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On August 20th, the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission (ASMFC) released Draft Amendment 3 to the Interstate Fishery Management Plan for Shad and River Herring for public comment (PDF). The amendment was developed in response to a 2007 American shad stock assessment which found the stocks at historic lows. The assessment raises red flags about the Atlantic's forage base because young shad, like their imperiled river herring cousins, are important prey throughout their range, supporting many predators such as striped bass, weakfish, sharks, tuna, king mackerel, shorebirds and porpoises.

After a period of shad recovery in the 1980s, a new pattern of coastwide decline began in the late 1990s and early 2000s, suggesting increased mortality in the ocean where stocks from individual river systems mix together during migrations to and from their summer feeding grounds near the Gulf of Maine. The stock assessment also indicated that the Atlantic herring fishery, which has been dominated by a fleet of mid-water trawlers operating in the Gulf of Maine since the late 1990s, could be responsible for "significant bycatch losses" and recommended that investigation of American shad bycatch become a "high priority."

Draft Amendment 3 proposes mandatory bycatch monitoring by the states through the ASMFC and calls for increased at-sea observer coverage and portside catch sampling so that American shad bycatch can be accurately quantified. In addition, a strong overfishing definition is presented that requires managers to consider all human-induced causes of shad mortality including bycatch as well as fish passage at dams and pollution. The current overfishing definition ignores these more substantial sources of mortality by focusing solely on directed fishing, allowing excessive mortality to erode shad populations.

An outpouring of public support is critical to ensuring that these measures are adopted into the final amendment. The ASMFC needs to hear from you! Please consider sending written comments or attending one of the hearings (PDF) that will be held throughout the Atlantic states.