April 5, 2018 — Andrew Applegate’s family has been in the fishing business since his ancestors moved from Cranbury, New Jersey, to the Sandy Hook area around 100 years ago. Along with some commercial fishing, Applegate’s father ran a couple of large party fishing boats out of Atlantic City, and through the decades the family caught whatever was available. But now, Applegate is part of a New England fishing community forced to depend on fast-changing marine species they’ve never seen in the region before, and give up on others that are dying out.
The Gulf of Maine has witnessed its cod stocks collapse but its lobster population explode. To the south, in contrast to their current success north of Cape Cod, lobsters have suffered shell-wasting disease and poor productivity down into the Mid-Atlantic. And black sea bass is being found in northern New England when 20 years ago that would’ve been unheard of, says Michael Pentony, regional head of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Greater Atlantic fisheries division. In the face of such changes, those involved in fisheries management are trying to prepare for a murky future. Reliable and more timely data paired with flexible regulations could, they hope, allow those in the business to adapt as fisheries change in the coming years.
These changes are forcing some to disregard historical knowledge gathered in logbooks by generations of fishermen who recorded where to catch certain fish at certain times of the year, says Ben Martens, the executive director of the Maine Coast Fishermen’s Association.
“Now you just have to throw those out. They don’t work anymore. And every year is completely different from the year before,” Martens says. “Sometimes we have water that’s too warm; this year we had cooler water. We’re seeing a lot more turbulence in what’s happening in our planning and in our business stability.”