September 27, 2023 — For nearly 50 years, America’s herring fishermen have been required to take federal monitors on their boats when they set out into the North Atlantic.
Aboard cramped private trawlers, the monitors record the health of fish and of the sea.
But now there’s a catch.
When regulators said the fishermen were on the hook to pay the monitors’ salaries, many said the government had gone too far.
“We don’t mind taking observers, you know, we have for decades now,” said Stefan Axelsson, a third-generation herring fisherman. “But to be told to pay for it just isn’t right.”