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Fishermen: Groundfish access must be preserved in eastern Maine

ELLSWORTH, Maine — Groundfishermen are few and far between in eastern Maine these days, but the ability of Mainers to get back into the industry needs to be protected, a group of fishermen and Maine fishing advocates told a federal official Tuesday.

About two dozen people, most of them licensed fishermen, met at City Hall on Tuesday night with Anne Hawkins of the New England Fishery Management Council to discuss consolidation and diversity in the groundfishing fleet. Federal officials held the meeting to get feedback about a potential amendment, called Amendment 18, to the Northeast multispecies fishery management plan that would address the issue of consolidation.

The issue of permit consolidation, by which some fishermen and commercial fishing firms have been buying up permits from others to increase their share of stock quotas, has been a growing concern among many fishermen and advocates. The concern is that by consolidating the permits in fewer hands, fish stocks are becoming less of a publicly held resource.

Read the complete story The Bangor Daily News.

MELISSA WOOD, NATIONAL FISHERMEN: Meting out the meager

May 22, 2012 - Listening to the New England Council's Groundfish Advisory Panel talk about how that industry is going to pay for monitoring costs is kind of like trying to figure out how to pay your bills when you've just lost your job. Though monitoring is important keeping costs down is critical. As Panel Member Gary Libby pointed out, "If we had 100 percent monitoring we probably wouldn't have an industry."

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