An ongoing study conducted by the Island Institute will seek to document herring spawning locations this fall along the coast. The study seeks to locate and map these spawning events in order to understand more accurately the reproductive nature and trends of herring. The project is a multi-year investigation that will match recent spawning observations with historical information to identify changes in spawning areas and abundance.
Performed in conjunction with local fishermen, the study relies on reports by lobstermen of herring spawn in the area. Herring deposit their eggs on the bottom in mats, sticking to gear such as lobster traps. One a spot is reported, it is then sampled over a larger area with a small hand drag and a map of the event is made.
According to the 1953 publication, Fishes of the Gulf of Maine, (Henry Bigelow and William Schroeder) herring can spawn throughout the summer and fall. However, since the start of the Island Institute herring spawning study in 1997, the earliest spawning events have occurred in late August. Historic evidence cites the area around the mouth of the Bay of Fundy as some of the most productive herring spawning grounds in the Gulf of Maine. This area, based on the current study, still appears to be a productive herring spawning site. However, there have been no recorded spawning events during the five years of the study in some of the other coastal spawning areas mentioned in the 1953 publication, such as the Mount Desert region and the mouth of Penobscot Bay.
Many fishermen have noted a decline in herring abundance in the nearshore region, causing worry that the population of this essential part of the marine ecosystem may be reduced. At the same time the herring population offshore has increased, raising speculation that this shift is environmental in nature. Maine lands about 60,000 metric tons of herring a year, with the majority of the catch used to provide bait for the lobster industry.
The information gathered enhances regionally-specific life-cycle information on this species, and could potentially be used to develop environmentally sound herring conservation and fisheries plans. This study is supported by a grant from the Eastern Maine Conservation Initiative. Anyone with historic or current knowledge of herring spawning activities is welcomed to contact Benjamin Neal at the Island Institute in Rockland, 207-594-9209 x 102.