Plumbing the Depths

By Lily Keyes| MIT SeaGrant 
Squid have occupied New England’s maritime imagination for centuries, from fishermen’s tales of strange tentacled creatures to the widely publicized giant squid reports along North Atlantic coastlines in the 1800s. Today, we turn a curious eye toward the longfin inshore squid (Doryteuthis pealeii) — the “Boston squid” — which has long been an important part of regional commercial fisheries. These squid thrive in the emerald green depths off the coast of Massachusetts, where low visibility is characteristic of the turbid, nutrient-rich waters.

Six years ago, Dan McKiernan, Director of Massachusetts Division of Marine Fisheries, got a call from Captain Domenic Santoro who couldn’t get a winter berth at a port on Cape Cod Bay.
That meant he couldn’t access fishing grounds.
“It dawned on me how important municipal policies and decisions are for accommodating the commercial fishing industry,” McKiernan said. “These are state and federally managed activities, yet it is the municipalities that can be the choke point relative to the business being successful.”

Andrew Spalt has been paying about $1.50 more a gallon for fuel for since April, about $40,000 a vessel, more than $100,000 across his three boats.
“You have to go fishing; you can’t really negotiate the price. It just hurts more,” said Spalt, working on his boats in New Bedford on a June day.

John Pappalardo’s keynote speech at the annual Big Blue conference was a call to action.
Many coastal communities find themselves caught between “tradition and tourism,” he said. “Between working waterfronts and rising property values. Between local families trying to stay and outside markets willing to pay more. Between climate change and systems of governance still built as though land and sea were separate worlds.”

Nearly 200 people packed a spacious, blue-carpeted room in the Dirksen Building on Constitution Avenue NE, where members of Congress mingled with administration officials and fishermen from across the country, enjoying dishes ranging from red snapper and black cod to Cape Cod skate stew.
In the crowd, enjoying respite from a 90-degree humid day in Washington D.C., Captain Bill Amaru received two pieces of historic memorabilia from a man who crewed for him close to 50 years ago, Jeff Pike.

When Stephanie Ridenour was commercial fishing and vessels were coming in for the day, no one wanted to be the first to navigate the changeable, risky Chatham Bar.
Ridenour, now natural resources director for Harwich, found herself in a similar situation as she navigated the town’s first planned harvest of river herring in more than 20 years — while a ban remains across the Commonwealth.

After a presentation on ocean acidification, fishermen Beau Gribbin and Jesse Rose joined scientists and others at a table where a nautical chart of the ocean off the Cape was unfurled. The captains pointed to a spot near the northern part of Georges Bank.
Some scallops they had harvested from that area had the same twisted shells researchers had presented moments before, impacted by ocean acidification.

If no one catches fish in the ocean, are they still there? Commercial fishermen say yes, but fisheries science has been saying otherwise.
The disconnect between what fishermen experience on the water and the information regulators use to manage stocks has always been a bugaboo, but it’s a particular problem when it comes to monkfish.