Whale slaughter......Senseless
This is going to be a long post, so please read the entire post.
First, a little background.
This information comes from New England fishermen, not an official news or governmental source. For those unfamiliar with the fishing community, they protect each other vehemently, so to hear rumors like this pitting fishermen against each other is rather unusual.
The herring population in the North Atlantic is very important to the fisheries in the area, as herring are feedstock for the larger species. They are the main food source for cod, haddock, and pollock, which make up a large % of the fish consumed in the US and across the world.
MY father goes deep sea fishing quite often when the weather is decent, normally he goes out on a party boat from April/May until October. He always goes out on the same boat, and is very friendly with the mates and owners of the boat. Every week when he goes out, we talk about the fishing. (I'd love to go out just as frequently, but between work and the Army my fishing has been almost eliminated from the schedule) This week's fishing report was abhorrent. It doesn't concern the boat he goes out on, rather it had to do with the large herring trawlers operating in the Gulf of Maine (They have been banned from the Grand Banks fishery).
1) The US Fisheries commission places observers on a voluntary basis with most boats in the fishing fleet. The herring trawlers have banned the observers. (this in and of itself should be cause for immediate revocation of all permits)
2) Herring are a midwater species, and are a food stock for marine mammals as well as groundfish (cod, pollock, and haddock). The midwater trawl nets have been taking Minke whales in their "bycatch". Normally the whales are freed from the nets and released. Evidently, not anymore. There have been reports of the herring trawlers slitting the abdomens of the whales and letting them sink to the bottom! There is no photographic evidence of this, but too many rumors to ignore, especially when taken in account with the banning of observers from the boats.
3) To drive the cost of herring up, they are grinding up a fair part of their catch as chum.
4) They have been taking groundfish (young pollock) as bycatch, (legal limit on polllock is 21", these are 4" fish)which is illegal, and grinding them up for sale as chum as well. This depletes the stock of groundfish, but allows the herring population to balloon.
Why has this been allowed to continue? Veyr simply, Senator Olympia Snowe is running interference, and not allowing the fisheries commission to do their job. The fisheries commission has been working very well with the fishermen overall, but she is trying to interfere with the fisheries commission.
fisheries legislation
Please, boycott Atlantic herring!
