Captain Gary Libby

I’m a lobsterman and groundfish fisherman from Maine, and believe it or not, I rely on a little fish called Atlantic herring for my livelihood. Lobster fishermen like me need bait, and most of the bait we use is herring. But herring are also the lynchpin holding the ocean food chain together.

Peter Baker

My connection to the sea started as a boy in Portland, Oregon. My father was a commercial fisherman, first for crab in the Bering Sea, then for shrimp off the Oregon Coast, and finally as a crawdad trapper in the Columbia River. Some of my earliest memories were visiting him in Newport, Oregon when he was just in from shrimp trips. I remember pulling crawdad pots onto his skiff just off Sauvie Island. It taught me a respect for the sea and the people who work on it.

Captain Ray Kane

Last month, the National Marine Fisheries Service rolled out a broad new set of rules for groundfish fishermen, taking drastic steps to save New England’s depleted groundfish stocks. These regulations, however, are focused solely on one aspect of our groundfish population problem – overharvest – and blatantly ignore the importance of the smaller species that serve as food for these larger fish in the ecosystem. Abundant populations of these little fish are vital to increasing the abundance of all the fish that prey on them. Without addressing this problem, the fisheries won’t be returning to healthy levels, and the fishermen – along with their families and communities that depend on them – won’t either.