“We’ve been in business around 120 years. We’ve seen the ups and downs over the years. It’s not the first time the resource [herring] has been down and it won’t be the last. That’s why we diversified,” explained Frank O’Hara III. Like many lobster bait dealers, the Rockland-based O’Hara Corporation felt the shock when the annual quota for herring was cut dramatically in 2018. Herring has been the sought-after bait for Maine lobstermen for decades, prized for its ability to attract lobsters and, once upon a time, for its low cost and availability.
Not today, however.
Source: ASMFC.
In 2000, Maine fishermen landed slightly more than 100 million pounds of herring in the state. The price: $0.06 per pound. In 2014 they landed 103.5 million pounds at $0.16 per pound. Eight years later, in 2022, Maine’s catch was a mere 3.8 million pounds. The price, not surprisingly, rose to $0.48 per pound.
New England’s Atlantic herring fishery blossomed in the late 1800s, when the fish was canned and marketed as sardines. In the late 1960s large foreign fishing vessels started fishing for herring in the Gulf of Maine and off Georges Bank. According to the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) these vessels caught staggering amounts of herring, up to 500,000 tons annually, massively depleting the stock. After the 1976 Magnuson-Stevens Act banned foreign vessels in federal waters, herring began to recover.
In the early 2000s, however, herring stocks began to decline and that decline has continued since then.
Herring stocks move between state and federal waters, thus they are managed in concert by the New England Fishery Management Council (NEFMC) and the Atlantic State Marine Fisheries Commission (ASMFC). NEFMC sets the annual catch limits (quotas) for three management areas and two sub-areas in the Gulf of Maine while ASMFC manages effort in the Area 1A herring fishery.
While the three-year stock assessments for Atlantic herring had suggested a decline in the population beginning in the early 2000s, the annual quotas remained steady. The 2016-2018 Acceptable Biologic Catch (ABC) was 110,000 metric tons annually, in line with previous quotas.
“But things really changed with the 2018 stock assessment,” wrote Megan Ware, former herring fishery management plan staff person at ASMFC and current Maine Department of Marine Resources (DMR) director of external affairs, in an email. “That assessment found that there has been below average herring recruitment since 2013, leading to stock declines. While we weren’t overfishing in the terminal year of the assessment (2017), the results showed that if the total ABC was caught in 2018, then the herring fishery would be overfishing. This prompted in-season action by NOAA fisheries to reduce catch in 2018 to 49,900 metric tons.”
The change was a shock to lobster bait dealers. “When they lowered the quota, our boats [F/V Sunlight and Starlight] stayed tied to the dock,” O’Hara recalled. “It was certainly challenging.”
Jeanne Fuller who, with her husband Chuck, runs Harbor Bait in Boothbay, agreed. “The quota went down sharply all of a sudden. We have a herring seiner and it hurt the boat.”
NMFS’s three-year stock assessments, which incorporate catch data, survey information, and life history parameters, indicated that the stocks were declining in part because fewer young were being born and ‘recruited’ into the population. The 2018 stock assessment specifically stated “The recruitment estimates from the most recent five years were among the lowest in the time series. This suggests that the short-to-medium term prognosis for the stock is likely to be relatively poor.”
Since the 2018 season, the annual quota for herring has gone from bad to worse. In 2019, the quota dropped to 21,266 metric tons; by 2022 it sank to 8,767 metric tons. In November 2020 the federal government declared the commercial herring fishery a “fishery disaster,” authorizing $11 million in aid for fishermen in Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Rhode Island, of which $7 million was assigned to Maine. The world of lobster bait shifted in response.
“We reacted to the quota by diversifying into as many things as possible,” O’Hara said. While hard (frozen) bait had always been used by the offshore boats even when herring was readily available, the company concentrated on developing additional sources of frozen bait from around the world. “We source bait based on lobstermen’s demands. When the frozen option became larger, we put in two big cold storage facilities [in Rockland],” he said. The company now offers everything from frozen rockfish and red fish to catfish and mackerel.
Harbor Bait in Boothbay doggedly went after new sources for the herring Maine lobstermen wanted. “We were able to make do as far as herring by buying from different boats, from Massachusetts when it was open, from the trawlers as well,” Fuller said. And, like other smaller bait businesses, the Fullers turned to menhaden to make up the volume lost from herring.
Menhaden, an oily fish that schools up the East Coast each year, were making a providential return as the herring quota sank. The menhaden quota set by the ASMFC, however, remained painfully low for Maine fishermen until 2023.
For years Maine had been allocated 0.5% of the total menhaden quota, approximately 2 million pounds each year. Yet beginning in 2018 Maine fishermen legally landed at least 20 million pounds annually by drawing on the unused quotas of other states. According to DMR, in 2016 Maine menhaden fishermen landed 6.1 million pounds; by 2020 that figure was 27.1 million pounds. Clearly the fish were there in the Gulf of Maine in abundance.
In 2022 the ASMFC agreed to raise the menhaden quota by 20%. It also granted Maine 5% of the total allowable catch, to the delight of Maine lobstermen. “Let’s put it this way. If we weren’t catching pogies, this industry, all the lobstermen would be in a lot of trouble, seeing as how we can’t catch any herring,” a Rockland lobster and bait dealer, who wished to remain anonymous, said.
Maine lobstermen began fishing for menhaden to supply themselves and to sell to local bait dealers. “There’s no lack of bait,” Jeanne Fuller laughed. “There’s too many pogies! With warm water like we have this year there are more pogies, less herring. But it was better when the herring quota was up because it kept all the prices down.”
NMFS’s 2024 Atlantic herring stock assessment, published in June, indicates that the herring stock is still overfished, but overfishing is not occurring because of the quota restrictions. The assessment found that the herring population is still far below its target level.
The herring spawning stock biomass is estimated to be around 48,000 metric tons, 26% of the full biomass target, according to the 2024 stock assessment. In the early 2000s that biomass was over 200,000 metric tons; in the late 1960s it was over 1 million metric tons.
Frank O’Hara III takes a long-term view of herring abundance. “This happened in the late 1980s, early 1990s. The stock rebounded. I’m hoping and optimistic that it will come back. We’re seeing a quota increase now. We’re definitely keeping an eye on it.”
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