NEFMC May herring workshop brings out conflicting sectors

First published in Landings, June, 2016.

The New England Fishery Management Council held a two-day workshop in Portland in May to discuss options for future herring management. Nearly a hundred stakeholders from government, conservation and the commercial fishing community shared their competing views on the importance of herring in the ecosystem and to the coastal economy.

The workshop was organized by the Council as part of its development of Amendment 8 to the Atlantic Herring Fisheries Management Plan. Through Amendment 8, the Council expects to establish a long-term control rule for specifying acceptable biological catch (ABC) for the Atlantic herring fishery. A control rule is a formulaic approach for establishing the annual limit or target fishing level based on the best available scientific information. An objective of Amendment 8 is to develop and implement an ABC control rule that manages Atlantic herring within an ecosystem context.

The workshop was conducted using a Management Strategy Evaluation (MSE) method, which is a collaborative decision-making process involving public input and technical analysis upfront. It calls for more public input to guide the management strategy than the normal amendment development process. MSE will be used to help determine how a range of control rules may perform relative to potential objectives for herring stocks.

Most stakeholders agreed that herring is extremely important to both the ecosystem and the local economy. Lobstermen described the importance of herring to the lobster fishery for bait and the need to sustain the herring resource over the long-term. Tuna fishermen were concerned that commercial herring harvests may be too high, resulting in a lack of forage for tuna and other species. Herring fishermen identified the need for a rigorous scientific approach based on good data in setting quotas and the importance of predictability in the quota from year to year, and underscored how important the commercial herring catch is to coastal communities. Seabird scientists talked about the need for herring as a forage fish for many bird species; others discussed herring as an essential forage species for the entire Gulf of Maine ecosystem.

The Portland workshop produced recommendations on a range of potential objectives to the Atlantic herring ABC control rule and how these objectives may be tested (i.e., associated performance metrics), and the range of control rules that would undergo testing. A summary of the workshop recommendations will be presented to the Herring Advisory Committee, Herring Committee and the full Council in June. In the near-term, the existing 2016-2018 herring specifications will remain in place. It is expected that the 2019-2021 specifications will be developed using the control rule adopted through the Amendment 8 process.