Mid-water trawlers, armed with funnel-shaped nets sometimes towed by a pair of boats, steam into herring and scoop up the fish, sometimes entire schools.
If passed, the restriction would bar mid-water trawlers from the Gulf of Maine June through September.
The coalition argues the herring fishery is hurting other commercial fishing, as well as recreational fishing and whale-watching, because it has been so successful, removing tons of herring from the food chain that supports other fish targeted by commercial fishermen, gamefish like the striped bass and whales.
"Mid-water trawling is an extremely efficient way to catch fish," said Peter Baker, chairman of the CHOIR Coalition, the North Chatham group that wrote to the National Marine Fisheries Service to press the agency to approve the change. "Normally efficiency is a good thing, but when you're talking about a dwindling resource as we do in the Gulf of Maine, efficiency is a problem."
Baker said his issue is not necessarily with the actual population of herring, but the changes in the ecosystem that result from large amounts of the fish being pulled from the ocean.
"Everything in the ocean eats herring," said Baker. "You take these nets through a school and you're not just catching herring, you're catching everything that's eating the herring. They get towed around at 7 knots for a while and when they're hauled up on the deck, they're dead and they just get thrown overboard."
In addition, he said, when schools are scooped out of the water, herring predators go farther to sea for food, affecting tuna fishers, cod fishers and the whale-watching industry.
Gloucester has at least three vessels, owned by Western Sea Fishing Company on Jodrey State Fish Pier, that catch herring using mid-water trawling nets. Gerry O'Neill, owner of the company, did not return a phone call seeking comment.
David Ellenton, vice president and general manager of Cape Seafoods Inc., said in an e-mail message to the Times that his company's supply of fish comes predominantly from Western Sea Fishing's three vessels, the Challenger, the Endeavor and the Voyager, which land between 15,000 and 18,000 metric tons of herring annually. Much of Cape Seafoods' fresh fish comes from Western Sea fishing.
Ellenton said there is no evidence to support an assertion that mid-water trawlers greatly harm the herring population and pointed to catch limits established in 2000 and a voluntary moratorium on weekend fishing.
"This is, in fact, a self-imposed 30 percent reduction in potential fishing activity throughout the Gulf of Maine, throughout the whole year," Ellenton wrote.
He said closing the Gulf to mid-water trawlers would damage a portion of the local fishing industry.
"Eliminating mid-water trawlers totally from the Gulf of Maine for the months of June through September would be devastating to our industry, to our employees, to the skippers and crews, and to the ancillary businesses which support this relatively small fleet of vessels," he said. "I would suggest that it will also have a devastating effect on the lobster fishers, particularly those in Massachusetts who rely on mid-water trawlers for their bait supplies."
Fifty-five groups, including the local Northeast Seafood Coalition and Yankee Fleet Whale Watch, signed the letter. A message for Jerry Hill, owner of the Yankee fleet, was not returned.
Vito Giacalone, of the Northeast Seafood Coalition, said his group supported the restriction after considering its implication.
"We signed on, but we're not a member of CHOIR, nor have we ever lined up with everything CHOIR has done," he said. "But the feed is critical for the ecosystem and something has gone radically wrong. It would be wrong to say that we definitely know it's the mid-water trawlers, but it would be intelligent to take some precautions."
Patricia Kurkul, regional administrator for the NMFS, said a decision on the restriction, which is part of an amendment to the Atlantic Herring Fishery Management Plan, is still a few months away. She said the council must publish the proposed changes and have a public comment period.
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