We feel that the Council s actions are unsound, and we fear for the wellbeing of our local fishing fleet. Similarly, the number of species present in gravel areas was reduced by 32 percent, while the number of species present in sand areas was reduced by 14 percent. Rockhoppers are a recent innovation used by trawlers to access very rocky areas which would have shredded their nets previously. The areas where marine vegetation is most prolific are the formerly untrawled areas. In other words, bouncing harmlessly over cobblestones is one thing, but driving a front-end loader through a vegetable garden is quite another.
Recruitment is the success rate at which spawned fish grow to reproductive size.
Fish need places to hide in order to avoid being eaten when they are very young. But now there is literally no place left to hide, and recruitment suffers. The plight of cod fishermen in Atlantic Canada and now the Gulf of Maine are good examples of this. Some have suggested that part of the recruitment problem involves trawler impacts on habitat. The issue needs to be addressed one way or the other.