PORTSMOUTH, N.H. (AP) — Fishermen and federal officials grappled Friday with the increasingly bleak prospect of finding some way for the historic New England industry to avoid collapse amid troubles with the health of Gulf of Maine cod.
Their meeting came in the week after regional regulators bought fisherman a yearlong reprieve from what would have been devastating cuts in 2012. But projections discussed Friday showed fishermen still face disastrous cuts in 2013 that most won't survive.
"It's going to be hard to preserve the industry at those low numbers (in 2013) and that's something that concerns us a great deal," said Sam Rauch, the head of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's fisheries arm, who led the meeting of fishermen, scientists and regulators.
"This truly is one of the iconic fisheries," he said in an interview after the meeting. "When you think of what the U.S. fisherman is, it's an inshore Gulf of Maine cod fisherman. That's why we are so devoted to working through this process to try to overturn every possibility we can. But the future, 2013, does not look rosy."
Read the Associated Press story by Jay Lindsay