Shad, Raritan and stuff..........

[AndyS]

Part of an article written by Tara Nurin for NJ Spotlight: September 2012

Midwater Trawling

While no one can pinpoint exactly why shad populations dropped so precipitously after 1990, some environmentalists blame a modern form of commercial fishing called midwater trawling.

Midwater trawlers travel the ocean dragging nets opponents say rival the size of football fields, either behind one 125-foot boat or between two. While trawlers in the Mid-Atlantic aren’t allowed to fish for shad, their nets ensnare everything in their path, entangling what the Herring Alliance environmental coalition says are 115,000 pounds of shad “bycatch” per year, which dies in the mesh. Four of the dozen-or-so trawlers that fish Mid-Atlantic waters are berthed in Cape May, while the rest sail out of New England.

“These boats in one single tow can catch more fish than are returning to entire states,” alleged Kristen Cevoli of The Pew Charitable Trusts Environmental Group, which participates in the Herring Alliance.

But a DEP report released in May states, “There is undoubtedly some bycatch discard loss, especially for male shad, but there is no data as to the severity of this bycatch,” said Jeff Kaelin, government relations and fisheries management coordinator for the trawler-owning Lund Fisheries in Cape May . He adds that there’s no data to support claims that his industry is decimating the population and admits that while there is a problem with river herring bycatch, the trawlers’ impact on shad is minimal.

“We just don’t have that much interaction with shad,” he said, noting that his boats aren’t currently trawling New Jersey’s waters at times when catching massive amounts of shad would be likely. “115,000 pounds is nothing, when considering we can take 90,000 metric tons of Atlantic herring per year.”

In June, the fishery management council passed Amendment 14, requiring all squid, mackerel, and butterfish trawlers to travel with federal monitors who can count the size of the bycatch. Scientists are expected soon to begin figuring out how to implement limits on shad and river herring bycatch in order to raise their protected status under a proposed Amendment 15.

Kaelin says he and his associates are willingly complying with Amendment 14 and notes that his company is minimizing river herring bycatch in New England by using an electronic system, partially funded and developed by his company that sends real-time bycatch information to a coastal Massachusetts science center, which then maps river herring clusters and instructs ship captains on how to avoid them.

But it’s not just midwater trawlers. Historic overfishing is also blamed, as is dirty industry that pollutes watersheds.

Removing Dams

At the same time that Furst is working to keep fracking from the Delaware River Basin, he’s also pushing for the elimination of two dams on the Lehigh River tributary that impede migratory fish.

“Every single tributary to the Delaware River is dammed or was to the point that the fish that would go there no longer exist,” he said. “There is an effort to remove dams on the various rivers.”

Dams were commonly built in the 19th and early 20th centuries for energy production. Though most of them have no use today, they litter the waterways, keeping shad and other migratory fish from swimming upriver to spawn. (Shad can swim hundreds of miles before spawning.)

[AndyS]

Rescuing the Raritan River

Dams are a particular problem on the Raritan River and its tributaries, with hundreds in place. The closest dam to the mouth of the Raritan is located just 20 miles from the Raritan Bay, with two more located less than 10 miles upriver. Thanks in part to these dams, the shad count in the largest river in the state is almost negligible.

But it's not just the dams. It wasn't all that long ago that the Raritan was polluted by the industrial sites and military arsenals that lined its banks.

“Twenty-two years ago, the river still caught fire,” said Bob Spiegel, executive director of the Edison Wetlands Association. “Everybody looked at the river as a place to dump your waste. For a very long time people said it was a dead river.”

“American Cyanamid used to dump all their dyes in the river. It used to run red,” remembered Still, who grew up near the defunct chemical company in Bridgewater, located along the Raritan. “Now there are all these kayak trips and people are building houses and docks along there. Oh yeah, it fires me up. It’s just mind-blowing.

Still’s enthusiasm is shared by the environmental advocates who made it happen.

Spiegel, who says the Raritan is being used for recreation by a record number of people, names the restoration of shad as a priority for his organization. Over the past two decades, his association has worked with the DEP to vastly reduce the amount of contaminants that leak from “dozens and dozens” of industrial and postindustrial sites along the lower banks of the river. He feels water quality has improved so tremendously that he and his cleanup partners are ready to encourage the establishment of green businesses and a river tourism industry in the communities that dot the lower Raritan.

“These fish are coming back: herring, eel, smelt, striped bass . . . All of these are very important, as they’re going to have a direct impact on the ability of the estuary to come back,” he said. “First and foremost, they’ll be major economic force in this area, where there can be billions and billions of dollars spent to fish. It’s a very scenic area and they will stimulate economies when people come to buy bait and tackle and patronize the amenities that are here.”

[AndyS]

A Holistic Approach

Spiegel is looking eagerly toward Woodbridge, where under the terms of a Natural Resources Damage legal settlement, El Paso Corp. (acquired by Kinder Morgan in May), is remediating a brownfield site that will become a 70-acre commercial property abutted by 110 acres of passive recreational land, including wetlands. He says it’s the first time in 100 years that residents of Woodbridge will be able to access the river. Spiegel adds that it’s the first time in history that New Jersey officials are taking a holistic, rather than site-specific, approach to planning and promoting the lower Raritan.

The NRD settlement has also resulted in another major accomplishment for advocates of the river: El Paso/Kinder Morgan is removing the Raritan’s three most downstream dams, located by the borough of Raritan, where fish have their last chance to prepare to leave the fresh water of the river before entering the brackish Raritan Bay on their way to the ocean. The first of the dams was removed last year; the second in July; the third is slated for demolition next year.

It’s a significant triumph for those who work toward the health of the state’s waterways, and it’s creating momentum for others to do the same. For instance, the Stony Brook-Millstone Watershed Association is working on the design, engineering, and permitting phase of their own dam removal projects at the mouth of the Millstone River in Somerset County, which joins the Raritan where the former Calco and Robert Street dams stood until El Paso removed them.

[AndyS]

Climbing the Ladder

Elsewhere on the river, scientists are striving to measure the efficacy of an existing fish ladder -- a gap in a dam the size of a doorway designed to let fish and a small amount of water pass through. Ladders like this are an alternative when it's not feasible to remove a dam.

Some fish ladders in the United States have been found to work better than others, and there’s concern that because this particular ladder, built into the 30-meter Island Farm weir near the intersection of the Millstone and Raritan rivers, is positioned at river’s edge. Its location makes it easier for the ladder to get filled with gravel and prevent adequate water flow for the fish to find it.

The DEP and Rutgers University are working jointly to measure the number of shad and river herring that successfully navigate the ladder. The DEP has installed video cameras just upstream and downstream of the weir to watch the fish in action, while Rutgers marine biologist Olaf Jensen is enlisting the help of students to tag fish as they make their way from the Raritan Bay to the ladder. In a procedure he calls “E-ZPass for Fish,” Jensen and his team implant microchips -- like those used to find lost pets -- into the fish they catch then track them as they pass an antenna located at the dam.

Funded by an $80,000 DEP grant, Jensen didn’t gather much actionable evidence during the first of two monitoring seasons, catching only one shad and 54 river herring, some of which he admits may have given up their migration because of the stress of the implantation.

“In the first year of the project it was hard to find out anything about American shad because there seem to be so few of them,” he said.

The project marks one of the first undertaken under the guidance of the Sustainable Raritan River Initiative, a Rutgers-led coalition that brings together 120 individual researchers, environmental groups, and local governments to find solutions for the river's problems. They’ve written a strategic plan for the region that strongly advocates the pursuit of land preservation as a means to restore river recreation and fisheries.

The group first met with the DEP in October 2010 to emphasize the importance of removing rather than repairing dams no longer in active use. They found a receptive audience. The DEP subsequently accepted the group’s guidelines for removing the first of what may eventually become many dams that block shad from accessing their spawning habitats.

The dam removals are helping catalyze a deeper appreciation for the river among the residents who inhabit the town that’s become ground zero in the contemporary movement to bring shad back to the Raritan River. Just as the townspeople of Lambertville established the now-famous Shad Festival in 1980 to celebrate the Delaware River's return to health, the borough of Raritan is hosting its first river festival on September 30.

[Lard Almighty]

Go get 'em Andy!

[Fish n Jeep]

Awesome!

[Eskimo]

.

In June, the fishery management council passed Amendment 14, requiring all squid, mackerel, and butterfish trawlers to travel with federal monitors who can count the size of the bycatch

This is good news, but only if the data leads to changes.
By-catch monitors were used to discover that the shrimp trawlers on the West coast had a by-catch rate of 86%. (86% Waste!!!)