Daily Archives: February 8, 2019

Harriet Didriksen remembered as an irreplaceable fishing industry ‘icon’

New Bedford — A procession of visitors entered a hospital room at St. Anne’s in Fall River last weekend to bid farewell to Harriet Didriksen. Her son, Dana, saw his mother. With each new person who entered the room, he began to see, in many ways, the matriarch of the waterfront. Didriksen died Sunday at age 76. Dana returned to his home in Manhattan on Thursday morning. With each day he spent in the SouthCoast, though, the bond between his mother and the fishing industry grew more and more visible. >click to read<21:00

Boat that sank off Eastern Passage raised as part of investigation

In a community where many make a living on the sea, the loss of a boat — and a life — means watching and waiting. On Thursday, people in Eastern Passage, N.S., watched as crews worked to recover the MV Captain Jim, which sank off Devil’s Island, near the mouth of Halifax Harbour on Jan. 29. The MV Captain Jim sank around 2 a.m. after the commercial boat began taking on water and lost power. After a massive search effort, two people were rescued from the icy water, but one crewman was missing. ?click to read<16:56

Please donate to the Max Hinch Memorial Fund – >click here<

On the waterfront, a special breed of Long Islanders toils in winter

Working on the water sounds like such a great idea. After all, you’ll have a bay or ocean for your daily view, a fresh sea breeze and plenty of sunshine throughout the year. Many watery jobs will also keep you in shape. Imagine lifting crates of oysters, hauling fishing nets, building bulkheads or working as a party-boat mate. For those who love to be outdoors, these jobs hold special allure. Then winter rolls around. And sunny skies, warm weather and inviting breezes morph into roiling waves, sleet, snow and ice, and bone-chilling winds that roar day after day. >click to read<16:10

FISH-NL calls for resurrection of arm’s-length body to bridge massive divide between science and inshore harvesters

The Federation of Independent Sea Harvesters of Newfoundland and Labrador (FISH-NL) is calling on Ottawa to resurrect the Fisheries Resource Conservation Council (FRCC) to bridge the enormous divide between fishermen and scientists over the state of fish stocks — northern cod in particular. “DFO scientists and inshore harvesters are once again complete strangers, just like in the early 1990s when the commercial fisheries failed,” says Ryan Cleary, President of FISH-NL. >click to read<13:38

North Carolina Fisheries Association Weekly Update for February 8, 2019

>Click here to read the Weekly Update<, to read all the updates >click here<, for older updates listed as NCFA >click here<12:57

Lobstermen face more gear restrictions to protect whales

Nearly everywhere but up inside Maine’s many bays, fisheries regulators have forced lobstermen to use sinking rather than floating rope for the groundlines that connect traps on the sea bottom, to limit the number of traps set on a trawl to reduce the number of vertical buoy lines in the water and to install “weak links” in those vertical lines so an entangled whale can break loose. All those mandates, which arose out of discussions at NOAA’s Atlantic Large Whale Take Reduction Team (ALWTRT), were hard-fought, expensive and largely unpopular. >click to read<11:22