Gloucester fishing industry attorney Stephen Ouellette explained that this is one of the darkest hour this industry has ever seen in 25 years. The amendment, approved Friday, restructures much of the fishing industry into 17 new cooperatives called “sectors.” It is told that the sectors will have the ability to decide for themselves how to develop rules for taking and allocating their allowed catch to the members.
Under this new rule the allowed catch will be based on the landings history of the individual members of the sector. Those who fail to join the cooperatives will fish on their own under an increasingly strict set of rules, tighter catch limits, and rigorous oversight.
Robert Lane of Bourne, the former owner of two draggers out of New Bedford, wants to quit the fishing business as he has biter experience in a sector in Maine. According to him the sector system is going to collapse of its own weight with all the paperwork managing the thing. He added that quotas force you into groups, and it’s a huge amount of work trying to manage it that way.
It estimated that Amendment 16 has raised some new concerns, however, prompting a large protest demonstration in October in Gloucester. While the new rules are intended to rebuild fish stocks and make boats more viable in the long term, many fishermen at the rally said they suspect smaller boats will be wiped out as the larger ones in the sectors buy the smaller boats’ catch allocations, which is permitted in the rules.
