March 24, 2017 — David Pierce, director of the state’s Division of Marine Fisheries, started yesterday’s public hearing on whether to bar trawlers from fishing for squid within three miles of Nantucket by listing the reasons he does not support a local petition to keep them away from the island from May 1 to Oct. 31.
By the end of the four-hour meeting, attended by an overflow crowd at the Public Safety Facility, Nantucket charter captain and former commercial fisherman Pete Kaizer hoped Pierce had changed his mind on at least one thing: that trawlers disrupt what are called squid mops in a way that kills squid eggs and affects spawning.
“Squid mops have to stay intact for 17-30 days and to disturb them will cause 100 percent mortality.You can’t be fishing on spawning squid and the eggs as well. That could be a tipping point with the kind of fishing pressure there now.”