Lately, it seems like each morning brings a new editorial piece posted on SavingSeafood about how the small-boat commercial fishermen on Cape Cod are responsible for everything wrong with the world. James Lovgren's Plaintiff fears another NOAA shredding party is the latest.
A herring/mackerel processing facility in New Bedford shuts its doors because the mackerel have disappeared (less than 1% of this year’s quota has been caught) and it’s somehow the fault of groundfish fishermen who think the so-called "mid-water" trawlers should have the same accountability standards we fish under? This is the first year the herring boats had any meaningful observer coverage, and they suddenly have a haddock bycatch problem they’ve never admitted before. Please. Everyone on the water knows what goes on with the "mid-water" trawlers, there’s a reason why they’re banned in Canada. And plenty of us, including myself, had to leave Georges Bank this year when we hit our cod cap even though we had plenty of haddock quota left, that's just the way things are now. Every fishery has to stay within its limits.
People who oppose sector management, blame nearly everything on an allocation decision that affects only one of the 20 groundfish stocks and that adds up to less than 0.1% difference of the overall quota. That just doesn't make any sense.
We read all the time about how we on Cape Cod are armchair captains and haven’t fished at all. Anyone who cares to find out the facts knows that the 60 members of the Fixed Gear Sector sailed more that 1800 trips this year, more than just about any other sector in New England. We landed about 2.2 million pounds of groundfish, 2.5 million pounds of skates, 1.2 million pounds of dogfish, and half a million pounds of monkfish. Jim Lovgren's opinion piece pulls numbers out of thin air.
Just like everyone else in the fishery, we were sick of discarding thousands of pounds of dead fish and sick of Days At Sea crushing our businesses. If you don’t like sectors, join the common pool. We couldn’t care less. But blaming us for everything needs to stop. It might be a convenient excuse, but it’s not making this fishery or other fisheries any better managed or more profitable.
If you have a better alternative to sectors that provides accountability and moves this fishery forward, then bring it to the table. Otherwise, quit all this complaining and find a way to make it work.
John Our FV Miss Fitz