April, 2012 – It’s been a terrible time for fishermen, but in recent years, those who have survived have had reason for optimism. Austerity — in the form of various restrictions on fishing — have allowed some damaged fish populations to be fully rehabilitated, including dogfish, Gulf of Maine pollock, and the haddock and scallops on Georges Bank, the vast fishing shoals southeast of Cape Cod to which the biggest Maine vessels still venture.
The federal regulators — the fisheries service of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) — is legally required to end overfishing of all stocks in the country by 2014, and by the middle of last year it reported it had done so for twenty-one of New England’s thirty-six monitored stocks. Gulf of Maine cod, NOAA fisheries determined in 2008, was rapidly rebuilding.
Which is why NOAA’s new assessment of the cod fishery caused such shock and dismay when it was first surfaced just before Thanksgiving. Since 2008, fisheries scientists reported, the Gulf of Maine cod population has not expanded as expected, and is now only about a fifth the size it needs to be to be considered rebuilt. To restore the stock by 2014 would require fishermen’s catch quotas to be slashed by as much as 90 percent, making it difficult or impossible to fish for other bottom-dwelling fish like pollock, haddock, and flounder that swim among the cod. After a period of cautious optimism, shell-shocked fishermen from Cape Cod to East Quoddy Head saw an artillery shell falling on one of their last remaining positions.
“Having such a big divergence from the previous assessment is a big surprise and leaves many, many questions,” says Jim Odlin, owner of a small Portland-based fleet of trawlers and a member of the New England Fishery Management Council, which makes many of the decisions about how to implement NOAA recommendations. “If we accept the new assessment, how do we move forward and still maintain some segments of the industry?”
That’s the question fishermen and fisheries regulators have been grappling with ever since, and the stakes are high for Maine fishermen. While big offshore boats like Odlin’s can travel farther afield for redfish, Georges Bank groundfish, and other species, smaller vessels have fewer options. “Day boats in southern Maine, New Hampshire, and Massachusetts are by far the most economically dependent on Gulf of Maine cod, in some cases accounting for up to 90 percent of the catch,” says Peter Shelley, senior counsel of the Conservation Law Foundation, the organization whose 1991 law suit forced the federal government to take measures to stop overfishing and rebuild depleted stocks. “They have no other options, whereas the big trip boats have lots of options.”
“The remaining groundfishermen are having a hard enough time making ends meet,” says former Maine marine resources commissioner Robin Alden, executive director of the Stonington-based Penobscot East Resource Center. “This could be a very serious blow.”
Read the full article at DownEast magazine.