Fishermen are gravely concerned that regulators are stealing our futures with baseless cuts to landing quotas. Rep. Jared Golden is taking positive steps to fix this problem.

It often happens that government regulators, who lack deep knowledge of what it takes to catch fish in the Gulf of Maine, reach conclusions about the state of our fish stocks that do not match what fishermen are seeing and what we know from being on the water every day.

The obvious objection whenever we raise this concern is that “anecdote is not the plural of data.” The doubters ask: Why would an individual fisherman know more than a government agency with a dataset? That’s a fair question.

The answer is this – we know what tactics regulators are using to catch fish for their surveys, and we know they don’t work. We know where regulators are conducting surveys, and we know fish don’t hold in those waters. We know how extensive the surveys are, and we know they aren’t thorough enough.

This mismatch creates a vicious cycle of new limits on catch, which in turn threaten our businesses.

Accurate data collection isn’t a flashy issue, especially as compared with other threats to the future of our fisheries, such as offshore wind. But bad data collection might kill us before foreign green energy companies do. In recent years regulators have slashed quota for onetime staples like haddock, shrimp and monkfish.

It’s hard for boats to run profitable trips when quotas are so low. Many fishermen I know sell their species quota to others. Some have given up the trade altogether and wonder if that was the point all along.

Rep. Golden is helping to address this problem. One recent example: Commercial shrimping has been banned in the Gulf of Maine for 11 years. One-time shrimpers either closed their business or repurposed to pursue other species, creating unnecessary pressure on other fisheries.

Now, a federal regulatory commission is working up a new management plan for the Gulf of Maine shrimp fishery, and one option under consideration is that the fishery never reopens. The congressmen suggests that the commission “work closely with commercial fishermen to utilize and apply their deep local knowledge, familiarity with the gear, and observations of the ecosystem to ensure existing surveys meet industry standards.”

I echo and commend Rep. Golden’s idea. The shrimp fishery exemplifies better than any other sector the dangers of poor data collection.

Fishermen want to work productively with regulators toward our shared goal of maintaining a sustainable fishery. After all, no one is more invested than us in its future. To that end, we are glad to show government regulators what we’ve learned about catching fish – best tactics, best locations, best times of day, and the like. We’re even happy to participate in the process. I have talked to dozens of vessel captains who are willing to host government regulators on their boats for purposes of data collection or to collect the data themselves.

The latest government data on shrimp suggest the shrimp fishery is still too fragile to reopen to commercial fishing. But the government’s data collection protocols were all wrong. A little fishing know-how could help. If the government knew how to catch shrimp, I bet the numbers would be different.

The government boat that collected data on Gulf of Maine shrimp is the Gloria Michelle. Its tow speed was too slow and its gear was not designed for optimal yield. No shrimper I know would ever use the net they used. They used the same protocol for every tow, even though tactics should shift depending on location and time. No wonder they didn’t catch any shrimp!

Fishermen are seeing shrimp everywhere. They’re in the bellies of the fish we catch. They’re lining lobster traps. And shrimp are a keystone species. Lots of fish eat shrimp. If the shrimp population is as low as the government thinks, we would see collateral decreases in other fish populations. We are not.

I’m open to the possibility that industry is wrong. So, what do regulators have to lose? Work with us, as Golden suggests.