Maine's Atlantic Herring Fishery 
Fishery Description
The Atlantic herring (Clupea harengus) is the most important pelagic fishery resource in the state of Maine. It is also an important forage species for predators such as seabirds, marine mammals, and a variety of larger fish species. Landings of this species exceed landings for any other species and reached 50,000 metric tons in 1996. It supports a $40 million a year canning industry and is the primary bait used in the lobster fishery.
In the past when there were many more canneries in Maine, herring were harvested primarily in “fixed” gear (weirs and stop seines) close to shore and catches were dependant on schools of juvenile herring (sardines) swimming into the gear or into a bay or cove where they could be “shut off.” Today, the fishery is almost exclusively a “mobile” gear fishery. Fishermen in larger boats pursue herring to offshore fishing grounds, using sophisticated electronic equipment to locate the fish and purse seines and mid-water trawls to catch them. The canning industry also relies on imports of herring that are caught in New Brunswick in the summer and in southern New England in the winter to maintain a consistent supply throughout the year.
The Department of Marine Resources is responsible for monitoring the status of the Maine herring fishery and works in cooperation with the National Marine Fisheries Service to assess the status of the U.S. Atlantic coast herring stock, which extends from Virginia to New Brunswick. DMR biologists process herring samples obtained from the commercial fishery and compile landings and catch statistics provided by the fishermen and the herring industry. This information is combined with trawl survey abundance indices to estimate stock size and to provide advice for management purposes. These assessments indicate that the entire Atlantic coast stock complex of herring is very large and under-utlilized, but stock size is believed to be much larger offshore on Georges Bank than it is in the Gulf of Maine where most of the fishing takes place.
