New England fishermen facing cod closure point finger at millions of lobster traps
SEAFOODNEWS.COM [Press Herald] By Tom Bell - November 13, 2014
Emergency restrictions aimed at protecting plummeting cod stocks, set to go into effect Thursday in the Gulf of Maine, have some fishermen complaining that one group that routinely kills cod won't be affected by the new rules - the region's lobstermen.
In 2008, the year for which the most recent data are available, an estimated 177,000 codfish were captured in lobster traps in state waters off Maine.
Paul Rago, chief of the population dynamics branch for the National Marine Fisheries Service at the Northeast Fisheries Science Center in Woods Hole, Massachusetts estimated there are 3 million lobster traps in Maine waters, plus the traps off the coasts of New Hampshire and Massachusetts.
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