Suffolk teenager chooses career as a fisherman to keep town’s proud tradition alive

March 3, 2024 Featured, International, International News

A teenage fisherman is hoping to inspire other youngsters to follow in his footsteps after launching his own £300,000 vessel into the North Sea. Alex Wightman, 18, from Lowestoft in Suffolk still believes there is a future in fishing despite government figures showing a decline in registered fishing boats in the UK. His boat, the 10 metre-long Emma Claire, named after his mother, is thought to be the first new vessel in the town’s inshore fleet for nearly 20 years. “Anybody my age, especially coming in to the fishing industry, would absolutely die to have a boat like this.” Alex hails from a fishing family, with his brother Max, 23, and dad Steve also fishing off the east coast. Video, photos, more, >>click to read<< 06:47

career as a fisherman, commercial fishing, F/V Emma Claire, Lowestoft fisherman Alex Wightman, Suffolk, Suffolk teenager, UK

Leave a ReplyCancel reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

Ocean Resource Privatization

Articles Posted by Date
November 2024

M T W T F S S

1 2 3

4 5 6 7 8 9 10

11 12 13 14 15 16 17

18 19 20 21 22 23 24

25 26 27 28 29 30

« Oct

November 2024
M	T	W	T	F	S	S
	1	2	3
4	5	6	7	8	9	10
11	12	13	14	15	16	17
18	19	20	21	22	23	24
25	26	27	28	29	30

The New England groundfish debacle (Part III): who or what is at fault? Nils E. Stolpe/FishNet

It took me a while to decide how to most accurately describe the situation that has been visited upon the New England fishing communities that are and since colonial times have been dependent on the groundfish fisheries.

NILS STOLPE: The New England groundfish debacle (Part IV): Is cutting back harvest really the answer?

While it’s a fact that’s hardly ever acknowledged, the assumption in fisheries management is that if the population of a stock of fish isn’t at some arbitrary level, it’s because of too much fishing. Hence the term “overfished.” Hence the mandated knee jerk reaction of the fisheries managers to not enough fish; cut back on fishing. What of other factors? They don’t count. It’s all about fishing, because fishing is all that the managers can control; it’s their Maslow’s Hammer. When it comes to the oceans it seems as if it’s about all that the industry connected mega-foundations that support the anti-fishing ENGOs with hundreds of millions of dollars a year in “donations” are interested in controlling. Read the article here

Recent Posts
- Oversight Hearing “Exploring the Successes and Challenges of the Magnuson-Stevens Act” Wednesday, July 19, 2017 2:00 PM
  
  On Wednesday, July 19, 2017, at 2:00 p.m., in Room 1324 Longworth House Office Building, the Subcommittee on Water, Power and Oceans will hold an oversight Read More »
- Grand Manan fisherman finds lobster with Pepsi can imprinted on claw
  
  Karissa Lindstrand had already spent five hours banding lobster claws on a boat called Honour Bound, off Grand Manan, when a blue and red logo she Read More »
- Fall chinook run breaking all records heading up the Columbia River
  
  “Fish have been counted at Bonneville Dam since it began operating in 1938, but we have never seen numbers like the 68,000 chinook that passed the Read More »
- Trawler Sky Wind arrested for illegal crab fishing in Sakhalin
  
  Fishing trawler Sky Wind was arrested and fined for illegal crab fishing in the Russian waters near Sakhalin. The vessel was detained by the boarded guard Read More »
- NOAA calls off active search for killer whale J50
  
  The U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has called off the active search for a sick killer whale that garnered international attention. The southern resident killer Read More »
- Coast Guard, good Samaritan search for 2 missing fishermen near Block Island, RI
  
  The Coast Guard along with a good Samaritan are searching for two missing fishermen after the fishing boat Mistress capsized Tuesday morning off Block Island, Rhode Read More »
- Officials Back Deep Cuts in Atlantic Cod Harvest to Save Industry –
  
  New York Times “I do not deny the costs that are going to be paid by fishermen, families, communities. They are real. They will hurt.” The problem, Read More »
- Hope for crab season debated
  
  Whether the North Coast Dungeness crab season will ever open this season, or even be worth opening at this juncture, depends on whom you ask. Second Read More »
- Pacific Tuna Stocks Have Plummeted, Scientists Warn – fished relentlessly for decades, in trouble.
  
  A report issued this week by fisheries scientists on behalf of fishing nations, including the United States and Japan, shows that decades of uncontrolled overfishing have Read More »
- A Soap Opera on the High Seas
  
  There are the hits: Discovery’s “Deadliest Catch” (about crab fishermen in the Bering Sea), History’s “Ice Road Truckers” (about truck drivers in the Canadian Arctic) and Read More »
- Father questions late start to trawler Returner search
  
  As a huge air, sea and land search yesterday again failed to find any sign of the 13m trawler Returner, Alan Fairley questioned why it had Read More »
- Tropical Storm Henri Public Advisory
  
  At 800 AM EDT, the center of Tropical Storm Henri was located by reconnaissance aircraft and NOAA Doppler weather radars near latitude 40.7 North, longitude 71.3 Read More »
- Dungeness crab catch ‘amazing’, but shortage of crew on boats, plant workers an issue
  
  “About 80% of our whole seasons gets landed in the first 8 weeks,” said Tim Novotny with the Oregon Dungeness Crab Commission. “So we had about 4 Read More »
- Lake Erie Commercial fishing done for the year
  
  Even though the species have changed over the years, Lake Erie has long hosted a valuable commercial fishing industry. The first fish caught in commercial quantities Read More »
- Mississippi 2016 shrimp season began with small shrimp, low prices
  
  “Shrimp season opened June 6, and about 200,000 pounds of brown shrimp were landed during the first week,” Burrage said. “The bad news is they were Read More »
- Rescue operation off Castletownbere coast brought seven crewmen ashore from sinking fishing trawler
  
  The dramatic rescue of seven crew members from the Ellie Adhamh fishing trawler last Saturday evening off the coast of Castletownbere in stormy conditions was the Read More »
- Coast Guard completes 3 rescues during busy crab season opener
  
  Station Cape Disappointment, along with Station Grays Harbor, launched 47-foot Motor Lifeboat [MLB] rescue crews at 7:30 a.m. for a fishing vessel taking on water near Read More »
- DFO to Release Latest Assessment of Northern Shrimp Stocks
  
  DFO will provide an update this morning on its latest assessment of northern shrimp stocks in the waters surrounding Newfoundland and Labrador and the FFAW will Read More »
- UN top court to rule on Japan whale hunt in Antarctic
  
  The UN’s top International Court of Justice will rule Monday whether Japan has the right to hunt whales in the Antarctic, in an emotive case activists Read More »
- Parasitic sea lice plagues global farmed salmon industry
  
  A surge of parasitic sea lice is disrupting salmon farms around the world. The tiny lice attach themselves to salmon and feed on them, killing or Read More »
- The last fishermen of Castletownbere?: ‘We are in extinction mode’
  
  “I suppose it was death by a thousand cuts,” Jason Sheehan says from his upstairs office on the harbour. Outside, it’s squally, leaden-skied, and the afternoon Read More »
- More and bigger shrimp boats could be headed Hernando Beach, and neighbors are in an uproar!
  
  Daniel Ebbecke has told county planners that he wants more intense commercial zoning for his one-third-of-an-acre lot “to eliminate the confusion regarding the use of this Read More »
- ENC shrimper thinking of new ways to get his product to customers amid inflation
  
  Inflation is making it harder for fisherman to turn a profit. Now, it’s fueling them to make decision on how they sell their catch. One local Read More »
- Florida aquaculture officials take cautious approach to Apalachicola Bay aquaculture leases
  
  In a lengthy and detailed face-to-face meeting with local seafood industry leaders Monday afternoon, Florida aquaculture officials signaled they planned to take a cautious approach to Read More »
- Atlantic salmon can be farmed on land, B.C. project shows
  
  A British Columbia First Nation is using a workshop this week in St. Andrews to explain how it is growing Atlantic salmon without the fish ever Read More »