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NEFMC Presents 2021 Award for Excellence to Frank Mirarchi

September 29, 2021 โ€” The following was released by the New England Fishery Management Council:

The New England Fishery Management Council today presented its 2021 Janice Plante Award for Excellence to Frank Mirarchi of Scituate, MA. Frank has been involved in the fishing industry for over five decades, both as an active commercial fisherman and as a dedicated partner in cooperative research.

The award was established by the Council in 2015 to annually honor an individual who has produced exceptional work โ€œto further the effectiveness of the fishery management process in New England.โ€ In particular, the Council seeks to pay special tribute to people who have displayed an outstanding commitment to the Council fishery management system and contributed time and energy to the process.

This yearโ€™s award recipient more than fits that bill. Over the course of his career, Frank has served on many of the Councilโ€™s advisory panels and working groups, including the Groundfish Advisory Panel, the Research Steering Committee, the Electronic Monitoring Working Group, the Multispecies Monitoring Committee, and the Interspecies Advisory Panel. He continues to serve as one of the Councilโ€™s representatives on the Northeast Trawl Advisory Panel, as well as on a steering committee that is working on issues related to Ecosystem-Based Fishery Management.

In the early 1990s, Frank was appointed to the Council as a sitting member, although his Council service is not the basis for this award. Rather, his dozens of years of concerted and selfless efforts to improve upon fishery management and the science that underpins it made him the Executive Committeeโ€™s top choice as the 2021 award recipient. Council Chairman Eric Reid said, โ€œFrank always made decisions that were fair, equitable, and based on sound science. He never pulled back from doing what he thought was right, even when the resulting action would impact his own business.โ€

While the Councilโ€™s award is in recognition of Frankโ€™s extensive contributions to federal fisheries management and the Council process, he was extremely active on the state level as well. He was instrumental in the success of the Industry-Based Survey for Gulf of Maine Cod, overseen by the Massachusetts Division of Marine Fisheries (DMF). He was a 17-year member of DMFโ€™s Marine Fisheries Advisory Commission, serving as vice chair or chair for many of those years. In 1994, the state presented him with the prestigious Dr. David Belding Award for all he had done to โ€œpromote the conservation and sustainable use of the Commonwealthโ€™s marine resources.โ€ And, he continues to serve on the board of directors for the Massachusetts Fishermenโ€™s Partnership.

A Witness to Change

Frank Mirarchi began fishing before the regional fishery management council system was created in 1976 under what is now known as the MagnusonStevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act. He attended a public hearing when the act was under development and therefore witnessed the establishment and evolution of the regional fishery management council system from the ground up.

He fished through a whirlwind of changes in vessel designs, gear modifications, and management measures. He saw the introduction of the Hague Line that divided Georges Bank between the U.S. and Canada through a 1984 World Court decision. At the start of his career, groundfish fishing meant throwing back small fish and staying out of closed areas. It then morphed to a new regime of daysat-sea and, eventually, groundfish sectors.

He firmly believed in research and was committed to contributing data to help sustainably manage the fisheries he had built his life around. He outfitted his last boat to make cooperative research more doable. He took part in a vast array of projects that ranged from Gulf of Maine cod spawning identification to spiny dogfish excluder devices in whiting trawls and so much more.

In presenting the Councilโ€™s 2021 award, Chairman Reid concluded, โ€œFrank has rightfully earned his reputation for being well spoken and fair minded. He has a natural ability to listen to others and engage in respectful discourse. He is resourceful, persistent, and trustworthy. He continues to share his institutional knowledge and remains deeply committed to the betterment of fishery management. He truly is a remarkable person and a kind human being.โ€

Read the full release from the New England Fishery Management Council

 

MASSACHUSETTS: Long a lifeblood, South Shore fishing industry faces numerous challenges

October 6, 2020 โ€” Over his more than five decades fishing commercially, Frank Mirarchi has watched the business evolve from thriving and straightforward to complicated and diminished, with skyrocketing costs, foreign competition and changing regulations choking an industry synonymous with the South Shore.

In the late 1960s, when he purchased his first of three successive boats, fish was abundant enough to make a solid living off of.

โ€œYou worked hard, you caught a lot of fish, the fish were actually enough to compensate you for their cost,โ€ he said.

In the 70s, he had two other men work on his boat with them, and their catch was enough to support all three families.

But the technologically-advanced equipment and permits have gotten prohibitively expensive for many, while regulations aimed at replenishing overfished populations have not been successful, Mirachi said.

Up until the 1970s, fishing was largely unregulated. In 1976, the US government extended its jurisdiction from 12 miles off coast to 200, eliminating foreign competition and leading to a rush of new US fishermen, creating a fish scarcity from overfishing.

โ€œBy 1985 or so, fishing was pretty bad,โ€ Mirachi said. With profits dropping, he switched from having two other crew members to one.

Read the full story at Wicked Local

MASSACHUSETTS: Fleet: Increased monitoring would be final nail in coffin

September 26, 2019 โ€” Regional groundfishermen delivered a unified and dire message to the New England Fishery Management Council on Wednesday, testifying that any radical increases to at-sea monitoring coverage will bankrupt the multispecies groundfish fleet beyond repair and without benefit.

The council, meeting for the third day at the Beauport Hotel Gloucester, dedicated much of Wednesdayโ€™s agenda to groundfish issues โ€” including the highly contentious Amendment 23, which will set future monitoring coverage levels and โ€” ultimately โ€” define the economic ability of commercial groundfishermen to continue fishing.

The four alternatives included in the draft amendment call for monitoring coverage levels of 25%, 50%, 75% and 100% of all commercial groundfish trips.

Groundfishermen, speaking Wednesday afternoon during the public comment period, drew a straight line from the increased monitoring costs to the economic collapse of the fishery.

Read the full story at the Gloucester Daily Times

A fishermanโ€™s doubt, and his love of the sea

November 3, 2015 โ€” He is up before the dawn, and, a creature of steady habits, he heads for the seashore.

Itโ€™s dark when Frank Mirarchi jumps into his black pickup truck, and dark still when he reaches Scituate Harbor. He parks on the town pier and stares at the ocean. But his 55-foot stern dragger is no longer moored there.

Actually, the boat is there. But itโ€™s no longer his. It was renamed last June after he sold it โ€” a poignant punctuation point to Mirarchiโ€™s half-century career as a commercial fisherman.

โ€œIโ€™m down here every morning to watch the boats go out,โ€™โ€™ he told me Monday as we sat on a bench overlooking the dazzling harbor and under an unseasonably warm autumn sun. โ€œI did it for 52 years. And I still love it.โ€™โ€™

I first met Mirarchi in early January when the harbor was icy and fat flakes of snow gently fell as if one of those snow globes had been softly shaken.

He is the son of a scientist and is something of a self-taught scientist himself. When I suggested Governor Charlie Baker would do well to pick his brain and appoint him to an ad hoc group looking into the travails of the cod fishery in the Gulf of Maine, the new governor took my advice. And soon Mirarchi was shaking hands with Baker on Beacon Hill.

When the latest news arrived last week about the depths of the cod collapse, the numbers were so alarming that I instantly thought of Frank and those like him who found their livelihood at sea.

Read the full story at Boston Globe

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