Next, Richard uses a graph that shows New Hampshire with no landings prior to the mid-1970s. This, too, is false, but here blame may lie in the source. New Hampshire had large landings in the 1960s and '70s. I know this because I worked as crew on those boats. The problem is New Hampshire had no wholesale docking facilities then, so the fish were loaded into pickup trucks and sold in Massachusetts. Apparently, if the landings were recorded at all, they were seen as Massachusetts landings.

I worked on boats that landed over 200,000 pounds of fish in April, May and June, the months that have been closed to New Hampshire fishermen for more than the last 10 years. This is a particularly important point because we fish for what comes to us, as we are too small to follow the fish offshore. When the time you catch fish the fishery is closed, you cannot establish catch history. These months were the time when the entire New Hampshire fleet historically made over 50 percent of their income for the year.

Read the complete letter at SeaCoast Online.