Ebb & Flow: Gloucester loses out on healthy inshore haddock

Two of the public's favorite white-fleshed groundfish — haddock and dabs (a flatfish) — just arrived inshore, especially the haddock. The public also likes day-boat fish for its superb quality. Day-boat fish are landed the same day they are caught and usually processed the next day.

But, ironically, local groundfishermen do not have access to these healthy stocks today because an annual rolling closure shut those grounds down April 1. When they reopen in two months, those fish will have already moved on. Other than minimal size limits, fishermen will be able to land all the haddock and dabs they snag.

But, groundfishermen are shaking their heads in disgust over the closure and the agency behind them, and they also don't see eye-to-eye with some of the very science that the fish regulations are based on.

"We have been waiting for the haddock all month," said Capt. Ignazzio "Naz" Sanfilippo, owner of the dragger Cat Eyes. "The fish arrived the last day (of the open season on March 31) right in the mud (30 to 50 fathoms down, 3 to 12 miles off Gloucester). Now they are around, and we can't catch them."

On March 31, several of the larger draggers working those grounds, including the Lady Jane and Midnight Sun, had 3,000- to 4,000-pound sets of haddock after towing their fishing gear for four hours.

"They're nice haddock," said Tom Testaverde, skipper and owner of the approximately 79-foot Midnight Sun. His brother Joe added, "There wasn't just one year class of haddock in the catches. Plus, there was a good mixture of males and females."

Capt. Mark Carroll sampled those same haddock grounds during a strong northwest wind two days before the Lady Jane and Midnight Sun caught those fish there.

"There was nothing then. When the northwest gales let go, those fish must have settled down on the bottom. They will be there the whole month," Carroll said.

"The haddock were way earlier last year, but at least the cod went all winter this year," said Arthur "Sookie" Sawyer, a gillnet fisherman and vessel owner. "Luckily, this year was a leap year, so we got that extra day of fishing in March." Since Middlebank opened on Dec. 1, many local groundfishermen cashed in on good cod and yellowtail (flounder) catches right up to the closing. The cod usually peter out by mid-January.

"The haddock are the best-tasting fish," Sanfilippo said.

I agree, especially when they are fresh — right off the boat — like the two that Testaverde gave me the morning after the closure. These fish were so fresh that their muscles didn't come apart while filleting them. My wife baked the fillets for supper, and I reheated the leftovers, topped by a dropped egg, for breakfast. Fish doesn't come any better than this.

"The dabs show up in April," Sanfilippo explained. The catches of this flatfish, whose white-fleshed fillets are often sold in fish markets as flounder, were on the increase prior to the closure.

Before the rolling closure concept set in back in 1998 as part of Framework Adjustment 25 to rebuild cod numbers, dabs made up much of the inshore fleet's daily catches in April and May.

Sanfilippo also strongly believes that fishermen should still have access to the haddock in the closed area if they use special haddock separator trawls that were developed by government grant money.

"The government has been handing out grants to develop these trawls. The trawls are available. Let us use them to catch these haddock," he said.

The separator trawls both retain most of the haddock, which tend to swim up inside them, and let out most of the other groundfish, especially the yellowtails, which the scientists say need further rebuilding.

Furthermore, many groundfishermen, including Capt. Carl Bouchard, who owns the dragger Stormy Weather, believe "there's no reason why the (inshore) grounds (off of Cape Ann) should be closed in April. You're not saving any cod in April by doing so. I've done the research, and we (he, other fishermen, and the scientists) proved it. Close Block 133 (Ipswich Bay to the Isles of Shoals) in May and the first two weeks in June, and you have done your job (protecting spawning cod)."

Bouchard was one of several fishermen who participated in collaborative research several years ago that assessed cod numbers throughout the year in given areas, including off Cape Ann.

Bouchard, like his peers, saw huge numbers of cod this winter. Small ones even came up in the fishermen's large-mesh nets. "That illustrates there's a bundle of cod down there. You usually don't catch the small fish with the 61/2-inch mesh netting," he said.

Fishermen have also often seen firsthand the opposite of what some of the science behind the regulations is saying. The men believe the dab numbers, and not the yellowtails, are down, and the dabs are the ones needing the rebuilding. Vessels can only land a meager 250 pounds of yellowtails a day. Their numbers were so high off Gloucester this winter that the fishermen often couldn't get away from them while targeting cod, and the discards were high.

Scientists also say that the Gulf of Maine and Georges Bank yellowtail stocks are separate. Local fishermen this winter netted many yellowtails that had been tagged in the Gulf of Maine as well as the southeast part of Georges Bank.

Most groundfishermen, including Russell Sherman from Gloucester, see the closure as "just another nail in our coffin. Why don't they (NMFS) just come out and tell you, 'We don't want you small guys in business any more. We only want corporate fishing'."

Paul Theriault, another groundfisherman, further explains, "Everyone used to make money fishing in April and May inshore. The government looked at our records and soon came to the same conclusion. Then, they shut those grounds down. That's the whole point of the closure."

He added, "Those haddock will probably swim to Canadian waters, get caught there by the Canadians, and sold back to the U.S." That same scenario occurred with herring last year. The Canadian groundfish exports often lower the ex-vessel prices of domestic fish.

Many of the local groundfishermen still have days at sea to use up this fishing year thanks in part to the fishing permit bank that "Saint Vito" Giacalone and his Gloucester Fishing Community Preservation Fund set up this year. The 2007/2008 fishing year will end April 30.

For the larger vessels with days left, like Sherman's and Testaverde's, "We can go outside (of the closure, 60 to 70 miles offshore), but the fuel is going to be the killer," Joe Testaverde said. For the smaller boats, they can either head south or risk the weather offshore alongside the bigger boats, both of which burn more fuel.

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