A near-unanimous New England Fishery Management Council has asked federal regulators to end the practice of allowing industrial sized, midwater herring trawlers to work without observers in a section of Georges Bank that is closed to groundfishing boats.
The concern is not about the target prey — there’s plenty of herring, maybe too much, an industry group suggests — but of "bycatch," the possibility that the herring boats have landed and could continue to land too much haddock in their big nets.
Gloucester is home to two major herring fishing companies that use industrial-sized boats working in pairs at times to trawl huge nets. Herring are essential bait for the lobster fleet and much is also exported to Egypt and other Third World nations.