FROM THE CROWE’S NEST

Hearing The Unified Majority

There seems to be a registration lag for some people, it’s the space between the word duck and when they do. The known threat of global warming sat on the back burner for about 50 years before the day late and a dollar short global chorus of wow! to melting ice caps.

Fishermen are typically reluctant to criticize each others gear, but faced with imminent disaster they are taking a stand. There is unprecedented unity among fishermen in opposition to industrial trawl gear in the Gulf of Maine. Referred to as mid-water trawlers, they in fact fish from top to bottom. In pairs, two 150' ships haul an enormous net targeting herring, but the fine mesh net catches about everything in its path. Protected, endangered, over-fished, under-fished and rebuilding stocks are packed into the net. They cannot be kept, so they are dumped overboard, dead.

Sound stupid yet? Management, as the National Marine Fisheries Service refers to itself, does nothing. The trawlers have virtually no observers aboard, they call in to report whatever catch figure they want to report and if they say zero haddock, NMFS parrots zero haddock, cod, stripers, whales or whatever.

The fishermen’s calls for help have also fallen on deaf ears at the New England Fisheries Management Council. These are not recent school graduates looking for an acceptable environmental cause to tilt at from behind a desk. They are professionals who have spent years on the water, from generations of fishing families, who have seen first hand the impact of industrial fishing.

The inshore ban on trawlers this year has produced more evidence than should be required to convince any rational person that life will return to the Gulf if the trawlers do not.

The importance of herring to the Gulf continues to grow. The coming boom in aquaculture will push demand for herring well beyond sustainability. Who gets the herring then? New England ground fish, lobstermen, tuna, whales, the Paris zoo, African farmers, or Gulf of Mexico fish farms?

Getting trawlers out of the inshore area and closed ground fish areas is essential to the survival of the whole resource. Management must not be allowed to ignore the unified majority of fishermen.