Feds close cod fishing in Gulf of Maine
Large areas of the Gulf of Maine will be closed to cod fishing, federal regulators announced on Monday. The closures, due to take effect later this week, are in response to continuing declines in the cod fish population.
The Bangor Daily News reported that fishing for other species with groundfish gear also will be banned in the closure area covering the western Gulf of Maine.
John Bullard, Northeast regional fisheries administrator for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, told the newspaper the cod population is in a “free fall” and that the number of cod “is only 3% to 4% of levels deemed sustainable for the stock.”
“We believe protecting these remaining aggregations of fish provide our best chance to prevent a cod stock collapse and a complete fishery closure,” Bullard told the newspaper. “We want to avoid the situation that Canada found itself in when its cod stock [on the Grand Banks off Newfoundland] collapsed in the 1990s.”
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