August 31, 2020 — The pandemic has kept us all closely tethered to home for the past five months, so it was nice for us here at FishOn to go over the bridge and up the line last Wednesday to cover an actual in-person event. No Zoom. No webinar. Just journalism in the great outdoors of Wakefield.
We covered the last public hearing conducted by the New England Fishery Management Council on the ever-contentious Amendment 23 — the measure to set future monitoring levels for sector-based groundfish vessels in the Northeast fishery.
The council, which is expected to take final action on the measure at its September meeting, did a good job of hosting the public hearing meeting under a tent in the parking lot of the Sheraton Four Points hotel.
Folks were masked and properly socially distanced. Capacity was 50 and about 20 fishing stakeholders attended the meeting, so there was plenty of room. Under the tent, it felt like junior high school detention (or so we understand) where they separate all the troublemakers as far apart as possible.
“It was a pretty big effort,” said Tom Nies, the council’s executive director said about a half hour before the scheduled start of the hearing. “The hotel was helpful. But we’re still working on some details.”