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Captain Ray Kane Last month, the National Marine Fisheries Service rolled out a broad new set of rules for groundfish fishermen, taking drastic steps to save New England’s depleted groundfish stocks. These regulations, however, are focused solely on one aspect of our groundfish population problem – overharvest – and blatantly ignore the importance of the smaller species that serve as food for these larger fish in the ecosystem. Abundant populations of these little fish are vital to increasing the abundance of all the fish that prey on them. Without addressing this problem, the fisheries won’t be returning to healthy levels, and the fishermen – along with their families and communities that depend on them – won’t either. When I started hook fishing off Cape Cod, Mass., in the early 1970s, I depended on Atlantic herring as bait for the codfish I needed to catch. The business put food on my table. The herring were plentiful for the cod, and the cod were plentiful for me. But foreign industrial trawlers realized the great potential herring had as a fishery and started targeting them. Soon after, the Georges Bank herring population collapsed. In response to the massive impact these foreign vessels were having on our fish stocks, the federal government passed the Magnuson-Stevens Act of 1976. The act created a 200-mile exclusive economic zone off the coast for U.S. vessels, essentially removing the industrialized foreign fleet from U.S. waters. It took almost two decades for the herring population to recover. By 1988, I had turned to tuna fishing. Tuna, like most ocean predators, feed on herring and go where the food goes. So, when there isn’t enough herring in our waters, the tuna go elsewhere. For a while, the tuna fishing was good, but in 1999, the New England Fishery Management Council allowed a new fleet of industrial midwater trawlers to begin fishing for herring from the ports of Gloucester and New Bedford. As the massive schools of herring disappeared, so did the tuna. By 2004, I couldn’t make a living off tuna fishing any more. They had followed the bait elsewhere. Since then, there has been some progress on limiting the herring fishery – the industrialized fleet has been excluded from the Gulf of Maine in the summer months and during the fish’s spawning period. This, hopefully, has helped inshore herring populations and the fish that feed on herring to return to historical fishing grounds. But we have a long way to go. Fishermen have seen a real lack of herring and herring spawn inshore on the backside of Cape Cod and on Nantucket Shoals. In these waters – particularly the spawning grounds near Nantucket Shoals – the herring still aren’t being protected. The spawning closure that was established in the Gulf of Maine needs to be extended up and down the entire New England coast to ensure the herring stock does not collapse again. In September, the New England Fishery Management Council will consider measures to do just that. It’s vital to the entire marine environment and the fishing industry to diminish the threats to this important fish and ensure that Georges Bank continues to be the most productive fishing area in the world. Through our herring fishery reform efforts at the Cape Cod Commercial Hook Fisherman's Association, I am ready to take action to make sure that the ocean does not lose this keystone species. Are you? Check out our work. Ray Kane is a Chatham, Mass.-based fisherman and a member of the Cape Cod Commercial Hook Fisherman's Association.
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In September, the New England Fishery Management Council will consider measures to do just that. It’s vital to the entire marine environment and the fishing industry to diminish the threats to this important fish and ensure that Georges Bank continues to be the most productive fishing area in the world.
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