NEW BEDFORD, MA (February 15, 2009) — The real action in the fishing industry last week was about 120 miles north of where Robert Lane’s boat was docked in uncrowded, calm waters at New Bedford harbor. But as Lane stood aboard the Isabel S, chatting with a crew member who was mending a net, he was exactly where he wanted to be.
It wasn’t long ago that Lane was an active voice for local fishermen. He would have been in the middle of the fray as fishing regulators met in New Hampshire, two weeks after a court ruling invalidated key rules and threw the industry into confusion.
But that’s not for him anymore. He recently sold one of his two boats, bought a landscaping business on Cape Cod and stepped back after 30 years in the fishing industry. In those decades, the 56-year-old Lane has seen the business shrink from an international, all-you-can catch bonanza to a tightly regulated colony of survivors. The journey has worn him down.
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