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To address Alewife and Blueback Herring declines, Massachusetts implemented a three year moratorium on the catch of herring beginning in December 2005. By the end of 2007, bans on herring fishing were also enacted by Rhode Island, Connecticut, and North Carolina.
These bans have not yet helped improve river herring stocks, and by the end of 2007, several fishing environmental groups asserted these actions would remain ineffective because overfishing by ocean midwater trawling was the primary cause of these herring declines . Because of the impacts to herring stocks, and presumed impacts to offshore ground fisheries, in December 2007, several environmental groups filed a federal lawsuit against the federal government to ban this trawling from certain ground fish areas.
(from buzzardsbay.org)
soooo... the MA moratorium ends this december. but i suspect it will be reinstated if the stocks havent changed.
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