As potential new cutbacks threaten the groundfish fishery in Maine this spring, most fishermen see the future of the industry as bleak. A few others, however, see enough potential for future growth to view this as a good time to invest.

Monhegan Island, a community founded by fishermen and almost entirely supported in centuries past by fishermen seeking the bottom dwelling cod, haddock, hake and other species, recently saw one fisherman sell his permit to the National Marine Fisheries Service in a government-sponsored buyback to reduce fishing effort.

Meanwhile, another fisherman on the island has just purchased a permit and boat from Massachusetts, and plans to go gillnetting for groundfish in waters near the island this summer.

As of May 1, the entire New England groundfish industry will be operating under additional restrictions imposed as a result of a federal court decision by U.S. District Judge Gladys Kessler. In response to a lawsuit by five environmental groups, including the New England-based Conservation Law Foundation and The Ocean Conservancy, the judge ruled that the Fisheries Service had failed to uphold conservation mandates in the federal Sustainable Fisheries Act. Environmentalists welcomed the ruling as a chance to institute an improved management plan, but many fishermen viewed the new rules as yet another restriction on a beleaguered traditional industry.

Groundfish populations in the Gulf of Maine and on Georges Bank remain for the most part at greatly reduced abundances, although a decade of increasingly strict conservation measures has shown improvements in some populations. Codfish in the Gulf of Maine, a primary stock that sustained many of Maine’s inshore fishermen, are currently believed to have a spawning biomass of about 14,000 metric tons, down from around 90,000 metric tons in the 1970’s, and have shown the slowest improvement rates of the major groundfish stocks.

Longtime Monhegan fisherman John Murdock gillnetted for 15 years off the island. For the most part he stopped a few years ago, as the stocks and catches waned. He recently sold his limited-access fishing permit to the federal government as a part of a $9.6 million program to retire 245 such unused permits. Prior to the capacity-reducing buyback, there were 1,732 groundfish permits in the northeast region. Fifty-two of the retired permits were in Maine, for boats ranging from Portland to Machiasport, and many coastal and island towns in between. One hundred-eight Maine permit holders had submitted bids for the buyback, out of a total of around 300 such permit holders in the state. A full list of the retired permits is available from .

According to Department of Marine Resources Commissioner George LaPointe, Maine has the second-highest number of vessels engaged in the groundfish fishery of all the Atlantic states, contributing to a total estimated groundfish landings value of around $50 million, supporting about 20 percent of the total economic impact of the fishing industry in Maine. Since 1994, the state has experienced a decline of just over 50 percent of the number of groundfish vessels.

“I was one of the last gillnetters in this area to keep going, but the fishery was just wiped out by greedy fishermen, and was cleaned right out,” Murdock says. He also is not convinced that the most recent restrictions represent a new and effective regulatory direction, stating, “In order to really fix the problem we need now to address the core causes, and these new regulations that are proposed will not do that, being just another temporary band-aid, and will not fix the fishery.”

According to Murdock, one of the core problems is the use of habitat damaging bottom-trawling gear: “We have never addressed the way fishing is done, and how dragging is raping the ocean; dragging has just got to cease.” Murdock recommends regulations making everybody fish the same gear, banning dragging, and returning to gillnets or hooks. Such categorical gear restrictions are not part of the current proposed settlement, and are often not regarded by federal regulators as legally defensible.

But as much as he enjoyed the fishing, Murdock states he would never get back into it. “Now there is just too much conflict and controversy, and too many boats fighting over too little fish,” he says.

Monhegan based lobsterman Matthew Thompson disagrees about the future of the fishery, and recently put his money down on betting that the fishery will recover. While many Maine groundfishermen were selling their permits back to the government last month, Thompson traveled to Massachusetts and purchased a 42-foot groundfish gillnet vessel and a fishing permit. He plans to run the boat on three to five day-trips this summer, seeking groundfish in the Gulf of Maine, fishing “wherever remains open.”

Thompson expresses optimism about a recovery, stating, “I have been seeing many more codfish in my lobster traps, and I think there are even more farther offshore.” Thompson plans to use gillnets and to experiment with fish traps in his search for catch. He is not too worried about further cutbacks in the days he can fish, saying, “I don’t think too much about what happens [with the regulations], because I figure it can’t get too much worse than it already is – I think we have hit the bottom in this fishery, and will soon be on the way back up.”