Daily Archives: January 9, 2013
Down East sardine history lands in Searsport museum
SEARSPORT, Maine — The sardine industry in Maine has passed into history.
Someday someon may figure out a way to make the business of catching herring and canning them as sardines profitable here again.
But by all available evidence, it’s over. Read more
Dick Grachek – Pew laboring overtime on Tuna, in the Biblical sense.
Couldn’t resist; spent the whole day on this, got so fired up at their blatant BS. DG
Fish News EU reports another missive from Pew (see copy and link below). And it’s a Beaut…so full of feeling.
“THREE days after a single Pacific bluefin tuna fetched $1.76 million at auction in Tokyo, scientists have revealed their population has dropped 96.4 per cent from unfished levels, due to decades of overfishing.”
Notice how Pew cites the generic “scientists”, never mentioning exactly who these “scientists” are, or for whom they are working or receiving grants from, or who funded this particular scientific revelation. As if with the word scientist, the reader should pause a moment in awe and wonderment and take every word that follows as gospel—no need to inquire any further. If the Pewian scientists have revealed unto us…Behold, and we shall then believe. Read more!
Sharecroppers of the Sea – Alaska story hitting home in New England. Hard.
Guys like Jared Bright vie for control of the industry’s lower rungs, the only rungs that seem to be left. Simply put, they’re renters. They don’t own the halibut, not even when it lands in their boats. The fish are instead the property of a generation of wealthy owners, most of whom did nothing more than fish in the right place at the right time to get a stake.
Their ownership rights came courtesy of the federal government. At the time, it was a good idea. In ways, it still is. But it’s created what amounts to a feudal system over a natural resource.
It’s a system, called catch shares, that the government and environmental groups will tell you is the best thing to happen to fish since catch limits. But fishermen in the halibut and black-cod industry—the first in the country to live with the bizarre realities of these new policies—have weathered its real consequences, outcomes that fly in the face of more official, rosy portrayals. Outcomes like absentee landlords, brokers and bankers, fish quota that costs more than your house, and a new generation of people cluttering their hulls, demanding sandwiches. Read more
Fish Processing Ship Spills Diesel Fuel in Kodiak
Congressman Issa Wants More Information About the EPA’s “Bristol Bay Watershed Assessment” 01/08/13
KDLG’s Mike Mason has the details.Click here
John Tierney warns fishermen aid bill coming up short
emergency aid to fishermen would come up woefully short for the local industry. Read More
Interior Dept. Expedites Review of Arctic Drilling After Accidents
Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said that the expedited review, which is to be completed within 60 days, was prompted by accidents and equipment problems aboard Shell’s two Arctic drilling rigs, the Kulluk and the Noble Discoverer, as well as the Arctic Challenger, a vessel designed to respond to a potential well blowout and oil spill. In addition, the Coast Guard announced Tuesday that it would conduct a comprehensive marine casualty investigation of the ground ing of the Kulluk Read more
House plan guts aid for fisheries
Two newly released U.S. House Rules Committee amendments combine to roughly match the Senate appropriation totaling $60 billion for Superstorm Sandy relief, but virtually eliminate the $150 million for fisheries disaster aid a
imed at providing relief to the Northeast groundfishery, including fishermen working out of Gloucester. One amendment for $17 billion, filed by Rep. Hal Rogers, a Kentucky Republican and chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, contains no money for the fisheries disasters of Massachusetts, four other New England states and New York, as well as Mississippi’s oyster fishery and Alaska’s Chinook salmon fishery. Read more
