Fishing Industry Report, Good bye American Fisherman

[Bruce]

Increased imports once again along with carefully planned cuts in catch quotas are making our commercial fishing fleets go away for good. No one can convince me that the two don't go hand in hand.

I quit eating fish and many types of seafood at restaurants years ago due to restaurant owners advertising one type of fish, then serving a cheaper farm raised filet. I called many restaurant owners out on it and they just said it wasn't them it was their suppliers. Liars, all of them.

Whos to blame? Like any industry who gets devastated by gov't over regulation, its the industry themselves.
This should be another lesson that gov't is the 800lb gorilla and will sit on your ass without regard to you at all. That shoving one's head in the sand while reaping large profits at times will come back and bite you in the ass without self regulation in the industry. Just ask doctors if your not convinced who practiced in the 70's and 80's and still practice now.

In fighting only serves to weaken an industry. People will never agree to multiple points all at the same time but there can be agreement between basic industry standards without .gov to step in and throw a fishing net over the whole mess.

My guess is its too late to save it. Your average dip shit consumer can't tell the difference between some crap Tilapia grown in the sewage filled fish pens of Vietnam vs a fresh piece of cod just caught hours ago. The craze for the omega 3 oils of wild salmon are replaced by farm raised salmon who neither have the levels of naturally fed nutrients or omega 3 but have increased antibiotics and growth hormones to get them to the market pdq.

I'm at the point unless I catch it, I ain't eating it.

R.I.P.


http://www.nbcnews.com/business/us-fish ... -1C8412932" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Jay Lindsay , The Associated Press

His city's best fishing days are long past it, but lifelong Gloucester resident Ron Gilson still sees what once was when he drives past what remains.

There's the waterfront lot, littered with discarded fishing nets and lobster pots, where vessels in the famed fishing fleet once docked. The clatter and grit of a top maritime machine shop downtown has been replaced by a banquet hall. On the state fish pier, where Gilson briefly parks, the sounds of year-round work have given way to the quiet whirr of his idling Prius.

To the 79-year-old, the decline of the industry has stolen jobs, community spirit and opportunity. And it's not over, Gilson said.

"This is the lowest point," he declared on a February day. "Tomorrow will be lower."

In May, New England's fishermen will again see a cut to the number of fish they can catch, this time so deeply that the historic industry's existence is threatened from Rhode Island to Maine. But as hard as the cuts are likely to hit fishing communities, local seafood eaters may not notice at all. In the region's markets, grocery stores and restaurants, imported fish dominate, and the cuts make that less likely to change.

The cuts will shrink the catch limit 77 percent for cod in the Gulf of Maine and 61 percent for cod in Georges Bank, off southeastern Massachusetts. That's the worst of a series of reductions to the catch of bottom-dwelling groundfish, such as haddock and flounder, that many fear could be fatal to the industry.

"They're going to wipe it out!" said Gilson. "The only thing that's going to be the same is the ocean you're looking at."

For fish consumers, a sharp drop in the local groundfish catch may jar a select group of diners who seek fish caught that day. But the cut's effects may not ripple further than that.

Just 9 percent of the seafood eaten in the United States is domestically caught, the federal government estimates. In New England, locally caught cod was just a slightly larger fraction of all cod eaten, 12 percent, according to fisheries economist Jenny Sun of the Portland, Maine-based Gulf of Maine Research Institute. And she estimates that could drop to 4 percent after the coming cuts.

Much of the imported cod is caught and frozen in Norway and cut in China, and there's plenty of it, Sun said. If the local cod catch dips to near nothing, fish processors "could easily fill in with imports," Sun said.

In fact, the biggest issue for one Maine seafood processing executive has been the perception that the New England industry's troubles mean he won't have fish.

But prices will likely change little after the cuts because substitutes are plentiful, said Chris Fream, senior sales executive at North Atlantic Inc., a processor in Portland, Maine.

"The sky certainly isn't falling because a) we knew it was coming and b) we've prepared for it and there's other species that are around," he said.

The remaining fishermen have limited options. The Northeast's groundfish fleet had 420 boats in 2011, a drop of 150 in just two years, and many of those who continue to fish do so because they have no choice.

Scituate fisherman Frank Mirarchi noted wryly that, at 69, he has few employment options. The fishermen he cooperates with, pooling quota and resources, have discussed taking even more boats out of the water and trying to hang in with whatever they can catch.

"This is not a long-term strategy," Mirarchi said. "Something needs to happen before 2014 or we all go down the tubes."

The crew on Gloucester fisherman Richard Burgess's two boats is family, and he said he hasn't considered selling out of the business.

"I put them out on the street, where are they going to get a goddamn job?" he said. "And these are men who have devoted their lives to feeding the country fresh fish. And now the country is stabbing us in the heart."

Groundfish accounts for 50 percent of the business for Richie Canastra, co-owner at the Whaling City Seafood Display Auction in New Bedford. He can still depend on the port's robust scallop catch, but he said he's already laid off four of 30 workers and anticipates another 10 layoffs when the cuts kick in in May.

There's talk of government aid for fishermen, after the fishery was declared an economic disaster last year. But the best hope for many in the industry seems to be a correction in the science that fishermen view as deeply flawed. There's also a belief that natural fluctuations have made fish scarce this year, and those same fluctuations can bring them back.

Canastra recalls the story about a 1928 Massachusetts license plate that featured a symbol of codfish that appears to be swimming away from the plate's abbreviation for the state. The cod catch suddenly dropped that year, prompting superstitious fishermen to demand the plate be changed to show the fish swimming toward the state name.

It was, and the cod came back to Massachusetts. It can again, Canastra said.

"My point is, there are cycles," he said.

© 2013 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

[GaryG]

This is a depressing sad state of affairs. The New England fishing industry was a significant part of the original colony's and then country's success. The American fisherman for the most part are the only ones that actually obeyed the fishing/quota restrictions (certainly compared to the Asian and even the European fishing fleets).

I suspect that recreational fisheries are not far behind. Soon our fisheries may be managed by hedge-fund managers through catch shares.

[Carl]

Consumers are the people to blame.
Want it cheap, want it plentiful, quality is not an issue...it's just gotta look good.

Taste beef or pork lately?
I know I haven't...it's become a tasteless mass.

People want Cheap and Purdy...Big Box Stores.

[Keith Poe]

http://eatocracy.cnn.com/2013/02/21/sea ... ?hpt=hp_c3" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;








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[Bob H.]

Bruce, At least were through with no fish for you Lubchenco..hope we make it through the next 4 years..the countries success depends on passing on what "this" generation knows to the next and letting them improve as they can..were sliding backward faster than anyone can imagine.. P.S. they are catching cod off block island again..been a while since that happened...a big ole fish cycle indeed..fresh cod vs tilapia....Cod for me..BH