New England Fishermen

New England fishermen of food fish like cod and haddock say they fear they will have to start paying the cost of at-sea monitors before the issue goes to trial. Fishermen will have to start paying the cost of the monitors around March 1 under new rules...

One of the two critical areas where New England fishermen search for cod may be in even worse shape than suspected. Fishing managers already knew stocks of Georges Bank's cod were thin. New data from the Northeast Fisheries Science Center says research boats fishing the broad swath of elevated sea floor off Massachusetts caught less of the fish per trip this past spring than all but one spring sea

The Mass. state budget includes $450,000 for UMass Dartmouth's School of Marine Science and Technology. Its the second year in a row that lawmakers have provided funding to study the ground-fish stocks off New England. Rep. Antonio Cabral of New Bedford tells WBSM...

  The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is freeing up nearly $33 million to aid struggling fishermen in New England.  Still be to determined is exactly how that money will be spent.  NOAA Regional Administrator John Bullard tells WBSM News, he's already had meetings with state fishery directors, industry representatives and members of Congress and more meetings are  planned. ... Read

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration announces a proposal to open some areas to ground fishing that have been off limits for nearly 20 years. The proposal states there are three offshore areas under consideration for opening to the South and East of Cape Cod...

The top regulators of New England's flagging fishing industry are asking fishermen not to take out their frustrations at the onboard observers who monitor what they catch and what they throw back. The request came in an open letter to fishing permit holders Thursday, a little over two weeks into a fishing year that saw the fleet take painful cuts in catch limits...

Fishermen from all over New England have written to 10 U.S. Senators and 14 Congressmen asking for urgent help surviving deep and impending cuts to their catch limits. The letter dated Tuesday was signed by 174 fishermen in ports from Connecticut to Maine...

With the New England Fisheries Management Council set to reduce groundfish catch allocations for the fishing year that begins May 1, Mayor Jon Mitchell has fired off a letter to the Council, asking that it take some steps to assist New England fishermen. ...