With questions already swirling around the federal government’s plan to regulate the New England fishing industry through "catch shares," all eyes have been waiting for the National Marine Fisheries Service’s first listing of the total allowable catch limits for some of the fishery’s species. Those figures, after all, will set the ceiling for the overall catch fishermen in their cooperative "sectors" can land under the new system. So it will be those figures that decide how or whether the new format will work. Now, with NMFS’ posting the total allowable catch for pollock, we know the answer: It won’t.
Gloucester’s Vito Giacalone — who, as policy chief of the Northeast Seafood Coalition, has tried to work with government officials to ease the transition to the catch shares format — says the 67% figure will simply "break the system."
Raymond Canastra, co-owner of the Whaling City Seafood Auction in New Bedford, says the NMFS’ pollock limits would be "the death knell" for many fishing boats — each of which, of course, is a small business and cog in the wheels of the local economy.
Read the complete editorial at The Gloucester Daily Times.
John Sackton of Seafood News took an alternative view, read his op-ed.