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I attended the Menhaden Advisory Panel mtg earlier in January. It was well attended by mostly those people against the seiners. RIDEM admitted they dropped the ball on monitoring the biomass in the Bay last year (bad spring weather had limited plane flyovers-DEM flys with spotter plane). This year, RIDEM has the state helicopter at their disposal if cloud/fog ceiling drops real low. The state Menhaden Plan requires that menhaden harvesting ceases when the biomass in Bay drops below 50%. It doesn't begin until it hits 50% again. Also, this year RIDEM has added another requirement that harvesting can not begin until biomass reaches a certain " floor" limit...which has not been determined yet (one of the RIDEM people told me that may be set at 2 or 3 million pounds). So those are good points. The bad points are that other boats may partake in harvesting menhaden in the Bay this year. The reason being that the herring (traditionally the lobster bait of choice) fishery has changed drastically, and lobster bait is harder to come by, hence the reason other boats may get involved. That's why the biomass trigger of the State Menhaden Management Plan is so important.
A call for the safe areas (no seining) to be expanded, i.e, close the upper Providence River, was proposed by several audience members, but was opposed by the advsory panel. I believe the panel would go for that, but its a hard sell for the one seiner that has worked the Bay for over 30 years...he has given up a lot of other areas in the past (Greenwich Bay, certain areas of West Passage to a closed portion of the summer, other parts of the Providence River, etc)...and the upper Providence River is like "shooting fish in a barrel" for the seiners.
The big problem in the menhaden fishery last year was two fold, not a lot pogies entered the Bay (probaly because of low salininty due to wet spring) and another seiner fished last year. The other seiner was from Gloucester, and created a lot of controversy because of his arragant and belligerent behavior towards fisherman up in the River....but thats a whole other issue for another discussion.
The public hearing would be a great place for your feelings to be known to the Marine Fisheries Council on this hot issue.....
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