May 9, 2016 — New England fishermen got some good news last week when the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration announced plans to scale back the amount of on-board monitoring required of the commercial fleet. However, there is still work to be done.
Late last week, NOAA said it will cut monitoring to 14 percent of all vessel trips for the season that began May 1. That’s down from about 24 percent of trips in 2015.
“Fishermen appreciate the changes and the evolution of the at-sea monitoring program,” Jackie Odell, executive director of the Gloucester-based Northeast Seafood Coalition, told reporter Sean Horgan. “We think what they’ve done is prudent and responsible.”