Ed Bennett of Marshfield, who has been fishing for 32 years, considers a proposal to allow groups of fishermen to form cooperatives – called sectors – as significant.
“This is certainly precedent-setting, and it’s probably the most important decision the National Marine Fisheries Service is going to make for quite some time,” he said.
Scituate fisherman Frank Mirarchi has been working — both on his own and as a member of the local nonprofit Friends of South Shore Fisheries — to get the government to change the way it limits the commercial fishing of groundfish such as cod or flounder.