Daily Archives: February 26, 2013
Miss Ally’s final voyage recalled
Fisherman Sandy Stoddard
It was with fair winds that Woods Harbour fisherman Sandy Stoddard left the Port LaTour wharf on Sunday, Feb. 10 bound for the fishing grounds along the Scotian Shelf. “The weather was good,” said the veteran fisherman. “We had perfect weather for four or five days.”Stoddard, aboard the Logan and Morgan, his son Chrisjon on the Benji and Sisters, as well as Katlin Nickerson and the crew of the Miss Ally were among the boats on the fishing grounds that week. “Others were fishing to the east of us in an area known as the edge,” said Stoddard. “We were in the Gully. The Miss Ally was about 110 to 115 miles away to the southwest.” Read more
Japan will never stop whaling – minister
Hayashi, a graduate of the prestigious Kennedy School at Harvard University who first entered parliament in 1995, said Japan was tired of being lectured by nations whose own culinary cultures can seem a little off-colour. ‘In some countries they eat dogs, like Korea. In Australia they eat kangaroos. We don’t eat those animals, but we don’t stop them from doing that because we understand that’s their culture,’ Hayashi said in fluent English. Read more
Genetic study pursues elusive goal: How many humpbacks existed before whaling?
Scientists from Stanford University, the Wildlife Conservation Society, the American Museum of Natural History, and other organizations are closing in on the answer to an important conservation question: how many humpback whales once existed in the North Atlantic? Read more
Japan to take part in International Boston Seafood Show
BOSTON —Japan’s Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries will be setting up a Japan Pavilion at the upcoming International Boston Seafood Show 2013 (IBSS), North America’s largest seafood trade event, to be held from March 10-12, at the Boston Convention & Exhibition Center. Read more
Two opposing views of the Gulf Red Snapper Fishery
John Sackton — Feb 11, 2013 — A new allocation fight is taking place in the Gulf of Mexico with recreational charters, backed by the Coastal Conservation Association, preparing to steamroller commercial interests, and further restrict do
mestic red snapper from restaurant menus. Read more here
TOM ADAMS -Mr. Sackton’s recent analysis of the red snapper allocation fight that appeared in the recent Seafood.com News and SavingSeaFood.com website is woefully inaccurate. First and foremost, Mr. Sackton pits two specifically named organizations – the Coastal Conservation Association (CCA) and Gulf of Mexico Reef Shareholders Alliance – as being at opposite ends of the allocation battle for Gulf of Mexico red snapper. Read more here
Americam Samoa – Albacore fishery management under review Western Pacific Fishery Management Council
The American Samoa longline fishery is the second largest fishery in the US Pacific Islands. The fishery is based almost entirely on fishing for South Pacific albacore caught for the American Samoa canning industry, with only a small domestic market, and limited access to overseas markets. This South Pacific albacore is also important to the central South Pacific countries neighboring American Samoa, which also supply the American Samoa canning and fish processing industry.
Catches of South Pacific albacore by all fleets south of the equator have more than doubled in the past decade and are currently about 90 percent of maximum sustainable yield. This is due primarily to the doubling of vessels from China fishing under access agreements with the Solomon Islands and switching by Taiwanese longliners from targeting bigeye to albacore. Read more
Woods Harbour, N.S., plans funerals for missing fishermen
Families in Woods Harbour, N.S., are preparing funerals and memorial services for the five fishermen lost at sea after their fishing boat capsized on Feb. 17 in rough weather. Read more, watch video
New Jersey may get some reprieve on reduced flounder catch
The Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission, a compact of East Coast states that regulates migratory fish, is considering an addendum to the fishery management plan to allow sharing between states. Such a management technique has been used on commercial fisheries but never for the recreational sector, said Interstate Fisheries Management Plan Director Toni Kerns of the ASMFC. Read more
A Rich heritage: “All I wanted to do was build boats”
TREMONT – “I built boats from the time I could walk,” says Robert “Chummy” Rich. “Most of them wouldn’t float. If they did, they’d float upside down.”
If you are a wooden boat nut like I am, you’ll enjoy this article. Lots of Maine humor and history. Read more
Maine Voices: Plight of cod fishery should serve as wake-up call for policymakers By Peter Shelley, CLF
By Peter Shelley, senior counsel at the Conservation Law Foundation — Before New England’s most important fishery collapses completely and takes our codfish with it, solutions must start with the facts at hand: Many of New England’s groundfish, particularly Gulf of Maine and Georges Bank cod, are at historically low levels and may be in complete collapse. Read more
Not so fast, Councilor
Cod, NOAA, and Existence
Fishermen’s troubles are a direct result of mismanagement: inadequate science, unreasonable Maximum Sustainable Yield-crisis centric regulations, NOAA’s single species approach to a complex multi-species fishery, and then, of course, our beloved “returning profitability to fishermen” catch shares, a disastrous campaign to privatize and turn the fish resource into a Wall Street commodity at the expense and demise of working fishermen. Additionally, NOAA has traditionally ignored environmental factors, such as climate change, predation, and natural cycles, focusing solely on managing the fishermen, not the fish in their environment. If this cod stock is indeed “collapsing”, it is certainly not due to “over harvesting”—the groundfish managers’ Total Allowable Catch has been under-harvested for years, sometimes by 75%, but consistently underfished by at least 50%. https://fisherynation.com/dick-gracek
Unemployed? How ’bout a sweet gig at World Wildelife Fund!
World Wildlife Fund (WWF), the world’s leading conservation organization, seeks a Director of Seafood Engagement for Business and Industry. No mention of salary, though. Read more
We Paid for the Research, So Let’s See It – make public, without charge, all scientific papers
The Obama administration is right to direct federal agencies to make public, without charge, all scientific papers reporting on research financed by the government. In a memorandum issued on Friday, John Holdren, the president’s science adviser, directed federal agencies with more than $100 million in annual research and development expenditures to develop plans for making the published results of almost all the research freely available to everyone within one year of publication. Read more
American Samoa – Singapore-Based Shipping Company to Pay $2.2 Million for Covering up Oil Pollution
According to the plea agreement, including a joint factual statement, the company operated the vessel Southern Lily 2 in American Samoa. On June 22, 2012, the vessel was boarded by the U.S. Coast Guard for a routine inspection. During the inspection the Coast Guard discovered that the ship’s oil water separator was not functioning. The Coast Guard learned that the device had not been functioning for several months and, at the direction of the chief and second engineer, the oily waste water had been being discharged overboard in violation of international law. Read more
Petition urges NOAA Gloucester shutdown
With the regulated industry facing a virtual implosion based on a disputed legal ruling, an online petition campaign has been initiated to pressure Congress to close NOAA’s nearly new headquarters for the Northeast region in Blackburn Industrial Park and use the annual agency’s regional payroll — pegged at about $15 million a year — to provide relief for a recognized “economic disaster” in the groundfishery. Read more here
From the Deckboss
A leadership change at Icicle, Can hatcheries help?, Larger salmon haul expected this year.
Read more here, and as always, read the comments!
