| After decades of overexploitation and severe depletion, Atlantic herring stocks in waters of the northeastern United States have recovered. Fishery managers now consider the herring resource to be underexploited. Nevertheless, some fishery managers and sustainable fishery advocates in New England have expressed concern that the fishery management plan may not adequately consider the importance of herring as prey for marine mammals, seabirds, and piscivorous fish. Several studies suggest that consumption by these predators is significant, yet trophic interactions are not explicitly considered in stock assessment models. Instead, as in most fisheries stock assessments, predation is subsumed within the natural mortality rate, and no empirical estimates of... |
