Tag Archives: New England groundfishery disaster

NOAA Reports: New England groundfisheries still struggling

sct logo“The report puts every region together with the whole country and calls it a big success, but in New England the groundfishery really isn’t doing well,” said Brian Rothschild, former dean of the School of Marine Science and Technology at UMass Dartmouth. “We still have some real problems in New England straightening out our management picture.” Read more here  08:49

Our View: Complex fisheries need the best minds

Brian Rothschildviewer call to action!The New England groundfishery is a disaster. Conservationists know it, the federal government knows it, processors, shipyards and supply houses know it. And nobody knows it like fishermen do. The source of the disaster can be summed up in a word: Complexity. Around every corner in the quest to manage the groundfishery lurks another tangled issue. Fishery managers declare catch limits that are little better than arbitrary because our definitions of overfishing are at odds, a condition created by murky, imprecise language in the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery and Conservation Management Act, further complicated by the inability to agree on the size of the fishery, its relative vitality, the impact of warming and acidifying oceans, the number of fish versus the size of the fish, the role of economics and management mechanisms “¦ you get the idea. Dr. Brian Rothschild points out in the policy paper,,Read more@southcoasttoday  09:31