Increasing Monitoring Capacity to Found Sustainable River Herring Harvests in Maine

River herring have been historically harvested through inshore fisheries, and constitute one of the oldest fisheries in North America. In Maine, river herring harvests once supported annual landings over 3 million lbs, but after populations plummeted in the 1980s, landings have remained below 1.5 million lbs. In 2012, the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission required river herring fisheries to close unless they could be demonstrated as sustainable.  In Maine, eighteen harvests were determined to be sustainable, while others were closed due to lack of data or concerns about the health of the run. The Maine Department of Marine Resources and University of Southern Maine are working with towns and local organizations to perform volunteer monitoring to collect data necessary to determine whether runs may be sustainably harvested. We have adopted visual sub-sampling methods described by Nelson (2006), however, estimates from visual counts may underestimate the true run size due to human error, variations in daily run patterns, and other variables. We examine the accuracy of visual counts using electronic or video counters placed above the volunteer counting stations. While volunteer counts provide an opportunity to build stewardship, they must also provide accurate data to achieve the goals of the project.