New England Revisits Fishing Regulations

NEW BEDFORD — Massachusetts will draw up its own groundfish management plan with the hope of moving the federal government away from its “days at sea” system, which has been ineffective and catastrophic to the industry, Energy and Environmental Affairs Secretary Ian Bowles told The Standard-Times on Tuesday.

Mr. Bowles dismissed the idea that the federal government wouldn’t respond to one state’s fisheries management rewrite, saying, “if I woke up every morning hearing that, I wouldn’t go to work.” He said going it alone will avoid conflicts such as one recently with the state of Maine “where we found ourselves on opposite sides of the fence.”

The plan is to supplement long-term proposals for re-regulation in 2009 with “more immediate and urgent changes in the next round of federal New England Fishery Management Council meetings this spring,” Mr. Bowles elaborated in a prepared statement.

The Patrick administration hopes to have better luck with this than it did in February of 2007 when it asked U.S. Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez to declare a “fishery resource disaster” in the Massachusetts groundfish industry in the wake of harsh new federal fishing restrictions. Framework 42, starting in November 2006, had cut in half the number of fishing days available to the groundfishing fleet. Gov. Deval Patrick cited $22 million in losses through last spring.

Mr. Gutierrez waited eight months and then rejected the disaster declaration.

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