Saving Seafood

Last of the fishermen: NH’s ground fishing captains fading away

October 11th, 2016 — Dozens of commercial fishing boats were once docked along the New Hampshire coastline and trawled through the Gulf of Maine to drag in thousands of pounds of cod.

Today, only about five commercial ground fishermen remain active in New Hampshire. And as they continue to struggle with strict regulations on cod and other species of groundfish, many question the future of groundfishing in the Granite State.

One active ground fisherman, Neil Pike, said “there ain’t one.” He lives in Seabrook and fishes out of Hampton Harbor where he said there used to be 13 other fishing vessels docked next to his. Now, he said there are three and he owns two of them.

“There is no future,” Pike added as he looked out the window of his harborside home where his boats are docked.

Jamie Hayward, 42, a gillnetter who fishes out of Portsmouth, said he once had six or seven crew members and brought in more than twice the amount of income he is making today. Strict cod catch limits and added costs from the federal government, he said, forced him to shrink his business and take up fishing for lobster part-time to keep his business alive.

“There’s a few of us that are surviving on a lot less than what we generated (before),” Hayward said. “There aren’t a lot of people that are catching fish and making money. It’s just not happening.”

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which oversees the nation’s fisheries, cut cod quotas for ground fishermen by approximately 95 percent in the Gulf of Maine over the course of a few years leading up to this fishing year. NOAA researchers say cod stocks are dangerously low and require the restrictions to help them bounce back.

NOAA increased Gulf of Maine cod allocations by 30 percent this year, but fishermen say it is not nearly enough. The number of ground fishermen dropped from nine last year. Dan Salerno, who manages the fishing sector that includes New Hampshire, said the exact number of ground fishermen today is hard to pin down as people change their status throughout the year. Some are waiting to fish their quota until the end of the year and are remaining inactive until then.

Read the full story at The Portsmouth Herald

Fading Fishermen: A Historic Industry Faces A Warming World

June 27, 2016 — SEABROOK, N.H. — The cod isn’t just a fish to David Goethel. It’s his identity, his ticket to middle-class life, his link to a historic industry.

“I paid for my education, my wife’s education, my house, my kids’ education; my slice of America was paid for on cod,” said Goethel, a 30-year veteran of the Atlantic waters that once teemed with New England’s signature fish.

But on a chilly, windy Saturday in April, after 12 hours out in the Gulf of Maine, he has caught exactly two cod, and he feels far removed from the 1990s, when he could catch 2,000 pounds in a day.

His boat, the Ellen Diane, a 44-foot fishing trawler named for his wife, is the only vessel pulling into the Yankee Fishermen’s Cooperative in Seabrook. Fifteen years ago, there might have been a half-dozen. He is carrying crates of silver hake, skates and flounder — all worth less than cod.

One of America’s oldest commercial industries, fishing along the coast of the Northeast still employs hundreds. But every month that goes by, those numbers fall. After centuries of weathering overfishing, pollution, foreign competition and increasing government regulation, the latest challenge is the one that’s doing them in: climate change.

Though no waters are immune to the ravages of climate change, the Gulf of Maine, a dent in the coastline from Cape Cod to Nova Scotia, best illustrates the problem. The gulf, where fishermen have for centuries sought lobster, cod and other species that thrived in its cold waters, is now warming faster than 99 percent of the world’s oceans, scientists have said.

Read the full story at the Associated Press 

NEW HAMPSHIRE: Seabrook honors fishermen lost at sea

August 7, 2015 — The first days of October had been warm in 1851, and seas were calm in the Gulf of St. Lawrence as much of the New England fishing fleet worked in the waters not far from Prince Edward Island.

That picturesque scene would change unexpectedly, when the ocean grew heavy with swells and the winds rose fiercely. What would be known as the “Yankee Gale” struck on the evening of Friday, Oct. 3.

Although vessels and fishing schooners in its path tried to run for safe harbor, most didn’t find it. The gale, accompanied by torrential rains, blew for the next two days, judging from written accounts.

By Monday morning, when the storm finally subsided, records show from 70 to 90 boats were sunk, capsized or wrecked ashore, and 160 men lost their lives, leaving families and friends at home in mourning.

Read the full story from the Newburyport Daily News