September 24, 2013 — Our congressional delegation continues to push for loans to help the struggling groundfishermen and for grants to help those for whom loans will be too little too late. But the best hope for the struggling sector may be found in this: "People are going to have to change."
That's what John Bullard, regional administrator for the Northeast Regional Office of the National Marine Fisheries Service, told the editorial board last week
He was talking about challenges to the groundfish industry, and it's becoming clearer all the time that he's right. Here's a partial list of the "people" who are going to have to change: 1. Groundfishermen, who are not going to win the battle about "better science." The reason we can't count more fish is because they aren't there to be counted, according to William A. Karp, the Science and Research director for the Northeast Fisheries Science Center out of Woods Hole, who joined Bullard in our offices last week.
Six or more consecutive years of poor reproduction — the result of fishing pressure, predation by robust populations of gray seal and dogfish, and changing ocean temperatures and acidity, among any number of other known and unknown variables — have left the cod fishery less resilient, even if the fishery were closed completely.
Read the full opinion piece at the New Bedford Standard Times