GLOUCESTER, MA (January 15, 2009) – For the region’s commercial fishing fleets centered in New Bedford and Gloucester, the next year promises more of the same — a crazy quilt of closed grounds in different seasons and further reductions in days at sea, under interim regulations released yesterday. But harder times for the hard-pressed fleets are anticipated, with a further 18 percent reduction in the number of days at sea among the new mandates.
GARM highlights groundfish gains, losses
PROVIDENCE, RI (October, 2008) – Commercial fishermen have made great strides in rebuilding biomass and reducing fishing mortality on several important groundfish stocks. However, a number of other stocks are still short of their biomass and fishing mortality targets.
The New England Fishery Management Council heard this mixed report during a special two-day meeting held Sept. 3-4 in Providence, where Paul Rago of the National Marine Fisheries Service’s (NMFS) Northeast Fisheries Science Center presented the findings of the third and latest Groundfish Assessment Review Meeting (GARM), which wrapped up at the end of August.
Read the Commercial Fisheries News story in full
LETTER: Delay fishing Amendment 16 and use sectors
NEW BEDFORD, MA (October 10, 2008) – Our fisheries management system is wasteful. The regulations actually force fishermen to throw overboard huge quantities of valuable fish. Last year, because of regulations, more than 50 percent of the cod that were caught had to be thrown back dead. This is a sin, particularly given the financial condition of the fishing industry and the need to conserve our stocks.
We have all read over the past decade that the fishing industry is in trouble financially and that the vessels will be out of business if the system doesn't change immediately, but we have had a huge reduction in our fleet from 1,000 vessels to 575 vessels in the last 15 years. During the same period, landings of groundfish have been well below 50 percent, but the reduction was done gradually, and fishermen, being very creative, did what they had to do to adjust to the cuts. And now we are anticipating further cuts that this time are certain to cripple the economic structure of the Massachusetts groundfish fisheries.
Read this commentary in full in SouthCoastToday.com
Midcoast Maine fishermen: ‘The future is now!’
PORT CLYDE, Maine (October 14, 2008) — PRNewswire-USNewswire via COMTEX/ — Glen Libby, chair of the Midcoast Fishermen’s Association (MFA), will express his vision for the future of Maine’s groundfish fishery at U.S. Senator Olympia J. Snowe’s field hearing on the sustainability of Maine’s groundfishing industry at 1:00 p.m. today, October 14, at City Hall in Portland, Maine.
Given the success of its Community Supported Fisheries program (CSF), the MFA sees a tremendous opportunity for conservation and positive economic change for Maine’s groundfish industry. Sector management, now being promoted by the New England Fishery Management Council, is planned for implementation in time for the 2010-fishing season.
Read the official press release in full at CBS News Marketwatch
YOUR VIEW: Fishery management faces conservation crisis
NEW BEDFORD, MA (September 5, 2008) – The fishery management system in New England is in a crisis. Sectors of the New England fishing industry are about to be obliterated by new management measures that will severely curtail the catch. Taking note of the magnitude of the anticipated measures, Senators Snowe, Collins, Kennedy and Kerry wrote the assistant administrator of NOAA on May 16, requesting a delay in implementing the restrictions. Expressing further concern, Representatives Frank, Tierney, Courtney, McGovern, and Capuano wrote the administrator on July 25 to request freezing regulations at the status quo for one year, until the management regime could be improved by eliminating wasteful management practices.
They noted that the very regulations designed to protect fish and ensure optimum yield have resulted in 1) throwing overboard hundreds of thousands of pounds of valuable cod (and other species) as bycatch, and 2) limiting the catch of several underfished species so optimum yield could not be taken. (Catches of haddock have been limited to about 10 percent of the optimum yield even though its population is so large that the growth of fish has become stunted.)
Lang leads assault on fish study, further restrictions
PROVIDENCE, RI (September 04, 2008) — The ink was barely dry on a downbeat, 1,000-page study of groundfish stocks when critics started poking holes in it during the first day of a two-day meeting of the New England Fishery Management Council.
New Bedford Mayor Scott W. Lang took the first 10 minutes of a mid-afternoon public comment period to implore the council to delay the imposition of Amendment 16, which would further restrict fishing based on the science in the report.
More restrictions now, combined with sky-high fuel prices, would destroy the fishing industry in the nation's No. 1 port, Mayor Lang said.
"The easiest way to regulate is to drive the fishing industry out of business," he said.
Read the Standard-Times story in full
Joel Hovanesian: Fishermen cooperate, and lose
PROVIDENCE, RI (April 28, 2008) – THEY TOLD US we were using nets with mesh size that was too small to allow juvenile fish to escape. We accepted and went to the largest mesh size in the world for the species we seek.
They told us we needed to protect spawning areas where fish reproduce. We closed thousands of square miles of the most productive areas in which we fished.
Then they told us this was not enough, so they closed tracts of ocean during certain months.
UMass Dartmouth faculty members named to Fisheries Management Council committee
DARTMOUTH, MA (February 28, 2008) – UMass Dartmouth School for Marine Science and Technology (SMAST) Professors Steven Cadrin and Daniel Georgianna have both been appointed for three-year terms to the New England Fisheries Management Council’s Science and Statistical Committee. The appointments were announced by Council Chair John Pappalardo at the Feb. 12 Council meeting in Portsmouth, New Hampshire.
"Three members of the UMass Dartmouth faculty are now going to advise the government on critical decisions about the nation’s living marine resources," said SMAST Dean Frank Muller-Karger, who was also a member of the U.S. Commission on Ocean Policy. "The Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act, which was reauthorized by the U.S. Congress in 2006, very specifically states that the government needs to manage resources based on scientific knowledge. Our experts help carry out the spirit of the law. We take very seriously this responsibility to protect the public trust." "The SSC has a heavy responsibility," said Prof. Kevin Stokesbury, Chair of the SMAST Department of Fisheries Oceanography where Drs. Cadrin and Georgianna are affiliated. "Its members have to review the science driving the fisheries management plans, often on a very short time schedule. Dan and Steve are both outstanding in their fields of study and excellent additions to the SSC. Our department will support them to the best of our ability."
Read the official announcement in full