April 3, 2012 – The National Marine Fisheries Service announced Monday it will cut next year's Gulf of Maine cod quota by 22 percent to 6,700 metric tons — much less than the 85 percent cut needed to end overfishing as required under sustainable fishing laws.
The new fishing year begins in May. Monday's announcement means the Gulf of Maine cod fishery, which stretches from Provincetown north to the Canadian border, will probably not shut down before the end of the year for lack of quota.
There has been quite a reversal of fortune for a cod stock that until last fall was believed to be a poster child for good fishery management, on target to be rebuilt to healthy levels by 2014. But when fisheries service scientists updated a 2008 Gulf of Maine cod stock assessment last year, they found that while the cod population had been growing slowly, the initial estimates were way too high and fishermen were catching cod at six times the sustainable level.
Read the complete story from The Cape Cod Times.