The New England groundfish fishery is one of the most historically significant fisheries in the world. The greatest parts of the New England character and all of New England’s coastal communities have deep roots in it going back for centuries. Were it not for the groundfish fishery, for the money it generated and for the people that it attracted, New England would be a far different region, lacking much of what makes it so attractive today.
We have been told for years that the New England groundfish fishery in particular is in a state of crisis. In seemingly endless media accounts, in foundation-funded study after study and report after report, the New England groundfish fishery is held up as one of the best examples available of how a fishery can be destroyed by mismanagement. We are constantly told that because of the rapacity of the fishermen and their willingness to break the laws, the laxness of fisheries enforcement, the conflicts of interest in the management bodies, the overwhelming efficiency of the boats and gear, the overcapitalization of the fleet, in fact, because of virtually everything that the fishermen are either responsible for or have any influence over, they are all facing imminent financial ruin and will only be saved (from themselves, of course) by a revolutionary shift in how we manage our fisheries.
It seems a classic disaster in the making, and thanks to a media machine that’s hungry for bad news to report, and to journalists who generally have neither the resources and skills necessary for nor the interest in digging beyond the canned gloom and doom releases that are incessantly provided by the ocean branch of the crisis industry, it’s a perception that’s well on its way to becoming a reality. And it’s doing so with the apparent encouragement of the upper echelon of the National Marine Fisheries Service in the US Department of Commerce’s National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA/NMFS), the agency that is responsible for managing our federal fisheries and our coastal waters outside of three miles.