A five-year-old industry advocacy organization was urged yesterday by a small but influential group from widespread elements of the national commercial fishing community to muscle up in an attempt to tell its story loudly, clearly and with effect. Jim Ruhle, president of the Commercial Fishermen of America, said the board would meet today and announce its decision. A North Carolina-based fisherman from a nationally prominent fishing family who also serves on the Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council, Ruhle brought the board to Gloucester for what he described as a crossroads decision, whether to disband or expand.
His brother Phil, a gear innovator and industry reformer who had served on the New England Fishery Management Council, was lost last summer in a fishing accident.
Ruhle’s advice yesterday came from a chorus in tight harmony.
"We’re at a fork in the road," said Brian Rothschild, a professor of Marine Science at the University of Massachusetts at Dartmouth, who serves as a connection between the congressional delegation and the state’s fishing industry. "Unless we intervene, the industry won’t achieve its objectives."