August 23, 2015 — PROVINCETOWN, MA — Eight years ago, Pedro Verde, captain of the dragger F/V Blue Ocean, stood on MacMillan Pier and blasted scientists and fisheries regulators for allowing him to fish only 52 days the previous year. He was talking to Sean Corcoran, a reporter at public radio station WCAI who was investigating the decline of the Provincetown dragger fishery.
“We catch tons and tons of the dogfish here,” Verde told Corcoran. “So the guys close up the dogfish for 17 years. Endangered species. The guys don’t even know what they are talking about.”
Eight years later, the dogfish fishery is not just open but is booming, and it is a sustainable local species of whitefish, though you will be unlikely to find it in many local markets or on local tables.
The complex issues surrounding the decline of the Cape Cod fishing industry, the tensions between fishermen and regulators, changing people’s attitudes about which fish they want to eat, and the future of fishing here were the subjects of a gathering at the Provincetown Public Library last week. Corcoran, now news director at WCAI, and Heather Goldstone, the station’s science editor, presented some of the findings of a series of reports broadcast over the last two years.