It’s not as glamorous as “the City that Lit the World,” but it’s still a nice way to be known: For five years, New Bedford has been the top U.S. commercial fishing port by landings value, trumping all the salmon ports in Alaska with its bounty of fish and sea scallops.
In fact, since 1982, New Bedford has ranked no lower than third each year, and it was No. 1 for all but one year between 1983 and 1991.
But the bounty hasn’t held steady. After peaking at 117.8 million pounds worth $161.2 million in 1990, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Fisheries Service figures show, New Bedford landings dropped sharply for several years, to a low of 68.7 million pounds worth $82.3 million in 1994.
Since then, however, despite a small bump in 1998, the fishing industry has made a powerful rebound, and in 2004 – the last year for which totals are available – a record 175.1 million pounds of fish and scallops came into New Bedford, valued at $206.5 million.
In another era, the recovery of New England’s fish stocks and scallop beds, and the resulting windfall for fishermen, just would have been celebrated. Yet instead, it is raising concerns about overfishing, and leading to tighter regional controls on commercial fishing.
And in Congress, a proposed reauthorization of the Magnuson Fishery Conservation and Management Act would tighten controls even more by forcing New England to impose hard catch limits on each species, as other U.S. regions do, instead of using its current system of setting “targets” for many species, limiting the days an area can be fished, etc.
Whichever way it’s done, said Patricia M. Fiorelli, spokeswoman for the New England Fishery Management Council, which regulates fishing in the region and enforces federal rules, the bottom line is the same: “We cannot have overfished fisheries. It’s not allowed.”
Tight controls are important even in times of plenty, officials and scientists say, not just to protect a frail ecosystem, but to ensure a long-term bounty for fishermen.
“Good management is the reason the fisheries are in good shape,” said Jeremy Collie, a professor of oceanography at the University of Rhode Island. “Clearly, overall, the fish stocks are in much better condition than they were [a few years ago], but that means we have to be vigilant and maintain the management measures that are in place.”
But Edward Barrett, a Plymouth, Mass.-based groundfish fisherman, president of the Massachusetts Fishing Partnership, and member of the board of directors of the Northeast Seafood Coalition, which represents the owners of 143 vessels from New York to Maine, said the rules keep getting tighter and more “Byzantine,” making it hard for fishermen to subsist.
“I’ve been hanging on by my thumbs for eight years now,” he said. “We’ve got the most restricted fisheries in the world in the Northeast. Why isn’t that enough?”
Barrett and James M. Kendall, executive director of the New Bedford Seafood Coalition and a former scalloper, also said fishermen take the hit not just for the impact of their actions, but for the results of pollution, climate changes and natural fluctuations in fish stocks.
“The problem really originates with the term ‘overfishing’ – it’s too damned broad,” Kendall said. “It includes any impact on the resource for whatever reason. You could drop an atomic bomb in the water and kill all the fish, and it would be listed as overfished.”
Tor Bendiksen, of Reidar’s Manufacturing, a Fairhaven fishing gear manufacturing company, said rises and falls in different species are a big factor: A strong haddock population in Georges Bank has probably slowed the rebuilding of codfish stocks, while low levels of cod have helped scallops to flourish, and probably lobsters as well, because cod eat young scallops and lobsters – as well as other cod, if the population gets too big.
“If you look at New England, off this coast, we have very healthy stocks,” he said. “We have some of the healthiest in the world, between our scallops and our haddock and our flounder. [But] these levels have never been high at the same time.”
This issue is important, fishermen note, because right now catch limits and other restrictions are often based on not how much of the targeted species can be safely caught, but on how other species may be affected. Haddock fishing, for example, is constrained by the potential for cod to be caught in the same nets (so-called “by-catch”). And a URI study co-authored by Collie last fall suggested the permanent closure of some scalloping areas in Georges Bank because the devastating impact that dredges and bottom trawls have on herring, cod and haddock habitats there could last as long as 10 years.
The by-catch issue, most agree, can be at least partially addressed through technology: specialized nets – some already sold by Bendiksen – can take advantage of different species’ natural behaviors to minimize the by-catch.
Supported by a $422,000 grant from the National Marine Fisheries Service’s Cooperative Research Partners Program, URI fisheries researchers David Beutel and Laura Skrobe have been testing one such net in Georges Bank. It has a 6-inch mesh on top and 8-foot openings at the bottom, and is designed to catch haddock, which tend to swim upward when they encounter a net, but release cod and flounder, which tend to swim downward.
The nets aren’t cheap, however: Bendiksen said they can cost $4,000 apiece for a small boat and $20,000 or so for a big boat. And just because a net fits the regulations one year, he noted, that doesn’t mean the following year the rules won’t change, requiring a new purchase.
Barrett said that’s what’s kept him from buying the new kinds of nets.
“Why should I go out and invest in a new net, in a new technology, and then two years later, the scientists will say, ‘That’s not right’?” he said. “With the days at sea and the catch they allow me, I can’t afford that technology.”
Yet things could be worse, Barrett said: If the current version of the Magnuson Act reauthorization is approved, with hard “total allowable catch” (TAC) limits required for each species, “it would be a disaster for these fishing communities.”
Fiorelli, of the New England Fishery Management Council, said the group – which includes state and federal officials, fishermen and environmental advocates – would prefer to keep New England’s flexible system of management tools, with minimal use of hard TACs and mostly target catch limits and limits on the days a boat can spend in an area.
Yet that system is, all admit, imperfect. The days-at-sea limits, which govern scalloping, for example, are based on the expected harvest per trip. But scallopers keep getting more efficient, Kendall noted. The typical boat is now out fewer than 100 days a year, and yet the tonnage keeps rising, so the limits have to be lowered again and again. “Soft” or target TACs can also be exceeded, fishermen and officials say, as has happened with codfish.
Hard TACs, on the other hand, can lead to “derby” fishing, Kendall said, with boats rushing to take all they can, making a harsh one-time impact on the stock, often at the expense of smaller boats that can’t compete with the larger, corporate operations.
Fiorelli, however, said hard TACs – while not the council’s preferred solution – would probably not make a major impact on local fisheries, and if they were imposed, they’d include timetables and other rules to prevent derbies.
The wave of the future is something far more sophisticated: so-called “ecosystems” management, with all the different species managed together, and other marine life also considered. The Magnuson Act reauthorization, as currently drafted, would require that new approach, and the New England council supports it, Fiorelli said.
But implementing ecosystems management is tricky. For starters, not all agree on how to do it. Kendall and Barrett, both of whom question the accuracy of current stock measurement systems, said trying to measure whole habitats would be even messier.
Even Fiorelli acknowledged that “the science needs to catch up” to make such an approach feasible.
Collie said fisheries managers don’t have to ditch their current systems to embrace the ecosystems approach – they can just start taking it into consideration. It involves fairly well-known issues, he noted: by-catch; the effects of fishing on the habitat, especially on the seafloor; predator-prey and other multi-species interactions, and climactic issues.
“It’s a pretty tall order,” he said, “so to do it effectively, you have to do it one step at a time.”
