A couple of weeks ago I came across this article talking about efforts being made to retain access to the ground fish fishery within the community of Martha’s Vineyard. While the fishery is not the first thing that comes to mind when I think of Martha’s Vineyard, it like most coastal communities along the northeastern US and Atlantic Canada were settled because of the bounty of the northwest Atlantic. Through time and attrition, access to the resource trickled away from smaller boat fishermen into a more corporate system.
To say the article hit close to home is an understatement. On our island, we have watched as mobile herring, ground fish and a portion of the scallop fleet slowly moved from independent fishermen to corporate control and subsequently to individual transferable quotas and fleet rationalization. The result: the loss of those fisheries and jobs from our community. Now, our multi-species fishery has become largely dependent on the lobster fishery with other fisheries acting a supplement. Dependence on one species is a bit of a scary concept.
Windy Wonderings 