NEW BEDFORD – July 19, 2011 — The National Marine Fisheries Service has proposed an increase in the permissible haddock bycatch for the Atlantic herring fishery — a move that one fishing company in New Bedford says was a long time coming.
Severe restrictions on haddock caught unintentionally, imposed on midwater trawlers fishing for herring, were blamed for the April shutdown of the NORPEL fish processing plant on Fish Island in New Bedford with the resulting loss of 80 jobs. One of the company's two boats, the 115-foot Nordic Explorer, subsequently left New Bedford to fish on the West Coast.
The new proposal, announced Monday afternoon by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Fisheries Service, would increase the bycatch limit to 2 percent of the acceptable biological catch for haddock. The herring industry has been fighting for just such a ruling since last fall.
Despite opinions from National Marine Fisheries Service scientists that a 2 percent limit was appropriate, the New England Fishery Management Council fixed the limit at 0.2 percent last year, a decision that has been heavily criticized by the industry and local officials.
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