As the New England groundfish fishery moves to “sector” management (fishing cooperative-based catch shares), it’s good to get the perspective of someone with nearly a half-century of fishing experience. Frank Mirarchi, a fisherman out of Scituate, Massachusetts, describes the busts that repeatedly followed boom years. I share Frank’s optimism that sector management–once all the details are worked through–will restore the natural abundance of fish in the Gulf of Maine. This time, however, as long as sectors are well-designed and enforced, the boom years should keep going in perpetuity, moving us away from the crisis management that has marked the New England groundfish fishery for the last several decades.
