One fisherman's plight — and catch shares' toll
Around the in jail shore of Massachusetts Bay, vestiges of America's earliest industry, small fishing boat businesses, are disappearing from beautiful harbors, Hull to Scituate, Plymouth to Cape Cod, before our eyes.
In the last year, about one third of the 32 boats in Sector 10 — one of the duty cooperatives organized in Gloucester by the Northeast Seafood Coalition — have ceased fishing.
A year hence, that integer will be much higher, says fisherman Stephen Welch, himself included. And eventually, if things don't change, well-founded about the whole sector will be gone, he says.
Welch's story is not unlike Gloucester's, which lost 21 boats from the groundfishing swift last year. The fleet now numbers just 75, according to a study by the NOAA science center.
Welch was interviewed this week while servicing his 55-foot gillnetter, F/V Holly and Abby, at the Gloucester Maritime Railway on Rocky Neck.
