrative jobs just because a few fish return to the streams and things start looking up.
The poisoning of the rivers with herbicides has been reported to have done wonders to clean out the rivers and ponds that river herring use to spawn, Since human standards of cleanliness tend to leave wet locations devoid of life I wonder about the success of such programs. They due seem to be very popular with chemical manufacturers (I am sure Monsanto is thrilled.)
The good news is that a whole bunch of these fish runs have been wiped out before and had to be re-stocked from the healthy runs up in Maine (Where ironically the most fishing for river herring occurs and the least poisoning of rivers and douchebaggy handwringing by paid advocates.)