Herring in a pickle

January 01, 2004

Fishermens Voice
January 2004
By Laurie Schrieber

Big boats with lots of muscle and roving ways could one day precipitate a herring crash if something isn’t done to control the relatively unregulated fishery.

Herring is not an overfished species and two assessments, although coming up with widely disparate biomass figures, show stocks in general are doing well.

But the industry is concerned increased capacity of boats using trawl gear, as well as the potential for greater numbers of boats, could threaten stocks in the future, and has already become a problem in Area 1A, the inshore Gulf of Maine.

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