Monthly Archives: January 2014
Maine fishery officials are shutting out commercial divers
I’ve been a commercial diver in the state of Maine for more than 23 years. In my career I’ve dove commercially for urchins, sea scallops, clams, periwinkles, mussels, lobster and logs. You name it, and I’ve probably either tried it or am going to try it to supplement and increase my diving opportunities and income. Read more@bdn 13:07
Letter: Cape Wind’s Maine deal cuts Mass. short – Matthew A.M. Lash, National Electrical Contractors Association of Greater Boston
Over $100 million of high-road jobs are in the air — and they’re blowing north to Maine. After years of touting projected economic benefits to the commonwealth, Cape Wind and its turbine provider, Siemens, recently inked a $100 million-plus contract with Maine-based Cianbro Corp. to construct substantial elements of the offshore wind development planned for the Massachusetts coast. Read more@southcoasttoday 12:15
“Alaska Salmon Now” Calls on Wal-Mart To Make A Decison About Sustainability Certifications
A small organization made up primarily of commercial fishermen and consumers is pressing Wal-Mart to make a decision about stocking products made with salmon from Alaska. KDLG’s Mike Mason has the story. Listen @kdlg 11:28
F/V Michael & Kristen, crew rides out storm on 11-day Georges trip
The Michael & Kristen, a 78-foot offshore lobster boat, arrived back in its home port of Gloucester Monday morning — 11 days after launching a trip to Georges Bank that spanned the new year turnover and exposed the boat and its five-man crew to some very choppy weather. Read more@gdt 05:15
The History of Upper Cook Inlet Salmon Fisheries By Katie Sechrist and Joe Rutz
The salmon-rich waters of Cook Inlet in Southcentral Alaska have given rise to several unique fisheries over the past century. The Kenai River boasts some of the most active fisheries in the state. Thousands of recreational fishers flock to the crowded banks every year with their rods, reels, and dip nets, ready to take home their limit of salmon. Alaska’s recreational fisheries are a relatively new concept (the majority of the state’s historical fisheries being largely commercial) but have grown to become an integral part of the state’s income and fisheries management. Read [email protected] 22:15
Western Gulf Fishermen’s Association have voiced their opposition DFO’s logbook plans
WGFA president Craig Avery raised his group’s concerns with Colin MacIsaac, PEI chief of resource management with DFO. MacIsaac was attending the group’s annual meeting. “We want to see something in place where we know the data is going to be used before we go ahead with the work and expense of logbooks. I think it should be put off until 2015, until DFO demonstrates to us that they can use the information they are going to get,” Avery said. “I think it is a waste of time.” Read more@sou’wester 21:25
Press Release: WPRFMC – Tuna Commission 2014-2017 Measures Are Driven by Allocation, Not Conservation
Despite being unjustly cast as the villain in the negotiating process, the United States ceded longline catch and purse-seine fishing effort limits. By contrast, despite being subject to some constraints, the member nations of the Forum Fisheries Agency (FFA) can continue to expand their tuna fisheries, especially purse seining. The flimsy excuse for this unchecked expansion is that the Pacific Island members of FFA have to bear a disproportionate burden of the conservation measures, though this has yet to be convincingly demonstrated to the United States and other Commission members. Read more here 19:27
Alaska Lieutenant Governor Mead Treadwell Rejects Gill Net Initiative
January 6, 2014, Anchorage, AK – Lieutenant Governor Mead Treadwell today rejected an initiative to prohibit shore gill nets and set nets in nonsubsistence areas of the state. Read [email protected] 19:16
Farming salmon on land is possible, project suggests – Future of fisheries may not require fish to ever see the ocean
As its name implies, the Atlantic salmon has always been seen as an ocean dweller. But the Canadian fishing industry is on the verge of being able to grow this saltwater fish anywhere – including, hypothetically, in the prairie provinces. The Namgis closed containment facility on Vancouver Island is the first salmon farm in North America to grow Atlantic salmon on a commercial scale in a completely land-based aquaculture system. Read more@cbcnews 18:06
Fisheries and Oceans library closings called loss to science
Irreplaceable science research may be lost when Department of Fisheries and Oceans libraries across the country are closed down, researchers fear. Fisheries and Oceans Canada hopes to close seven of its 11 libraries by 2015. Already, stories have emerged about books and reports thrown into dumpsters and the general public being allowed to rummage through bookshelves. Read more@cbcnews 17:59
Board of Fish at Kodiak: permit stacking, trawling hot topics; Wal-Mart reps talk salmon at Juneau
This is Fish Radio. I’m Laine Welch — The Fish Board comes to Kodiak and Wal-Mart reps talk salmon in Alaska – Permit stacking and trawl fisheries are the topics that will likely get the most attention when the State Board of Fisheries meets in Kodiak today through Friday. Read more@fishradio 17:43
It’s not every day scientists discover a new ocean current.
Well, in 2004, two Icelandic researchers announced that they’d found what they thought was a whole new ocean current flowing south through the Denmark Strait, off the east coast of Greenland. They called it The North Icelandic Jet, and they hypothesized that it supplied half the deep, southerly-flowing water that counter-balances the Gulf Stream. Dr. Bob Pickart a senior scientist at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, was immediately intrigued by the North Icelandic Jet. Was it real? Where did it come from? How much water did it carry? Read more@capeandisland 15:32
Oceans Under Siege: NRDC tries to legitmize marine spatial planning as combating “ocean sprawl”. MSP IS ocean sprawl!
Dear EarthTalk: I recently heard the term “ocean sprawl,” which was a new one on me. We all know “sprawl” as it manifests itself above sea level. But in the oceans? Can you enlighten? – Bill Chadwick, Nantucket, MA Read more@infozine 13:57
Proposed rules call for more reporting by seafood dealers to help fisheries
Beaufort County seafood dealers may have to do more paperwork in 2014 due to proposed changes in federal reporting requirements. The biggest change would require dealers to report their purchases from fishermen every week instead of every two weeks. While not excited by more red tape, Beaufort County dealers have been largely receptive to the proposed changes, which could help the fish that provide their livelihood. Read more@islandpackett 11:49
“We were primed to make some money,” – Georgia’s shrimping season a disaster
Jim Page, a marine biologist with the DNR Coastal Resources Division, says sample trawls along the coast show shrimp catches had been well below average throughout the fall season. “Food shrimp is the most valuable component of Georgia’s seafood industry. Thus far, during the 2013 season, slightly over 1 million pounds has been reported, with a value of around $5 million,” Page said. Read more@albanyherald 11:19
Man’s body found near boat after search in Lunenburg County
A 78-year-old fisherman from Lunenburg County is dead after he failed to return home overnight, according to Nova Scotia RCMP. Police said a search for the man in South Stonehurst, near Blue Rocks, ended at about 5:15 a.m. on Monday when the man’s body was found on the shoreline near his nine-metre fishing boat. Read more@cbcnews 08:32
Raising the Nemesis after storm sinking
The Nemesis, a 21-foot Novi vessel made in Nova Scotia, sank off T-Wharf in Rockport Harbor sometime late Thursday night or early Friday morning, during the snowstorm. And on Saturday, owner Andy Arnold of Beverly — a commercial scuba diver who salvages sunken boats for a living — led the effort to haul it back to the surface. Read more@gdt 00:12
Conserving the Kenai king is a mandate for board, ADFG
Editor’s note: This is the 10th and final part of the Morris Communications series “The case for conserving the Kenai king salmon.” King salmon are the lynchpin of the Cook Inlet fishery. Other runs of other salmon species are far more abundant, but the health of king salmon affects all users. Alaska is currently experiencing historic low runs of king salmon returning to major systems throughout the state. It affects Alaskans who have fished for kings for years in these rivers and creeks, and the visitors thousands of businesses depend on every summer. Read more@juneauempire 22:26
Project hopes to define lobster brand for one of nation’s iconic foods
When asked what foods represent Canada, people may think Canadian maple syrup before considering one of Canada’s most iconic foods: lobster. The Lobster Council of Canada, the voice of the Canadian lobster industry, believes the time is right to launch a project focused on defining a Canadian lobster brand identity, focused on its superior quality, delicious taste and year-round availability. Read more@the guardian 21:31
West Coast sardine crash could radiate throughout ecosystem
The sardine fishing boat Eileen motored slowly through moonlit waters from San Pedro to Santa Catalina Island, its weary-eyed captain growing more desperate as the night wore on. After 12 hours and $1,000 worth of fuel, Corbin Hanson and his crew returned to port without a single fish. “Tonight’s pretty reflective of how things have been going,” Hanson said. “Not very well.” Read more@latimes 20:35
Lower Columbia River – Discussions under way about a possible smelt season this year, one-day-per-week sport fishery or a small commercial bobber-net test fishery
There was a time when millions of migrating Pacific smelt would jam the Lower Columbia River en route to tributaries, while thousands of sport dip-netters lined the shores to catch them by the bucket loads. By the late 1990s, these small silver-colored fish started falling off the map, and fisheries dwindled to the point where National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) listed them as threatened under the Endangered Species Act in spring of 2010. Smelt have been off-limits to fishermen since 2011, and that means even touching them dead or alive is a no-no. Read more@seattletimes 14:41
In Deep Winter Alaska’s Largest Fisheries Get Underway
(SitNews) – Salmon will always be the heart of Alaska’s fisheries. That’s why many people think of summer as “the fishing season.” But that’s not the case. The deep of winter is when Alaska’s largest fisheries get underway each year. On January first, hundreds of boats with hook and line gear or big pots will begin plying the waters of the Bering Sea and Gulf of Alaska for Pacific cod, rockfish and other groundfish. Then on January 20th trawlers take to the seas to target Alaska pollock, the world’s largest food fishery with harvests near three billion pounds. Read more@sitnews 12:59
Price of bluefin tuna nosedives at Tokyo auction – Dramatic Pew statement- “You have to wonder what the last fish is going to cost,”
TOKYO — Sushi restaurateur Kiyoshi Kimura paid 7.36 million yen (about $70,000) for a 230-kilogram bluefin tuna in the year’s celebratory first auction at Tokyo’s Tsukiji market on Sunday, just five per cent of what he paid a year earlier despite signs that the species is in serious decline. Read more@therecord 12:27
On the Grand Banks – Hibernia platform oil leak curbs production
An oil leak at the site of the Hibernia offshore platform on the Grand Banks off the coast of Newfoundland has resulted in a significant downturn in oil production.Workers reported a small leak on Dec. 18. Hibernia management company officials said it happened in a valve that is part of the rig’s offloading system. Only 10 litres of crude oil spilled at the time, and no oil sheens were spotted on the water at that time. Read more@cbcnews 12:10
Baker – The axeman cometh for DFO and Coast Guard?
Some things are hard to explain even by the most verbose of politically astute minds. The ongoing gutting/changing of budgets and services at the Department of Fisheries and Oceans (DFO) and the Canadian Coast Guard are beginning to defy logic. Less offshore fishing surveillance – I won’t ramble on about the rationale, only to say it’s comparable to firing the cops because you haven’t had a serious crime in a while. Read more@cbcnews 10:35
Rhode Island Fishermen’s Alliance Weekly Update JANUARY 5, 2014
The Rhode Island Fishermen’s Alliance is dedicated to its mission of continuing to help create sustainable fisheries without putting licensed fishermen out of business.” Read the Update 10:16
USCGC Polar Star to assist vessels in Antarctica
ALAMEDA – The U.S. Coast Guard Cutter Polar Star is responding to a Jan. 3rd request from the Australian Maritime Safety Authority (AMSA) to assist the Russian-Flagged Akademik Shokalskiy and Chinese-Flagged Xue Long that are reportedly ice-bound in the Antarctic. The Russian and Chinese Governments have also requested assistance from the United States. Read more@uscgnews 18:51
F/V Unicorn Takes on Water; Volunteers Rally to Save Her
F/V Unicorn nearly sank Friday night in Menemsha after a cracked valve caused the docked boat to take on gallons of water. A crew of volunteers worked into the night in below freezing temperatures to pump out water from the hull and safely secure it. Read more@vineyardgazette 16:14
Trying Very Hard To Die: The Preventable Disease in Commercial Fishing – Is it the work, or the workers?
Yesterday, the New York Times published an outstanding piece of journalism – A Speck in the Sea by Paul Tough. But what struck me most wasn’t Aldridge’s will to live or the harrowing details of his survival; it wasn’t the incredible search effort to find him, either. It was that Aldridge, like so many commercial fishermen before him, seemed to be trying very hard to die. Read more@gcaptain 10:59
