BOSTON (AP) — March 1, 2013 — Federal fishery managers told beleaguered New England fishermen on Friday that they'll try to cover the millions it costs to hire required at-sea catch monitors.
But they also warned they couldn’t guarantee the funds because of automatic spending cuts that kicked in Friday, as well as the lack of a federal budget for the 2013 fiscal year.
Regional fishermen who target bottom-dwelling groundfish, such as cod and flounder, are facing massive cuts in what they’re allowed to catch during the 2013 fishing year, which begins May 1. A 77-percent year-to-year decrease in the catch of cod in the Gulf of Maine is among the worst in the slate of reductions many fishermen say will end the local industry.
And fishermen must absorb those cuts on top of paying for the at-sea monitors, which track what they haul in and what they discard to try to ensure accuracy in a management system that relies on strict quotas for each species.
The government has covered that expense since the monitors became mandatory on a certain percentage of fishing trips in 2010. But the fleet was expected to pay for the monitors for the first time in 2013.
Read the full story from Jay Lindsay of the Associated Press at the Boston Globe