Maryland, along with some other east coast states, has issued a moratorium on the harvest of the blueback herring and alewife, known collectively as “river herring.”
River herring populations have dropped drastically along the east coast since at least the 1980s. States from Maine to Florida were told to ban all herring fishing if they couldn’t develop a plan for the sustainable harvest of the declining species by January 1. Apparently, we didn’t get it together in time.
From now on, if you’re caught using river herring as bait, make sure you can prove you bought it from New York, Maine, New Hampshire, or the Carolinas, all of which have not been required to shut down their fisheries.
