Daily Archives: September 22, 2018

State stops Mainer from sedating lobsters with marijuana smoke before being cooked

State regulators have put a halt to a Maine restaurant owner’s experiment of sedating live lobsters with marijuana smoke before they are cooked, at least for now. Charlotte’s Legendary Lobster Pound in Southwest Harbor is getting some of its lobsters high before cooking them,,, Gill, a registered medical marijuana caregiver, said Saturday that she was working to change her procedure after a “technicality under the Maine Medical Use Program and a remark from the health department.” The Maine Health Inspection Program was investigating, Emily Spencer, a spokeswoman with the Department of Health and Human Services, said Saturday. She said the state was also looking into whether the medical marijuana was being used appropriately. >click to read<21:54

Skates, bait for lobsters, unloaded at Town Dock in Stonington

Geal Roderick, of Mystic, captain of the lobster boat Pocahontas, unloads skates that he had just purchased at the Stonington Town Dock on Thursday. The skates, a deepwater fish similar to rays, will be used as bait in the 300 pots that Roderick intended to set over the next few days. Roderick also crews, as needed, on his father’s boat, the Stacy and Geal. Harold Hanka, 3 photos, >click here<18:51

Atlantic herring quotas may be cut again

Later this month, fisheries regulators will decide whether to adopt a new set of regulations, known as Amendment 8, that could include restricting fishing areas for the herring and could, for the first time, account for the fish’s place in the larger ecosystem. The New England Fishery Management Council’s Atlantic herring committee will meet next week to vote on a recommendation to the full council, which meets the following week. Consideration of the new management system, and the restrictions it would bring, follows the announcement in August that next year’s quota for Atlantic herring had been cut by 55 percent from its original level. >click to read<16:06

LETTER: Coal transportation plan earns a big ‘NO’ from Cape Breton lobster fishermen

There has been much said about the Donkin Mine, Kameron Coal and Cape Breton lobster fishermen lately and I would like to set the record straight on some matters. First and foremost, 99.9 per cent of fishermen are in support of the Donkin Mine, as am I. What we don’t support is seismic activity, and a pier and barge system. A new pier in Morien Bay will take up a lot of the fishing grounds, plus we will have to deal with a barge full of coal being transported to Mira Bay where a minimum 400-foot coal vessel will be waiting to off-load and take it. This will create coal dust not only in Morien Bay but also in Mira Bay. >click to read<15:13

Big dreams for tidal power: Irish company hoping to drop turbines in Minas Passage, expecting some cynicism

Simon De Pietro will have to mend burnt bridges before he can build the world’s largest tidal array. “I expect there to be some cynicism and it’s not a good thing that happened,” said the director of DP Energy, based in Ireland. “But that wasn’t us.” His company’s plan to install an array of five sub-sea tidal turbines and one floating turbine in the Minas Passage with a combined power output of nine megawatts makes him the latest Irish proponent with big dreams for tidal power. The last one was OpenHydro, which went bankrupt days after installing its turbine on July 22 — leaving local companies holding the bag for millions of dollars worth of work and a 1,000-tonne turbine on the seabed. A team brought from Ireland to get it working over recent weeks have determined that it’s not spinning as a result of an unknown mechanical failure. >click to read<

A week later, overturned F/V Miss Annie in Bluffton’s May River is still there. Here’s why

State officials said Friday they still didn’t know when the boat, which leaked an unknown amount of fuel into the river, would be removed. The boat, “Miss Annie,” overturned Sept. 15, when it was docked in the May to avoid Florence’s wrath. An official with the S.C. Department of Natural Resources and another with S.C. Department of Health and Environmental Control visited the site that day. Crews from the U.S. Coast Guard didn’t arrive until Monday because the boat was “reported as stable” and all of their “assets were engaged in the hurricane response with the impacts in Myrtle Beach and Wilmington,” U.S. Coast Guard MSTC Clayton Rennie said Thursday morning. >click to read<10:00

Wicker advocates for bipartisan bill to end illegal global fishing, seafood trade

U.S. Sen. Roger Wicker (R-MS), a member of the U.S. Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee, earlier this week questioned whether increased federal action would aide in the halt of illegal fishing and seafood trade in the global marketplace. Sen. Wicker on Aug. 28 introduced the bipartisan Maritime Security And Fisheries Enforcement (SAFE) Act, S. 3400, to address the threat to national security from illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing and associated illegal activity, to prevent the illegal trade of seafood and seafood products, among other purposes, according to the text of the bill. S. 3400 calls for “a whole-of-government approach” that would include the intelligence community to help combat IUU fishing,,,>click to read<09:08

Waterman charged with 600+ fishing, boating violations in Delaware City area

DNREC Fish & Wildlife Natural Resources Police arrested a commercial waterman from Sussex County on Thursday for more than 600 shellfish and boating violations near Delaware City.
Shawn P. Moore, 40, of Georgetown, was charged with 322 counts of failure to tend commercial crab pots within 72 hours; 171 counts of improperly-marked commercial crab pot license number on buoy; 121 counts of over-the-limit commercial crab pots; two counts of crabbing from a vessel not displaying a proper color panel; >click to read<08:20