October 25, 2021 — Contrary to popular belief, the fishing industry is not dead.
And UMass Amherst’s Gloucester Marine Station has the numbers to prove it.
According to a study conducted by the marine station and presented at the Cape Ann Museum to city and state leaders on Friday, blue economy jobs grew faster than the regional economy as a whole from 2004 to 2020 as the number of people working the blue economy grew by 19.5% on the North Shore.
Over this period, all industries in the region had a growth of 12.2%.
“The strength of our North Shore Blue Economy is a combination of mature and emerging specialized industry clusters and opportunities in both traditional maritime industries and technology-based industries not always perceived as being connected to the ocean,” Katie Kahl, an assistant professor of sustainable fisheries and coastal resilience at UMass Amherst, wrote in the executive summary of the study.
The blue economy, as The World Bank defines it, is the “sustainable use of ocean resources for economic growth, improved livelihoods and jobs and ocean ecosystem health.”
This includes coastal tourism and recreation, living resources, marine transportation, marine construction, ship and boat building and repair, and offshore minerals.
The focus area of the study included Gloucester, Rockport, Manchester, Essex, Beverly, Ipswich, Salem, Marblehead, Swampscott, Nahant, Lynn, Peabody, Danvers, Wenham, Hamilton, Rowley, Newbury, West Newbury, Newburyport, Salisbury and Amesbury.
Read the full story at the Gloucester Times