June 9, 2016 — A program to get New England fishermen using video technology instead of human monitors to track their adherence to catch limits and document fish discarded from boats is getting mixed reviews in South Shore fishing ports.
Longtime commercial fishermen from Marshfield and Scituate said the project to equip some groundfishing boats with digital cameras comes with numerous pitfalls, including cost burdens and concerns about how video footage would be used.
Beginning this week, up to 20 groundfishermen from the Maine and Cape Cod will use three to four cameras to document fish handling on their vessels. At the end of each fishing trip, boat captains will send hard drives to third-party reviewers, who will view the footage and determine how much fish was discarded.
The Nature Conservancy is overseeing the project and hailed it Tuesday as a “new era in fisheries monitoring” that would be less costly than the current federal mandate, which requires having human monitors aboard boats on a percentage of fishing trips – at a cost to the fishermen of more than $700 a day.
Last December, South Shore fishermen threw their support behind a lawsuit filed by the nonprofit Cause of Action on behalf of Northeast Fishery Sector 13, which represents fishermen from Massachusetts and New Hampshire down to North Carolina. The federal lawsuit challenges the legality of the federal mandate and came in the aftermath of news that government funding to cover the cost of monitors was running out.
Christopher McGuire, The Nature Conservancy’s marine program director, said his group has begun working with National Marine Fisheries Service personnel in hopes of winning approval for the video-monitoring program.
If video monitoring can deliver verifiable data at an affordable cost, McGuire expects federal approval to come within two years.
South Shore fisherman Ed Barrett questioned whether there would be any cost savings, saying the camera equipment would cost thousands of dollars.
“Then someone has to sit in a cubicle and watch the video,” said Barrett, who lives in Marshfield. “ In a multi-species complex like we have in New England, it’s impossible for the video to pick out which fish are being discarded.”
Read the full story at the Patriot Ledger