Storm Birds – an Icelandic trawler in peril

August 20, 2020 Canada, International News

In the winter of 1959, Gudlaugsson was first engineer on a trawler that endured a monumental storm off Newfoundland. All hands were put to hacking ice from the decks in a bid to stop the vessel sinking under its weight. “It was 72 hours of fighting.” In Storm Birds, Icelandic novelist Einar Kárason has taken the story of Gudlaugsson and his crew and turned it into a pulse-quickening piece of fiction. Here the trawler is the Mávur, the Icelandic word for “seagull”, and the maelstrom is evoked by an unnamed crew member recalling the events in later life. He makes it clear that being a fisherman in Icelandic waters “could be as dangerous as soldiering in times of war”. >click to read< 09:49

Book, first engineer, fishing trawler Mávur, Icelandic fisherman Thordur Gud laugsson, monumental storm off Newfoundland, novelist Einar Kárason, Storm Birds

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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

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