January 29, 2015 — Fishing stakeholders have not surrendered in their campaign to get NOAA Fisheries to modify the emergency interim actions that have shuttered the Gulf of Maine to cod fishing and severely restricted fishing for other species.
The stakeholders, including the Gloucester-based Northeast Seafood Coalition and the Maine-based Sustainable Harvest Sector, are widely displeased at what they consider NOAA’s casual rejection Wednesday of an industry plan that would eliminate the 200-pound cod bycatch trip limit and open up some closed broad stock areas in return for the sectors surrendering up to 60 metric tons of allocated cod quota.
“I’m flabbergasted,” Maggie Raymond of the Associated Fisheries of Maine said Thursday in advance of the New England Fishery Management Council meeting in Portsmouth, N.H. “It’s just shocking that (NOAA Fisheries) is not willing to work with us.”
NOAA Regional Administrator John K. Bullard on Wednesday announced the federal agency has no plans “at this time” to modify or remove any of the restrictive emergency interim measures it enacted last November to protect the imperiled cod stock in the Gulf of Maine.
Read the full story from the Gloucester Daily Times