Tag Archives: Shad
Fisherman Darren Porter has been keeping a one-man vigil at the Windsor causeway since last Thursday
The Hants County weir fisherman and marine science data collector has been floating in his open boat up to 20 hours a day to raise awareness for the lack of fish being allowed up the Avon River. “About six minutes on a tide,” said Porter of the amount of time the big gates in the Windsor causeway are opened to allow water through. That, he argues, is not enough time to allow the inner Bay of Fundy salmon, shad, gaspereau, striped bass and tom cod to get up the Avon River. That also, he argues, puts the operators of the gates (Department of Agriculture) in violation of the federal Fisheries Act. >click to read< 09:03
Shad: Following the history and biology of a East Coast transplant
Shad were one of the largest commercial fisheries in the East during the 19th century, but overharvesting and heavy pollution prior to the environmental enlightenment of the 1970s saw the population drop faster than heavy shad dart in a slow current. Commercial harvests on the East Coast declined from nearly 20 million pounds in the 1870s to less than 2 million a hundred years later. In 1871, forward-thinking individuals at the United States Fish and Wildlife Service decided to transport shad from New York’s Hudson River to the Sacramento River in California’s Central Valley. The reasoning for this move was, in part, to add commercial and sport fisheries, as well as add another plentiful food source to the quickly swelling population of a post-Gold Rush California. Read the story here 08:41
Search for a Scapegoat: Offshore Trawler Bycatch Suspected in Disappearance of Shad
Mid-Atlantic fisheries regulators are weighing whether to take additional steps to protect American shad and river herring as they migrate along the East Coast, as some new research suggests significant numbers of herring may be accidentally netted by offshore trawlers. The Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council is scheduled to receive a staff-written white paper this month reviewing whether to move toward imposing tighter limits on the amount of shad and river herring that could be caught by offshore fleets pursuing another species, Atlantic mackerel. The council, which regulates commercial fishing within federal waters from New York to North Carolina, plans to make a decision at its October meeting. “We’ve got industrial-scale fishing vessels targeting mackerel and Atlantic herring in the southern New England area, and we barely have any observer coverage on those vessels,” complains Roger Fleming, a lawyer with Earthjustice. “Some of those vessels can hold up to 1 million pounds of fish. . . . They can virtually wipe out a river herring stock in one tow [of the net].” Read the story here 12:20
Shad make a run up the Hudson River
Poughkeepsie Journal – One of the Hudson River’s signature species has begun its annual spring run up the river. American shad come back to the Hudson each year to spawn. Shad were the basis of a commercial fishery that was closed in 2010 by the state Department of Environmental Conservation due to declining numbers. continued
