[Fish_Eye]

I attended last nights meeting and I wish I could say it was encouraging.

The stats are in from last years runs and there has been no significant improvement over the near collapse in 2005. The biologists are busy gathering data, attempting to restore runs, but they have no idea as to why the collapse happened.

Zach Harvey from The Fisherman brought up the correlation between the new industrial pair trawling fleet and the demise of the river herring. The response was that they know that there is some “co-mingling” of alewives and blueback herring with the targeted Atlantic herring; however, they have no idea of what percentage.

I brought up the fact that a promise was made that there would be more observer coverage. I was told that a significant increase in observer coverage occurred during last year, perhaps double the previous coverage – at a cost of over 4 million dollars…and this years budget only allows for $100,000. Even with all the new observers on board, they have neglected to get any real hard data on the percentage of river herring by-catch or should I say by-kill. The likelihood that we will get more useful data is bleak.

IMHO there might be issues with increased predation from holdover stripers, cormorants, seals, there may be water quality concerns, but none of these factors happened overnight…pair trawling did. We need to get more data, we need to study the migratory patterns of bluebacks and alewives with a tagging and monitoring program, and we need more observer coverage to identify where and when these fish are being intercepted at sea. Don’t look forward to live-lining any herring in the near future…or maybe in your lifetime.