http://docs.lib.noaa.gov/rescue/cof/data_rescue_fish_commission_annual_reports.html

US Commission on Fish and Fisheries.

How the East was Lost

In his "Report on the condition of the sea fisheries of the south coast of New England in 1871 and 1872."
Spencer F. Baird, the first Commissioner of Fish and Fisheries writes"

"Our remarks have been hitherto directed toward the practice of the destruction of the parent fish before the function of spawning has  been properly accomplished. It is equally reprehensible to interfere in any way with or destroy the spawn after they have been laid, or the young fry after they are hatched.  This result is said to follow the use of the trawl-net, which, dragged carefully and sedulously, day by day, over the portion of the sea bottom which constitutes the great nursery of fish, bruises the eggs and harrows up the seaweed or grass to which the eggs have been attached, or among which the young fish are playing, and gathers it inside of the net, involving the destruction of all life that may be inclosed. 

 "This evil has not manifested itself in America, owing to the almost entire absence of trawl-net fishing, as it has in Europe, where it is considered as doing much more mischief than all other modes of fishing put together.  Should this engine of destruction come into general use on our coast and add its agency to those already referred to in connection with the pounds and weirs, the diminution of the supply may continue to go on in a vastly greater ratio than ever."

Washington Government Printing Office 1873

GOM fisheries reform floundering needlessly.

It is remarkable that, despite a plethora of  ideas put forward on Gulf of Maine fishery restoration, the great schools of cod  continue thinning, as likewise the ranks of Maine  groundfishermen  Before both these vanish utterly, we must take our hearts and minds out of the cramped box of contemporary fishery management.  Go back to square one.  Perhaps a new ghost dance will be luckier than that of the Souix.

We must think of cod, halibut, haddock, skates, etc as wildlife.  Changing, like other predators, their locations with the seasons.  Working singly or in groups to track, control and overpower their prey. As  territorially possessive of mating locations as moose or mouse. Scuffling like terns in an island rookery.  

Bottom trawlers fishing Alaskan waters recently failed in federal court in an attempt to overturn another of the new smart fisheries regulations adopted there, which requires commercial vessels to keep all the fish they catch. It requires the groundfish draggers to retain 65% of their bycatch next year, rising to 85 percent by 2011.
Details: http://www.akmarine.org/pressroom/release-032007.shtml

In perhaps one of the greatest conservation achievements of the new millenium, the North Pacific Fishery Management Council (NPFMC) voted unanimously to protect over 60% of the Aleutian Islands fishing grounds from bottom trawling. This was a final decision in a multi–year process to evaluate the effects of bottom trawl gear on sensitive ocean habitats, such as valuable living coral forests and sponge beds. This change represents a policy shift from allowing destructive bottom trawling everywhere in the unique Aleutian Islands to permitting the gear only in certain areas. The decision advances conservation while allowing for viable fisheries to continue.

It requires the boats to start retaining 65 percent of their catch in 2008 and increases to 85 percent by 2011.

The interfaces lie in ruins, and into the past and future

We have created a desolate Ocean of Babel.  The great streams of communications that crisscrossed the atoms-wide face of Venus' air/sea surface microlayer are stilled.  Aphrodite is now besmeared with molecule-thick petrochemical superplumes.   

Muffled by a billion films of glistening hydrocarbon sheens, Gaia's one-celled marine algae -- Earth's source for most oxygen and absorber of most CO2 -- find themselves walled off from the atmosphere by a transparent oil ceiling. No longer can they inhale the rich fare of carbon dioxide and hundreds of nutrients, so key to powering the great cycle of Life Below. Nor does their sweet breath pass into our waiting atmosphere.  The more stolid breathing of whale, fish and shellfish and coelenterate

Stilled are the "quorum-sensing" pep rallies directing the behavior of marine protozans by the trillions, of bacteria,  and viruses across hundreds or thousands of square miles of the Gulf of Maine's "surface microlayer", 

as deadly to the all important marine microecosystem as the spilt oil of the Exxon Valdez was to Alaskan seals and seabirds and other flora and fauna 

Think those little protozoans aren't important? Guess again.  Marine scientists at Woods Hole have found that 

It is a want of courage that dooms our finned relations.

The tobacco industry could have done no better job.

Abandon the dead metrics of government fish speak, where the deck chairs of fishery management arrange and rearrange in a musical chairs contest, where the welfare 

We need to save the germs. Nothing else will ever amount to more than sophisticated deckchair rearrangement on the whole fleet of sinking ships that presently constitutes the Gulf of Maine's marine ecosystems.