DONATE
BUY STEW + CHOWDER
The Massachusetts Economic Development Planning Council showed up on the Cape in mid-June, part of a state-wide barnstorming tour to hear from people on the ground, in the workforce, and in our case on the water.
The idea is to create a four-year plan with priorities for how Massachusetts should think about our economy, and what state government can do to move us in the right directions.
Every year NOAA, meaning the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration as opposed to the guy with the ark, ships to Congress a report with a straightforward title:
“Status of US Fisheries.”
The report has some Biblical aspects, meant to be the definitive word delivered from on high so to speak. It always offers big-picture info, for example that commercial and recreational fisheries created 1.7 million jobs across the nation in 2022, and generated $253 billion in sales.
The Bigelow, launched in 2005, is named after a remarkable man, Henry B. Bigelow, who helped create Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. As a scientist he spent a lot of his life on the water trying to understand fish. As a teacher he spent a lot of his life trying to impart that understanding at Harvard University and in books like “Fishes of the Gulf of Maine.”
So it’s fitting that a vessel built with noble intent, to create a platform for the best science to understand species and stocks, climate change, and all kinds of oceanographic realities, would be named for him
The term “green economy” has been in play for a while now, and we have a pretty good idea what it means at least in the abstract; an economy that builds jobs and prosperity while keeping environmental impact in mind, reducing or even reversing damage.
Of course how it translates on the ground and on the water, the real tradeoffs and specific measurements, is another matter and worth a long discussion that could begin with coffee and end with beer.
When we launched our “Small Boats Big Taste” program soon after COVID struck, we had clear goals but no idea if we could realize them:
Help independent small-boat fishermen and the fishing industry navigate past the pandemic’s new barriers.
Feed growing numbers of people facing food insecurity that comes when money shrinks.
Build local demand for local fish and keep it going and growing after start-up philanthropic support ends.
One of my most frustrating moments in many years working on fisheries issues arrived a few months ago, when a federal judge overturned a hard-fought reform that would have kept giant mid-water trawlers out of local waters, allowing herring and other crucial forage fish to return, school, and rebuild.
Five years ago no one had heard of COVID, there had not yet been a deadly shark attack on Cape Cod, and fish prices (to the fishermen anyway) were just as unpredictable and fluctuating as they are today.
Meanwhile, in January 2018, we first published this emagazine, using “Small Boats, Big Ideas” as our flag.
We are now witnessing the bitter, devastating impact to our fishing community and ecosystem caused by a single federal judge who overturned years of effort to protect our small-boat fishery and small fish crucial to the ocean’s health.
After years of effort by Cape fishermen, our community, and like-minded interests across the region, last year the National Marine Fisheries Service approved a 12-mile buffer zone, with a 20-mile bump off Cape Cod, to protect ocean herring, a vital forage fish, from mid-water trawls. This was a huge victory that many of you helped make possible with your support and public advocacy.
The ocean doesn’t subdivide and segregate, that’s not nature’s way. Mixing and mingling, coursing and combining, always is the default.
But that fact of life can drive fisheries managers crazy. If everything always is in flux, interconnected in the complex play and way of life, how can we be smart and responsible, know what we’ve got and what to do, keep commercial fishing strong while thinking ahead and protecting both habitat and fishing for the future?
e-Magazine PDF’s