Fish managers seek emergency action to protect river herring

Karl Blankenship offers some further insight into the herring issue
Via the Bay Journal:

Bycatch blamed for sharp decline in alewife, blueback populations

The coastwide catch of blueback herring, shown here, and alewife has declined from 13.7 million pounds in 1985 to about 1 million pounds. Four states have closed their waters to river herring catches.

East Coast fishery managers are calling for emergency action from the federal government to control the bycatch of river herring in ocean fisheries in an attempt to reverse the sharp decline of blueback herring and alewife.

Millions of the small fish once flooded Chesapeake Bay tributaries during their spring spawning runs, but those migrations have dwindled to a trickle in recent decades as populations hit historic lows around the Bay and in most other East Coast rivers.

While a number of factors may contribute to the decline, fishery managers suspect that large numbers are caught by fishermen targeting other species in federal waters-those more than three miles off the coast, where river herring spend most of their lives.

Read the entire article here.