Steve Urbon’ story today spotlights two problems.

1. A fishing boat owner’s catch will no longer be in his own hand’s; he will have to trust that opportunistic members of his sector don’t grab everyone’s share of a particular fish species before the limit is reached.

And

2. The sector system will inevitably push the small boat owners out of business as their share of the catch makes their businesses no longer viable.

 Mayor Scott Lang, state Rep. John Quinn and Congressman Barney Frank have vowed to apply further political pressure if the system collapses whole sectors of the New Bedford industry. The New England Fisheries Management Council objects to political pressure but it refuses to develop a workable fishery management plan for the sector of the ocean ecology called fishermen.

 It’s hard to understand how this kind of purist approach by NMFS, particularly because it is based on questionable science, will work for the fishery and the New Bedford industry that depends on it.

See this entire column at The South Coast Today [subscription site]

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