June 20, 2012 – Last fall, as the "We are the 99 percent!" movement took off across America, I realized that New England fishermen are in the same plight.
The hundreds of fishermen in our region — the small, day-boat fleet that brings fresh seafood to your dinner table and the charter boat captains who take you out on the water to catch fish yourself — are paying the price for the mistakes of a few new-to-the-region industrial ships.
This fleet of about two dozen vessels pursues sea herring, the linchpin species of the ocean ecosystem. But their fishing practices have none of the regulation and supervision that the fishermen who harvest cod, flounder and other groundfish do.
I have been involved in the fishery as a fisherman's wife and have had a vested interest in community-supported fisheries for the last 20 years. Community-supported groundfish fleets are rapidly disappearing.
Five years ago when our fishermen in Port Clyde started the Mid-Coast Fishermen's Association, we had 12 fishing vessels. Today, only three groundfish vessels and two shrimp vessels remain.
Although we have seen increasing restrictions through the years and played by the rules, a 400-year-old tradition is now hanging on by bloody fingernails.
Read the full story at the Portland Press Herald.