Restoring River Herring Might Require Curtailing the Ocean Bycatch

The incredible amounts of silt that washed down the Hudson and Connecticut rivers after Irene probably didn't do much good for fish in those rivers. I blogged about it here, after asking Tom Lake, of the Hudson River Estuary Program, about it.

The long term affect probably won't be terrible, he told me: "that is why fish have so many thousands of progeny, to account for such unexpected losses."

Then he said, "They'll rebound, as soon as we close the coastal loopholes on their harvesting."

I let that remark pass until just now, when I saw, via Twitter, this piece, published in the Patriot-Ledger, which covers (I believe) the Quincy, Massachusetts, area. It was written by Steve Pearlman, coordinator of the Watershed Action Alliance of Southeastern Massachusetts. He wrote that efforts to restore historical spawning runs of blueback herring and alewives (such as the work Save the Sound and the state of Connecticut have been doing to build fish passages on Long Island Sound's tributaries) ...

... won’t truly succeed if river herring continue to be decimated at sea by corporate trawler fleets dragging football field size nets to catch entirely different species of fish: Atlantic herring. Their “incidental” catch of river herring is imperiling commercial and recreational fish such as cod and striped bass that depend on river herring as a key source of food.

A quarter of a million river herring were caught in a single tow by a mid-water trawler in New England in 2008, more fish than were counted in all but one Massachusetts herring run that year.

On Sept. 28, the New England Fishery Management Council meets in Danvers to vote on several approaches to minimize the accidental “bycatch” of river herring. But the few corporate fishing interests that benefit financially from ignoring the bycatch problem will try to stop the council from even considering options that could cost them a bit more to implement. Yet these very options could financially benefit small-scale commercial and recreational fishermen who are harmed by wholesale destruction of this critical part of the aquatic food chain.

The intercept fishery or bycatch fishery have been causing problems for river fish for decades.Let's hopet the fishery management council takes some action.

A Sewage Fix on the Hudson Gives Researchers Immediate Data

When a sewage treatment plant needs to be fixed, the operators can't just shut off the flow of sewage into the plant. They have to plan the repairs for a time of low-flow (very late at night or very early in the morning), disinfest the sewage as best they can, continue to release it partially-treated, and hope for the best.

When Westchester County announced recently that it had to do just that, three researchers took it as an opportunity to get real data. Here's what the Journal News reported (although oddly it doesn't say which treatment plant the repairs were made at; the count has three on the Hudson: in Yonkers, Ossining and Peekskill):

Just hours after the predawn release, the three testers found levels of the sewage-indicating enterococcus bacteria that were four times higher than usual.

The highest levels recorded exceeded recommended federal guidelines for primary exposure, such as swimming.

Though the scientists' overnight data showed bacterial spikes, the levels receded within 24 hours, as expected. ...

"There have been dramatic improvements in the water quality of the Hudson River since the (1972) Clean Water Act," said Juhl, a research scientist with Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory in Palisades. "But the current data sets consist of averages. People don't go into the average water on an average day. They go in at specific locations at specific times."

Out of 27 spots that Juhl and the crew tested repeatedly in 2006 and 2007, 21 had at least one instance when enterococcus levels per 100 milliliters of liquid were higher than allowed by federal authorities for anyone with direct contact with the water, such as swimmers.

The bad news is that the repair crews didn't finish the work and will have to try again. The good news is that there aren't likely to be many swimmers in the water at this time of year.

Whither the Riverkeeper?

One of the good things about being a reporter all those years ago was that people returned my phone calls in a generally timely way. One person who didn't was John Cronin, who was then the Hudson Riverkeeper.

Cronin loved publicity, and was something of a genius about getting press attention for Hudson River issues. He just happened to operate on his own schedule and according to his own priorities, and that meant if you called him on a Monday you might expect to hear back from him the following Monday. Once I learned this, it was no big deal -- I just timed my calls accordingly, which I was happy to do because he knew what reporters needed and was happy to dole out the strong opinions and relevant anecdotes on cue, or I found someone else to call when I was on deadline.

Out of the blue late last night, John emailed me. He's the head of the Beacon Institute for Rivers and Estuaries, in Beacon, N.Y. (another old friend and colleague, Marc Moran, is the chief operating officer). John also has a sort-of blog -- I say 'sort-of' because he's not using the traditional blog format.

In my opinion, John is one of the most important figures in modern environmental advocacy. I was bummed when a rift occurred at Riverkeeper that prompted him to quit and Bobby Kennedy Jr. to feud with Bob Boyle and eventually oust him as head of the organization (although I remember, about four years before John quit, he told me he was exhausted and didn't intend to be Riverkeeper forever and, a couple of years later, him empasizing to me twice in an interview that Bobby worked for him, so the end was in sight for a while before it happened. But I digress...)

John cares deeply about the river and environmental issues, and always had thoughtful and insightful things to say. His blog, or whatever you want to call it, is here.

John, by the way, was the second of three Hudson Riverkeepers. Tom Whyatt, who is now an environmental attorney, was the first; after he was Riverkeeper, Tom was the executive director of Westchester Land Trust (I'm now the acting executive director); Alex Matthiessen is the third.

No Shad

Back in the 1980s, the Soundkeeper sued Norwalk to get the city to upgrade its then-abominable sewage treatment plant. John Cronin, who was then the Hudson Riverkeeper, went to Norwalk to help announce the suit and, to drive his point home about how bad water quality was, said that at the upcoming Norwalk Oyster Festival, they wouldn't even be serving oysters from Norwalk.

I remembered that a decade later when someone told me that there were so few shad left in the Hudson that Cronin was on his way down to the Delaware River to buy shad to serve at Riverkeeper's annual Hudson River shad-fest.

And now another decade or so has past and the Riverkeeper's shad-fest has come to this: shad will be completely missing from the menu:

For the past few years, Riverkeeper, the Hudson River conservation group, has been easing the fish off the menu of the festival it stages in Garrison, N.Y. This year’s event, on May 18, will be completely shad-free.

The issue is simple conservation. Shad swim from the ocean to the upper reaches of rivers each spring to spawn. In the Hudson River, the number of shad has been dwindling because of overfishing and decades of environmental sins.

This year, some biologists predict the run might be the smallest in memory, prompting the state Department of Conservation to enact emergency restrictions on commercial and recreational shad fishing. The shad is the only Hudson River fish that can be sold commercially.

In a show of support for Riverkeeper’s decision, shad was taken off the menu at the Hudson River Maritime Festival May 10, too. Their motto: Please don’t eat the shad. Save the shad.

Sad.

If you want to read something else that is sad, in retrospect, read William Warner's Beautiful Swimmers: Watermen, Crabs and the Chesapeake Bay. Sad because the incredible bounty he wrote about 40 years ago has been so severely compromised, in the same way that the Hudson has been compromised by the loss of shad and Long Island Sound compromised by the loss of lobsters. I read Warner's book while I was working on mine, just as I read Bob Boyle's The Hudson River: A Natural and Unnatural History. Warner died yesterday at age 88.

Where are the Shad?

I haven't seen shad or shad roe in the fish case of our supermarket yet, which is a bit odd -- in years past, it has come in earlier than the local run, in late January and February instead of March and April, which means the fish are being caught in the so-called intercept fishery in the ocean or in rivers much further south (come to think of it, I seem to recall hearing that the intercept fishery has been banned, or severely curtailed, for fear that it was preventing shad from reaching their spawning streams).

In any case, there are so few shad left in the Hudson that New York State is further restricting the number of days that the handful of commercial fishermen who are left can catch them. Sad.

Beefsteak, Shad, and Joseph Mitchell

It’s a good morning when two stories in the news call to mind great pieces written by Joseph Mitchell, even if one of them is the sort of sad tale that underscores how basically clueless we are when it comes to trying to understand and manage some ecosystems.

I’ll get to that next. First though is “Gluttonous Rite Survives Without Silverware,” in the Times, a long, fun account of a dining tradition – if “dining” is not too delicate a word – called a beefsteak. You have to read it to believe it but even better, you have to get Mitchell’s book, Up in the Old Hotel, and read his piece from the 1930s, called “All You Can Hold For Five Bucks” (it’s also available as a download if you go to this site, then click on “For More Beefsteak Information Click Here,” but you really ought to buy it or get it from the library, because everything in it is good). But the Times story isn’t about a revival; it’s about a survival through the decades in northern New Jersey, even as the New York beefsteak faded in the mid-twentieth century. Totally gross, but amusing.

Less so however for this story, in the Journal News, about how New York State is considering closing the commercial shad season in the Hudson. Striped bass, zebra mussles, PCBs, General Electric, intercept fisheries – all of them have a role in the decline of the shad fishery, or at least people think they do. Truth is, nobody knows, and the state is left to draw the conclusion that the only thing to do is tell people like Bob Gabrielson and the nine or so others who still fish commercially in the Hudson that they’ll have to cut back even more. Mitchell also wrote about the Hudson’s shad fishermen, in The Rivermen, page 574 in Up in the Old Hotel.

I went to Gabrielson’s house a decade ago to buy shad roe (read about it here) and although I probably never would have done so again – Pound Ridge to Nyack for roe is a long drive – it was nice to know I could have if I wanted to.

Chinese Mitten Crabs

Another Chinese mitten crab was found in the Hudson River, this one up near Cold Spring. The Hudson River Almanac has details, and characterizes the find rather dramatically: “…it casts an ominous cloud on the estuary.” (That must be one big crab.) Here’s what the Almanac says:

It was announced this week that a second Chinese mitten crab, this one an immature female, was recently found along the Hudson. Coupled with the first recovery this past June, it casts an ominous cloud on the estuary (see 12/9 Cold Spring). …

12/9 - Cold Spring, HRM 54: This past October 29, a second Chinese mitten crab was found at the Cold Spring Boat Club boat launch (see 6/3 Nyack for the first mitten crab, an adult male). It was confirmed as an immature female, 30 mm carapace width. The juvenile female mitten crab was brought to the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center in Edgewater, Maryland, in early November. Although we now have 11 confirmed mitten crabs from the Mid-Atlantic region, this is the first appearance of a juvenile. Yet, we still cannot confirm a self sustaining population. Continued monitoring is needed to establish a better understanding of the population.
- Carin D. Ferrante, Amanda Higgs

[The Chinese mitten crab (Eriocheir sinensis) is native to the estuaries of China where it is highly regarded in the market. Mitten crabs are catadromous, meaning that they spend much of their life in freshwater, then return to higher salinities in the lower estuary (15-20 parts-per-thousand salt) to reproduce. The salinity gradients of east coast estuarine systems like the Chesapeake Bay, Delaware Bay, and the Hudson River are nearly ideal for them. Adult mitten crabs have a carapace width of about 3", but six of its 8 legs are almost twice as long, giving them an almost "spider crab" look. Unlike the native blue crab, a swimming crab, mitten crabs are burrowing crabs, similar to our mud crabs only many times larger. They have a generalist diet, varied in prey, and their potential ecological impact on east coast estuaries is still unknown.

Chinese mitten crabs were inadvertently introduced to Europe in the 1930s and are now widespread. The first U.S. mitten crab was caught in San Francisco Bay in 1993, though they may have been there earlier. They first appeared along the Atlantic coast in Chesapeake Bay in 2005. One more followed in 2006, and another this year. Already, 4 mitten crabs have been collected from Delaware Bay this year. All 7 of these crabs, plus the earlier one from the Hudson, have been males.

Chinese mitten crabs have been an invasive species in Europe for a decade or more. The Marine Invasions Lab at the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center in Edgewater, Maryland, is working with U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, NOAA, and the Maryland Department of Natural Resources in monitoring their presence. It is illegal to import mitten crabs into the United States, but there is genetic evidence that the east coast mitten crabs arrived here from Europe via commercial traffic, much like zebra mussel in 1988.

If you encounter a mitten crab in New York State, please notify Leslie Surprenant, NYSDEC Invasive Species Management Coordinator (518) 402-8980, (ljsurpre@gw.dec.state.ny.us), and Carin D. Ferrante, Smithsonian Mitten Crab Coordinator (ferrantec@si.edu). Do not release them alive! If you take photos, make certain that you take both dorsal and ventral - top and bottom - views so we can determine its sex. Leslie Surprenant.]

Compiled by Tom Lake, Hudson River Estuary Program Naturalist New York State Department of Environmental Conservation.

And here’s more info about the Almanac itself, which is a great thing and should be duplicated on Long Island Sound:

The Hudson River E-Almanac is compiled and edited by Tom Lake and emailed weekly by DEC's Hudson River Estuary Program. To sign up to receive the E-Almanac (or to unsubscribe), send an email message to hrep@gw.dec.state.ny.us and write E-Almanac in the subject line.

Weekly issues are archived at http://www.dec.ny.gov/lands/25611.html.

Some Really Big, Really Old Fish

More about those big, un-dangerous sturgeon in the Hudson River, from the Hudson River Almanac:

6/28 - Dutchess County, HRM 80: The NYSDEC Hudson River Fisheries Unit sturgeon tracking team netted an 8' long female Atlantic sturgeon this afternoon. Sturgeon over 4' in length tend to be females. This one may have been 35-40 years old. She appeared to be about to burst with eggs - her body was huge! The fish was fitted with a satellite tag for tracking and released after much prodding and encouragement.

- Amanda Higgs, Rebecca Johnson

[Atlantic sturgeon are the stuff of myth and legend. They are the largest fish to regularly inhabit the Hudson, reaching 10-12' in length and weighing in excess of 350 lb. Biologically they are a fish but their countenance suggests far more. They are a primitive-looking and wonderfully adapted creature belonging to an order of fishes whose evolutionary origins reaches back into the Triassic, at least 200 million years ago. Sturgeon grow very slowly - taking as long or longer than humans to reach maturity - and rival us in longevity, surviving 50 years or more in the wild. Tom Lake.]

The Hudson River Almanac is worth getting, by the way. Here’s how:

The Hudson River E-Almanac is compiled and edited by Tom Lake and emailed weekly by DEC's Hudson River Estuary Program. To sign up to receive the E-Almanac (or to unsubscribe), send an email message to hrep@gw.dec.state.ny.us and write E-Almanac in the subject line.

Sturgeon General

Once when I was still a reporter, I got a call one June day from Frances Dunwell, of the New York State DEC’s Hudson River Estuary Program. Researchers were going out on a boat the next day to catch and tag sturgeon in the Hudson, she told me, and I was invited to accompany them. That’s great, I said, tell me where and when. Sturgeon were mysterious. The Hudson in June was beautiful. And a chance to observe part of what goes on under the water was too good to pass up.

Then an editor called me to his desk. A county employee had recently been charged with a crime in connection with a sewage spill in Yonkers, a story I had been covering. The employee was going to be arraigned at Yonkers city court. When? Tomorrow. But I was just invited to observe a sturgeon-tagging operation – it will make a great story.

Tough, he said. It's your story. You’re going to Yonkers city court.

I did as I was assigned, accompanied by plenty of complaining, but I always regretted the missed sturgeon opportunity.

It turns out though that Fran and the HREP are still involved in sturgeon research, along with other backers. Not long ago a fellow from the Albany Times Union did what I had hoped to do and wrote a pretty good account, here.

Here are some excerpts that interested me particularly:

Two centuries ago, novelist Washington Irving saw a sturgeon leap from the river.

"How solemn and thrilling the scene as we anchored at night at the foot of these mountains," he wrote, "... and was startled now and then by the sudden leap and heavy splash of the sturgeon."

However, there is some danger if a boater happens to get too close. Last month, a 32-year-old woman in Florida was knocked unconscious by a leaping sturgeon….

And if you like WPA murals, which I do, although I’m no expert and not even a student of them, here’s a reason to stop in and mail a letter the next time you’re passing through Hyde Park:

Murals that decorate the walls of the Hyde Park post office, which was used by the town's most famous resident, Franklin Roosevelt, include a depiction of two men in a flat-bottom river boat taking in a netted sturgeon while other workers on shore slaughter the fish for their flesh and caviar.