March 7, 2015 — The sampling remains microscopically thin, so only time will tell whether the compromise forged by the commercial fishing industry and NOAA Fisheries on the Gulf of Maine interim cod measures will stand as a template for the future.
Even given that uncertainty, the lack of rancor in modifying the emergency cod measures was a refreshing departure from the antagonistic tango federal regulators and the fishermen have danced in the past.
So, what was the difference? Many involved in the process, from regulators to fishermen and the elected officials that move between the two camps, say it was the ability of each side to focus more on the merits of an idea than bow to the cumulative baggage of their adversarial history.
“We were really trying to understand the issue from a scientific point of view,” U.S. Rep. Seth Moulton said Friday morning during a break in his daily legislative schedule. “It wasn’t just about arguing an economic or emotional issue.”
That is a distinction Moulton has preached since the first-term congressman began campaigning last year to unseat 18-year incumbent John Tierney in the Massachusetts 6th congressional district, stressing that the shared goal of a sustainable fishery should stretch across the lines that often divide the fishing stakeholders.
That mantra got an early test last November — weeks after Moulton’s victory in the general election and months before he would be seated in the House of Representatives — when NOAA responded to the dire conclusions of last summer’s unscheduled assessment of the cod stock by locking down the Gulf of Maine to cod fishing and instituting other measures that fishermen said would also keep them from fishing for most other species in the final months of the 2014 season.
Read the full story at the Gloucester Daily Times