by JRisapirate » Tue Feb 14, 2012 7:44 am
Brian the Government(or should I say Lobby Groups who run the country) feels that they have been over fished.. Other states along the East Coast - Delaware, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia, Massachusetts and Rhode Island - have closed their river herring fisheries as well. The river Herring (alewife or blueback) are different than the Atlantic Herring which are much more silvery and slightly different body, and my understanding to be one of the largest biomasses in the ocean/ a lot of them. The F'ed up thing is that commercial fisherman fishing for Atlantic Herring with a federal permit may be in possesion of Bluebacks, because they have a special piece of paper?.. I agree the stock is lower than years past but to close it completely is a killer, especially whitout a definative reason why it has gotten so low. Same thing has happened to Weakfish, and the recreational anglers are the ones getting screwed. Could it be due to huge increase in the striper population, pollution by Dupont and factories along the Herring's spawning routes,*extensive comercial fishing/ Japs*, we don't know. But it was only a matter of time, the limits were becoming less and less over the last couple years.. Going to be hard to resist using the dipnet/castnet at that first full moon in April..
A quote directly from the NJ Fish and Wildlife - "New Jersey does not have an approved plan since the available information on river herring stocks is not sufficient to definitively prove the State's river herring stocks are sustainable."
So they close a fishery completely while admitting that they don't have enough researched based information to develope a plan to help the fishery recover..
P.E.T.S. Member