Tag Archives: mid-water trawlers

Cape Cod Fishermen Seek Buffer From Mid Water Trawlers

boat-e1364231633321On Aug. 17, the Herring Oversight Committee of the New England Fisheries Management Council voted to send the council two options for establishing a buffer zone prohibiting mid-water trawling off Cape Cod. The zone would extend either 12 miles or 35 miles from shore — significantly farther than the 6-mile zone proposed by the herring industry and closer than the 50-mile mark sought by environmental groups. The council will consider the options when it meets in September. Fishermen have been complaining for years about the industrial-sized ships landing on the back side of Cape Cod, scooping up millions of pounds of herring and leaving, they say, a temporary ocean “bio-desert” in their wake. In 2015, the Cape Cod Commercial Fishermen’s Alliance collected hundreds of comments and individual letters from fisherman about the phenomenon called “localized depletion” — defined as “when harvesting takes more fish than can be replaced locally or through fish migrating into the catch area within a given time period.” Read the story here 16:22

‘We’re not dying yet. But …’ Fisherman fears new rules smothering herring industry

568f31790b67e.imageGerry O’Neill looks at the water world spinning around him, a world of regulation and re-regulation and over-regulation — in other words, the modern world of commercial fishing — and thinks that he’s seen this movie before. “At the end of the day, the groundfishermen are struggling and everybody knows that and it’s because of over-regulation as well,” O’Neill said. “We’re not dying yet. But if they keep doing what they’re doing, we’re going to go the same way as the groundfishermen.” Given the state of the groundfish fleet, that is a chilling phrase,  Read the article here 07:39

Huge herring haul worries rival fishermen, environmentalists

A little fish that New Englanders have sought since the Colonial era is at the center of a battle over how to manage massive boats that trawl swaths of ocean off the East Coast. The catch for the Atlantic herring, which travels in groups sometimes numbering in the billions, is in the midst of a massive boom. Last year fishermen caught more than 95,000 metric tons of the fish for the first time since 2009, federal statistics show. Now rival fishermen are raising concerns about the high catches, and regulators are starting to consider whether the big haul is adversely impacting the environment, marine mammals or other fisheries. Read the rest here 14:29

Regulators in New England cap river herring catch

100_1068The caps proposed Thursday by the New England Fishery Management Council during their meeting on Cape Cod target so-called mid-water trawlers, which catch herring by pulling a large net between them. The caps limit the trawlers to a  total of 500,000 pounds of river herring in three areas off New England. [email protected] 17:15