The New England groundfish industry — the nation's oldest industry — today awaits with confusion, frustration, anxiety and a dollop of hope, the dawning of a new era set to begin at midnight tonight.
Catch share/sector fishing, after more than three years of research and development, is still a work in progress, and a transitional phase in the shift from the old effort control system to the investor friendly market principles favored by the Obama administration's chief fisheries administrator Jane Lubchenco.
More than half the groundfishermen have joined sectors, guild like business cooperatives, in order to take advantage of the government's inducements that include allocations shares of the catch — catch shares — in each of the 15 groundfish species that swim amongst each other.
Read the complete story at The Gloucester Daily Times.