Tag Archives: Conversion

Mark Siino inherits a fishing boat hand-built by his grandfather, and transforms it into a floating classroom.

Mark Siino never met his grandfather, Angelo Siino, but he now spends his days running his hands over a boat his grandfather built. The General Pershing is a 60-foot fishing boat hand-built in the 1920s in Monterey by Angelo, with his brothers Gaetano and Francesco and their father, Erasmo, all Sicilian immigrants. Now, after moving from owner to owner for nearly a century, the boat has retired its fishing permits and come home, and back to the descendants of its original craftsmen. Siino, along with a team of volunteers, has for years been restoring the boat to convert it into a floating environmental and marine science classroom. >click to read< 10:05

Former Navy ship embarks on new career catching and processing fish off Alaska

cd6ede4c-2900-11e6-a8e0-56660c973af9-1560x1039Seattle’s fishing industry on Thursday feted the latest addition to the fleet, a 233-foot former Navy oceanographic vessel overhauled at a cost of more than $30 million for a new line of work — catching and processing fish off Alaska. The Lake Union ceremony drew several hundred people to watch the traditional breaking of a Champagne bottle across the bow of the former John McDonnell, newly christened as the Seafreeze America. Later this month, the ship will head north to harvest yellowfin sole and other species in the Bering Sea. In a Seattle increasingly swept up in a tech boom, the SeaFreeze Amercia offers a reminder of the vitality of an older and still potent Puget Sound industry. Read the rest here 14:49