Fishermen face curtailment of catch quota
Because of a change in a federal law that manages fish stocks, Maine fishermen expect next year's herring catches to be severely curtailed, according to the Bangor Daily News. Besides impacting the fishermen, the change will also affect Maine's lobstermen, who will be forced to look elsewhere for the herring they use to bait their traps.
The New England Fishery Management Council sets quotas for the amount of herring that can be caught in four regional fishing areas, including the inner and outer Gulf of Maine. The herring catch limit has been steadily reduced over the past several years. In 2007, the quota in the inner Gulf of Maine was reduced from 60,000 metric tons to 55,000 metric tons, the Daily News reported. In 2008, it was reduced to 43,150. Next year, the quota for the inner Gulf of Maine is expected to be reduced to only 20,000 metric tons, the paper reported.
Since the state's lobster industry uses 60,000 metric tons of herring each year as bait, the lobstermen will be faced with finding new sources to make up the difference. "It's going to be severe," Terry Stockwell, a spokesman for the Maine Department of Marine Resources, told the Daily News. "There's no way to sugarcoat it."
The reduction is a result of a change in the federal Magnuson-Stevens Act that requires independent scientists to review stock assessments and then recommend quotas to the regional fishery council, the Daily News reports. This year scientists came up with a recommendation, which is not debatable, much lower than regulators had made in the past, according to the paper.
The New England Fishery Management Council is scheduled to discuss next year's herring quota at its meeting Sept. 24 in Plymouth, Mass., and make a decision by November, the paper reported.
Go to the article from the Bangor Daily News >>
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