CHATHAM, Mass. — November 15, 2012 — Sometimes the best intentions can have the worst results. So say Cape scallopers, who are worried that a new plan intended to protect important fish habitat and help restore the region's faltering fish stocks will drive them out of business.
"We were in such a thriving fishery. Getting more money (for our scallops) than we ever got. Nice size scallops, and it's almost like this habitat amendment is like a nightmare. It's like they are pulling the rug out from underneath you," said Chatham scalloper Tye Vecchione.
The New England Fishery Management Council, which draws up plans to manage the region's fish stocks, has been working on a fish habitat protection amendment for the past eight years. For six of those years, scientists sampled the ocean bottom and combed databases, matching that information with fish surveys to show where fish, lobsters, shellfish and other marine life congregate.
Much of the best fishing terrain lies in and around the Great South Channel that separates Georges Bank from the mainland, and north in the Gulf of Maine, according to the council's habitat study, and is listed as a likely site for closure or restrictions. Requiring these new habitat protection zones could be considered as an ecological trade-off for allowing fishermen access to areas currently closed to most fishing, according to the council.
The council could close some of the area to all fishing, or just to fishing with certain gear types, such as scallop dredges, which have a very damaging effect on the bottom. Or they could just lessen the effects of dredging by shortening tow lines, for instance, decreasing the area of a net that will contact the sea floor.
The habitat amendment was on the back burner, nearly forgotten, for years. It recently resurfaced as the council began debate on reopening thousands of square miles of fishing grounds that have been closed for nearly 20 years. The habitat analysis showed that there was little valuable protective bottom for fish in the so-called closed areas. There are two large areas on Georges Bank, and a third large area off Nantucket, as well as a group of smaller areas in the Gulf of Maine.
However, decisions on which new sections of the ocean to close for habitat protection and which to leave open evolved over a long time period, with many meetings, and were made without the input of the local fleet, said New England council member Tom Dempsey, policy director at the Cape Cod Commercial Hook Fishermen's Association. The Cape fleet consists of mostly smaller vessels and fishes in waters relatively close to shore.
"Day-boat fishermen couldn't afford to go to those meetings. They became disengaged from the process," Dempsey said.
About 20 Cape vessels, employing 100 fishermen, routinely work in the Great South Channel between five and 20 miles to the southeast of Chatham. Four years ago, fishery regulators allocated 5 percent of the annual scallop quota to general category scallop vessels, dividing it among hundreds of small boats based on how much they had historically landed.
Those who didn't get a big enough portion of the quota could buy additional rights from other fishermen to catch scallops. Many in the Cape fleet did buy rights from fellow fishermen, borrowing $150,000 to $500,000 each to do so.
"I have money out on buying quota, and I would lose a lot," said scalloper Bob Keese. Unlike the big scallop vessels working out of large fishing ports such as New Bedford, which catch tens of thousands of pounds of scallops a day, the general category fleet is limited to 600 pounds each day.
Read the full story on the Cape Cod Times