It is helpful that the leader of the agency that oversees the nation’s fisheries has called for new ways to ease overfishing. To move forward, regulators need to put money toward demonstration projects and analysis of their results to see what alternatives show the most promise. As for area management – one of the alternatives under consideration – a group in Maine is ready to do much of the work. Money and staff support from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration would make that a reality.

Restricting days at sea, which for cod in the Gulf of Maine already are down to just 27 days per year, so far has failed to stop overfishing and allow depleted stocks to regrow. Further reductions will drive more fishermen, mainly those with smaller boats, out of the business, harming fishing communities and industries.

At a recent Senate hearing on his agency’s budget, NOAA administrator Vice Admiral Conrad Lautenbacher agreed that alternatives to the days-at-sea approach were needed. In response to questions from Sen. Olympia Snowe, a member of the oversight committee, he said the agency had set aside $6 million in its budget for such research with an eye toward doubling the number of programs that look at limiting who can fish in given areas.

One such alternative, area management, which empowers local groups to set rules for a small area of the coast, has worked well for Maine’s lobster industry. It is time to see if it also can work for the region’s troubled groundfishing fleet.

The Area Management Coalition, a group of fishermen, scientists and conservationists, is ready to test this approach on Maine’s inshore fishery, a project that is estimated to cost about $200,000. This area, along the coastal shelf, once was very productive, but fish populations have declined dramatically, largely because of overfishing.

The area should produce between 15 million and 30 million pounds of fish a year. Today it yields only 1 million to 3 million pounds. As a result of the fishery’s decline, the number of groundfishermen in Maine has plummeted. In the 1960s, every coastal town had a fishing fleet. Today, only one fisherman in the area from Vinalhaven to the Canadian border makes his living from groundfish.

To improve this situation, the Area Management Coalition has proposed that Maine’s inshore fishery be managed by a local council that would set restrictions for those who want to fish in the area. By managing on a smaller scale, the hope is that fishermen will be rewarded for restricting their catches to allow populations to grow, for example, by larger catches in the future. Under the current system, if local fishermen don’t quickly catch a population that is growing and has potential to be very productive in a couple years, other fishermen, often in much larger boats from far away, will.

As other approaches fail, this one is certainly worth a closer look. Funding and staff support from NOAA would make that happen.