BOSTON — November 5, 2013 — The region's $1.2 billion New England fishing industry's iconic cod, flounder and other popular fish stocks are still far from healthy despite nearly two decades of increasingly harsh regulations.
In fact, the sense of gloom and doom following drastic cuts to fishing quotas this year is so bad that fishermen aren't even showing up for fishery management meetings any more.
Only a handful attended Monday when the Massachusetts congressional delegation assembled in the Statehouse to take testimony on the current state of the industry, getting an earful about changes that need to be made to keep it viable.
Two panels of experts told legislators that fishermen and their families need financial help; that the science used to estimate fish populations needs a lot of improvement in accuracy and timeliness; that time frames to rebuild fish stocks need to be extended; and that global warming is going to make it all worse and needs to be taken into account.
"There is no doubt our groundfish fishery is facing disaster," said Tom Dempsey, the Cape's representative on the New England Fishery Management Council.
The legislators included Democratic Massachusetts Sens. Elizabeth Warren and Edward Markey; U.S. Reps. John Tierney, D-Mass., and William Keating D-Mass.; and Sen. Mark Begich, D-Alaska, chairman of the Senate Subcommittee on Oceans, Atmosphere, Fisheries and the Coast Guard. Begich is leader of the effort to reauthorize the Magnuson-Stevens Act, the federal legislation that both funds and delineates fisheries management.
Markey told fishermen that Congress is working on help. The Senate included $150 million in national fisheries aid money in its latest appropriations bill, he said. He described the low-interest Small Business Administration loans authorized for the region's fishermen last Friday as a "little blue sky breaking through the clouds."
"The fixes that are coming are way behind the problems," Dempsey said in an interview before the meeting.
Read the full story at the Cape Cod Times