Spatial and temporal genetic stock composition of river herring bycatch in southern New England Atlantic herring and mackerel fisheries

Anadromous river herring (alewife and blueback herring) persist at historically low abundances and are caught as bycatch in commercial fisheries, potentially preventing recovery despite conservation efforts. We used newly established single-nucleotide polymorphism genetic baselines for alewife and b...

Full description

Bibliographic Details
Published in:Canadian Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences
Main Authors: Reid, Kerry, Hoey, Jennifer A., Gahagan, Benjamin I., Schondelmeier, Bradley P., Hasselman, Daniel J., Bowden, Alison A., Armstrong, Michael P., Garza, John Carlos, Palkovacs, Eric P.
Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
Language:English
Published: Canadian Science Publishing 2023
Subjects:
Aquatic Science
Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics
Long Island
Long Island Sound
Block Island
Northwest Atlantic
Online Access:http://dx.doi.org/10.1139/cjfas-2022-0144
https://cdnsciencepub.com/doi/full-xml/10.1139/cjfas-2022-0144
https://cdnsciencepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1139/cjfas-2022-0144
Description
Summary:Anadromous river herring (alewife and blueback herring) persist at historically low abundances and are caught as bycatch in commercial fisheries, potentially preventing recovery despite conservation efforts. We used newly established single-nucleotide polymorphism genetic baselines for alewife and blueback herring to define fine-scale reporting groups for each species. We then determined the occurrence of fish from these reporting groups in bycatch samples from a Northwest Atlantic fishery over four years. Within sampled bycatch events, the highest proportions of alewife were from the Block Island (34%) and Long Island Sound (22%) reporting groups, while for blueback herring the highest proportions were from the Mid-Atlantic (47%) and Northern New England (24%) reporting groups. We then quantified stock-specific mortality in a focal geographic area (∼3500 km 2 , including Block Island Sound) of high bycatch incidence and sampling effort, where the most accurate estimates of mortality could be made. During this period, we estimate that bycatch took about 4.6 million alewife and 1.2 million blueback herring, highlighting the need to reduce bycatch mortality for the most depleted river herring stocks.

Similar Items