Stellwagen Bank, outlined in red, is located only 25 nautical miles from Boston and three nautical miles from Gloucester and Provincetown.

Located at the mouth of Massachusetts Bay, only 25 nautical miles from Boston and three nautical miles from Gloucester and Provincetown, lies Stellwagen Bank, an underwater plateau that is home to a wide variety of marine life and is one of New England’s special ocean places. Stellwagen has been known for its highly productive fishing grounds since the early 1600s, and it is one of the few remaining hotspots of the Atlantic wolffish, a bottom-dwelling fish with a distinctive mouth full of sharp and wayward teeth that is facing extinction in the United States. However, because of its heavily-trafficked location and desirable biological abundance, Stellwagen has been faced with a multitude of human-induced pressures, leaving its ecosystems at risk. Species such as the wolffish, along with commercial species such as cod, are threatened when modern fishing gear is dragged along the bottom of the ocean, leveling the seafloor and destroying habitat features like biogenic depressions, burrows, nooks or small caves that allow fish to hide to catch prey, avoid predators, and protect their eggs.

In 1992 Stellwagen Bank was designated as a National Marine Sanctuary, which  meant that some harmful activities (including sand and gravel mining, drilling for oil and natural gas, and discharging pollutants) were prohibited – but all fishing activities were allowed to continue. In 1998, however, an amendment to the groundfish fishery management plan established a closed area in the Gulf of Maine (the Western Gulf of Maine Closure, or WGOMC) that overlaps Stellwagen and prohibits the use of particularly destructive bottom-tending fishing gear within its boundaries. (Recreational fishing and less-destructive commercial fishing are still allowed within the closure.) The idea behind this closure is that if gear that destroys the sea bottom is kept out, ocean wildlife and features on the seafloor will have the chance to rebuild and a rebuilt thriving benthic habitat will mean healthier fish stocks.

A pair of Atlantic wolffish

If the WGOMC has this desired effect, it will be important not only for the marine life within its boundaries, but also as an indication that this strategy should be replicated in other areas in need of protecting and rebuilding ocean communities and associated managed species. A recent NOAA National Marine Sanctuaries report compares protected areas within the WGOMC with areas of initially similar habitat type outside the WGOMC for the period 1998-2005 to see if the closure was indeed having a positive effect. What do the results say? Overall, the study’s findings indicate that the fish and wildlife inside the WGOMC closure area are recovering from impacts of destructive fishing gear. However, the report cautions that the seafloor community is changing over time and may not attain a stable state (in theories of ecology, ecosystems change over time until they reach a final, stable phase). Still, the WGOMC is recognized as an important area for conserving biodiversity, and the report concludes that the use of closures remains a valuable tool for maintaining ocean habitat. While this certainly indicates that further study of the WGOMC is needed and that recovery is not complete, it also supports the case for protecting vulnerable underwater habitats in order to allow our healthy ocean ecosystems to grow and thrive.

In New England the issue of fisheries management is a serious topic as it involves serious questions of science, economics, healthy ecosystems, an iconic part of New England’s culture and the very real issue of many people’s livelihoods. Still, the public debate around fishing and fisheries management in New England can often be a lot like arguing baseball – the home team is usually deemed more virtuous than the rest of the league and many facts, figures, data and theories are promoted to defend that assertion. These debates can happen between any combination of folks with an opinion or a perceived stake in the issue – trawlers and gillnetters, one port versus another, one state versus another, commercial fishermen and recreational fishermen, fishermen and regulators, and fishermen and conservationists, among others. While baseball rivalries can be pretty heated, the overwhelmingly vast majority of fans are able to understand that, after all, it’s just a baseball game. Most times.

The thing is, fishermen, regulators or conservationists involved in fisheries issues in regions outside of here often consider the debate and behavior in New England to be much more contentious. For some reason we seem to treat each other more rudely and with such a lack of civility that it is noted across the country. The public debate and political hyperbole over the implementation of the most recent groundfish management plan is a clear example. Despite years of hard work and robust debate by the New England Fishery Management Council and a near unanimous vote to approve the “sectors” plan (final vote 16-1) for managing species like cod, haddock and flounder, the current public debate resembles a fist fight over the results of last year’s World Series. Working the refs, rallying the crowd and harassing the other team’s fans has become a larger part of the story than the game, as it were.

So, when federal Commerce Secretary Gary Locke issued a plain, legal, factual and well reasoned response to deny Gov. Patrick’s request to raise the catch limits through “emergency action” we felt the Secretary deserved an honest “thank you.” CLF and nine other conservation groups sent him a  letter saying so. Thank you Secretary Locke. We think you made an important, rational and sober decision that will help move New England forward.

CLF Senior Counsel Peter Shelley spoke to Boston’s ABC affiliate WCVB-TV in response to Department of Commerce Secretary Gary Locke’s decision on Friday to reject Governor Patrick’s request to increase catch limits, citing the lack of scientific and economic evidence indicating that such an increase was necessary. Shelley stated that the industry has actually benefited economically by the new catch limits since they went into effect in May 2010, while fish stocks have been steadily increasing.

“There is a win-win that can be seen by restoring the fish populations. You can’t have a healthy industry that’s based on a resource base that’s disappearing,” Shelley said during the segment.

For those of you who missed Friday’s broadcast, click here to watch the clip online:

Today,  Department of Commerce Secretary Gary Locke made the decision to reject Governor Patrick’s request for emergency action to increase catch limits for Massachusetts fishermen, in violation of the groundfish management plan that CLF helped to pass, which has been in effect since May 2010 and was helping to create positive, sustainable change in the state’s fisheries. Several weeks ago, the Governor petitioned Secretary Locke to declare a state of economic emergency in Massachusetts fisheries and was supporting a lawsuit that challenged the plan, putting fish and fishermen at risk.

“With his decision to reject Governor Patrick’s request to increase catch limits, Secretary Locke has rightly rejected the notion that the new fisheries management plan is contributing to an economic crisis in the Massachusetts fishery,” said CLF Senior Counsel Peter Shelley. “On the contrary, fishing industry revenues in Massachusetts are up 21.9 percent over 2009 in just the first seven months under the new “catch shares” management system.  The Governor’s demand for emergency action was more politics than economics.” Read more >

The following op-ed was written by CLF Maine Director Sean Mahoney and published on Saturday, December 18 in the Portsmouth Herald.

On Monday, Dec. 20, a committee of the New England Fishery Management Council will meet in Portsmouth to continue the effort to develop a new management plan for Atlantic herring.

Atlantic herring are not only valuable as bait for lobstermen, but are a key forage fish for bigger fish and marine mammals such as striped bass, cod, tuna, dolphins and whales. The work of the council’s Herring Committee is critically important not just for the sustainability of Atlantic herring but for the continued viability of these other fisheries and tourism-related industries such as whale watching.

The Atlantic herring fishery is currently dominated by midwater trawling vessels. These vessels are large (up to 150 feet) and often fish in pairs, where their small-mesh nets the size of a football field, can be stretched between two boats. These small-mesh nets are efficient killing machines. The problem is they are also indiscriminate killing machines — any fish or marine mammal that is ensnared by the small-mesh nets is unlikely to survive, even if they are thrown back into the water after the nets are hauled on deck. These dead fish — referred to as bycatch or discards — include not just the fish that prey on Atlantic herring, such as stripers or haddock, but also the Atlantic herring’s cousins — alewives and blueback herring.

Alewives and blueback herring (collectively referred to as river herring) are anadramous fish — they are born in freshwater, spend most of their lives in the ocean, and then return to freshwater to spawn. The rivers of New England were teeming with river herring up to the 1980s. But in the last 20 years, their numbers have dropped precipitously. For example, until 1986 the number of river herring returning to spawn in the Taylor River averaged between 100,000 to 400,000 a year. But by 2000, that number had declined to 10,000 to 40,000 a year, and in 2006, only 147 river herring returned to the Taylor River. This is a tragedy for New Hampshire’s wildlife conservation.

The causes of the dramatic decline in the numbers of river herring include the fishing practices of the midwater trawl vessels. While at sea, river herring can often be found in the same waters as Atlantic herring and fall victim to the indiscriminate fishing practices of the midwater trawlers. In 2007, bycatch documentation showed that three times the amount of river herring was taken in one tow of one of these industrial vessels as returned that year to the Lamprey River, which boasts New Hampshire’s largest remaining population of river herring.

The meeting of the council’s Herring Committee will focus on management steps to curb this wasteful practice. Central to the success of any management effort must be a robust monitoring program, catch caps on river herring to serve as a strong incentive to avoid areas where river herring are known to aggregate and strong accountability measures to be applied when those catch caps are exceeded.

If river herring are to avoid the fate of Atlantic salmon — another anadramous species all but extirpated from New England’s rivers where they once teemed — a critical step is putting an end to the indiscriminate fishing practices of the midwater trawl boats pursuing Atlantic herring. All other efforts to improve the access to and water quality of the waters river herring spawn in are of little value if they are killed before they get there.

> Read more about CLF’s regional ocean conservation work

In probably the most honest headline published since the start of the BP oil disaster, today’s Miami Herald writes “With no clear plan, experts brace for worst.” US Coast Guard Commandant Thad Allen is contemplating an attempt at plugging the gushing well with a collection of shredded tires, golf balls and other assorted technologically advanced clogging materials. Meanwhile, the BP spokesperson on the scene says, “I have every confidence we’ll find a good temporary solution.” When asked for particulars he revised his confidence to say he has every “hope and prayer.” Another step towards honesty. “Sometimes we are not prepared for adversity,” as Cannonball Adderley once said. Why not approach adversity with honesty?

Oil booms, chemical dispersant, skimmer boats and prep to wash oily wildlife are the basic tenets of oil spill response. For all the creativity and commitment to get oil out of the ground, into your tank and the money in the bank we sure have not made much progress in disaster preparedness or oil clean-up. Every oil spill from the 1969 Santa Barbara oil spill, the Exxon Valdez and the smaller spill of fuel oil in Buzzard’s Bay in April of 2003 employed the same four components. What is being employed in the Gulf Coast today is the same approach on a larger scale. It’s no mystery why this is the case. Unless the oil industry feels the pain through fines, regulations and criminal responsibility there will always be an incentive to cut corners, cross fingers and place confidence in “hope and prayer.”

Philosphers and theologians can weigh hope and prayer, but most of us use the standard yardsticks of oil disaster measurement. The BP oil disaster, although likely low-balled, now has its own ticker. The US Coast Guard estimates there have been 250,000 gallons of Corexit, the chemical dispersant of choice, sprayed on or in the ocean so far. The Gulf of Mexico dead zone was over 7000 square miles before the BP oil disaster. There are about 77,000 miles of coastline in Louisiana alone. And then we have about 900,000 feet of plastic oil containment boom placed along Gulf Coast shores. There are still 5280 feet in one mile.