New fishing regulations that take effect May 1 have fishermen so concerned about the future of their business that a group of New England lawmakers, including U.S. Sen. Judd Gregg and Jeanne Shaheen, have banded together to seek an ease of the restrictions.
The new system to manage the region's fishery allots a certain amount of each species to groups of fishermen, called sectors, to manage among themselves. If the sectors exceed their limit on any groundfish species, they must stop fishing for all species.
Fishermen believe the new regulations could put them out of business, according to a recent New Hampshire Public Radio report.
“The industry and individual fishermen are not going to be able to handle and cope with the complexity and cost of this program, and we’re going to have job loss, we’ve lost 50-percent of our fleet prior to this, we expect to lose another 50-percent after this plan is implemented," Erik Anderson, president of New Hampshire Commercial Fisherman’s Association, said in the NHPR report.
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