Fished Out

It's an unseasonably warm June day on the Alaskan island of Kodiak as skipper Dan Miller pulls the Anna D up to a quiet concrete pier beside a seafood wholesaler. The hold of his fishing boat is loaded with 9,000 pounds of freshly caught halibut, and the lanky former biologist is as happy as a seal soaking in the sun. Halibut is selling for almost $4 a pound, a record, and Miller's gross take will be nearly $33,000.

Some 4,000 miles to the southeast, Maine fisherman Craig Pendleton, 46, is spending much of the summer sitting in a dark office over Norm's TV in Saco, a former mill town south of Portland, pondering the fishing industry's future. Since early May, his boat, the 54-foot Susan & Caitlyn, has been sitting at a dock collecting barnacles because of federal rules that limit Pendleton to only 48 days at sea. He likely won't go out again until October to trawl for cod and haddock in the Gulf of Maine.