MASSACHUSETTS — Last week, a federal judge agreed the species needs more protection and ruled in favor of a lawsuit brought against the National Marine Fisheries Service by two Massachusetts fishermen and a Cambridge-based environmental group.
The New England Fishery Management Council and NMFS did not follow federal law in drawing up an update to the management plan for Atlantic sea herring in March 2011 and should have included river herring in the plan, U.S. District Court Judge Gladys Kessler said in her decision issued in Washington, D.C.
She ordered the council and NMFS to include river herring in a new amendment to the fishery management plan and set a strict limit for the amount that could be caught.
Kessler ordered that new regulations also need to reduce the bycatch of river herring by sea herring boats, and new herring quotas currently being drawn up by the council must include a calculation of the biological role all herring play in the food chain.
The fish are a valuable link in the food chain converting the vast plant energy of plankton into protein consumed by whales and commercially important species such as cod, tuna, and swordfish.
The fisheries service and the council are to report to the court on their progress one month, six months and a year after the ruling. The court will retain jurisdiction in the interim.
Read the full story at the Cape Cod Times.