January 24, 2015 — Colonial America’s first true industry, groundfishing, has followed the path of many others. Technology improved as the industrial revolution took hold — it kept improving afterward — and a growing population of fishermen, both domestic and foreign, became more productive as they pursued cod, haddock and other species found near the ocean floor.
Today, that industry faces an uncertain future of depleted stocks, consolidation of the fleet, restrictive regulation and questions about whether species that long sustained some New England fishing communities will ever rebound.
As the steam-powered trawler and mesh net replaced the schooner and baited fishing line at the start of the 20th century, fishermen and their vessels became, perhaps, too efficient to the point of jeopardizing the resource on which they depended for their livelihood.
Regulations were slow to take hold, but in recent decades, they have become increasingly more restrictive. (Federal regulators last year again drastically slashed Atlantic cod catch limits, for example.) Groundfish stocks, however, have failed to rebound in response.
“Humans have been failing at fisheries management for a very long time, so it’s not a small task” to get it right, said Robin Alden, executive director of the nonprofit Penobscot East Resource Center in Stonington and a former commissioner of the Maine Department of Marine Resources.