June 16, 2014 — If the need to get money to those suffering from the fisheries disaster is like getting help to a burning house, the tangle of inefficient, insufficient and inequitable regulation controlling the groundfish fishery demands a long-term solution to prevent future disasters and make the industry viable and sustainable.
The reauthorization of the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act under consideration by Congress now needs to require better science, more contribution from the industry in gathering data for the science (Alaska fisheries rely on industry vessels for 80 percent of data, 20 percent from government; the Northeast is flip-flopped) and better interpretation of the data.
Read the full opinion piece from The New Bedford Standard-Times