PROVIDENCE, RI (March 5, 2009) – Fishing grounds in all oceans have depleted stocks, sending fishermen to ever more remote places in search of ever more exotic species, such as Patagonian toothfish, in the extreme South Atlantic. If it’s any consolation, New Englanders can boast that the collapse of commercial fishing happened here first.
About 25 years ago, stocks of groundfish on Georges Bank swooned and fishermen started hauling in empty nets. The cod catch dropped from over 50,000 metric tons in mid-1980s to 3,000 in 2005. It was pretty clear what happened: The stock got fished out. Fishermen, with powerful new vessels and techniques using sonar and new habitat-damaging bottom-trawling gear, didn’t give the fish a place to hide.
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