Contact: Eliot Hurwitz                 For Immediate Release
         Teri Frady                    1/20/98

A program that traded $24 million in federal relief funds for the rights of 78 vessels to fish for hard-pressed New England groundfish such as cod, haddock and flounder has just been completed by the Commerce Department's National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

The 78 vessels represent 18 percent of the days used to fish groundfish in the Northeast (days-at-sea), and 22 percent of the revenue generated by groundfish landings. The program, which began in 1994, has contributed to the overall reduction in fishing for these stocks, which have historically formed the basis of New England's commercial fishery and have been near collapse in recent years. The program's purpose was to both assist fishermen adversely impacted by the groundfish crisis and to aid in the long-term viability of the groundfish fishery.

In a ceremony at the Boston Fish Pier on Wednesday, officials will award the last grant in the program. Michael Barry will accept $517,000 to retire his groundfishing vessel, the 80-foot trawler Captain Sam, homeported in Boston. The vessel will land its last trip earlier in the day at the Boston Fish Pier.

The award will be made by John Bullard, director of NOAA's Office of Sustainable Development and Intergovernmental Affairs, the primary designer of the Northeast Fisheries Assistance Program, which provided almost $100 million of economic assistance to Northeast fishing families. The NFAP is made up of several programs, including a two-part vessel buyout program (pilot and expanded), fishing industry grants, loans, a subsidy for health insurance for fishing families, and the establishment of a few fishing family assistance centers. "The buyout has been successful in part because fishermen helped design it," Bullard said.

"At the same time," Bullard said, "we remain concerned about the number of groundfish permits that are currently held, but not used, and may become active as these stocks recover." This so-called "latent effort" represents many times the ability to harvest and land groundfish than the buyout program removed from the fishery. "We will continue to make the latent effort problem as visible as possible to ensure that the sacrifices made by fishermen to reduce their effort now are not lost to new effort as stocks recover," Bullard said.

Of the 78 vessels, 53 were homeported in Massachusetts, 21 in Maine, two in New Hampshire, and one each in Rhode Island and New York. To prevent transfer of effort into other fisheries, the vessels had to be scrapped, legally sunk, or put to uses that would preclude the capacity to fish. Of the 78, 61 were scrapped and seven sunk, and six are being used for research or education and four for harbor patrol or humanitarian pursuits.