A fertile soil and a temperate growing season favour agriculture; the island's location makes it a base for lobster, shellfish, and groundfish (cod, hake, flounder, and redfish) operations; and its sandy beaches, warm waters, and other tourist amenities attract hundreds of thousands of summer visitors.
Dr. Steneck said that increasing biodiversity by encouraging stocks of groundfish like cod might lead to reduction in lobster abundance.
The move was welcomed by fishermen who fear 2013 will bring drastic quota cuts to groundfish like cod, haddock and yellowtail flounder.
This makes it a crucial source of nutrition for, among myriad other creatures, foraging species like herring and mackerel -- which, as it happens, are among the many food sources for predatory species further up the food chain, including Gulf of Maine groundfish like cod.
Under the new system, New England's groundfish catch, mainly cod and haddock, is divided among co-operative groups of boats called sectors.
A federal judge ordered the National Marine Fisheries Service to submit the plan after ruling that the agency had failed to quickly rebuild populations of so-called groundfish, which include cod and flounder.
The second amendment, rushed into the spending bill by Senator Susan Collins of Maine, would block a court-ordered plan devised by the National Marine Fisheries Service to prevent overfishing and help rebuild severely depleted populations of New England groundfish, which includes cod, haddock and yellowtail flounder.
To protect declining stocks, the government has been increasing efforts to restrict the number of groundfish — species like cod, haddock and flounder found at the bottom of the sea — that can be caught per day and narrowing the number of days New England fishermen can be out.
It chases down pelagic fishes such as lancet fish, mackerel, pilchards, herring, and sauries, and forages near the bottom for groundfishes such as cod, hake, icefish, dories, sand lances, lumpsuckers, and flatfish.
The Commerce Department issued a formal disaster declaration for the entire Northeastern commercial groundfish fishery, which includes cod.
That seals are a factor in the lack of cod and groundfish recovery was "a logical conclusion given that an individual grey seals eat between 1 and 2 tonnes of fish every year", she told the Guardian.
