September 6, 2015 — Hundreds of thousands of pounds of valuable fish caught off Connecticut’s coast are thrown overboard every year, and 80 percent of them are dead by the time they hit the water, experts say.
Commercial fishermen, environmentalists and state officials say a prime reason for such a stunning waste of a natural resource is an out-of-date federal regulatory system that hasn’t kept up with the realities of a changing climate and shifting fish populations.
“It’s just a wholly unjustifiable practice,” said Peter Auster, a senior research scientist at Mystic Aquarium. “This waste … is pervasive in the way we’re managing fishing.”
“The whole construct of the [regulatory] system needs to be questioned,” said Curt Johnson, executive director of the Connecticut Fund for the Environment and Save the Sound.
The problem is that federal fishing regulations are designed to protect fish species based on where they used to be most plentiful. Some of those fish populations have now shifted their range north as a result of global warming, but federal fishing quotas haven’t changed. As a result, Connecticut fishermen are saddled with low, out-of-date quotas, forcing them to throw back huge amounts of certain species, even though those fish have become plentiful off New England.
Read the full story at the Hartford Courant