This is one of those articles that I shouldn't have read while eating breakfast.  My digestion will never be the same.
Since the end of the Second World War, and particularly since the initial passage of the Magnuson Act, which provided far too many financial incentives for fishermen to increase the size and productivity of their vessels and gear, New England fishermen have worked steadily to destroy the fish stocks that fed much of the Western Hemisphere for more than half a millenium.  Steadfastly battling against any regulation that might serve to conserve fish stocks and make them available to the next generation and, when they failed in that, adopting measures of illusory effectiveness, such as days at sea, to avoid the hard quotas that might actually serve to recover the stocks, the commercial fleet in the northeast was largely successful in their goal, significantly reducing stocks of cod, haddock, wolffish, white hake, etc., and all but wiping out others such as the southern New England stock of winter flounder.  However, their efforts were eventually foiled by the Sustainable Fisheries Act of 1996 and the follow-on provisions of the Magnuson Act reauthorization of 2006-2007, which actually required them to cut back landings and permitted the stocks to rebuild--at least those stocks which, unlike the southern stock of winter flounder, weren't so badly overfished that they may have passed some sort of biological tipping point that may make recovery impossible.
Now, despite the need to reduce the national deficit and funnel government spending only to essential activities, we see the perpetrators of the groundfishery's decline seek to be rewarded for their improvidence.  And no, Sen, Kerry, the current economic difficulties of the New England fishermen are not fauless in this matter.  Their current problems are a direct result of their refusal to heed decades of warnings about declining stocks, and the pounding, incessant greed that drove them to fish depleted stocks down to levels that, in the opinion of some biologists, may have led to regime change on the fishing banks.  The problems in the northeastern fishing industry, Sen. Kerry, ar not "because of circumstances that are entirely outside the fishing industry's control."    The problems in the fishing industry, Sen. Kerry, are primarily attributable to the actions and attitudes of the fishing industry, and it is that industry, and not the American taxpayer, that should bear the financial consequences of their own conscious choices.
Giving $100 million to the fishing industry will only prolong the pain, allow the fishermen to retrench and plan new assaults on New England's marine resources.  It will teach them that irresponsibility pays.  It will teach them that they can escape the consequences of their own misguided actions.  It is exactly the wrong thing to do.
If Congress wants to spend $100 million on fisheries issues--and it probably should--let it spend that money on the research needed to reliably assess important fish stocks not only in the Mid-Atlantic, but all along America's coast.  Let it prodcue the good baseline science needed to determine the number of fish that may safely be removed from healthy stocks, the measures that must be imposed to rebuild depleted stocks and revisit the allocations bwetween the sectors to see whether they make sense in view of the legal mandate to manage fisheries for the greatest overall benefit to the nation.  Using the money in that fashion would provide real long-term benefits, and ultimately the greatest hope for the fishing industry's survival.  On the other hand, handing out $100 million in pork in what amounts to rerds for depleting northeastern fish stocks will not change the long-term status quo, and it is that status quo which poses the greatest threat to the long-term survival not only of the fish stocks, but of the industry that cannot survive towing its nets through an empty ocean.