Thomas Farragher is absolutely right: If politicians, ranging from the governor to the attorney general to our congressional delegation, really want to help the fishing industry and save the fish, they need to listen to fishermen like Frank Mirarchi (“An expert to reel in,” Metro, Jan. 17).
Mirarchi and fishermen like him have seen the benefit of electronic monitoring on commercial vessels in New England for years. We need to see what is happening at sea — what is being caught and where, and what is being thrown overboard.
Roughly 20 percent of New England vessels have monitors, and those are human beings, paid by the day, in an expensive and inadequate system. Mirarchi and other fishermen have participated in tests of video monitoring and have found that it works and that it can be designed to cost about a quarter what the current system costs.
Governor Charlie Baker, Attorney General Maura Healey, and our delegation in Washington need to tell the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration: Enough testing. It is time to implement 100 percent electronic monitoring.
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