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I have decided to write a letter to the Pres to make him aware of the pending collapse of the herring fishery. The more research I do about pair trawling the more upset I get. As far as I can tell NMFS encouraged the development of the pair trawling fleet that is currently emptying our near coastal waters of herring and thousands of juvenile groundfish. These boats were built with federal loans(our money) and now that the funding has been cut for the observation program they are fishing unsupervised. In august and sept of this year they were working off the east side of Cape Cod and in a strange coincidence there was no real giant tuna bite off of Chatham this fall, hmmm... maybe because there were no herring! They went over their quota for that area by 40% and we think they killed a whale, it washed up on the beach with a broken spine the same day they left the area. Their bycatch of juvenile ground fish species is largely undocumented, in 54 observed tows in the gulf of maine 9 giant bluefin were dead in the nets and another boat was later caught trying to sell giants illegally.
Pair trawling has been banned in Canada for over 30 years and its time we did the same. This is one fishery where technology and industry have no place. The companies that own these boats have lobbyists who can pay whoever they need to so they can keep over fishing and not reporting their bycatch. If you are not aware of this situation please watch the "declining herring" video on youtube. There are several other videos on pair trawling as well. GET ACTIVE TO SAVE OUR FISHERIES!!!!
Thank you, Capt Dave Kraus
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