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“I hope you guys catch more shrimp than Forrest Gump,” read a handwritten note left by a well-wisher aboard the Joann & Holly before the fishing trawler steamed out of Southwest Harbor at dawn last Saturday.
Headed for Portland, out of which he will fish for the rest of the winter, Capt. Dave Horner was thinking about the opening of shrimp season early this week and wondering just how plentiful the shellfish would be. He and other Maine groundfishermen increasingly rely on the crustacean as part of the equation to survive, even thrive.
As he towed for shrimp Tuesday off Portland, and his crew sorted through the catch, discarding starfish, sculpin and other trash, Horner was likely too busy making a living to think about proposed federal regulations being hotly debated less than 100 miles away in Peabody, Mass., by members of the New England Fishery Management Council.
In its annual report released earlier this month, the council’s Multispecies Monitoring Committee announced cod, haddock and yellowtail flounder stocks are making a comeback on Georges Bank —
a vast, shallow plateau 200 miles southeast of Portland — once one of the world’s richest fishing grounds. Thousands of square miles there have been closed to groundfishing since 1994.
But the committee of scientists had some bad news, too. They reported cod stocks are at record low levels in the Gulf of Maine — a 36,000-square-mile body of water stretching from Cape Cod to Nova Scotia — where Maine’s groundfish fleet, consisting largely of small, family owned and operated boats, is concentrated.
The scientists said various federal rules imposed in recent years, including limits on the days groundfishermen can work, have not done enough to restore Gulf of Maine stocks. They called for a 63 percent reduction in the cod catch.
Steve Correia, a fishery biologist at Massachusetts Division of Marine Fisheries, chairs the committee. His group came up with eight strategies to enable cod stocks to rebound. The options include closing certain fishing grounds partially or year-round, further reducing fishermen’s days-at-sea quotas and further restricting how much cod can be caught per fishing trip.
“The catch is much higher than it should be for the stock,” Correia said before Tuesday’s council meeting in Peabody. “If you have a big bank account, and you get 10 percent interest, you get a lot of money. If you have a small one, you get only a small amount. That’s what the fishing mortality rate is like.”
Ellie Dorsey, a marine biologist specializing in groundfish at the Boston-based Conservation Law Foundation, said closures are the most effective tool to boost stocks in the Gulf of Maine. She noted that the method has already been proven on Georges Bank.
“Overfishing has not yet been halted. I think some year-round closures are called for in the Gulf of Maine,” she said Monday.
In Maine, the news that such a dramatic reduction in fishing is needed on the heels of other regulations has angered state officials, scientists and fishermen who fault federal fisheries managers for failing to take adequate action to protect Gulf of Maine stocks when they closed much of Georges Bank back in 1994.
The critics charge the Georges Bank emergency closures drove New England’s offshore fleet — consisting primarily of large boats from Portland south that catch the bulk of the fish — north into the Gulf of Maine, further eroding stocks. Now, they say the region’s small-boat fleet, unable to venture as far afield, is paying the price.
Jim Wilson, a University of Maine professor of resource economics and longtime observer of the New England fishing industry, is among the critics.
“The reason Gulf of Maine stocks are in such bad shape is that the New England council closed large parts of Georges Bank without taking comparable steps in the Gulf of Maine. They should have had enough foresight to see what the outcome would be,” he said last week. “The tone of the federal government is always that fishermen have done this damnable thing, but this is as much a regulatory error.”
Richard Langton, a groundfish specialist in the state Department of Marine Resources, shares Wilson’s view.
“It may have been a lot easier to not try and predict what fishermen were going to do. Still, it’s devastating to the small-boat fleet. Some could argue it was socially irresponsible,” he said last week. “Ecologically, it might be better to have smaller boats, with limited range, which are not extremely dependent on harvesting one species group.”
Dr. Andy Rosenberg, Northeast director of the National Marine Fisheries Service, dismissed the criticism. All along, he said his agency has argued for greater protection of Gulf of Maine cod stocks. Like New England’s lobster fishery, he said the region’s groundfish industry opposed more regulation until the marine resource was on the brink of disaster.
Rosenberg said he recommended Gulf of Maine closures last year,
but the measures ultimately were rejected by the New England council created under the 1976 Magnuson Act to give regional fishing industries greater say in federal policy decisions. He said a 1,000-pound trip limit and other methods endorsed by the council in the Gulf of Maine have not stopped cod stocks from plummeting.
“The industry, the council, the state of Maine in particular, were very resistant to regulations,” he said last week. “The draggers wanted restrictions on gill-netters. The gill-netters wanted restrictions on draggers. The big boats wanted restrictions on little boats. The little boats wanted restrictions on big boats.”
Rosenberg said it is pointless to point fingers.
“This is not about blame or who is going to be penalized. If the fish are not there, they are not there,” he stressed.
The New England council will hear public comment on proposed measures at its next meeting in mid-January. Council members have until Feb. 1 to recommend a Gulf of Maine plan to NMFS so the federal agency can impose new rules in time for the 1998 groundfish season starting May 1.
Down at the waterfront, at places such as Southwest Harbor and Stonington, groundfishermen said further limits on the days they can fish would put them out of business. Some said they could live with a reduced cod trip limit and possibly staggered closures.
In Stonington, where back in the 1980s as many as 18 fishermen ventured offshore to set gill nets for cod, haddock and flounder, the groundfish fleet has shrunk to a couple. The town once boasted filleting houses and businesses that built and repaired the long, curtainlike nets used to trap fish by the gills.
Last summer, longtime fisherman Rick Bubar was one of only two “netters” out of Stonington. He goes up to 75 miles offshore in his 40-foot boat. Sea urchin diving now, he hopes to go gill netting again next spring unless his fishing grounds are shut off.
“It’s not going to hurt the big boats,” he predicted.
Readying the Joann & Holly to go shrimping, Dave Horner said he still plans to fish for a living for whatever species are available, such as shrimp, monkfish and flounder, regardless of what federal regulators have in mind. He said fishermen have become an easy political target and he’s tired of the scientists’ word being taken as the gospel truth.
“If you catch a lot, they say we are overfishing. If you don’t catch much, they say it’s proof more regulations are needed,” he said. “They are not driven by science. They’re just trying to keep their jobs. That’s what we are trying to do.”
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