By JAY LINDSAY Associated Press Writer
BOSTON – August 13, 2010 – The catch for fishermen in the Northeast during the first three months following drastic rule changes fell 10 percent compared to last year but revenues rose 17 percent, according to federal statistics released this week.
It's too soon to draw broad conclusions, but the relatively stable first-quarter numbers are cause for cautious optimism about the switch, said Patricia Kurkul, the National Marine Fisheries Service's Northeast regional administrator.
"It's sort of on track with what we saw last year, so there's nothing catastrophic going on here," Kurkul said.
Industry advocates say the statistics would tell a more complete story if they included how many boats went to sea. Odell said the early catch may have been driven largely by a few fishermen who have bigger catch limits. Brian Rothschild, a marine science professor at the University of Massachusetts at Dartmouth, said the large haddock catch likely went to big vessels, since they're the only ones with the horsepower to tow special nets used to corral haddock.
Rothschild added that federal regulators have got to do better than stay relatively even with last year, when fishermen only caught a fraction of what they were permitted to catch.
"If this year we're catching the same amount as last year, then the present system is no better," he said.
Kurkul said one concern was recorded landings for species that aren't supposed to be caught at all, including southern New England winter flounder, which showed 36 metric tons for the quarter. Kurkul said the number could be the result of wrongdoing, faulty reporting by dealers or compiled from statistics gathered by third-party federal catch observers.
"What we need to do is dig deeply into the numbers to find out exactly what happened," Kurkul said.
The catch got a boost because the new rules allowed fishermen into areas previously closed in May, and unusually high prices helped fishermen at the start of this fishing season, said Jackie Odell of the Northeast Seafood Coalition, a fishing industry group.
But the early numbers are likely masking that a broad section of the fleet hasn't started fishing yet because fishermen are limited to catching so few fish this year, she said.
"I know a lot of fishermen right now that are very, very concerned about their allocation for the whole year and don't think there's anything positive out of what's taken place over the last three months," Odell said Friday.
Though the total catch was relatively even, fishing varied among ports. In Gloucester, the catch dropped about 13 percent in the first quarter, but New Bedford groundfishermen increased their catch by 10 percent.
Portland, Maine, saw a huge jump, with 61 percent more groundfish landings in the first quarter, compared to last year. But Kurkul said Portland may just be absorbing the catch from the state's other ports, whose combined catch dropped 50 percent during the same period. The haul in Rhode Island was 15 percent higher than last year, but it dropped 43 percent in New Hampshire, an area where fisherman have been staying tied up, Kurkul said.