So I was listening to WBUR this morning on the way into work and they were talking about these new restrictive fishing rules being set up, which take effect tomorrow. I tried to find an article on WBUR’s website on this to link to but failed. So far as I can tell, the new rules do three things:

1. Restrict the total catch for fishermen to 1/10 what they were previously allowed.
2. Force fishermen into groups (shares, they called them) where the restrictions on how much fish they could catch was allocated to the group, not the individual fishermen. This means that potentially the first fisherman out for the season can catch all the allowed fish for the season and the rest of the members of the group go belly up (no pun intended).
3. Make fishermen who accidentally catch a fish that they’re not licensed to catch lose their license for the season. So if you drop a net and pull up one fish that you weren’t supposed to catch, you’re toast.

The guy they interviewed said he thought the new rules were designed to put fishermen out of business, and its hard to disagree. WBUR then interviewed someone from the state fishing board, who proceeded to say some pretty incredible things. He acknowledged that these measures would cause fish prices to rise at the supermarket, but he also went on to say that we here in New England have been spoiled by the general availability of fresh fish like cod and haddock, and that people in Nebraska didn’t generally have access to fresh fish like that, and that we would have to just make due.

The worst part about it all s that the fisherman they had been interviewing said that stocks have been replenished, and that there is no risk of extinction or depletion off the coast of Massachusetts any more. He cited some scientific study. WBUR reporters never put someone on to refute that claim, so I would have to guess he was telling the truth.

So this is asinine on too many levels to count. Frankly, one of the reasons I like living in New England, despite the high costs, is because we can get fresh seafood. I eat fresh fish maybe twice a week. Frankly, I’m not entirely sure what the results of this will be… increased imports from Canada? Black markets for illegally harvested fish? I don’t know. What I do know is that that fisherman on the air had $400k in loans out to support his business, and he’ll no longer be able to catch the fish to support those loans. He’s done for.

I also know that despite having an all Democrat delegation in a Democratically controlled congress for the last 5 years, nobody has seen fit to do anything about this other than offer some words of condolence. It’s like the health care bill, where nobody in the congressional delegation tried to stop this stupid tax on medical devices, a tax that will adversely impact the Massachusetts economy disproportionately. Yet none of our supposedly powerful democrats tried to do squat to stop it. Scott Brown campaigned against it and got elected, but by then it was too late.

So I feel bad for the Gloucester fishermen, but I also have to wonder how they’ve been voting all these years.

In any event, the local paper has a decent editorial about the issue:

Remember those promises to get the economy moving again?

Forget it. Not here. Not in Gloucester — not in any New England community that’s economically tied to the proud fishing industry; not anywhere in the nation where small-boat fishermen go about their trade to supply the nation and the world with seafood — and protein.

Around here, and across Ocean Nation, the Obama administration, through the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, is all about destroying jobs and driving small business into bankruptcy in the name of protecting fish stocks that, in many cases, no longer need protection.

Read the whole thing.

UPDATE: Found the WBUR article.

Tags: Democrats, Fishermen, Gloucester, LinkedIn, Scott Brown

This entry was posted on Friday, April 30th, 2010 at 7:43 am and is filed under News & Politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.