"On the one hand," said Vito Giacalone, the Gloucester-based industry and sector visionary, "Lubchenco’s message is that we’ve got to get businesslike. On the other hand, they’re creating the most unfavorable business conditions (for the sectors) — and it’s all manmade."
The gist of the problem for the creation of sectors — cooperatives of fishermen working under regulations based on their actual catch — and a common pool of fishermen — working under existing controls limiting their fishing grounds and days at sea — was the two sets of rules written in June during a marathon session in Portland, Maine, governing the competing sides of a fishery that had been engineered intentionally into regulatory schizophrenia.
The rules for the sector members working off catch shares were said to be too constricting while the rules for the common poolers, controlled only by effort restrictions, were said to be too loose.
While catch share limits are to be set in Plymouth, the common pool is looking at no limits on pollack and a 2,000 pound daily limit on cod.
Kurkul wrote to the council that "certain industry members believe … a pollock derby" might have been unintentionally created by the setting of such lax controls on members of the common pool.