April 24, 2012 – Massachusetts fishermen’s earnings sank by 14.2 percent in 2011 — a record drop that some blame on the first full year of new federal catch limits, the Herald has found.
“They’re just killing us,” said Plymouth fisherman Jim Keding, who sold his boat and downsized into a smaller home because he couldn’t make ends meet under the new system.
A Herald review of U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis figures shows that workers in the state’s “Forestry, Fishing and Related Activities” sector earned $54 million less in 2011 than they did in 2010.
The 14.2 percent drop represents the largest such Massachusetts decline in the two decades the bureau has kept such records.
Figures for the fishing industry alone aren’t available yet. But bureau economist David Lenze said fishermen’s earnings account for the bulk of the “Forestry, Fishing and Related Activities” category in Massachusetts.
Some fishermen blame their floundering fortunes on a “catch-share” system the government put in place in May 2010 to protect groundfish such as cod. The program gives each boat a license to catch a certain amount of fish based on what the vessel netted from 1996 to 2006.
The system replaced an older program that regulated such things as each ship’s allowable days at sea.
“The government has been pushing a bureaucratic agenda for a very long time (of) requiring the consolidation of the fishing fleet,” said former New Bedford Mayor Scott Lang, who helped lead an unsuccessful lawsuit against the new system.
“Approximately half the fleet is tied up in New Bedford — and I know it’s the same everywhere you go (around) New England,” said Lang, now a private lawyer helping plaintiffs appeal their lawsuit loss.
Read the full story at the Boston Herald.