The National Marine Fisheries Service will spend more than $1 million on efforts to improve the management of New England groundfish industry, Sen. Olympia Snowe, R-Maine, announced today.

Snowe, ranking member of the Senate Subcommittee on Oceans, Atmospheres, Fisheries, and Coast Guard, said the funding announcement is in response to concerns raised during a congressional field hearing she held in Portland last month. Members of the industry testified that regulatory restrictions have devastated the state's groundfishermen.

Snowe said the money would provide a first step toward overhauling the regulatory structure and improving management and catch monitoring systems.

Maine's groundfishermen have had the number of fishing days reduced from an average of 116 days in 1996 to 48 days in 2008. The number of active groundfish boats has declined from more than 350 in the 1990s to perhaps as few as 70 that still land their catch here in the state, according to state data cited by Snowe.

The Portland Fish Exchange has witnessed its volume of fish drop by more than 60 percent since 2000. And jobs in fish processing and wholesaling in the state fell by more than 40 percent from 2000 to 2004, Snowe's announcement said.

The $1.03 million in federal funding announced Friday will be used to develop a new system to monitor days at sea, build a system to track fisheries permits and improve monitoring of catches, among other things.

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