After years of counting time on the water, the zero hour is coming up for New England’s fishing industry. On June 24, the New England Fishery Management Council (the regional governing body for fisheries) will vote on a new management plan for harvesting fish like cod and flounder — the groundfish that this region’s economy was built on.
Currently, our commercial fleets follow a "days-at-sea" method regulating how much time they spend at sea and how much fish they can bring to port on any one day. But the program hasn’t protected populations of these key fish species and hasn’t been able to sustain a viable fishing industry either.
Existing rules also force fishermen to toss overboard any fish that exceed their daily trip limits, so the fishermen don’t make money and the dead, discarded fish don’t help fish populations reproduce. This system is essentially designed to make fishermen less efficient, and they are not even currently required to stop fishing when scientifically recommended annual catch limits are reached.