12/23/2010 – Gov. Deval Patrick recently asked U.S. Commerce Secretary Gary Locke to implement an Emergency Action to increase the amount of fish, such as cod, flounder and other groundfish, that fishermen are allowed to catch. If granted, such action would ignore established science and undermine years of public input and hard work at the New England Fishery Management Council to bring long term economic stability and sustainability to New England's fisheries.
The reality off our shores is that 14 of 20 groundfish populations are either overfished or experiencing overfishing, and this decline is hurting the region's marine environment and economy. Knowing what we know, conserving the natural capital in the ocean and harvesting these fish in a sustainable fashion into the future without damaging the rest of the ocean ecosystem should be of paramount importance. The council — made up primarily of commercial fishing interests and state fishing directors — is the decision-making body for New England's fisheries, and eight months ago it implemented a new management system, which prioritized these same values.
The new fisheries management plan was spearheaded by the industry and state fisheries directors and put in place after three years of research, debate and public input. The system established 17 fishermen-run collectives, called sectors. Sectors were pioneered by local Cape Cod fishermen as voluntary, cooperative and community-based, and were designed to maintain the diversity of fishing fleets and coastal communities. A key advantage of sector management is that it allows fishing vessels to choose the time and place they fish to maximize their economic returns per vessel, rather than having a combination of management approaches that reduces catch efficiency and lowers profits, as the previous days-at-sea system did. Days-at-sea also failed from a conservation perspective since fish stocks did not rebuild.
Read the complete opinion piece from The Cape Cod Times.