BOSTON – Gov. Deval L. Patrick has called for the federal government to declare a “fishery resource disaster” to aid coastal communities reeling from recent regulatory changes.
Patrick made the request in a letter to U.S. Commerce Secretary Carlos M. Gutierrez and other officials, with an analysis by the Mass. Division of Marine Fisheries attached.
“The DMF report finds a substantial and disproportionate reduction in revenue” attributable to an emergency action last May and a “framework adjustment” in November that sharply reduced allowable days at sea for the commercial groundfish fleet, Patrick wrote.
“As a result, revenues of Massachusetts groundfish vessels fell from $44.6 million in 2005 to $36.5 million in 2006, a decline of 18 percent,” Patrick wrote. Based on that $8.1 million decline in fishing revenue, and “a moderate multiplier of 2.7,” he said, the DMF arrived at a total loss to the state economy of $22 million.
“A decline in revenues of this magnitude – a magnitude greater than … occasioned the declaration of a fishery resource disaster in 1994 – represents a true economic disaster to the Massachusetts groundfish fishery and the communities it supports,” Patrick wrote.
