February 20, 2013 — Fishing isn’t just a way of life here but a $1 billion industry, so when fishermen complain government-mandated reductions on groundfish catch coming May 1 could be devastating, that brought not one but both U.S. Senators for the state to hear their concerns Wednesday.
"What would one year do here, just to put a stay on everything?" said Harriet Didriksen, daughter of a Norwegian immigrant fisherman, owner of New Bedford Ship Supply, and a former groundfish boat owner who now owns a scallop fishing boat. Along with many people connected to the lobster, scallop, and groundfish business and associated processing and packaging and shipping businesses here, she’s reeling from the proposed cod catch reductions being pushed by the National Marine Fisheries Service.
NMFS scientists say their studies show the cod stock is badly overfished and dangerously close to collapsing, leading the service to push for a 55 percent reduction in the allowable cod catch on Georges Bank in the year starting May 1 –- and a 77 percent reduction in the Gulf of Maine cod catch. (The service is proposing to let fishermen who catch less than their allotment in the year ending April 30 carry over between 2 and 10 percent to the next fishing year, but many fishermen scoff that’s unlikely to mitigate the disastrous effects of the deep reduction in allowed catch for 2013-14.)
But Didriksen and many other people in the fishing business in New Bedford and elsewhere in New England have no faith in the NMFS studies.
"Truthfully, the industry does not really believe National Marine Fisheries numbers," Didriksen said. "It's gotten to a point that we just don't have confidence in it."
Watch the video on the Northeast Cable News Network