To truly understand the question, “Is it time to open the harvest of river herring?,” one must understand the subculture of New England river herring. The Back River was “my” herring run located in the Jackson Square portion of Weymouth, MA. Our harvest days were Wednesdays & Saturdays. On these days, Jackson Square would come […]
Leaving Enough Baitfish in the Water Top Photo: Humpback Whale Often overlooked baitfish, specifically anchovies in this case, were the topic of discussion at a recent meeting in Astoria that I participated in. A couple of commercial seine boats made a big splash in the lower Columbia River last summer. There’s no hiding it; with […]
Top Photo: Kodiak Harbor Waterfront, Alaska In early February, Duke University and the Oak Foundation hosted an international workshop focused on supporting small-scale fisheries. I participated in a panel addressing the successes and challenges of small-scale fisheries. Workshop attendees included academics, representatives from the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (UNFAO), conservation and rural development […]
Top Photo: Pair Trawlers off Rhode Island, by Mike Laptew. I have been working on river herring-related issues for the past 25 years and was one of the first anglers/conservationists to jump up and call attention to the fact that river herring were disappearing rapidly before our eyes. We are quite literally at the bottom […]
Top image: portrait of John Jacob Astor, via Wikipedia I had the good fortune to get a little culture in my life this week. One benefit of moving from a tiny town in coastal Oregon to “the Big City” was the diversity of opportunities that exist within these crowded city walls, such as the opportunity […]
Photo: Steve Brustein and Capt. Dave Monti with cod caught at the East Fishing Grounds three miles east of Block Island on No Fluke Charters. Cod fishing is good off the Rhode Island coast. Contraire to what is being experienced in the Gulf of Maine, cod fishing for recreational anglers off Rhode Island has been […]
How the Administration’s Actions Could Affect our Fisheries Top Photo: Arizona Aubrey with a Tillamook Bay sturgeon We’ve all been victims of regulation, and when President Trump rolled out his “1 new regulation in, 2 old ones out” executive order, I wasn’t sure that was such a bad idea. But then I got educated. In […]
If there is one constant in mid-Atlantic fisheries management, it is that restrictions on the recreational summer flounder harvest will always be controversial. That is particularly true in 2017, after six years of below-average recruitment—the number of young fish entering the population—has caused the population to decline to just 58% of the target level, forcing […]
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