Saturday brought fine weather for seafaring — light winds and clear blue skies — but among local fishermen the mood was black. The first day of May marked the official beginning of sector management, a new system of federal fisheries regulation that has put the Provincetown fleet on the fast track to oblivion.
“It’s going to be ugly. It’s going to be extremely ugly to start,” said commercial fisherman Chris King.
King is the only groundfisherman in Provincetown who’s been able to join a sector, a group of fishermen assigned a quota that they must divide among themselves according to rules recently devised by the National Marine Fisheries Service. In the 17 sectors in New England, an individual fisherman’s share of the total allowable catch — his “catch share” — is determined by his past landings.
All well and good for groundfishermen south of the 42nd parallel, where the daily quota on cod has at times been as high as 2,000 pounds per day. But it’s been a different story in Provincetown.
Read the complete story at Wicked Local.