Around the inside shore of Massachusetts Bay, vestiges of America's earliest industry, small fishing boat businesses, are disappearing from scenic harbors, Hull to Scituate, Plymouth to Cape Cod, before our eyes.
In the last year, about one third of the 32 boats in Sector 10 — one of the business cooperatives organized in Gloucester by the Northeast Seafood Coalition — have ceased fishing.
A year hence, that number will be much higher, says fisherman Stephen Welch, himself included. And eventually, if things don't change, just about the whole sector will be gone, he says.
"We're off 50 to 60 percent," said Welch, who is 50 and began commercial fishing as a teenager. "I'm too young to retire, and it's not right to lay people off. I've got five guys working for me now.There were eight at the peak."
Welch was the only fisherman to testify at this week's Senate Commerce Committee hearing in Boston that was organized by U.S. Sen. John Kerry. But studies of his sector by the state, University of Massachusetts-Dartmouth and NOAA scientists, which were reported in written testimony, verify Welch's analysis.
Read the complete story by Richard Gaines in The Gloucester Times