January 24, 2014 — One well-seasoned commercial fisherman says Federal regulations are drowning New England fisheries.
He says catch shares, where fishermen are limited to a certain quota of fish per season, are to blame.
"90% of the seafood consumed in the United States comes from overseas. So we do all these rules and regulations here, we tie down all our fisherman from going fishing. And the rest of the world don't [have] the same rules that we do, and they taking our market share," says Carlos Rafael of Carlos Seafood in New Bedford, Massachusetts.
Environmental groups argue that catch shares are critical to improving the sustainability of the industry in the long-term.
"You don't just want to fish until you've run out of fish. You want to fish in a way that's sustainable. So that the populations will reproduce, the young fish will grow and become big enough to be fished,” says Dr. William Karp, director of science and research at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association. “And then the whole cycle can be maintained."
But others in the industry are critical, Karp admits, "we get a lot of scrutiny because people don't want to believe the news that we are bringing, and they may not be seeing the same things. Fisherman may be fishing in an area where the fish are particularly abundant. And we are trying to look over a much broader area to get a more complete understanding of the condition of the stocks."
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