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"Commercial Fishermen Have a Good Winter!"
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Below is a direct quote from The Gloucester Daily Times, as
indicated in the lines below.
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Published: March 24, 2007 12:00 am
Local groundfishery had reason to smile this winter
Ebb & Flow , Peter K. Prybot
Gloucester Daily Times |
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"Gloucester's groundfishery machine has flowed this winter
at a time when the weather or more restrictive fishing rules
could have slowed it to a periwinkle's crawl. The weather,
fish, harvesters, dealers and processors and consumers made
this happen. How did this positive scenario unravel?
But, a sentence of caution first. Come April 1, when the
inshore grounds off Cape Ann temporarily close, and
especially May 1, the beginning of the new groundfishing
year and the rules that go with it, the machine could find
itself ebbing.
Weather, fish cooperate
The spring-like weather right up to Jan. 15 gave fishermen
continuous back-to-back days to work the fishing banks and
even opened numerous windows of opportunity after that to
fish around repeated bitter-cold, hard northwesterlies and a
pair of powerful easterlies. Some inshore fishermen pushed
their luck aboard small vessels and worked in blowy, rough
conditions, while a couple even fished along.
Inshore grounds off Cape Ann further blessed local day boat
fishermen from late fall right up to press time with a
charge of quality cod, pollock, yellowtail and last of all,
haddock that weren't primarily either "feed or spawn fish."
Spurts of alternate-size cod - scrod (smalls), markets
(mediums) and large - then visited and departed the fishing
areas. Fishermen also often quickly caught their daily
quotas of cod - 800 pounds - and yellowtails - 250 pounds.
Furthermore, the groundfish catches didn't come to a near
halt from mid-January to mid-March as they have in past
years.
The meat yield drops dramatically in "spawn fish," which
direct their energies to the production of gametes rather
than muscle mass. Fishermen dub such fish, which appear all
head and thin to the rest of the body, as "logey." The
postmortem flesh of "feed fish" such as cod and pollock,
which are famous for rounding their bellies with sand eels,
softens quickly even when chilled down.
Offshore grounds in the 1:1 Days at Sea (DAS) counting areas
have simultaneously yielded trip boats fair catches of
greysole, monkfish, and hake, a few redfish and lobsters,
and sometimes tens of thousands of pounds of pollock. Boat
prices for pollock, which have a less desirable
darker-colored flesh than cod and haddock, tend to be lower
than those for "white fish," such as cod, haddock and
flounder. The inshore fleet has been working primarily in
grounds where the new fishing regulations count each day at
sea as two.
The harvesters
Gloucester's traditional trip boat and day boat groundfish
fleet has been a big part of this happy story. Most other
major East Coast ports primarily handle the catches of trip
boats, which often stay at sea five to 10 days at a time.
The quality of their landings can be affected by these
longer durations at sea.
"The quality of fish improves when your day boats are out
fishing," explained Joseph P. Brancaleone, production team
leader at Pigeon Cove Whole Foods. This company buys day and
short-trip (two to three days long) boat fish, processes it
and later distributes the seafood to Whole Foods stores in
the northeast.
About a dozen Gloucester trip boat draggers and gillnetters
and approximately 75 day boat draggers, gillnetters and hook
boats have survived National Marine Fisheries Service's
ongoing, real-life groundfishery survivor series so far by
either seasonally engaging in other fisheries, especially
lobstering, or by purchasing additional costly fishing
permits or leasing days at sea.
Depending partly on the size of the vessel, such a fishing
permit can cost the fisherman from tens of thousands of
dollars to hundreds of thousands of dollars, while leasing a
day can run up a price tab from a couple of hundred to eight
hundred dollars. Most vessels' regular yearly DAS allotments
are not enough to keep them operating in the black.
Regardless of the size of their individual catches, the
sheer number of day boats working this winter and their
accumulative catch repeatedly filled the landing voids of
trip boats and added thousands of pounds of groundfish to
the system then.
Roughly 25 out-of-port groundfish vessels, which have
apparently decided Gloucester's not a bad port to do
business with, have also contributed to the landings here
this winter.
'Gorgeous' fish
In addition to being good at evolving with the complex,
changing regulatory process, these harvesters are determined
as ever to continue the hunt at sea. Many have also taken
extraordinary steps there to land quality fish, which has
rewarded them with both higher boat prices and praise from
shoreside workers and fish buyers.
Such fishermen not only quickly clean, thoroughly wash and
move their fish by hand rather than by pick or pitchfork but
also store it on deck in coolers with ice or even in large
vats with ice water and salt. February's and March's
37-degree bottom water temperature also enhanced the fish
quality by lowering the fish's core body temperature to that
of their surroundings so they come up cold to start with.
"The fishermen have been taking care of fish like never
before. The boats can't bring in as much as before, but what
they have brought in has been excellent," said Sam Favazza,
a veteran fish buyer who holds a seat at the Gloucester
Seafood Display Auction.
Paul Dupree, the weekend team leader at Pigeon Cove Whole
Foods, who helps off-load boats there, added, "The fish have
been just beautiful. They've been shiny, and their colors
have been bright. There's been no slime and no smell,
either."
Romeo Solviletti, plant manager at Steve Connolly Seafood,
Inc., further stated, "The haddock, cod and yellowtails have
been gorgeous."
The boat prices for most fish have stayed high this winter.
Cod and haddock have generally been in the $2 per pound
range, and cod and greysole prices have even sometimes
spiked to more than $4 per pound.
"There are 25 people at the auction bidding for these fish,"
Favazza explained.
"Even when you thought the prices would go down, they
didn't," Solviletti said.
Change looming
The Gloucester dealers and processors did their part by
offering places for the fishermen to land and sell their
catches, keeping markets open and by moving this fish and
making it available to the public. This winter "... has been
decent for us. The fish quality and landings have been
decent," said Lenny McCollum, the fillet room manager at
Ocean Crest Seafoods, one of Gloucester's largest and oldest
fish dealerships.
Rose Ciulla, a co-owner of the Gloucester Seafood Display
Auction, added, "It was an open winter, and the boats got
some fish. Luckily, we got through the winter all right."
And the consumers completed the life cycle of Gloucester's
groundfishery machine this winter by purchasing the finished
product. Most of them know the health benefits of eating
deep-water fish and how tasty each species can be.
Solviletti has customers at Connolly's who know and expect
quality, and "if the fish isn't good, they will let you know
about it."
But change is looming on the horizon. During the April and
May inshore closures, which will keep many day boats tied to
the dock, "Day boat fish will be harder to come by, and
dealers and processors will have to rely on fish from trip
boats and Canada and Iceland," Brancaleone predicted. Also,
when Stellwagen Bank reopens in June, and the day boats can
go back to work, more feed fish - especially cod - will be
landed again. A warming water temperature will also decrease
their quality.
In addition, many fishermen, along with McCollum and Ciulla,
are especially afraid of what's to come - the unknown - from
the fishery powers-that-be during the new fishing year. One
of the new regulations will limit groundfishermen's daily
monkfish catches to just 300 pounds. Monkfish have been a
mainstay to many groundfishermen." |
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| Information from the
Gloucester Daily Times Online |
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© Offshore Pursuits LLC 2007 |
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