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Commercial Fisheries News
Volume 33 Number 12
August 2006
Scientists say inshore herring decline ‘warrants concern’
PORTLAND, ME – Scientists have taken a closer look at the inshore Gulf of Maine component of the herring stock complex and have reported some disconcerting news.
The National Marine Fisheries Service’s (NMFS) most recent bottom trawl surveys have turned up very few Atlantic herring in what the agency calls “the inshore Gulf of Maine strata.”
In fact, the 2005 and 2006 spring surveys and the 2004 and 2005 fall surveys all produced “very few fish,” and a preliminary analysis of the data “suggests that there may have been a 50% decline in the 10-year average of the NMFS bottom trawl survey for inshore strata with the inclusion of data from (these) most recent survey years.”
“It warrants a note of caution,” said Bill Overholtz of the Northeast Fisheries Science Center, which conducts the NMFS surveys. “We have two consecutive years in two consecutive surveys where the trend is tipping downward.”
The inshore strata run from Massachusetts to Downeast Maine.
SAFE report
This new information was included in the New England Fishery Management Council’s draft Stock Assessment and Fishery Evaluation (SAFE) Report for Atlantic herring, which was discussed publicly for the first time at a July 6 meeting here of the council’s herring committee and industry advisers.
The news set a very different tone compared to the latest herring stock assessment conducted by the US/Canada Transboundary Resource Assessment Committee (TRAC), which concluded that the herring stock complex as a whole was at a high biomass level with very low fishing mortality rates (see CFN July 2006 for details).
However, the TRAC did not look separately at the inshore Gulf of Maine. And according to the SAFE report, the NMFS bottom trawl surveys “across all strata” showed no “apparent” trends for herring.
But once Overholtz and other scientists on the council’s herring plan development team (PDT) scrutinized data exclusively from the inshore Gulf of Maine survey tows, they saw a decline.
Surveys “noisy”
The SAFE report contained several qualifiers about using such surveys to gauge the health of the herring resource. The scientists described the data gathered about herring in the NMFS bottom trawl survey as “noisy,” and said that any trends should be interpreted with caution.
“The spring and fall surveys have been variable over the entire time series, as the bottom trawl surveys are not specifically designed to sample pelagic fish,” stated the report.
“Nevertheless, they are another useful tool to help monitor stock conditions, and survey results should be considered accordingly when selecting fishery specifications,” noted the SAFE report.
Complicating matters is the fact that similar declines are not showing up in the Massachusetts Division of Marine Fisheries (DMF) inshore survey or the Maine/New Hampshire inshore survey overseen by the Maine Department of Marine Resources.
However, both state surveys seem to track younger herring, which the SAFE report noted might be a more useful measure for tracking “recruitment to the inshore component of the resource.”
That said, the Massachusetts spring survey fluctuated “without trend” and the fall survey showed a possible “slight upward trend.” The Maine/New Hampshire survey, which only has been ongoing for five years, has primarily sampled age 1 fish and showed no apparent trend either.
But the NMFS data alone were troubling enough to prompt the following SAFE report statement: “The low values for inshore Gulf of Maine strata during the most recent survey years warrant further investigation by the herring PDT.”
PDT role
Herring committee Chairman David Pierce of Massachusetts asked herring plan coordinator and PDT Chairman Lori Steele what the council could expect of the PDT.
Since the PDT does not conduct stock assessments, Steele said, “All we can do is look at the available data and develop some recommendations for you.”
Without prejudging what the PDT would do, Steele said, “I think the PDT’s advice is going to be, ‘We have some survey declines that need to be monitored closely. If the council is concerned about the inshore component, then it needs to address that through the TACs and set the TACs accordingly.’”
Steele noted another factor that was making the PDT’s job more difficult.
“Overall, we have a resource that’s not overfished and overfishing is not occurring, but we have a lot of uncertainty about what’s going on in the inshore component,” she said. “The PDT is not going to be able to clear that up and bring forward anything certain on the inshore component.”
Tuna fishermen worried
Rich Ruais, executive director of the East Coast Tuna Association who attended the July 6 herring committee meeting, said he was surprised by scientists’ use of the word “caution.”
“I’m alarmed,” he said. “You’ve got two years in a row and a 50% drop in the survey. It matches what you’ve been hearing now from a whole bunch of other users of the resource – people who are out on the water – that the Gulf of Maine is in trouble.
“I’d like to know how many more years of a drop we have to wait for before we go from ‘caution’ to ‘alarm’ and get serious about reducing the TAC,” he said.
Janice M. Plante
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