September 27, 2013 — The New England Fishery Management Council on Thursday approved the region’s first cap on the amount of river herring that can be caught by industrial trawlers. According to the rules, which must be approved and put into place by the National Marine Fisheries Service, the Atlantic herring fleet can incidentally catch no more than 311.4 metric tons of river herring and shad.
The cap, which is the median of what managers estimate it caught over the past five years, will be implemented by zone and gear type. River herring and shad, whose populations are at historic lows, spend part of their lives at sea and run up rivers to spawn; hundreds of millions of dollars have been spent on dam removal projects to foster a revival of the runs, but fishermen and conservationists have long warned the species also need protection at sea.
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