As the struggle to save the foundering Northeast groundfishery continues, drastic cuts on landing limits for cod, yellowtail flounder and haddock went into effect this week. Adopted by the New England Fishery Management Council in late January and effective May 1, the cuts brought little cheerful news to the fishing communities up and down the New England coast.
As the struggle to save the foundering Northeast groundfishery continues, drastic cuts on landing limits for cod, yellowtail flounder and haddock went into effect this week.
Adopted by the New England Fishery Management Council in late January and effective May 1, the cuts brought little cheerful news to the fishing communities up and down the New England coast.
“We know that for some fishing communities that have relied heavily on cod, haddock and flounder, the next several years are going to be a struggle,” said John Bullard, NOAA Fisheries northeast regional administrator, in a prepared statement released Tuesday. “We’ve done everything we can to include measures that may help soften the blow of quota cuts, but it’s going to take a collective effort to find more ways to keep both the fishery and the businesses that support it viable while these stocks recover,” Mr. Bullard said.
Quotas will be reduced on nine stocks of cod, haddock, and flounder. For nearly half of these stocks, the 2013 quotas are higher than what fishermen actually caught in the last fishing year, NOAA said. Catch limits on cod will be cut 78 per cent.
The fishery council and NOAA plan to ease restrictions on fish that are in better shape, including white hake, pollock and redfish. “Knowing the challenges facing groundfish fishermen, NOAA Fisheries adjusted the 2013 white hake quota upward by about 15 per cent over the proposed level, because recent analysis shows the stock condition has improved,” the statement said.
In September 2012 the U.S. Secretary of Commerce declared the New England fishery a federal disaster. At the time Greg Mayhew, one of the last groundfishermen left in Menemsha, said he had gone from catching 100,000 pounds of yellowtail in a year to about 4,000 pounds.
“You can’t go and make any money, so you might as well tie it up,” Mr. Mayhew said. Echoing many others, Mr. Mayhew agreed with the predictions for the 2013 fishing season. “I see it is being pretty catastrophic as far as groundfish are concerned,” he said. “A lot of the problems with fishing stocks are bad management decisions.”
On the heels of the NOAA announcement this week, Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren issued a statement criticizing the failure of an interim measure, that she said “would have balanced protecting the fishing resource with protecting our fishing families’ way of life.
“These painful cuts will be felt far beyond the docks and will impose economic hardship on our coastal communities.”
Comments
The only effective way to
Dan ChilmarkThe only effective way to preserve both the fish and the fleet is to subsidize the fleet and ban fishing for at least 5 years. We need the fish to have the resource and the industry. We need the fleet to have access to the resource. But the problem has been over-fishing for a half century and the only way to try to rebalance things is to stop fishing, protect the stocks for a long enough period of time to let it recover to sufficient numbers that can be fished, enforce a ban of all fishing in these areas (including banning foreign fleets from fishing these waters), and subsidizing the fishing fleet (at it's current level) for the five year, or longer, period needed for the stocks to recover. The bad news is that taxpayers will need to flip the bill. It's not popular, it's not fair, and it should never have happened in the first place, but now we need to act. In a state as liberal as this is, and with a Democratic President and Senate, this measure should be able to be passed. I don't support subsidies, nor am I a fisherman, but this is the only way to fix the problem. Once the stocks are back up, strict enforcement and quotas will be needed, and a higher price for fish, to allow the industry to survive, and the common man and woman to eat from the Atlantic table. The alternative, which is being acted out now, kills both the industry, and the economy that it supports. We need hard decisions and tough people to make them, but now is the time to act.
The decimation of our small
Jeremy Mayhew ChilmarkThe decimation of our small boat fleet continues. Fisheries management salaries rise. The system seems rigged against the small fishermen, with regulators preferring an easier-to-manage system with a few big players. Multinational corporations and fishermen who have consolidated operations are buying up the shares of fishermen who have realized they can no longer make a living in the business.
The New England Fishery Management Council's sector management plan (introduced in 2010) has wreaked havoc on our small fleets. Corporations now rule the sea. The drastic cuts on catch quota don't just make "the next couple years a struggle" for small, family operations... it demolishes them. The writing is on the wall.
GOd bless mr.Mayhew and
kerritt Tis, MA.God bless Mr. Mayhew and family for your fine work, people owe you their lives!
Send the goverment a dead fish in a newspaper....
This on going abuse of the
Charles Bourget Falmouth MassThis on going abuse of the resourses and owner operators has been going on for more than forty years that i am aware of.
As a goverment liason for East Coast Tuna and Excutive Director of NE Harpooners Association I can attest to the sociopathic nature of NMFS,MDMF. NERC,ASFC and others as computor models were used to eliminate the selected victims.
Thats why a differant criteria(landing,size and many other arbitray and carpritious regulations were used in determining entrance into various segements.Had nothing to do with biology.The record supports this ASSERTION!!!
This goes back to Bill Gordan/BILL FOX at NMFS,Phil Coates at Mass DMF and a bunch of stooges at the NEFMC and all the cohorts of hate.. Thats why we have prolems today--gear and time area closure and CPUE were not used until People managment was completed some decades later-the mandate of magnason was ignored-theses public employees violated the publis trust and that is a crime and they should be prosecuted to the full extent of the law-sociopath check out the definition>>>:)hip Bourget-be glad to talk to any and all--2072843124
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