Monthly Archives: May 2014
Freeport fisherman lands 200-pound halibut alone
Gillis still had the 25-pound head of the halibut in a bucket of the back of his truck when I ran into him in Digby on Saturday, May 24. It didn’t take much to get the story out of him. Thursday, May 22 didn’t start so great for Gillis; his crew backed out on him, but with a wife and kids at home, Gillis has to earn a living. So he went alone. Up at 2:30 a.m., he loaded the boat by himself and set off on to the dark sea. Read more here 14:35
Salmon farmers in B.C. fish for federal legislation
The lack of a federal aquaculture act is hurting British Columbia salmon farming, and the sector as a whole in Canada, say industry leaders. “We’re the only seafood farming industry in the world that doesn’t have its own legislation,” said Ruth Salmon, the executive director of the Canadian Aquaculture Industry Alliance (CAIA). Read more here 06:55
Louisiana: First catches of shrimp season ‘not too good’
It was a mixed bag at docks lining local bayous as the first skiffs returned to deliver the first brown shrimp of the spring season. Inshore waters between Freshwater Bayou and the Mississippi River opened at 6 a.m. Monday, but local fishermen said it’s too early to tell whether an already shortened season is going to be bountiful. Read more here 06:36
Fairhaven Shipyard neighbors worry about shipyard reconfiguration
FAIRHAVEN — The Fairhaven is asking the state Department of Environmental Protection for permission to reconfigure docks in the North Yard, and neighbors worry the move could result in more pollution. Read more here 06:16
Jersey Shore fishing: Seismic blasting to begin June 3 unless opposition prevails
Just what effect seismic testing will have along the Jersey Shore is in question, but it seems that almost everyone except the Obama Administration is opposed to taking a chance on any negative consequences resulting from it during a study that hardly appears to be of high priority. Read more here 21:45
Fuel costs, weather, and regulations contribute to smaller NC seafood harvests
“They just won’t let us fish,” Everett said. “People just can’t make it.” Everett’s father opened the business in 1942, and it shipped fish to Boston, Philadelphia and New York City. But, he said, with tightening restrictions on where fishermen can fish, how many fish they can catch and more, “There was no way to pay your bills.” Read more here 20:18
Woods Hole allies with energy firms
In the coming days, according to officials at Woods Hole, the institution is set to sign agreements with Saudi Aramco, the primary oil company owned by the Saudi government, to study the potential for “hydrocarbons” in the Red Sea. It is also preparing to ink a deal for a “simulation study” on behalf of the Italian oil company Eni, while it has half a dozen other proposals in the works with unnamed corporations, the officials said. Yet earlier this month, Woods Hole coauthored the Obama administration’s National Climate Assessment, which partly blamed hydrocarbons for causing climate change and damaging oceans. Read more here 13:10
The sea in his blood – He doesn’t plan to retire from lobster fishing any time soon.
Roy Payzant heads out to sea at 6 a.m., where he and his two-man crew haul 250 lobster traps every day the weather is decent, which recently meant a six-day week. Some evenings he’s in bed by 8 p.m. and he’s up at 5 a.m. to do it all again. “I never have to set an alarm clock,” which isn’t surprising given Payzant has been doing this for almost 75 years. He turns 92 next month and is a full-time lobster fisherman. Read more here 11:21
Oceanography study examines risks of Old Harry Oil and Gas development
A team of environmental researchers is trying fill some of the knowledge gaps in exploring for oil and gas in the Gulf of St. Lawrence and the preliminary results give some idea of how vulnerable western Newfoundland’s coastline might be to a spill. Read more here 10:34
N.C. gill net limits hurt watermen’s livelihoods
John Norris stiffly eased down into his flat-bottom boat using a small step ladder and a helping hand from his fishing partner and wife, Brenda. If he tilts too far, he falls over. Norris, a 68-year-old commercial waterman, is being treated for cancer. He’s had operations on both knees and shoulders, and he carries vertical and horizontal scars more than 12 inches long crisscrossing his torso. Read more here 09:57
It’s back: dead whale turns up on shore
The dead whale had been towed out to sea starting Wednesday by a vessel working on behalf of the Fallbrook-based Marine Conservation Science Institute, but the carcass never made it quite far enough to escape the strong currents that brought it back to shore at Border Field State Park. Read more here 09:16
Keeping it real with eels
ROCKPORT — There is much that still is not known about the American eel. But that’s hardly the fault of Eric Hutchins. Hutchins, a NOAA fisheries biologist, is all about keeping it real with the eel. It would be hard to find anyone, anywhere, better at the eel spiel than the Rockport resident. Read more here Five free pages! This article is three pages. Talk about being cheap? 09:00
Capt. Edwards casts off aboard Miss Judy Too for another shrimping season
Capt. Tommy Edwards was back out in open waters as the local shrimping season kicked off. Aboard Edwards shrimp boat the Miss Judy Too, it’s a five man crew. Edwards and his crew haven’t been able to shrimp for the past seven months, but now that shrimping season has started, they finally get to cast out their nets. Read more here 22:48
Spring 2014 edition of Pacific Islands Fishery News
Our Spring 2014 edition of Pacific Islands Fishery News is now available online! To download the complete edition, please click here and allow a few extra seconds for the file to upload. Council Explores Measures to Provide Relief to American Samoa Fishermen, South Pacific Albacore Crash is Region-wide, Amendment 7 Approved, US Territories to Benefit, and more 16:35
In Depth, Dan Bacher – Former Marine Life Protection Act science co-chair sentenced to 10 months
A federal judge in San Francisco on May 20 sentenced Ron LeValley of Mad River Biologists, the former co-chair of the Marine Life Protection Act (MLPA) Initiative Science Advisory Team for the North Coast, to serve 10 months in federal prison for his role in a conspiracy to embezzle over $852,000 in federal funds from the Yurok Tribe. The “marine protected areas” created under the MLPA Initiative fail to protect the ocean from oil spills and drilling, water pollution, military testing, seismic testing, wave and wind energy projects, corporate aquaculture and all other uses of the ocean other than fishing and gathering. Read more here 15:44
Mississippi to start voluntary snapper reporting program – (It should be mandatory)
BILOXI, Miss. (AP) — The Mississippi Department of Marine Resources will start its voluntary red snapper reporting program for recreational fishermen on June 1. The purpose of the program is to allow agency officials to better track how many red snapper are being harvested and landed in Mississippi. Read more here 15:13
Coast Guard rescues fisherman after vessel sinks near Newport, Ore.
The master of the 28-foot fishing vessel Rip Rider contacted Coast Guard Sector North Bend, Oregon, at 8:20 a.m., via VHF-FM radio reporting that he was taking on water and had donned survival equipment, and at 8:33 a.m., the man’s 406 mhz emergency position indicating radio beacon activated, broadcasting his exact location. Read more here 14:22
The corporate take-over of fisheries policy making
In the past couple of years a number of international conferences and gatherings of key policy makers, corporate representatives and international NGOs have taken huge strides in setting the global agenda in fisheries policy. A worrying pattern has begun to emerge: the interests of small-scale fisheries peoples are consistently sidelined as representative organisations are rarely invited and, if so, are barely listened to. This article will run through some of the most recent events, and documents how a corporate take-over of fisheries policy is taking place. Read more here 13:55
Can US eliminate invasive species by eating them?
HOUSTON (AP) – It seems like a simple proposition: American lakes, rivers and offshore waters are filling up with destructive fish and crustaceans originally from other parts of the world, many of them potential sources of food. So why not control these invasive populations by getting people to eat them? Read more here 13:16
Cold Water Cowboys star taking fame in stride
Although he’s taken some teasing from friends and occasionally gets recognized in public, Caines said his newfound notoriety isn’t likely to go to his head. “I’m me whether I’m happy or I’m mad,” Caines said with a smile Friday prior to a promotional appearance at Colemans at the Garden in Corner Brook. “If I got to go be somebody else for a TV show, then the TV show can leave.” Read more here 11:19
Bering Sea fishery management needs to change for halibut users across Alaska
This year the Magnuson Stevens Act will be reauthorized by Congress. The MSA is the law by which the National Marine Fisheries Service and the North Pacific Fisheries Council manage the federal fisheries off of Alaska. In public hearings, the message that “all is well in Alaska waters” and “no major changes to the law are needed” has been echoed by many groundfish industry lobbyists. Although no one will dispute that the Bering Sea groundfish industry is a behemoth, its financial success is coming at the expense of other users. Halibut fishermen in all areas of the Bering Sea have a catch limit of 3.2 million pounds this year. The estimated bycatch cap in the Bering Sea is almost 8 million pounds. Read more here 10:58
China lifts geoduck ban, to Peninsula suppliers’ relief
China has lifted a five-month ban on live shellfish from U.S. West Coast waters, a move greeted with relief by North Olympic Peninsula producers. The Chinese government announced the ban’s end in a letter Friday, officials said. China imposed the ban in December on the import of clams, oysters, mussels and scallops harvested from Washington, Oregon, Alaska and . Read more here 10:33
Eelgrass Restoration program is underway in Boston Harbor
The removal of wastewater inputs, heavy organic loads, and siltation is very important to successful eelgrass restoration efforts. Water quality improvements from re-direction of the Boston Harbor sewage outfalls to an offshore site have resulted in a measurable reversal of within the Harbor Read more here 10:20
Guest column: Follow the Will of the Voters – Keep the Net Limitation
On May 15, the First District Court of Appeal in Tallahassee heard yet another legal challenge to the net limitation placed into the state Constitution in 1994 by 72 percent of Florida’s voters. This critical conservation issue was placed on the ballot 20 years ago after many years of short-sighted management of public marine resources that allowed huge nets to be used in our state’s salt waters. These nets, which catch fish by entangling them by their gills,,, Read more here 10:02
Upgrading Sacramento’s wastewater treatment could cost $2 billion
In December 2010, the Central Valley Regional Water Quality Control Board told the plant to clean up its effluent as a condition of renewing its state discharge permit. The board found that high volumes of ammonia in the water were disrupting the food chain and endangering fish such as salmon and Delta smelt. Single-celled organisms posed health risks to people who came in contact with the river water, board members concluded. Read more here 09:12
‘It’s not a big deal’: Lobster fishermen say closure of offshore herring fishery not too detrimental
BELFAST, Maine — The National Marine Fisheries Service Saturday closed a large swath of ocean offshore in the Gulf of Maine to fishing for Atlantic herring — the preferred bait of many lobstermen. But the closure should not have a major detrimental impact on the state’s valuable lobster fishery, according to David Cousens, president of the Maine Lobstermen’s Association. Read more here 08:30
N.C. Marine Fisheries Commission – Certain waters to re-open to gill nets
Gill net fishermen will soon be able to return to the water, but no red drum caught in their nets as bycatch can be kept before the next season, which opens Sept. 1. The N.C. Marine Fisheries Commission took action Thursday that re-opens waters in certain exempted areas to allow anchored large-mesh gill net operations beginning June 1. However, no possession of red drum will be allowed. Read more here 13:35
Northern cod reclaiming its territory
After being beaten down by overfishing to a fraction of the mighty force it once was, northern cod are starting to rebuild and re-populate its traditional areas off the coasts of Newfoundland and Labrador. That’s good news for a species that has shown few positive signs of recovery during the 22 years since being placed under a moratorium. Read more here 09:04
