Richard Allen, a fellow commercial fisherman, wrote a letter (Times, Saturday, July 11) raising a basic question: How much fish should fisherman catch?
I agree with him in that fishermen would catch all they could, even if it was just enough to clear expenses — and if it were the old days, not now.
The fleet today is about a tenth of what it use to be. The mesh size is so big that legal size fish fall right through. If it wasn’t a school fish, such as cod that are so plentiful at certain times they plug up the end of the net (cod end) that allow the fish to not be able to get through, the catch would be probably 25 percent of what it would be with a smaller net.
Read the complete story at The Gloucester Daily Times.