BARNSTABLE, Mass., — March 4, 2013 — Cape fishermen will hear from a panel of fisheries experts from Canada and France, and get to brainstorm ideas for solutions to social, environmental, economic and other concerns at a workshop tomorrow from 4 to 7 p.m. in the Lorusso Tech Solarium at Cape Cod Community College.
The Who Fishes Matters Tour has already held similar workshops in Maine, New Hampshire and Gloucester and features a team of fishing policy experts from British Columbia, Nova Scotia, and France talking about how to maintain fleet diversity and avoid consolidation of the fishing industry into a relatively small group of larger-size vessels.
It is a problem on local fishermen's minds and vital to their survival, said Sandwich fisherman Bill Chaprales. He said small vessels once used inshore areas in the Gulf of Maine to catch cod and other bottom-feeding groundfish, while the larger vessels went offshore. Part of what made that possible was an 800-pound daily limit on Gulf of Maine cod that made fishing inshore unattractive compared with a 2,000-pound daily quota for offshore stocks on Georges Bank cod.
The smaller boats could make a living on the diminished quota, Chaprales said. But when a new fishery management system was introduced back in May of 2009, most vessels were apportioned a share of the overall fish quota and could catch as much as they wanted each day as long as they didn't go over their individual limits. Even then, they could buy up or trade for additional quota shares to keep on fishing.
Suddenly, the inshore areas were more attractive to big boats, and small-boat fishermen from the Cape up to Gloucester saw the fish they had relied on disappear.