NEW BEDFORD, Mass. — September 20, 2012 — The New England Fishery Management Council's groundfish committee has unanimously approved a proposal to help fishermen survive the crisis in the groundfish industry by letting them catch more fish.
At a meeting in New Bedford on Wednesday, the committee recommended giving fishermen access to areas currently closed to fishing, allowing them to target fish stocks such as pollock, redfish and Georges Bank haddock that are considered abundant. Drastic cuts to the allowable catch for declining species such as cod and yellowtail flounder, scheduled to take effect May 1, threaten to force many fishermen out of business.
Last Friday, the Secretary of Commerce declared a national disaster in the New England groundfishery and the Northeast congressional delegation is now seeking $100 million in economic relief for the industry.
The groundfish committee proposal would allow fishermen to work inside large areas currently closed to fishing that are not considered critical habitat areas. Under the proposal, access to closed areas would be allowed only from May 1 to Feb. 15 to allow fish time to spawn and all vessels would be required to use approved types of fishing gear.
Former New Bedford mayor John K. Bullard, who recently began work as the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's regional administrator for fisheries, attended Wednesday's meeting and spoke in favor of the measure. "There are now only 400 active groundfish vessels in the Northeast part of this country," Bullard said. "Coincidentally, there's about the same number of right whales. We're on a razor's edge."
A disaster declaration does not guarantee that money will "fall from heaven" he said. "There is no money right now. So we need to find ways to make income available to fishermen," he said.
New England fishermen caught only 18 percent of the total allowable catch of haddock last year while Canadian fishermen harvested 94 percent of their allocation, according to fisherman Jim Odlin. "And that's a shared stock," he said. If U.S. fishermen could fish at the same rate, an additional 482 million pounds of haddock could have been landed, he said. "The industry would look a whole lot different then," he said. "There wouldn't be any disaster."
However, there were some dissenting voices at Wednesday's meeting. Peter Shelley, senior counsel with the Conservation Law Foundation, strongly opposed the proposal, saying it would create "an enormous and undefined loophole" in existing regulations. Offshore lobstermen also expressed their concern that groundfish vessels could come into conflict with their own fishery. Groundfish trawl gear nets could damage lobster pots, lobsterman Jon Williams told the committee.
Read the full story in the New Bedford Standard Times