FROM THE CROWE’S NEST

The Stream Less Traveled

Recently the New England Fisheries Management Council met before a mixed group of interested parties, from stakeholders to the curious, to decide the total amount of herring that can be taken out the Gulf of Maine. For those on the extreme ends of the issue the decision was easy. For most everyone else it was an agonizing debate.

For the corporations that own the $12 million dollar mid-water trawlers, the decision was simple, more herring for the investors. For the extreme environmentalists it was simple, no more herring fishing until they get interested in something else. But for fishermen, the typical fishermen who go out in small boats, whose bottom line runs across the family dinner table, it was far more difficult.

It was between a very big rock and a very hard place for lobstermen. They know about changes in the Gulf of Maine. They see fewer traditional fish, hear scientists squabble over who’s right about what’s wrong, and no longer see weirs along the coast where their fathers and grandfathers got herring. They know things change, because they’ve seen it.

If they support significant reductions in the herring TAC and they can’t get bait fish enough to cover costs they are stuck. If they support a higher herring TAC and the herring disappear from the increased effort, they are really stuck.

A few things can be said about the industry that are realities. There are two groups fishing: fishermen and corporations. Fishermen are not corporations and corporations are not fishermen. Fishermen are people who live in communities, have families and live lives. Corporations are legal contrivances to protect capital. They don’t have lives and they are not alive.

The recent development of fishermen’s coalitions and alliances is a necessary reaction to this reality. There are and will be differences between and among these organizations, but they will likely evolve if the effort is made to continue. Their presence at the council meeting was apparent and important.

Some groups were criticized for being out of the main stream. Calling for closure of the herring fishery to a room half full of lobstermen wasn’t even in the stream.

The backdrop to what’s happening here is the collapse of the California and the North Sea herring fisheries. There are plenty of examples in our country’s history of people who saw the importance of what needed to be done and took the stream less traveled to be heard.