Tag Archives: herring trawlers
Maine: Pending bait shortage poses another threat to New England lobster industry
Regulators want to cap this year’s herring landings at last year’s levels, or 50,000 metric tons, and slash next year’s quota of the most popular lobster bait from 110,000 to 30,000 metric tons. They want to do this to offset record low numbers of newborn herring that are entering the fishery to replace those that are caught, eaten by other predators or die from natural causes. The 2019 quota could fall even lower if regulators adopt a separate proposal to leave more herring in the sea to feed the fish, birds and marine mammals that eat them, including Gulf of Maine species such as cunner, cod, seals, whales, puffins and terns. The New England Fishery Management Council could decide the issue as early as September. Eco-based Management. >click to read<10:51
Herring trawlers just offshore anger Cape fishermen
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.” Read the story here 08:59
Letter: Stories show need to focus on NOAA science – Mike Dyer, Essex, Ma
The Nov. 21 Times included several illuminating items about the state of our fisheries. In his letter to the editor, Paul Cohan took NOAA regional administrator John Bullard out to the woodshed, shredding Bullard’s recent “My View” piece. In the other, we learned that the New England Fisheries Management Council will not impose emergency restrictions on the big herring trawlers, against the protests of haddock fishermen, who say that the trawlers take too many haddock as bycatch. more@GDT 17:34
