Monthly Archives: May 2014
North Carolina Fisheries Association bus trip for a meeting of the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission.
“The purpose is for the fishermen to learn more about the ASMFC and how it works and how it affects them,” Schill said. “We are going to make a statement. We have never taken a contingent to the ASMFC before.” Read more here, schedule, and pick up points 11:50
Elver fishermen reach half of quota with three weeks left in season
There’s less than three weeks to go in Maine’s big-money elver fishing season. And while fishermen are having luck atching eels, even the Maine Marine Patrol admits fishermen’s incomes are down from last year. Video report here 10:33
N.C. Division of Marine Fisheries employee part of fishing operation cited for violation
An N.C. Division of Marine Fisheries employee was part of a commercial fishing operation that was recently cited for a fisheries violation. Derris Warren, a marine fisheries technician II in the division’s Fisheries Management Section, was fishing aboard the vessel Hannah Denise on April 3 when it was stopped by Marine Patrol officers Dean Nelson and Brian Gupton in Taylors Creek in Beaufort. Read more here 09:57
Millennium Marine launches boat building business in Maine
Maritime lobster industry hurt by P.E.I. prices: fishermen
Frustrated P.E.I. lobster fishermen say the low price set for Island lobster is dragging down prices across the Maritimes. Lobster processors on P.E.I. have set the price at $3.75 for canners and $4.25 for market lobsters. “Why are we giving our lobsters away? We’ve got the best lobsters in the world and we’re selling them for bargain basement prices,” said Souris fisherman Shane Clinton. Read more here 09:03
Mexican man gets life sentence for death of Coast Guard officer
A Mexican man convicted in the 2012 killing of a U.S. Coast Guard officer, the first on-duty death since 1927, was sentenced on Monday to life in federal prison without the possibility of parole, a newspaper reported. Read more here 08:19
New rockfish catch limits eyed
Worried by recent declines in the numbers of Maryland’s state fish, Atlantic states fisheries regulators are weighing slashing the annual striped bass catch by up to one-third next year all along the East Coast and in the Chesapeake Bay. “It’s called being regulated out of business,” said Robert T. Brown Sr., president of the Maryland Watermen’s Association. He contended that “there’s no shortage of fish.” Read more here 21:25
Togiak Herring Update: Most Participants Have Called it a Season
Alaska’s largest herring fishery is essentially over despite that fact that the fishery is open until further notice. The total harvest in this year’s Togiak sac-roe herring fishery is over 24-thousand tons, which is still short of the 27.8-thousand ton quota available to fishermen. Read more here By Mike Mason 19:22
Pacific Walruses Removed from the Unusual Mortality Event in the North Pacific Pacific walruses have been removed from the unusual mortality event declared in the North Pacific for several marine mammal species. KDLG’s Mike Mason has the story. Audio report here 19:25
“simply the best fish in the world.” Royalty. Copper River salmon shall arrive in Seattle on Friday
The 
will open for the season Thursday morning and the first fish is expected to arrive at Sea-Tac at 6 a.m. Friday. But the demand will be high because of the short open fishing period. The open window for the Copper River District is only 12 hours on Thursday, according to the Alaska Department of Fish and Gave Division of Commercial Fisheries Read more here 18:06
This is Fish Radio. I’m Laine Welch …The reds start running this week at the Copper River – a market outlook
It’s hard to believe but Thursday marks the official start of Alaska’s 2014 salmon season with a 12 hour opener at the Copper River. The year’s first fresh sockeye salmon will be flown out and featured in markets far and wide. Read more here 16:47
CBS Sixty Minutes – Saving the wild salmon
May 11, 2014, 7:40 PM|Do salmon farms help or hurt the declining wild salmon population? Dr. Sanjay Gupta reports on the controversy surrounding the multibillion dollar industry. Watch the video here 15:28
ASMFC Spring Meeting, May 12-15, 2014 is under way
Board/Section meeting proceedings will be broadcast daily via webinar beginning at 10 a.m. on May 12th, continuing daily until the conclusion of the meeting (expected to be 3:15 p.m.) on May 15th. The webinar will allow registrants to listen to board/section deliberations and view presentations and motions as they occur. Read more here Webinar registration is here 12:28
BP oil spill: methane persisted in sea after microbe cleanup
As much as half a million tonnes of natural gas, 80 percent of it methane, leaked into the deep sea as a result of the blowout on April 20, 2010, on BP’s Deepwater Horizon rig. The leak triggered a surprising “bloom” of marine bacteria that feasted on the gassy hydrocarbon plume. The bugs did indeed remove a significant amount of the gas, but their population crashed while the leak was still in progress, it said. Read more here 12:15
Record Prices For Stone Crab Claws Amid Scarcity
Florida Keys-based 
tells The Key West Citizen that fish houses paid $25 to $30 a pound for jumbo-sized claws, $18 to $21 a pound for large claws and $8 to $11 a pound for medium claws. Read more here 10:40
Falmouth Ma. police tip foils lucrative elver eel poaching
FALMOUTH — The Falmouth Department of Marine and Environmental Services responded to a suspected case of elver poaching Saturday, saving about 35 pounds of the young and valuable eels. The department received a tip when a driver near a herring run saw two men who quickly left in a truck when the passer-by tried to engage them, department Deputy Director Chuck Martinsen said. Read more here 08:24
New Brunswick and Nova Scotia Lobster fisheries seeking MSC certification
The MSC, an international non-profit organization, has a program to label fish products indicating the product is from a well-managed and sustainable fishery. This labeling helps consumers in their decisions on buying fish. Read more here 08:09
Atlantic Coast Fishery News: Magnuson Stevens Act Questions sent to Senators on the Commerce Committee
Atlantic Coast Fishery News Sent a series of questions to your Senators on the Commerce Committee regarding The Magnuson Stevens Act. The questions are listed here, and the answers from your representatives will be published in the next issue. Please read these questions, and feel free to comment at Fisherynation.com. Yours could be included in the published article.
Many of the Rules adopted under the Magnuson Stevens Act have the net collective effect of preventing commercial fishermen from landing the total allowable catch in numerous fisheries in a fishing year. Some of these rules concern use and payment of federal observers, seasonal and geographical closure of highly productive fishing grounds, tight limitations on the catching or landing of various choke species that prematurely shut the target fishery (even though the target fishery is NOT overfished).19:24
Saving Striped Bass (It sounds so dramatic!)
By June, the fish will be racing through these waters on the way to coastal New England as part of their northern migration, a biological spectacle akin to the movement of salmon on the West Coast. But with the striped bass population in decline, competition for the prized catch has intensified between recreational and commercial fishermen, setting up a showdown over a fishery that generates, according to one study, several billion dollars a year. Read more here
The Morgan’s long journey: Five-year restoration has brought ship to the eve of departure
Mystic – When work began in November of 2008 on what would become the $10.6 million project to restore the whaling ship Charles W. Morgan, there were no plans to sail her again. The ship’s 80-year career, which began in 1841 in New Bedford, Mass., and would take her on 37 profitable voyages through the world’s great oceans, was over. Read more here 12:44
Whaling ship sets sail on new mission Read more here 12:55
A Bench is dedicated to Brad Liska during annual Chatham Blessing of the Fleet
“B Strong B Courageous B Liska.” – Brad, a Nauset Regional Middle School student who died in late 2012 of brain cancer, also was a member of a long-standing commercial fishing family in Chatham. His dad, Mark Liska, fishes on the F/V Sea Dance, and Brad’s grandad Amon “Dick” Liska crewed on fishing boats out of Chatham for 50 years. Read more here
Money available for Maine scallop projects – sea urchin survey underway
PORTLAND, Maine (AP) — Maine’s annual spring dive survey of green sea urchins is underway. Read more here — Maine Sea Grant is seeking proposals for research projects related to the nearshore scallop fishery in Maine. Read more here 11:03
Sea-lion miseries tied to sardine reduction – Do we let nature take its course if there are now too many?
Mass beachings of malnourished sea lions in 2013 are likely linked to a drop in sardine populations near Channel Islands rookeries where thousands of sea lions are born each year, federal officials say. More than 1,600 sea lion pups washed up on beaches from San Diego to Ventura between January and April 2013 – starving, dehydrated and suffering from a variety of diseases. Read more here 08:55
Update of fisheries law pits West Coast against East Coast
The Magnuson-Stevens Act was enacted in 1976 to protect fisheries collapsing from overfishing and poaching by foreign trawlers. But the upcoming fourth reauthorization of the main federal fisheries law has split American fishing factions by coastlines. The Magnuson-Stevens Act expired last September. Republicans in the House Natural Resources Committee and Democrats in the Senate Commerce Committee have released separate bills to update the 2006 reauthorizationed Read more here 00:39
Texas Begins Largest Oyster Reef Restoration in State History
The oyster reefs selected for this project include Middle Reef, Pepper Grove Reef and Hannah’s Reef in Galveston’s East Bay and the large Sabine Reef in Sabine Lake. Rodney said the Pepper Grove Reef oysters “were recently named as some of the tastiest oysters by Thrilllist.com.” Only two of the top fifteen oysters come from the Gulf of Mexico. Read more here 20:24
Louisiana is stirring up the hornets nest again with testing imported farmed shrimp.
Under their study 95% of samples tested positive for at least one illegal antibiotic. What needs to be done is a study by a independent organization as it is in Louisiana’s interest to put a bad name on imported shrimp to protect their domestic industry. Tom Wendt, Read more here 15:36
Pews Peter Baker, once again, pushes his agenda – No Refuge For Fish? Stressed Species Need Safe Habitat
Overfishing and warming waters are combining to create a potent one-two punch that threatens significant harm to New England’s already beleaguered fish and fishermen. Fortunately, there is one thing we can do to cushion both blows: protect ocean habitat — the places where fish spawn, grow, and find shelter and food. Read more here! 14:00
R.I. Democratic gubernatorial candidate Todd Giroux reacts to seal incident
Democratic gubernatorial candidate Todd Giroux moved a seal off a beach near his Bristol home in April. It is a violation of federal law to touch or move a seal. Giroux told NBC 10 he and two others were trying to help a troubled animal on the shore of the Kickemuit River. He said the seal appeared to have been shot. Someone Giroux calls a nosy neighbor called police. Read more here 12:10
Angry MP holds news conference on cuts to shrimp quotas – First In, First Out ain’t sitting right.
“I don’t even want to sit in front of this Canadian flag,” Watkins said. “It’s disgraceful. We, as Newfoundlanders are down here. They don’t care about us.” New Democrat MP Ryan Cleary didn’t miss a beat. “Let me move that flag out of the way, how’s that?” Read more here 11:27
Hunt for oil, gas in Gulf of St. Lawrence questioned – “The way fishermen feel is government is going to walk over us anyway,”
The Ecology Action Centre in Halifax and fishermen in Cape Breton are raising the alarm over the possibility of oil and gas exploration in the Gulf of St. Lawrence. Joanne Cook, marine toxics co-ordinator at the centre, said the Canada-Newfoundland Offshore Petroleum Board announced this week it was approving oil and gas exploration in the gulf. Read more here 09:41
U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, National Marine Fisheries Service proposed rule to amend ESA sections 4, 7, 10 of the Act
SUMMARY: We, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the National Marine Fisheries Service propose to amend our regulations, which implements the Endangered Species Act of 1973, as amended. In 1986, the Services established a definition for “destruction or adverse modification” that was found to be invalid by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth and Ninth…Read more here 11:33
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