Tag Archives: longline fleet
A Talk – Commercial Fishing Navigates Change to Bring Home Profit
A taste of the enthralling work of commercial fishing Saturday described a tug-of-war with not just the deep, but also a sea of federal regulations. How the captain and crew know where to set up the hooked lines for tuna, how the moon rules when fish bite, the extent that Big Brother’s eye is on the industry, the astounding amount that a scallop fishing permit is worth, what happens when one guy, days out to sea, gets a fever,,, Karter Larson’s talk on commercial fishing from Barnegat Light’s Viking Village dock is standing room only each year at the LBIF. >click to read< 21:39
Hawaii’s longline fleet about to hit its 3,554-ton bigeye tuna limit, enviro scorned rule will keep them fishing
Hawaii’s longline fleet is about to hit its 3,554-ton limit for bigeye tuna in the Western and Central Pacific, prompting a closure date for the fishery of July 22, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The longliners had caught an estimated 98 percent of their annual quota by Wednesday, National Marine Fisheries Service reported. The feds had been predicting longliners would hit their bigeye tuna limit by Aug. 14. But the closure will likely be short-lived thanks to a federal rule that proposes, like in years past, allowing U.S. Pacific Island territories — American Samoa, Guam and the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands — to each allocate up to 1,000 tons of their 2,000-ton quotas to U.S. longliners under a “specified fishing agreement.” David Henkin, staff attorney for Earthjustice, a nonprofit environmental law organization, calls it a “shell game” that allows overfishing, but the courts have so far disagreed. Read the rest here 10:23
Dumping of halibut sparks fight among North Pacific fishing fleets
When Skipper Bill Hayes brings up his trawl net from the bottom of the Bering Sea, he often finds halibut mixed in with the yellowfin sole and other fish he pursues with a Seattle-based trawler. People often pay more than $15 a pound for halibut at the store. But federal harvest rules only allow hook-and-line fishermen — not trawlers such as the boat Hayes captains — to sell these fish. To make trawlers try to avoid halibut, they are required to dump this “bycatch” overboard. They can’t even donate the fish to a food bank. Read the rest here 08:29 Related articles, click here
