Stonington fishermen fight for their livelihoods: The fleet’s past, present and tenuous future

July 22, 2021 Mid Atlantic, National, New England

While they have weathered storms, the loss of 41 fleet members at sea, declining catches and restrictions on how much fish they can land, the aging group of mostly men who make up the Town Dock Fleet now face a set of new challenges that threatens their future and that of the state’s last surviving commercial fleet. These include the difficulty of luring young people into a grueling but potentially lucrative occupation and the leasing of vast areas of their fishing grounds to offshore wind energy companies that plan to erect hundreds of massive turbines. >click to read< 09:17

Alan Chaplaski, Captain Aaron Williams, Captain Dan Malone, eight lobster boats, F/V Jenna Lynn II, F/V Tradition, fight for their livelihoods, fleet has 10 fishing and scallop boats, fleet's past, Joe Gilbert, lobsterman Geal Roderick, Lobsterman Josiah Dodge, lobsterman Matt Maderia, lobsterman Mike Grimshaw, NOAA, offshore wind farms, present, Retired fisherman Joe Rendeiro, Southern New England Fishermen and Lobstermen's Association, Stonington Connecticut, Stonington Fishermen, tenuous future, Town Dock Fleet

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The New England groundfish debacle (Part III): who or what is at fault? Nils E. Stolpe/FishNet

It took me a while to decide how to most accurately describe the situation that has been visited upon the New England fishing communities that are and since colonial times have been dependent on the groundfish fisheries.

NILS STOLPE: The New England groundfish debacle (Part IV): Is cutting back harvest really the answer?

While it’s a fact that’s hardly ever acknowledged, the assumption in fisheries management is that if the population of a stock of fish isn’t at some arbitrary level, it’s because of too much fishing. Hence the term “overfished.” Hence the mandated knee jerk reaction of the fisheries managers to not enough fish; cut back on fishing. What of other factors? They don’t count. It’s all about fishing, because fishing is all that the managers can control; it’s their Maslow’s Hammer. When it comes to the oceans it seems as if it’s about all that the industry connected mega-foundations that support the anti-fishing ENGOs with hundreds of millions of dollars a year in “donations” are interested in controlling. Read the article here

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