That was happening throughout the fishing industry: haddock landings had plummeted to one-fiftieth of what they were in 1960, cod landings had dropped by a factor of four. The culprit—as it almost always has been in fishing— was a sudden change in technology. New quick-freeze techniques allowed boats to work halfway around the world and process their fish as they went, and this made the three-mile limit around most countries completely ineffectual. Enormous Russian factory ships put to sea for months at a time and scoured the bottom with nets that could take thirty tons of fish in a single haul. They fished practically within sight of the American coast, and within years the fish populations had been staggered by fifty-percent losses. Congress had to take action, and in 1976 they passed the Magnuson Fishery Conservation and Management Act, which extended our national sovereignty to two hundred miles offshore. Most other nations quickly followed suit.
Of course, the underlying concern wasn't for fish populations, it was for the American fleet. Having chased out the competition, America set about constructing an industry that could scrape Georges Bank just as bare as any Russian factory ship. After the passage of the Magnuson Act, American fishermen could take out federally guaranteed loans and set themselves up for business in quarter-million-dollar steel boats. To make matters worse, the government established eight regional fishing councils that were exempt from conflict-of-interest laws. In theory, this should have put fisheries management in the hands of the people who fished. In reality, it showed the fox into the chicken coop.
Within three years of Magnuson, the New England fleet had doubled to 1,300 boats. Better equipment resulted in such huge takes that prices dropped and fishermen had to resort to more and more devastating methods just to keep up. Draggers raked the bottom so hard that they actually levelled outcrops and filled in valleys—the very habitats where fish thrived. A couple of good years in the mid-eighties masked the overall decline, but the end was near, and many people knew it. The first time anyone—at least any fisherman—suggested a closure was in 1988, when a Chatham fisherman named Mark Simonitsch stood up to speak at a New England Fisheries Council meeting. Simonitsch had fished off Cape Cod his whole life; his brother, James, was a marine safety consultant who had worked for Bob Brown.
Both men knew fishermen, knew fish, and knew where things were headed.
Simonitsch suggested that Georges Bank be closed to all fishing, indefinitely. He was shouted down, but it was the beginning of the end.
The swordfish population didn't crash as fast as some others, but it crashed all the same. By 1988, the combined North Atlantic fleet was fishing over one hundred million hooks a year, and catch logs were showing that the swordfish population was getting younger and younger. Finally, in 1990, the International Commission for the Conservation of Tunas suggested a fishing quota for the North Atlantic swordfish. The following year the National Marine Fisheries Service implemented a quota of 6.9 million pounds of dressed swordfish for U.S.-licensed sword boats, roughly two-thirds of the previous year's catch. Every U.S.-licensed boat had to report their catch when they arrived back in port, and as soon as the overall quota was met, the entire fishery was shut down. In a good year the quota might be met in September; in bad years it might not be met at all. The result was that not only were fishing boats now racing the season, they were racing each other. When the Andrea Gail left port on September 23rd, she was working under a quota for the first time in her life.
ALBERT JOHNSTON has the Mary T back out on the fishing grounds by October 17th and his gear in the water that night. He's a hundred miles south of the Tail, right on the edge of the Gulf Stream, around 41 north and 51 west. He's after big-eye tuna and doing really well—"muggin' 'em," as swordfishermen say. One night they lose $20,000 worth of bigeye to a pod of killer whales, but otherwise they're pulling in four or five thousand pounds of fish a night. That's easily enough to make a trip in ten sets. They're in the warm Gulf Stream water and the rest of the fleet's off to the east. "At that time of the year it's nice to fish down by the Gulf," Johnston says. "You get a little less bad weather— the lows tend to ride the jet stream off to the north. You could still get the worst storm there ever was, but the average weather's a little better."