Herring Hits The Wall
by Laurie Schreiber
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Tis not overfished and overfishing is not occurring, fishermen still face a potentially devastating cut to the amount of herring they can catch in the next three years.
The New England Fishery Management Council (NEFMC) received advice from its Science and Statistical Committee, which said the catch should be set at 90,000 metric tons for the entire fishery for 2010, down from 194,000 mt.
If that figure stands, NEFMC members and fishermen said both the herring and lobster industries could be devastated.
“It’s going to likely – I won’t say destroy – but devastate the sea herring industry and those who depend on herring for bait – the lobster industry, for example,” said NEFMC member David Pierce. “There are all sorts of implications here.”
“This is a reduction in the ability of the fleet to land by about 50 percent and it’s just going to have disastrous consequences for those 12,000 to 15,000” – including lobster and shoreside industries – “who are involved in this fishery,” said David Ellenton of Cape Seafoods in Gloucester, Mass. “We’re talking about an industry where investments have been made in new vessels, modifications have been made to vessels, vessels have had to spend millions of dollars to become purse seiners as well as midwater trawlers to participate in this fishery. And now they’re going to be given levels of catches that are 50 percent less than they have been used to.”
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Glen Robbins' Western Sea coming into Rockland, Maine in June, 2009 after seining herring. The New England Fishery Management Council received advice from the Science and Statistical Committee, which said the catch should be set at 90,000 mt for the entire fishery for 2010, down from 194,000 mt. NMFS scientist Patrick Sullivan said the determination was based on a “worrisome level of uncertainty” in the stock assessment. ©Photo by Sam Murfitt
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The Legend Of The Withch's Leg
by Tom Seymour
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Bucksport’s most famous tourist attraction, the Colonel Jonathan Buck Memorial, or, as it is better known, “the leg in the stone,” remains an enigma. Buck’s descendents erected the memorial around 1855, 60 years after Colonel Buck’s death. Shortly thereafter, the image of a leg and foot appeared on the face of the stone, and with it, the legend that continues to baffle and fascinate people to this day.
Colonel Buck, as the tale variously goes, condemned a local woman to be burned at the stake as a witch. Just before she died, the unfortunate victim uttered her famous curse upon Buck, along with a prophecy that an image of her leg would appear upon and remain on the Colonel’s tombstone. Then, as the flames were consuming her, her leg fell off and rolled away from the pyre, and her son, a deformed outcast, grabbed it and ran off in the woods. The curse was forgotten for 60 years, until the stone was erected. Legend also maintains that the stone has been replaced many times, but the leg always re-appears, and all efforts to remove the image are in vain.
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| Colonel Buck condemned a local woman to be burned at the stake as a witch. Just before she died, the unfortunate victim uttered her famous curse upon Buck, along with a prophecy that an image of her leg would appear upon and remain on the Colonel’s tombstone. Photo by Tom Seymour |
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