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“The saga over the future of Virginia’s reduced-stock Chesapeake Bay herring fishery continues to unfold as the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission (ASMFC) Herring Management Committee approved a motion on Tuesday, August 6 that could lead to further regulation of the fishery.
The Management Committee approved a motion to create a “working group” to consider and evaluate a “precautionary approach” to the management of the state’s herring fishery.
That includes considering time- and area-wide closures of Virginia’s herring reduction fishery “to protect fish-eating birds and fish during critical periods in their life cycles….”
“…At the ASMFC Herring meeting, USGS scientists Barnett Rattner and David Ziolkowski presented a comprehensive report on the status of the U.S. osprey population, showing that ospreys, as well as other raptors, have made a remarkable recovery since the catastrophic effects of the chemical DDT that thinned the birds’ eggshells in the 1960s.
Tsiolkovsky explained that after measures were taken, including a ban on DDT, osprey populations increased by about 300 percent in the eastern United States and by about 587 percent along the Atlantic coast between 1966 and 2022. In the Chesapeake Bay, osprey populations have increased by about 1,800 percent since the 1960s.
He continued: “These numbers show that by all measures, osprey has made a remarkable recovery. Populations are now exceeding historical numbers, in part because they have returned to a very different world than before their decline began.”
Tsiolkovsky did note that between 2012 and 2022, “things are changing” as osprey population growth in the Mid-Atlantic region and other parts of the U.S. plateaued. He noted that bird populations “don’t grow forever…” due to limited carrying capacity (food and shelter).
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