Herring Run Moratorium Will Remain In Effect Three More Years

HARWICH – The river herring harvest, possession and sale moratorium put in place three years ago by the state Division of Marine Fisheries will continue for another three years, selectmen agreed Monday night. Last October, the Massachusetts Marine Fisheries Advisory Committee approved the continuation of the moratorium based on the dearth of anadromous fish migrating up rivers in the state to spawning headwaters. Division of Marine Fisheries Director Paul J. Diodati has implemented the additional three-year ban as of Jan. 1, 2009, which includes those runs within municipalities which have been granted local control by the state. “We saw some initial positive signs of river herring population increases in spring 2008 as a result of these sacrifices,” Diodati said.

“We’ve seen fish every year but the last time we saw a significant number was in 1999,” Natural Resources Officer Thomas Leach said this week of the once prolific Herring River run. Leach said there has been improvement since the moratorium was put in place three years ago and last year there were a few days with significant numbers moving up the ladder at Johnson’s Flume in West Harwich. “Once again this is the state telling us they’re giving us permission for us to close the run,” Selectman Ed McManus. His reference was to efforts by the town to close the run four years ago, before the state instituted the first moratorium, because of depleted fish stocks. A year later the state mandated the closure.

There remains a lack of recovery in the river herring runs in the commonwealth, DMF officials said in a prepared statement announcing the extension of the moratorium. “All available information indicates that the number of spawning river herring entering the runs in the spring of 2008 remained well below average and mortality remained high,” officials stated in the DMF New letter. “But there is some good news. The moratorium appears to have helped stabilize the runs, although at lower levels, and many of our runs showed a slight 2008 increase in the number of spawning fish.”

DMF officials predict three more years of a moratorium will allow the maximum number of spawners to complete an entire life cycle, thus increasing the probability of stock recovery. The state fisheries agency admitted there are currently unidentified factors contributing to morality. It conducted a study on the impacts of river herring by-catchin the sea herring pelagic fisheries which found 70 percent of vessel trips yielded no river herring by-catch, and only a very small number of trips had significant quantities, with annual estimates between 285,000 to 1.7 million pounds. “While significant, this amount of mortality is not sufficient to cause the coastwide decline in river herring stocks and so there must be other, currently unidentified factors contributing to mortality,” the study concluded.

Leach said the Harwich Conservation Trust and the Cape Cod Commercial Hook Fishermen’s Association will conduct a comprehensive river herring counting program in the run this spring. They are looking for volunteers to do a herring count once the run begins. Leach estimated it would start in mid-April and continue through mid-June. He said 40 people have volunteers to assist with the count. “One of the goals is to estimate the number of fish in the run,” Leach said. “We don’t know what that number is.”

Leach said Ryan Mann, outreach and stewardship coordinator for HCT and Lara Slifka, cooperative research program coordinator with the CCCHFA, also a member of the conservation commission, will be overseeing the survey. Residents interested in volunteering to assist with the count can contact Mann at the trust’s office in South Harwich. Mann said the commitment can be as little as 10 minutes a week, but volunteers can do more.

HARWICH - (4/12/07) Every spring for thousands of years, people on Cape Cod have eagerly awaited the return of the herring. This year the waiting is accompanied by a degree of worry. Massachusetts is in the second spring of a three-year moratorium on the taking of any river herring. Since 2000, every herring run in the commonwealth has seen a precipitous drop in returning fish. Harwich Natural Resources Officer and Harbormaster Tom Leach asked selectmen to close the Herring River Run in 2004, two years earlier than the state. “It was so obvious the numbers were down.” Leach remembers when the river ran black with herring. “Even 15 years ago, in 10 seconds I could count 100 herring moving past. By 2004 the numbers were so low our volunteer counters were getting bored waiting for a fish to come by.” Leach and the Harwich selectmen got complaints about the closure. Herring is used for bait, sometimes referred to as “striper candy.” And herring run managers from other towns thought the Harwich closure would put more pressure on their runs. “No one’s complaining now,” Leach says. “They understand there is a serious problem with the herring.”

Harwich’s Herring River was one of the largest herring runs in the state and was an important part of the local economy in years gone by. The first “scouts” this year were seen on March 25, but most of the herring will wait just offshore until the river’s temperature nears 50 degrees. Leach is not optimistic about this year’s counts. “From fish scale research studies we know that the majority of fish in this run are three year olds. Fish coming back this year would have been hatched in 2004, a very bad year for herring. Three years before that was the drought.”

Some scientists think the 2000-2001 drought started the fast decline in herring numbers, but they are still trying to determine other factors, looking at fish passageways, water quality, and predators. Leach thinks the biggest factor in the decline may be from human predation in the form of the recently expanded sea herring fisheries. “One tow could equal all the herring in our run.” Atlantic sea herring is a separate species that does not migrate inland to spawn. River herring, however, interact and school with the sea herring. “Sea herring were nearly decimated by Russian trawlers in the 1970s,” said Peter Baker of the Cape Cod Commercial Hook Fishermen’s Association (CCCHFA). “By the 1990s the stocks were declared rebuilt, and since that time foreign and domestic investment in the sea herring industry has taken off.” “These trawlers are huge. Their nets are the size of a football field wide and long, and eight stories high, with a two-inch mesh. One tow can take 100,000 pounds of fish. The best science says that we should only be taking 37,500 tons a year inshore. Last year 60,000 tons of Atlantic sea herring were taken inshore.”

Sea and river herring are keystone species, destined to be food for many other creatures in the food chain. A large catch of sea herring means a huge amount of by-catch of other species that is discarded. “They’re supposed to be fishing in the middle of the water column, but we know the herring spend the day on the bottom of the ocean, so the trawlers will be taking their catch there,” said Baker. “We don’t have any numbers for the amount of river herring in that by-catch. First of all, it’s hard to get numbers. It’s an ocean, not a forest. It’s big and things are always moving around.”

Federal observers stationed on commercial fishing boats have not been consistently required to monitor river herring in the by-catch, Baker said. CCCHFA fears that pressures on these keystone species will further damage the cod and tuna fisheries. They worked to get an amendment passed with the National Marine Fisheries that bans mid water trawlers from inshore waters of the Gulf of Maine, June through September, when tuna and ground fish are seeking the herring for food. “But due to political considerations, this amendment does not apply to the whole 50 mile backside of the Cape,” said Baker. “Sea herring trawlers can still come to within three miles of that shoreline and can be seen from Truro.” CCCHFA hopes to amend the amendment to make a Cape Cod buffer zone, but even if this is passed, it will be 2009 before it is implemented. Meanwhile, Tom Leach and other herring run managers are doing what they can on land to assist the river herring numbers. “It’s just as important to make sure the fish have a way out of their spawning ponds as a spring run in,” Leach said.

Only 1 percent of the fish fry survive a summer in the pond. Leach along with other Department employees, Heinz Proft, and Tom Telesmanick wade the complete herring run each year, to make sure that even with low summer levels, the stream will be accessible for fry to make it back out to the ocean. This year with the help of AmeriCorps Cape Cod volunteers he has completed much of the stream clean-up, removing fallen trees, and trimming some of the overhang. And he’s removed dirt bike ramps that can block the herring passage. CCCHFA is also involved with coastal stream clean-ups and seeking to get a culvert replaced in Orleans. Statewide there are 30,000 culverts that impede herring runs. Leach says the herring will wait until dark to go into the culvert which is part of the old rail-trail bike path. The culvert is not blocked, but herring shy away from the darkness. “But it would be very expensive to replace that culvert with a bridge.”

There will be an opportunity to see migrating herring swim through the Herring River, up Johnson’s Flume, into the West Reservoir and beyond during a walk of the Bell’s Neck Conservation Land Monday, April 23 at 9 a.m.. Sponsored by the Harwich Conservation Trust, the walk is free and open to the public. From Harwich Center go west on Great Western Road, turn left on Bell’s Neck Road and park on side of road between East and West Reservoirs. For information, call 508-432-3997 or visit www.harwichconservationtrust.org.4/12/07

NOTICES

Supersceding State Regulation have closed all herring runs in the Commonwealth through 2008

"The fishway is in trouble and we need your cooperation to restore our run."