Bill Amaru – Cape Cod Commercial Fishermen’s Alliance Interview

  • September 27, 2023

After 50 years of commercial fishing on Cape Cod, Bill Amaru has seen many changes, from the rise in regulations and decline in species like cod to the arrival of southern fish species as the waters in the Gulf of Maine become warmer. It is another aspect of the many impacts the warming climate is having on Cape Cod. When we interviewed Bill at Rock Harbor in Orleans, he talked about how local fishermen have rolled with the changes, adapting to each new challenge. But as new species begin to populate the waters around the Cape, he worries what the lack of a catch history for these fish — upon which regulators base quotas — will mean, because without a federal quota, fishermen cannot catch or sell these new species. He is also concerned that as cod and other traditional species become scarcer and scarcer, the techniques used to catch these fish will be lost.