At the end of 2010 Secretary of Commerce Gary Locke made a decision we were hoping for! He denied an emergency request to allow herring midwater trawlers to catch more haddock. (One of our partners blogged about this last month.) The New England Fishery Management Council's groundfish committee will be meeting to discuss the issue next week and we'll be monitoring their progress to ensure more haddock is not caught as bycatch by industrial trawlers. We'll keep you posted!

Warwick Beacon
December 28, 2010

To the Editor:
It is said that history repeats itself, a statement I never quite understood. However, it is becoming clearer to me as I observe the river herring run on Buckeye Brook each year. I have been coming here for over 40 years, and I find myself now pondering: Has something changed?

On Monday, Dec. 20, a committee of the New England Fishery Management Council will meet in Portsmouth to continue the effort to develop a new management plan for Atlantic herring.

NOTE: A few points to clarify in this article: The Council didn’t “agree(d) to ask for looser rules” but voted to address this issue through the normal Council process and not an emergency action. Also, the haddock bycatch cap isn't a static number but changes based on the abundance of haddock. See our recent blog post about the issue.

The Cape Codder
November 23, 2010, by Rich Eldred

BREWSTER — Haddock have put food on the table for local fishermen over the past decade, but mid-water trawlers that fish for herring are hauling up so much of the groundfish as bycatch that they desperately want the cap lifted, and that would slash the allocation for local ground fishermen.

Although we're not a party to the Earthjustice lawsuit, we support what it is trying to accomplish, and I was glad to see you do justice to this problem on its editorial page ("Alewife in danger," Oct 28). A few additional points are worth noting about this complex issue.