This editorial was printed in the Cape Codder, a newspaper published in Orleans, Massachusetts, on August 18, 1998. For more than two years, federal lawsuit number 96-11247 has been sitting in United States District Court in Boston.
Nobody knows much about it.
Nobody's heard much about it. Not much has been done about it. But this suit, filed by a group of Cape Cod fishermen, could soon become as important to the fishing industry as court-ordered bussing was to school desegregation. The plaintiffs are a group called the Cape Cod Commercial Hook Fishermen. They fish by playing out long lines out of tubs off of the backs of their boats, lines with hundreds of baited hooks attached.