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.)