Comments on: CLF Calls to Shut Down New England Cod Fishery

By: Peter Shelley

Peter Shelley — Wed, 20 Feb 2013 04:03:22 +0000

Thank you, Barkley, for this observation and we could not agree with you more. While we absolutely have to protect the spawning cod that are left in the ocean as the base for restoring their populations in the future, those increased populations will not materialize, particularly in the coastal areas unless there is food. As Ted Ames at the Penobscot East Resource Center has meticulously documented, the loss of coastal cod populations in Maine coincided with the loss of river herring has Maine’s great rivers were dammed for power and blocked herring migrations into and out of those rivers. And those cod never came back despite population fluctuations in the overall Atlantic cod stock. Ted fervently believes, and we believe right along with him, that if those river herring populations are restored, the predators like cod will be attracted back to their old cruising grounds and local sub-populations of cod will reform over time. We are pushing our lawsuit to remove the dam on the St. Croix as hard as the court system will tolerate and we are also supporting a bill in the Maine Legislature that would require that the dam be removed. We are also channeling money into river herring restoration projects (mostly dam removals) throughout the Gulf of Maine. As you say, time is of the essence and everyone should get behind these efforts.

Thanks again,
Peter Shelley

By: Tony Austin

Tony Austin — Fri, 15 Feb 2013 18:03:20 +0000

I am 150% in favor of your suing NMFS again. Nothing but your lawsuit seems to work with these people, and what you have right now is a leaderless agency with no guts. Fact is that current fishermen know nothing about what things were at the turn of the century (last one) or earlier. This is the “gimme” generation. I’ve been a commercial fisherman since I left academia in 1970. A native of Wellfleet, I now fish in North Carolina, and had it not been for the latest iteration of the Magnuson Act we wouldn’t have anything left down here. The Council system is broken everywhere but in the Pacific NW. If dragging and gill netting aren’t stopped, nothing will come back. Seems we can’t learn a damned thing the Canadian debacle… Suggest you consider Pauly’s shifting baseline when you make your arguments… I fished out of Harwich and Chatham and Wellfleet for years. Truth is that the Southeast is not in much better shape than New England….

By: Barkley Van Vranken

Barkley Van Vranken — Thu, 14 Feb 2013 17:58:43 +0000

Peter,

What is the status of the legal action that the CLF has submitted to force the reopening of the fishways on the St Croix River. I can’t understand why the New England Fish Management Council and others don’t connect the collapse of the Cod Fishery in the Golf of Maine with the loss of River Herring migrations, especially the migrations in and out of the the St Croix. Sure, we have to cut back on the allowable catch to protect the few fish we have left, but that’s not really what’s going to restore a healthy fishery. Don’t we first need to restore their environment so the Cod have adequate food sources needed to procreate. Isn’t the real problem that the Cod are starving to death? Why isn’t anyone making this point? It seems so obvious and so simple to remediate. What’s happened on the Kennebec, and soon will happen on the Penobscot, is a good start. But if we act fast, we could also make a change to the St Croix so this year’s Spring migration would be releasing fry into the Golf Of Maine next year.