Saving Seafood

As fish move north, ‘things are getting weird out there’

June 4, 2019 — Here in one of New England’s oldest fishing communities, there’s a longing for the old days, long before climate change and the federal government’s quota system got so complicated.

Convinced that Congress and NOAA will never allow them larger quotas, many fishermen want to take their grievances straight to the White House, hoping the commander in chief will intervene and allow them to catch more fish.

At his fish wholesaling business, Mike Gambardella reached for his iPhone to find one of his prized photographs: a picture showing him wearing a white T-shirt bearing the message, “President Trump: Make Commercial Fishing Great Again!”

Bobby Guzzo, Gambardella’s friend, who’s been fishing here for more than 50 years, has the same sign on a bumper sticker plastered on the back window of his pickup.

“It used to be you’d go catch fish, come in and sell them,” Guzzo said. But now the system is needlessly complicated, he said, with too much bookwork and a quota system that’s hard to decipher, adding, “Now you’ve got to be a lawyer.”

“If you get ahold of the president, tell him to come see us,” Gambardella tells a visitor.

Read the full story at E&E News

Calling on the president to make commercial fishing great again

March 30, 2017 — One boat after another offloaded their catch at Gambardella’s Wholesale Seafood. A busy day for the seafood distributor but that’s not the norm these days. Fewer fishing boats are coming in because crews say they can’t afford to go out with limits on what they can catch.

“The regulations are outdated, the science is wrong, and we’ve been fishing under these conditions for too long,” said Bobby Guzzo a longtime fishermen.

He says they often have to throw back fish so they don’t go over their limits and those limits are based on what state fisherman are from even though they all fish the same federal waters. Connecticut limits are a lot lower than states down south.

“We’re all fishing in federal water, we’re all fishing together,” said Guzzo. “Why aren’t we all together?”

It’s a question Guzzo has been asking for years and now he and fellow fishermen are hoping to ask President Donald Trump. They are calling on him to make commercial fishing great again.

“We want to sit down with Mr. Trump hopefully,” said Guzzo. “It may be pie in the sky but we got to try to do something otherwise we’re going. And he has been listening. He seems to a few people. We need change.”

Read the full story at WTNH 

Connecticut Lawmakers, Proposed Atlantic Monument Met With Opposition From Commercial Fishermen

August 5, 2016 — The following is excerpted from a story published yesterday by the Hartford Courant:

A plan announced Thursday that would designate a unique undersea area 150 miles off the New England coast as the nation’s first Atlantic marine national monument was met with immediate opposition from commercial fishermen.

Connecticut’s congressional delegation, as well as environmental and educational groups, want President Barack Obama to preserve the “New England Coral Canyons and Seamounts” area, which lies along the continental shelf.

The proposal would dramatically restrict commercial fishing in that area and is drawing fierce opposition from commercial fisherman like Stonington’s Bobby Guzzo, who owns and operates two boats.

“That’s just the government trying to take all our water,” Guzzo said Thursday from aboard his fishing vessel. “I’m dead set against it.”

Joseph Gilbert’s Empire Fisheries operates four fishing boats out of Stonington, and he also has problems with the proposed undersea sanctuary. “Fishermen are conservationists, too,” Gilbert said, explaining that he believes the proposal “is well intentioned” but simply “goes too far” without considering the impact on commercial fishing operations and supplies of fish for consumers.

“A lot of these areas are protected already,” Gilbert said.

Commercial fishing groups such as the National Coalition for Fishing Communities argue that there already exist federal laws and regulatory commissions that are set up to protect valuable marine resources like those within the proposed marine sanctuary.

The Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission, which is responsible for regulating fishing in the region, is also opposed to creation of a protected marine monument off New England’s continental shelf. Commercial fishing organizations warn that the plan would hamper fishing for red crab, swordfish, tuna, as well as off-shore lobster fisheries.

Jon Mitchell, mayor of New Bedford, Mass., New England’s most important fishing port, has also objected to the proposal, as has Maine Gov. Paul LePage.

Read the full story at the Hartford Courant