Tensions high as action is urged on cod decline
PHOTO / &Copy; Hans Hillewaert (Wikimedia Commons)
The Atlantic cod is on a critical decline in the Gulf of Maine, but fishermen won't know whether they'll have to obey quotas until a federal agency makes recommendations by next month.
The New England Fishery Management Council has relegated the action to take on the dramatic cod population decline in the Gulf of Maine to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, though the council did recommend emergency action Wednesday.
NOAA is to respond by next month. Fishermen are concerned that the federal agency’s recommendations could put quotas on them across the region, which extends from Cape Cod to the Bay of Fundy in Canada, potentially devastating their businesses, according to The Boston Globe. The quota issue has caused such tension that the council hired a police detail.
The newspaper noted that NOAA will decide whether to forbid recreational fishing in the western part of the gulf, require federal observers on commercial fishing boats in some areas or end exemptions to reduce the overall catch.
Two years ago the council cut the cod catch by 77% to 1,550 metric tons per year. NOAA also could potentially ban cod fishing, which happened in the 1990s in Newfoundland, the newspaper said.
It’s not clear what has caused the cod collapse, but overfishing and climate change have been blamed.
The executive director of the Maine Coast Fishermen’s Association said his group was disappointed that the council’s meetings didn’t result in any specifics.
“There’s a lot of worried fishermen in Maine and we were really looking for some direction from the council,” Ben Martens, head of the group, which catches some one-third of Maine’s groundfish, told the Portland Press Herald. “But [the council’s meeting] left us with more questions than answers.
Maine’s cod catch, at its peak in 1991, reached about 21.2 million pounds, which translates into $16.3 million in sales, the newspaper said, quoting state Department of Marine Resources. By 2013, the catch had fallen to 286,000 pounds valued at $736,000.
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