WASHINGTON (AP) – New England commercial fishermen are bracing for possible new limits on their catch and other industry restrictions as Congress drafts sweeping new regulations for the nation’s fisheries.

Lawmakers are trying to strike a delicate balance between protecting vulnerable fish stocks and keeping the struggling fishing industry afloat.

“We all want to practice conservation, but we want rules that don’t drive people out of the business,” said Arthur Medeiros, a Stonington, Conn., boat owner who heads the Southern New England Fishermen’s and Lobstermen’s Association.

Sen. Ted Stevens, R-Alaska, chairman of the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee that oversees the country’s eight regional fisheries, has proposed new individual fishing quota rules for boats and a greater say for scientific advisers in restoring depleted species.

The quota plan is generating controversy among some New England fishermen who fear the shares of smaller boats will be bought up by big corporations bent on monopolizing the region’s centuries-old industry.

“We’re gonna work hard to block these quotas,” said Angela Sanfilippo, president of the Gloucester Fishermen’s Wives Association in the Massachusetts port city on Boston’s North Shore. “Why should only a few corporations own the bounty of the ocean? It belongs to everybody. How can they privatize it that way.”

The Senate panel is expected to begin rewriting the 1976 Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act on Dec. 13 after the Senate returns from its Thanksgiving recess.

Lee Crockett, executive director of the Marine Fish Conservation Network, one of several environmental groups active in the fight, praised the Stevens bill as a good first step, but added, “It has a long way to go.”

A final bill probably won’t emerge until next spring after the House produces its version, congressional aides said. Until then, fishing conservation and commercial interests will be jockeying for an edge.

“The (fishing) industry never feels like it is getting enough,” said Susan Buchanan, a spokeswoman for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Fisheries Service. “The conservation community never feels like it is getting enough. We have a lot of contention.”

Exactly how the new quotas would be imposed as part of the complex system of federal regulations that fishermen already face remains unclear.

The Bush administration, along with Stevens, supports a market-based quota system that would divide shares of the total allowable catch among fishermen, who would then be permitted to buy and sell the shares among themselves.

“There is a driving need, for some reason, in Washington for quotas,” said James Kendall, a New Bedford, Mass., seafood industry consultant. “They see it as a cure-all for everything.”

U.S. Reps. William Delahunt, D-Mass., Rob Simmons, R-Conn., and Tom Allen, D-Maine, have proposed a quota system aimed at safeguarding the smaller boat fleets common to New England waters. Their bill would limit quota ownership to 1 percent of the total to prevent monopolization of the industry by large outside firms.

Overall catch limits for various fisheries loom as another flashpoint.

The New England Fishery Management Council has used flexible “target” catch limits in the past, but Stevens’ bill sets firm restrictions on what can be caught. Any excess fish caught would be deducted from next year’s catch limit, according to the Stevens proposal.

Chris Brown, who heads the Rhode Island Commercial Fishermen’s Association, said quotas can work if the overall fish ecosystem is managed properly. Brown and many environmental groups belive that federal regulators need to manage New England’s fishery as a single ocean ecosystem rather than by species.

Most fisheries are managed one species at a time. Ecosystem management takes a broader approach by factoring in how a plan for one species impacts other species. Stevens’ bill encourages ecosystem management.

“Ecosystem management is gonna be the way to go now,” Brown said. “Species by species management hasn’t worked for the fish or the fishermen.”

Brown added, however, that flexibility is critical.

“When you have a huge problem, which we do, solutions won’t come exclusively from one direction,” said Brown. “What we really need is a stable business climate that will allow fishermen to conduct themselves as businessmen.”