The harbor in Gloucester, Massachusetts, part of the Northeastern fishery declared a disaster by the Commerce Department last fall. Photo: Gretchen Ertl / The New York Times

By JESS BIDGOOD
15 February 2013 GLOUCESTER, Massachusetts (The New York Times) – B. G. Brown, a second-generation fisherman who chases cod and haddock from this port city, spent a recent morning rigging up his 31-foot commercial vessel to be manned alone. He had just lost his only crew member to the more lucrative lobster fishery, days after fishery regulators last month approved a 77 percent cut in the amount of cod that can be harvested from the Gulf of Maine waters here. “It’s kind of tricky setting hooks by yourself,” said Mr. Brown. At 41, he is one of the younger members of the aging cadre that still plumbs these waters for groundfish, but he has reluctantly listed his boat for sale. “I don’t want to give up, and I really want to find a way to try and stay on the water, but I really just don’t see a way at the moment,” he said. Mr. Brown is one of hundreds of fishermen caught in the net that has tightened around this industry and its seaside communities as the numbers of both fish and boats appear to be at historically low levels. Changes in the ecosystem, lingering effects of decades of overfishing and imperfect fishery management could all be to blame for the crisis, depending on whom you ask. The situation looked so dire that the Commerce Department declared the Northeastern commercial groundfish fishery a disaster last fall, along with three salmon fisheries in Alaska and Mississippi’s blue crab and oyster fisheries. That declaration paved the way for Congress to appropriate financial relief to those areas — a stop-and-start process that saw $150 million attached to, then stripped from, the Hurricane Sandy relief bill. Recently, Representative John Tierney, a Democrat of Massachusetts, proposed legislation that would draw aid money from a tax on imported fish. [more]

As Fisheries Struggle, Debate Heats Up Over How to Help