August 16, 2012 — Fishermen and fishing communities such as Scituate may be in for difficult times based on the preliminary report by the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) on fishing stocks in New England.
Per the report, as well as federal regulations, there may be a decline in the amount of fish that may be taken commercially from the ocean.
“Fishermen, including myself, are very distraught that we will have less to be able to catch,” said Scituate fisherman Frank Mirarchi. “There’s no question about it, people could be losing their livelihood.”
Mirarchi explained that the annual stock assessment done by the NMFS helps to set a limit for every managed fish stock in the country.
“The numbers go up, and the numbers go down,” he said. “In New England, all the numbers went down.”
Mirarchi said there are several reasons the numbers for fish stock in New England appear to be going down; everything from an explosion of the seal population – that feed on the fish – to a shift in water temperature.
And in the past few years, he said there have been several changes to how the fish stock is counted, including the switch to a sector management system, which counts the actual pounds of fish caught rather than estimating how much is caught based on days out at sea.
Within the past five years, he said the NMFS has acquired a new boat that allows for a net to be cast out in a particular area and the count is based on the catch.
“But ever since the new boat, the numbers have been going haywire,” he said. “Some people are saying that the net is not catching enough quantity as have been previously caught. All these factors have confounded the stock assessment.”
According to Mirarchi, fishermen could be required, in some cases, to cut back their catch by 80 percent.