Tag Archives: Gerry O’Neill
Mid-Water Herring Trawlers to Return to Inshore Waters – Court Overturns Exclusion Zone
Herring fishermen from New England and the Mid-Atlantic won a crucial decision last week when a federal judge in Boston ruled in their favor against an exclusion zone in Northeast U.S. waters. The court ruled that a National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) measure excluding the mid-water trawl fleet from productive inshore fishing grounds violated the Magnuson-Stevens Act, the nation’s premier fisheries law. The lawsuit was brought by the Sustainable Fisheries Coalition (SFC), a trade group representing herring and mackerel fishing companies. >click to read< 08:16
Gloucester: New herring rules prompt angst at dock
The protections for the Northeast herring fishery enacted this week by the New England Fishery Management Council are not welcome news for Cape Seafoods and could force the locally based seafood company to change the way it fishes.,,, One option, O’Neill said, is to change the way the company’s boats fish, moving away from the ultra-efficient midwater trawling to bottom trawling in the areas where the technique is allowed. “Even if we decide to make the investment in new gear, it’s not going to be an easy thing,” O’Neill said. “Everything the council does devalues our operation. It devalues the permits and it devalues the plant. How do you plan anything? How long before they try something else?” >click to read<16:34
‘We’re not dying yet. But …’ Fisherman fears new rules smothering herring industry
Gerry 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
