Daily Archives: April 2, 2020
Coronavirus: Elver Season Starts, But Prices Plunge
At 8 a.m., Monday, March 30, about 30 elver fishermen were at the Pemaquid Falls town landing to claim their fishing spots for a shortened season. The elver, or glass eel, season in Maine got off to a late start because of a coronavirus-related delay from March 22 to March 30. Bristol Town Administrator Chris Hall said in a phone interview March 30 that he estimates there were at least 60 fishermen at Pemaquid Falls on opening day last year. The price of elvers has dropped significantly this year, from more than $2,000 per pound in 2019 to $500 per pound, the lowest starting price since 2010. This is down from a price of $2,700-$2,800 at the start of the 2018 season, the highest ever seen in Maine’s elver fishery. photo galley, >click to read< 18:51
VARD Secures Contract For Stern Trawler
The new vessel will be the first new building of VARD’s own design sold to the Faroe Islands. VARD’s shipyards in Norway have in the past built many fishing vessels to Faroese ship owners, which several of the vessels were highly innovative at the time and a leap forward for the local fishing industry. The newly developed trawler of VARD 8 03 design is based on a range of highly advanced and well-proven fishing vessels from VARD, designed with the latest demands for fish health management, efficiency and environmentally-friendly operations. The vessel has been developed in close cooperation with Framherji and will have the latest green technology on board. >click to read< 14:47
Coast Guard medevacs Commercial Fisherman 55 miles offshore of Lake Charles, Louisiana
The Coast Guard medevaced a mariner from an 86-foot fishing vessel approximately 55 miles offshore Lake Charles, Louisiana, Thursday morning. Coast Guard Sector Houston-Galveston watchstanders received a call from the captain of the fishing vessel Captain Taruong Phi who reported a crewmember was suffering from symptoms of a heart attack and in need of medical assistance. Watchstanders consulted the duty flight surgeon who recommended the medevac. photos, >click to read< 13:33
Gas engines saved the lives of salmon fishermen
Between 1908 and 1911, something happened that almost certainly saved hundreds of men from drowning on the Columbia River Bar. The salmon canneries in Astoria started fitting their gillnet fishing fleets with small gasoline engines. At the time, the mainstay of the Astoria gill-net fishing fleet was a picturesque double-ended lapstrake design, developed by a California man named J.J. Griffin in 1866 for use on the Sacramento River. They were 24 to 30 feet long, 7 to 8 feet wide, sloop-rigged with broad gaff-rigged sails on a relatively short mast. This design quickly caught on and became very famous and popular on river fisheries all up and down the West Coast. >click to read< 11:27
Cordova: All fishing vessel operators must sign coronavirus safety agreements
Businesses and individuals, including fishing vessel operators, will be required to sign coronavirus safety agreements to conduct commercial operations in Cordova.,, Under a mutual aid agreement, an operator must educate their employees about coronavirus symptoms and safety measures that may prevent infection, ensure compliance with the city’s coronavirus emergency rules and complete a health risk assessment form for all operators and employees working in Cordova or its waters. An operator must notify the city within 24 hours if any individual fails a health risk assessment and confirm that that individual has been placed under quarantine. An operator also agrees,,, >click to read< 09:53
Petty Harbour Inshore fishery champion Tom Best dead at 74
Tom Best died of cancer Tuesday afternoon at the Miller Centre in St. John’s. Best became a licenced inshore fisherman in Petty Harbour in 1963 after finishing high school. Petty Harbour mayor and fisherman Sam Lee said, “I’ve known Tom all my life really, but I’ve been working with him for over 50 years closely. It’s a great loss to our community and not only to the community but to Newfoundland as a whole.” Best was founding president of the Petty Harbour Fishermen’s Cooperative, a position he held for most of the last 36 years. The Co-op is owned and operated by fish harvesters. >click to read< 08:45
Coronavirus: Commercial fishermen scale back as market demand plummets
With restaurants only permitted to offer takeout and delivery, and many specialty seafood markets offering limited products or temporarily closing amid the COVID-19 outbreak, commercial fishermen are scaling back operations, too, and they’re feeling the impact. “It’s scary what’s out there, it really is,” said Ernie Panacek, 69, general manager of Viking Village, a commercial seafood producer in the borough. “The money that we get comes from those people going out to dinner and going to retail,” he said. “It’s going to be a hardship for a while. No one is going to flip a switch and have it go away immediately. We’re going to feel this for a long time.” 14 photos, >click to read< 07:45
Susan Beaton: Our markets gone, call fishing season off
I read that the provincial fisheries ministers from the Atlantic provinces and Quebec met recently. I was slightly heartened, but also worried. Is their intention to support our spring lobster and snow crab fisheries, or is their focus on ensuring they won’t have to, by making the case that we should fish, come what may?,, My hesitation occured when I read, “… adapt to maintain their livelihood.” Let me say, here and now, as a lobster fisher in the Gulf for 20 years, I have no interest in staying ashore, but I doubly have no interest in being a canary in the coal mine to test the theory that fishermen/women will fish, no matter the cost. We shouldn’t be put in the position of having to go to sea when there is no reasonable chance we can succeed. Fisheries from around the globe are shutting down because there is no market. more, >click to read< 06:56
