ELLSWORTH — While lobster landings nearly doubled during the dozen years that George Lapointe served as commissioner of the Department of Marine Resources (DMR), most of the state’s other fisheries have suffered declines.
Declines in fish stocks and increased federal regulation have decimated the state’s once prosperous groundfish industry. Fewer boats landed fewer scallops, the sea urchin fishery is a shadow of what it was during the boom years of the early 1990s, and Maine’s shrimp industry was nearly destroyed during the last decade when shortened seasons and reduced landings forced Portland-based processors to shut down for lack of product.
“Groundfish was a huge issue in 1998 that remains,” Lapointe said. “It’s important in Portland and in areas like this,” Downeast, “with no groundfish left.”
Lapointe could hardly have taken the reins at DMR at a more difficult time as far as management of the New England groundfish resource was concerned. For years, Lapointe said, regulators had flexibility in choosing measures to protect the region’s depleted stocks of cod, haddock, sole, flounder and other regulated species and the New England Fisheries Management Council (NEFMC) tried to protect and rebuild those resources primarily by requiring fishermen to use nets with larger mesh and restricting fishing in certain areas.
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