The Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council is enacting a first-ever cap on accidental catching of the American shad and related fish.
The shad, an important part of the Chesapeake Bay's food chain, has for decades been the target of overfishing and victim of pollution. Maryland closed its fishery for them in 1980, The Baltimore Sun reports.
Yet though other fish have bounced back when subject to fishing bans, the shad have not, according to the Sun report.
The fishery council's ban says fishing trawlers will have to turn back if their nets catch 236 metric tons of river herring and shad, according to the report.
"The council wanted to at least start addressing this bycatch issue by putting a hard cap on it," Jason Didden, a fisheries management specialist for the council, told the Sun.
According to 2010 statistics from the Chesapeake Bay Network, the American shad's population has been on the rise but, at the time, was less than 30 percent of abundant levels.
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