January 19, 2018 — Interstate fishing regulators are trying to get a better handle on the population health of a species of small fish that has been harvested on the East Coast for centuries.
The Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission says it’s starting a stock assessment for American shad that it expects to be completed by summer 2019. Shad are members of the herring family that’ve been harvested for their meat and eggs since at least the Revolutionary War.
The commercial harvest of shad has dipped over the decades. Fishermen caught more than a million pounds of them as recently as 2005, but the harvest dipped to about 375,000 pounds in 2016.
They have been historically brought to land from Maine to Florida. Recently, most East Coast shad have come ashore in the Carolinas.
Shad is unusual in that its life cycle depends on where it is found along the coast. Fish native to Florida and the Carolinas are semelparous, that is they return to their natal rivers to spawn at 4 years old and die soon after. They lay between 300,000 to 400,000 eggs.
Read the full story at the Gloucester Times