March 30, 2012 – The state's deputy director of marine fisheries has urged NOAA's cod crisis response team to crack down on inshore gillnetting and schemes used by offshore trawlers to get at the stocks in Stellwagen Bank and other nearby waters.
David Pierce, who first made public a series of chronic private complaints by dayboat fishermen of cod-poaching off-shore trawlers working schools on Stellwagen, noted those reports in a letter a month later, dated Feb. 29.
The letter was obtained by the Times earlier this week.
Pierce expressed skepticism at the freedom from government oversight granted by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to sectors, or fishermen's cooperatives, as incentives to join in the trading of catch shares and quota under the fishery's now 2-year-old management system.
Read the complete story from The Gloucester Times.