3 hours Ago
When I got my first fishing job as a sternman on a Maine lobster boat more than 40 years ago, one of the first lessons I learned was that nothing stays the same. Even when the fishing was good, the best fishermen were always thinking ahead. It wasn’t just about recognizing your targeted species moved about and you had to hunt them; sometimes they disappeared altogether, reappearing a few years later.
Bill Gerencer is a former commercial fisherman and corporate trainer. He served concurrently on the New England Fisheries Management Councils’ Groundfish Advisory Panel for 20 years and the Office of Sustainable Fisheries Highly Migratory Species Advisory Panel for 17 years. Fishermen always had a backup plan.
No fish inshore? Head to Georges. No fish Downeast? Head to the west’erd. Got your traps on the shore for the winter? Put on a shrimp net or some groundfish gear.
This kind of action became increasingly difficult as the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) began adding more and more restrictions and limits to entry, while simultaneously getting a lot less able to accurately predict the size of many fish stocks. Fishermen who got shut out of the spring inshore cod fishery due to limits and closed areas did what they always did when fish seemed scarce: they put their gear on the bank and concentrated on what was more available — in this case, lobstering. No big deal, they had seen scarcity before.
Being frugal, they let groundfish permits lapse and didn’t bother to reapply. Why buy a permit you won’t use for a while? You can always get another when you need it. Or so they thought.
NMFS complicated the issue by restricting entry so fisheries traditionally available to all were left to the few who decided to stick it out. More and more fishermen got boxed into, or out of, fishing opportunities. If you didn’t use it, NMFS made you lose it.
Enter climate change. Only someone who just began fishing yesterday — or someone whose life consists of working in an air-conditioned office, driving home in an air-conditioned car and sitting in in front of a giant flat screen TV in an air-conditioned home, consuming the marketing that now masquerades as news — believes there’s no such thing as climate change. Those of us who’ve made the water and the waterfront our home for a few decades know things are different.
The species mix is changing. Lobsters are moving north, east or farther offshore. An oyster that once took three years to reach market size now takes less than 14 months.
I could go on. There’s no easy way out. Fortunately, those who work on the water, those of us with a little extra salt in our veins, aren’t focused on “easy.
” This is a culture that values hard work. Sure, we love to work “smarter not harder,” but that doesn’t reduce our overall effort level. What we could use is some smarter actions by both the federal and state governments.
People who know how to work on the water are a treasure. Only those who work on the water understand the work. Those who craft the regulations need to start considering the importance of human capital; they need to figure out how to remove the boxes they’ve used to restrict the fisheries.
NMFS must stop supplying uncertain stock assessments that are statistically useless. It needs to apply new standards to itself with the same rigidity as the rules generated by its shoddy work are applied to the fishing community. Permitting must get easier, not just for fishing but aquaculture too.
Yes, aquaculture. Wild harvest fisheries and aquaculture have some legitimate conflicts, but the bottom line is, working waterfront is working waterfront and those who work there share a lot of the same skills. If I was just starting out on the stern, I’d be hedging my future with some lease applications.
The world has been farming on land for millions of years (and hunting). Aquaculture has only been around for a few decades. We’re just beginning to figure it out.
What I don’t recommend is fishermen allowing themselves to be used by fake organizations that purport to want to save fishing when their primary funders’ goal is to not have to look at the working waterfront out the window of their summer homes for the few months they spend in Maine every year. I’m sorry, but are these any of these folks and the hucksters they hire (asking us to save the working waterfront) from the working waterfront? We believe it’s important to offer commenting on certain stories as a benefit to our readers. At its best, our comments sections can be a productive platform for readers to engage with our journalism, offer thoughts on coverage and issues, and drive conversation in a respectful, solutions-based way.
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