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Midwater herring trawlers are back in Area 1A starting tomorrow. (10/1)
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Midwater herring trawlers are back in Area 1A starting tomorrow. (10/1)
Hate to remind everyone, but starting tomorrow (10/1) the midwater herring trawlers will be allowed back into the inshore Gulf of Maine.
There is a spawning closure in place that covers most of Jeffreys Ledge and Ipswich Bay until the middle of October, which is good, but it is only temporary and it does not cover very much of 1A at all. By mid-October, midwater boats will be fishing anywhere they want in the inshore GOM.
The improvements this summer were impressive. People from throughout the region, and in all different fisheries/sectors, have all seen changes. As a tuna fisherman in the GOM, I can say for sure that there were far more fish here than in many years. We had single afternoons seeing more than in the last 5 years combined. The whales, and all the other life were here too. And as of the last time out, most of it was still here. Given that we never saw a thing in the GOM after June with the midwater boats fishing, that fact is impressive. Also, herring was not the only thing that around more, but so was whiting and macks. Groundfish were in places they had not been in years, and things like blue sharks were back again.
But starting tomorrow, the midwater boats will be back and hungrier than ever. While the spawn closure will help prolong the fishing in places like Ipswich Bay, it will ruin everything east of Portland, and within weeks, we all know they will be in Ipswich Bay and on Jeffreys. Safe to assume that within about 3 weeks, this whole part of the ocean will be a dead zone.
The four month buffer zone is a great start, but it will be clear in a couple weeks how important it is that we get midwater gear banner year round, and off places like the Cape as well. Like I said, the inshore GOM buffer is a start, but until the whole region is protected from these guys all year, we will never see things get back to normal. The improvements this summer with the buffer speak to how much damage has been done by the midwater fleet, and should only help motivate all of you to continue helping in this effort.
It is a bit early to do it now, but within a week or so, I will be posting info on how people can help. We have a big meeting coming up, it will determine whether we get to try and get more changes in this fishery, so we will all need to do our part. I will have sample letters and all that. So, stay tuned.
In the meantime, watch the midwater fleet do its damage and remember how good it is when they are not around. And make sure if you are on the water that you bring a camera. These guys dump lots of stuff but nobody ever has a camera and so it might as well not even be reported. Especially mid-month when the boats come abck off of Southern Jeffreys and Ipswich Bay...you will be able to take pics of them from land before too long, so you do not even need to be on the water!
Re: Midwater herring trawlers are back in Area 1A starting tomorrow. (10/1)
And unfortunately, there will be around 20,000mt left for them to catch between now and Novemeber. They can go past then, but they have proven they can catch at least 5,000mt a week if they put some effort into it, so all that will be taken in no time. Any herring that can be found will be gone in no time.
And while it may sound like that is a good thing in terms of lobster bait, it is not really true, since these midwater boats (unlike the seiners) sell a lot of fish overseas and to other markets besides the bait market here. It is important to point out that this year there was almost no bait shortages- certainly a small fraction of what was seen the last few summers. Because seiners do not sell to Africa and Eastern Europe, there was more bait around even though less fish was taken.
I would STRONGLY suggest that any guys fishing for tuna (commercially) get out and fish now, because when the spawning closure reopens in a couple weeks, there wont be any tuna left in places like Ipswich Bay.
Well, for that matter, anyone who fishes anywhere north or east of Gloucester for any kind of fish, get out there in the next week or two, because everything will be ruined soon.
Re: Midwater herring trawlers are back in Area 1A starting tomorrow. (10/1)
I hear ya, Fragil. It truly $ucks, on many levels.
Also, if you or anyone else here is out and sees the trawlers fishing, you can report it on the following web page (anonymously if you want)...we need to keep an eye on these guys so please report them if you see them.
Re: Midwater herring trawlers are back in Area 1A starting tomorrow. (10/1)
I was on Platts yesterday doing some groundfishing. Around 1400 a large trawler came across searching back and forth. Looked like a little pre-season scouting trip to me.
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Re: Midwater herring trawlers are back in Area 1A starting tomorrow. (10/1)
what if the boat name has been concealed? I saw a trawler or 2 in New Bedford that had the names covered up and no visible #'s, no identification. I read about this down in S. America countries with the longliners that wiped out the Patagoinian Toothfish, AKA Chillean Sea Bass within a 5 year span, but was mostly fish piracey, poachers.
Re: Midwater herring trawlers are back in Area 1A starting tomorrow. (10/1)
Last night the Western Venture came into Portland...less than 24 hours after they were allowed to start trawling. I was only down there for a few minutes and there were at least a dozen trucks there waiting to load up on herring. Each truck holds around 40,000-45,000 pounds. Trucks had likely already come and gone, and there was one arriving as I drove off, but I do not know for sure how many other trucks had left full or had not arrived yet. But the dozen or more there would mean that they were unloading at the very least 500,000 pounds. Likely a lot more (she holds well over a million pounds).
We all knew they would come back and be fishing as hard as ever, but if they can keep up a pace like this, they will catch it very quickly.They will probably catch so much so fast that there will be nothing left later in the lobster season for bait. And they will also catch so much so fast that once again by the time NMFS closes the area, they will already be well over the quota.
Not sure where they caught the fish...someone down east said they though they saw it off Jonesport, where the seiners have been fishing, but that would be about a 10+ hour steam to get to Portland so I have my doubts. They could be anywhere- the Kettle, Platts, 3 dory, the Falls, or somewhere way to the east.
Re: Midwater herring trawlers are back in Area 1A starting tomorrow. (10/1)
Quote:
surfs_up_today - 10/2/2007 7:36 PM
This is like legal napalm bombing….complete deforestation….but you get paid $$$$ to do it. Legal rape and pillage of our natural resources.
So let’s do some math….
500,000 lbs of fish per day
1 fish is about a foot in length
5000 feet per mile
Line the fish up end-to-end and and presto….100 Miles !!! of fish were taken….in one "Trawler-Day".
And how many "Trawler-Days" to go?
How do we influence our lawmakers to stop such an atrocity?
It really is an atrocity.
Its not even so much the weight (although dont get me wrong, thats A LOT of fish) but how they do it. Purse seining for herring is way harder and takes way more effort, skill and time...plus it is limited by tide, weather, time of day, etc. Midwater trawlers, especially the pair trawlers, have such big nets and tow them so fast, they can fish in any weather and it takes very little skill. They are not limited in any way except by how much they can fit in their holds.
While no matter how you do it, taking that much fish at one time is going to have an impact, but that many fish taken by a seiner really has a much smaller overall impact. Herring seiners can fish around the tuna fleet all summer, no problem. Once midwater boats show up, they decimate everything. Midwater gear is very bad gear. They take a lot of fish and really messes the whole ecosystem up. Midwater boats can go out and just fish day and night, day and night, and nothing stops them. And what they leave behind is scattered and not in big schools, which drastically reduces the ability of predators to eat those leftovers. They are bad news.
That said, you can definitely help us fight these guys. By the end of the week I will put sample letters up that you and others can use to send in to the managers to show support for getting these guys out of here. I will explain it all once I put the letter up.
Re: Midwater herring trawlers are back in Area 1A starting tomorrow. (10/1)
Quote:
colin yentsch - 10/2/2007 5:13 PM
There was a trawler today at about 8am lurking just outside the 3nm line between sequin and bantam heading east. What a depressing sight.
Thats awful. They love that area...they can catch lots of fish and burn a lot less fuel. They could care less that they leave the place a dead zone. Kettle, Bantam, all those spots were always some of the best tuna spots until midwater trawlers showed up. Sucks.
Re: Midwater herring trawlers are back in Area 1A starting tomorrow. (10/1)
I really think part of the problem is that the public in general (not fisherman), have no idea that this atrocity is taking place. Atrocity is a strong word, but I think it is appropriate here…A-T-R-O-C-I-T-Y.
While the tuna quota internationally is a joke, and we don’t get our fair share, having severely depleted bait in the GOM is just burning the candle at both ends.
I was reading “The Fisherman” today, and I would like to quote the offshore report. In fairness, this is not related to the Trawlers, but just a general report about mother nature and bait movement in a small area. This is from Zach Harvey, a recognized authority (or at least reporter!) in offshore fishing:
“…where you find the bait, you fine the fish”
“….no one’s sure how long the BFT bite will hold together once the forage base leaves”
Clearly, our eco-system is getting hit hard when a pair of trawler can pick up a million pounds of bait in one outing. Again, the public has no idea that these massive machines exist, and that our lawmakers allow them.
Re: Midwater herring trawlers are back in Area 1A starting tomorrow. (10/1)
I am going to post the sample letters later today, but wanted to post about what I just heard while I had a moment. Was talking to someone who was fishing at the Regal Sword (off Cape Cod) yesterday and saw herring pair trawlers dump a massive amount of dead striped bass that they had caught as bycatch. And chances are, there were no observers onboard so it will go unreported. Even if the guys who watched it reported it, it would be all but impossible to prove anything without and observer onboard.
Re: Midwater herring trawlers are back in Area 1A starting tomorrow. (10/1)
this is out of the National Fisherman, cover story...
The baiting game
If it isn’t one thing it’s another, say seiners hit with zero-tolerance rule on spawning herring
By Kirk Moore
It’s a moonless night in the Gulf of Maine. In the wheelhouse of the blacked-out Western Sea, radar and sonar screens cast weird palls of blue and red on captain Danny Fill and his crew as they watch for herring on the sounders. The light accentuates barely simmering anger in their faces.
“Last year we had two and half million pounds this week. This week it’s 100,000 pounds,” says Shaun Rockett, the purse seiner’s skiff man and engineer. He pulls sharply on his cigarette, one from a carton of Marlboros that he and Fill are burning through tonight in their frustration.
“We know where the fish are,” Rockett adds, with a jet of smoke. “You just can’t go there.”
After inshore Maine waters closed to midwater herring trawling this past summer, the region’s traditional purse seine sardine fleet and their customers came under pressure too, from an Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission mandate for zero-tolerance of spawning herring bycatch in the lobster bait industry.
Pushed offshore by area closures, Fill and other seiners hunted around, telling each other and anyone else who would listen that rolling shutdowns were not conservation, but political payback for the purse seiners’ support of closing the whole inshore Area 1A to midwater trawling during the summer months.
“We’ve always gone to sardines” — juvenile herring — “when the spawners come on,” Fill says. “What these midwater trawlers really want is to save the quota for when they can get back in. If they can knock some of the smaller guys out of the business, they can take it. They’re looking at the long dollar.”
The first summer of this new herring conservation regime had herring fishermen, lobstermen and bait dealers uncertain and anxious, prone to believe the worst predictions of economic and political consequences. But that griping was tempered with optimism, as some reported new signs of abundance.
“There’s been a general resurgence not only of herring, but in whiting too,” says Rich Ruais of the East Coast Tuna Association, whose members pushed hard for a June through September ban on midwater trawls in Area 1A.
This summer tuna harpooners reported “a lot of life in the water, compared to when the trawls were breaking up the [herring] schools,” Ruais said. “From our perspective, the buffer zone worked. We never expected there would be miraculous changes overnight in the tuna fishing.
“But in the long term, it looks promising,” Ruais says, with fishermen seeing more juvenile bluefin tuna in the 40- to 110-pound range. Meanwhile, the giants are staying farther east.
A study published by University of New Hampshire researchers last summer suggested herring forage for bluefins may be only part of the story for a trans-Atlantic population beset by overfishing in eastern Atlantic and Mediterranean waters, to say nothing of climate change.
“The numbers of tuna, whales and birds seem to be up, and fishermen say they’re seeing some improvement in groundfish. We like to think that has a lot to do with the closure,” says Peter Baker, campaign manager for the Herring Alliance, a Pew Charitable Trusts-funded umbrella group for critics of midwater trawling.
“It’s nice to see the [New England] council take action, and have it work.”
But not everyone agrees that absence of the midwater boats and reports of abundance are a matter of cause and effect.
“It’s hard to understand how almost overnight things improved throughout the ecosystem,” says Jeff Kaelin, a consultant for the Raber family, owners of the Portland, Maine-based trawler Providian. “We think those claims that eliminating trawls after June 1 dramatically turned everything around just don’t have any basis in science.”
Midwater herring trawlers are back in Area 1A starting tomorrow. (10/1) 
