Category Archives: National
NOAA Seeks Nominations for Scientific Review Groups under the Marine Mammal Protection Act
NOAA Fisheries will publish a Federal Register Notice on Monday, August 19, 2019, soliciting nominations to three independent marine mammal scientific review groups (SRG). We would like your assistance to identify qualified candidates. The three independent regional SRGs, covering Alaska, the Atlantic (including the Gulf of Mexico), and the Pacific (including Hawaii), were established under section 117(d) of the Marine Mammal Protection Act to provide advice on a range of marine mammal science and management issues. >click to read< 16:27
Greenland, the new US Alaska? Trump mocked, as Some Canadians Say “We Should Outbid Him!”
Greenland, the new US Alaska? – The United States’ interest in Greenland is not new. In 1867, secretary of state William Seward, then of the Andrew Johnson administration, showed interest in purchasing Greenland and Iceland from Denmark. >click to read< Trump Wants to Buy Greenland? We Should Outbid Him! – from the article, What would we get if we did obtain Greenland? It would certainly complete our set of Arctic islands. We would possess over two million square kilometres of land, almost all of it covered by an ice sheet with a volume of 2.8 million cubic kilometres. >click to read< 15:40
Winter Harbor Lobster Boat Races draw huge fleet
Last Saturday at the Winter Harbor Lobster Boat Races, everyone who signed up for the event qualified for a chance in the annual post-race prize drawing organized by the event’s sponsors to win something to build — the bare hull for a brand new Mitchell Cove 35 lobster boat — and come they did. According to Jon Johansen, president of the Maine Lobster Boat Racing Association, 167 boats signed up to race at Winter Harbor and earn the right to participate in the drawing. “They came out of the woodwork,” Johansen said Monday morning. >click to read< 11:40
Google Pitchman Bill Nye: Fighting Climate Change Will Make You ‘Filthy F-cking Rich’
Inventing climate change solutions or technology could you make you a fortune, according to liberal media favorite: Bill Nye “The Science Guy.” Nye shared an F-bomb dropping video on Instagram on Aug. 13. He said that if his typical warning that the “oceans are rising” wasn’t enough to make people care, he had another reason for them to take action on climate change. “I’m gonna level with you. The real reason you should do your part to combat climate change is — It’ll make you filthy f—king rich” Nye shouted. Video >click to read< 11:12
NC seafood company owner pleads guilty to selling foreign crab meat as a ‘product of the USA’
The owner of North Carolina seafood company Capt. Neill’s Seafood of Columbia, Phillip Carawan, pleaded guilty Tuesday to selling close to 200,000 pounds of crab meat from Asia and South America while marketing it as Atlantic blue crab. The U.S. attorney said the untrue label gave Carawan an advantage, raking in more than $4 million thanks to the mislabeled crab from 2012 to 2015. >click to read< 10:31
Investment in a boatyard. Port of Toledo offers strategic lessons for Astoria
Marine workers, business leaders and politicians gathered earlier this month to watch the trawler Pegasus get lowered into the Yaquina River from the former Sturgeon Bend Boat Works, a shuttered boatyard acquired from Fred Wahl Marine Construction in 2010 by the Port of Toledo. Widening and modernizing the vessel took more than 10 months, $3 million and tens of contractors. Purchasing and developing the boatyard has cost Toledo more than $10 million, largely from state grants and loans.Toledo’s vision to turn the boatyard into a thriving economic generator offers lessons to the Port of Astoria. >click to read< 22:55
Repeat offender poses as worker, tries to steal fishing vessel from Ballard shipyard
Doug Dixon, general manager of Pacific Fishermen Shipyard and PFI Marine Electric just off Shilshole Avenue, said the crime was carefully-planned. He said that a woman who appears to be homeless and spends time around the shipyard took a hardhat from a construction site next door and used it to gain access to the shipyard. “She looked like a worker coming into the yard, so nobody questioned her,” Dixon said. With the hardhat disguise, she climbed aboard Pacific Fishermen’s $12 million North Sea,,, >click to read< 17:24
Boris Johnson’s Looming Wind Disaster. Its coming here, and is being sold by huckster politicians
Boris Johnson’s government is shuffling towards a gigantic cliff edge which has nothing to do with Brexit. The looming disaster can be summed up in one word: renewables. The clue came in the form of the widespread power cuts that Britain experienced at the end of last week. Britain’s National Grid — and by extension the nation’s electricity supply — has been horribly compromised by the dash for renewable energy. >click to read< Meanwhile on Cape Cod, John Kerry, Gina McCarthy, and Dylan Fernandes hold forum as Kerry announces World War Zero. Tackling the issue of climate change – Lots of photo’s, and no John Kerry, Jane Lubchenco was no friend of the fishermen. It was another lie. Read the comments @MTV! >click to read< 15:18
‘Deadliest Catch’ Star Jake Harris Sentenced To Prison After Police Chase
Jacob “Jake” Harris, who headlined the show until 2012, was convicted of driving under the influence and possession with intent to manufacture or distribute heroin. He pleaded guilty to the felony charges and was sentenced on Aug. 1. Harris, 33, is the younger brother of Josh Harris, who currently captains the multi-million dollar fishing vessel, the Cornelia Marie, on “Deadliest Catch.” He’s being transferred to a Washington state penitentiary today, according to the Skagit County District Attorney’s Office. >click to read< 13:25
Athearn Marine Agency Boat of the Week: 52′ Steel Dragger, Cat 3406, with State and Federal Permits
Specifications, information and 13 photos >click here< To see all the boats in this series, >click here<11:24
Ocean temperatures off N.S. dip after record breaking year, have moved back to normal
Following a season of record-breaking surface temperatures last year, ocean temperatures in the waters around Nova Scotia have moved back to normal this summer, says the Department of Fisheries and Oceans.,,, In 2018, DFO found winter sea surface temperatures from the Scotian Shelf to the Bay of Fundy were above normal. There were also record-breaking temperatures in August and September. However, DFO’s spring survey conducted in April 2019 differed from last year’s results. “First, the surface was really cold because we had a really cold winter. It takes time for the ocean to heat up,” Hebert said. “The deeper water seemed to be back to the normal temperature.” >click to read< 09:44
Rope free traps? Company studies ways for fishing nets and whales to coexist.
“It’s promising and many people are asking why we don’t use it right away — but it’s still in the scientific testing phase, with tests being done in the water and it has not yet been adapted for commercial fishing,” Cormier explained. In some trials, the buoy took up to 30 minutes to surface; in other cases it never surfaced. “There is still work to be done as far as the reliability of the equipment,” he said. “We don’t want to create another problem, that of ghost fishing.” >click to read< 09:49
Sea Gulls make unbearable noises at ungodly hours. Here’s why
I first assumed that gulls make noise during mating rituals. But Richards gave me a much more unsettling answer. “When the gulls first hatch, the chicks start to wander around. And the neighbours next door [i.e., other gulls] will actually try to eat the other chicks,” said Richards. “So, the parents are actually defending their chicks from their neighbours.”,,, “And they swallow them in one gulp.” >click to read< 09:04
Childhood ended early in Cohasset
In the 19th century, it was not unusual for Cohasset children to work in the fishing industry.,,, We know of one boy, Francis Pratt, who at age 8 went to sea as a ship’s cook. His father, Dr. Ezekiel Pratt, Cohasset’s only doctor at the time, was very poor and struggled to feed his eight children. He told them, “I can’t have you gnawing at my ribs any longer,” and in 1826 sent young Francis off to sea on a Cohasset fishing schooner. >click to read(short)< 09:19
Michael Moore-Backed Doc Tackles Green Energy’s ‘False Promises’
What if alternative energy isn’t all it’s cracked up to be? That’s the provocative question explored in the documentary Planet of the Humans, which is backed and promoted by filmmaker Michael Moore and directed by one of his longtime collaborators.,,, Director Jeff Gibbs takes on electric cars, solar panels, windmills, biomass, biofuel, leading environmentalist groups like the Sierra Club, and even figures from Al Gore and Van Jones, who served as Barack Obama’s special adviser for green jobs, to 350.org leader Bill McKibben, a leading environmentalist and advocate for grassroots climate change movements.,,, But when he started pulling on the thread,,,, >click to read< 19:32
To Mike Gambardella, Get Well Soon!
To all the good people who visit us here at Fisherynation, we would like to let you all know our good friend and major supporter of our commercial fishing communities and our heritage has just come through a major surgery at Mid-State Medical Center hospital in CT. He will be on the mend for a while but we know that although he is down now, he’ll be back at it soon enough and continuing what he started with his Make Commercial Fishing Great Again Campaign! Mike, you know we all love you and are behind you 110%. You’ll be back on the front lines of this battle soon enough. Until then, we encourage our Fisherynation supporters to give Mike a shout out and let him know how much he is appreciated. >comment here!<16:34
For those that don’t know Mike, here is a bit about him: Fishermen hope bumper sticker gets Trump’s attention, Stonington fish wholesaler calls on Sen. Blumenthal for help, and others! >click to read<
Here in Kentucky, sport fishing is gone. Kentucky, Tennessee in fight against Asian carp
Here in Kentucky, sport fishing is gone. The groups that historically flocked to the lakes for vacation have dwindled. On Aug. 1, the Kentucky Department of Natural Resources, Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency and Tennessee Valley Authority met at the lock and dam to put on a demonstration to show the vast number of carp congregating. It was the second such demonstration that week. The groups took electrofishing boats onto the lake to stun the fish. One of the four species of Asian carp, silver carp, leap when frightened. The other three largely stay under the surface. Video. photo’s >click to read<14:00
Maine’s lobster industry needs your help
A little over a week ago, we saw more than a thousand lobstermen flood the Stonington commercial pier. Almost the entire Maine delegation attended in person to demonstrate its support for lobstermen who are being unfairly targeted around the issue of right whale entanglement. Also speaking and demonstrating their support were Maine Governor Janet Mills, State Senate President Troy Jackson and several other state elected officials. by Julie Eaton >click to read< 12:10
Coast Guard rescues 25 fishermen and 12 Coast Guardsmen as boarded vessel capsizes and sinks
The U.S. Coast Guard rescued 25 fishing boat crewmen and 12 Coast Guardsmen after the fishing boat they were aboard capsized and sank approximately 336 nautical miles southeast of Clipperton Island in the Eastern Pacific Ocean, Wednesday. Coast Guardsmen were conducting a routine boarding of the 160-foot Ecuadorian fishing vessel Marujita when it began listing and became unsafe to remain aboard. Photo’s, >click to read< 08:55
New Bedford, Massachusetts fishing company, managers, vessel captain to pay in civil penalties
New Bedford, Massachusetts-based Vila Nova do Corvo II, Inc., company managers Carlos Rafael and Stephanie Rafael DeMello, and vessel captain Carlos Pereira agreed to pay a total of $511,000 in civil penalties and to perform vessel improvements. This was to ensure compliance measures to resolve federal Clean Water Act claims stemming from oily bilge discharges from the commercial fishing vessel Vila Nova do Corvo II, a related discharge of fuel oil filters, and violations of pollution control regulations. The United States filed the complaint in this action in April 2019 in the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts. >click to read< 13:00
Cost-Effective ‘Renewable’ Energy Is Like Unobtanium: A Fictional Construct
We must continue diversifying our energy supply, that means increasing our output of solar, wind, geothermal, hydro- and ocean-based energy,,, Blah, blah, blah. Anyone who works in real energies will probably know a different story.,,, energy expert, Mark P. Mills, describing the vast quantity of non-renewable, not-even-recyclable waste that nifty green energy baubles such as wind-farm turbines generate,,, “Renewable energy” is a misnomer. Wind and solar machines and batteries are built from nonrenewable materials. And they wear out. Old equipment must be decommissioned, generating millions of tons of waste.,,, Building one wind turbine requires 900 tons of steel, 2,500 tons of concrete and 45 tons of nonrecyclable plastic. >click to read< 14:57
‘Disgusting and embarrassing’: Sunken shrimp boat spurs call for changes in Port Royal
Only the top of the shrimp boat’s pilothouse was visible Wednesday morning from the Port Royal dock where the 60-foot vessel had floated abandoned for months. The shrimp boat sank Tuesday, sending fuel into Battery Creek and calling attention to the other rotting, junk-laden and abandoned boats amassed at the town-owned dock. “If those folks owe us money or they’re not shrimping, they don’t need to be here,” Willis said. “This is supposed to be a working shrimping dock.” Video, >click to read< 13:03
New York fishes for information in offshore wind research
NYSERDA President and CEO Alicia Barton said: “As New York becomes the national epicentre for the US offshore wind industry, we continue to undertake evidence-based environmental and commercial fishing related research to help us advance offshore wind development in a way that is sensitive to the environment, ocean and the economy.,,, The state intends to use evidence-based environmental and commercial fishing related research to help advance offshore wind development. In other words, bend over! >click to read<12:34
New York picks five projects to advance responsible development of offshore wind – The selected projects include, National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) with the Responsible Offshore Development Alliance (RODA) and others, Responsible Offshore Development Alliance (RODA), Biodiversity Research Institute, Ecology and Environment, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Approximately $2 million was made available as part of this competitive solicitation for projects in one of five categories: >click to read<
D.C. Circuit gears up for busy environmental docket – Massachusetts Lobstermen’s Association v. Ross,
A federal appeals court in Washington is starting to fill in its fall argument calendar and is already set to handle several major cases involving energy infrastructure, air pollution and environmental rollbacks from the Trump administration.,,, Marine monument — Oct. 22, In Massachusetts Lobstermen’s Association v. Ross, D.C. Circuit judges will review the Obama-era designation of the Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument. The lobstermen and other challengers say the former administration overreached when it outlawed energy development and most commercial fishing in the protected area off the New England coast. They lost their case in lower court last year and swiftly appealed >click to read< 08:39
“LML 144” – Sailboat secures past to present with Homer to Bristol Bay trip
Standing tall among the thousands of visitors at last weekend’s Salmonfest was a 29-foot long wooden vessel with a 9-foot beam, a 25-foot mast, and a plaque identifying it as “LML 144.”,,, Accompanying it were Tim Troll of Dillingham and Dave Seaman and Kate Mitchell, both of Homer, organizers of “Sailing Back to the Bay.” The vessel is set to take off and then follow a route that has linked Homer and Bristol Bay for decades. It will sail west, across Cook Inlet to Williamsport, be portaged 26 miles to Iliamna Lake, sail the length of the lake with stops at villages along the way, navigate the Kvichak River, and then proceed on Bristol Bay to the community of Naknek, arriving an estimated two weeks later, in time for Naknek’s “Fishtival.” Total distance of the journey: more than 200 miles. Photo’s >click to read< 22:02
Transported in ship ballast, Invasive crab poses threat to coastal ecosystem
Alaska normally welcomes European tourists. One traveler who’s been officially banned, however, is the European green crab, an invasive species with the potential to overrun coastal ecosystems. The green crab has already colonized Washington and parts of British Columbia, and conservationists want to delay its arrival in Alaska for as long as possible. The green crab lacks predators outside its original habitat,,, >click to read< 20:35
FISH & MEN: A film on the High Cost of Cheap Fish
We hope the fishing families and pioneers featured in this film will inspire a movement,,, For centuries, cod fed the world and helped build a nation. Nowhere was that more so than in Gloucester, Massachusetts – America’s oldest fishing port. But, today all that has changed… From California to Maine, small fishing communities struggle to survive. The iconic American fisherman is in a perfect storm of foreign competition, erratic regulations and rising costs. Trailer, photo’s, of some of the best people on the planet. Please support this effort. >click to read< 14:51
Athearn Marine Agency Boat of the Week: 2000 Novi Lobster boat, 44’x11”x 20′ 6”, 3412 Cat
Specifications, information and 30 photos >click here< To see all the boats in this series, >click here< 12:44
Coast Guard urges EPIRB education to save taxpayer dollars, lives
When the Coast Guard receives an EPIRB alert and cannot trace it to the owner due to missing or outdated registration information, they launch aircraft and boat crews to search the area for signs of distress. It costs approximately $15,000 per hour to fly a C-130 Hercules aircraft, $10,000 per hour to fly an MH-60 Jayhawk helicopter, and $5,000 per hour to operate a Coast Guard small boat. Since October 1, 2018, there have been 16 confirmed false alerts for distress beacons in Alaska that cost the taxpayer approximately $353,108. Of those 16 cases, three of the distress beacons were located in garbage dumps. The cost for searching for those beacons was approximately $35,000. >click to read< 14:53
The Global Ocean Grab – Fishing Rights: We can still help save our BC fishing communities!
The sea is an open space that, beyond coastal waters, does not belong to any particular nation or group. People have been harvesting food directly from the sea since time immemorial and the oceans are a resource that belongs to all humanity. Unfortunately, in the age of globalization, the management of this shared heritage of limited resources is based on legal frameworks that undermine small-scale fishers and community management systems while reinforcing the disproportionate power of corporations and other private actors. One of these “legal” mechanisms involves reallocating access to fishing rights and quotas to increase economic efficiency, but this model is very weak in regards to conservation and ensuring equity and social justice. >click to read< 10:42
