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Project January 16, 2025

Changing Tide: Climate Change and New England Fisheries

Authors:

Bill Amaru has been a commercial fisherman off Cape Cod for 50 years. He’s seen a lot of changes in his patch of the ocean, like tropical fish moving in and cold water fish moving out.

“There's been substantial warming of our waters,” Amaru says. “It’s having an impact.”

Fisheries in the Northeastern U.S. are experiencing unprecedented changes, including ocean warming, marine heatwaves, and ocean acidification. Can science and policy move fast enough to save them?

Climate change affects the entire life cycle of New England fish and shellfish. Heat and pollution are decimating eelgrass beds, which serve as nursery habitat for flounder, bay scallops, and Atlantic cod. And in the open ocean, more black sea bass, longfin squid, and summer flounder are showing up as the water warms. Meanwhile, cold water species like American lobster, Atlantic cod, and Atlantic herring are drastically on the decline.

These changes are happening so fast that both the fishing industry and federal fishery managers are struggling to keep up. Federal fishing quotas are based on where fish were caught in the past; so while Amaru would love to fill his boat with tropical fish, he has no legal access to them.

Meanwhile, the traditional New England groundfish are disappearing.

“We're struggling to keep up at a rate that can keep fishing fleets employed as these stocks shift,” Amaru says.

This series of radio reports and documentary film will look at fishermen like Amaru who are struggling to hold on to their livelihoods, as well as federal fishery managers wrangling an antiquated system.

This project will also look at some of the causes of these devastating changes to Northeastern fisheries, and will examine governmental policies that may be moving too slowly to save them.

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