Monthly Archives: July 2014
Judge: Dongwon knew seiner was unseaworthy before sinking
A judge with the District Court of Guam has determined Dongwon Industries knew about the unseaworthy condition of a vessel it allegedly owned and operated before sending its captains out to sea, and in turn, to their deaths. This determination is included as part of judge Joaquin V.E. Manibusan, Jr.’s decision to deny a Dongwon-linked company, Majestic Blue Fisheries, LLC, its petition to limited its liability for the June 2010 sinking of the fishing vessel Majestic Blue and the deaths of the vessel’s captain and chief engineer. Read more here 20:54
Lobstermen victims of circumstance! Whale watcher boat Cetacea? Lobster rope? How about a big assed piece of cable!
Initial attempts by the divers to clear the line from the propeller were unsuccessful. Original reports indicated a lobster pot line was caught in the propeller, but further analysis revealed it was a cable from Northeast Gateway’s offshore facility which required additional dive resources and heavy duty equipment for removal. Read more here 18:56
PETA Plans to Fly Vegan Banner over Rockland Lobster Festival
An animal rights group says it plans to hire an airplane to fly over the Lobster Festival here tomorrow that will carry a banner reading “Keep your paws of their claws: Try vegan.” People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals says the plane will circle the festival every 15 minutes starting at just after noon, until 2:30 p.m. on the event’s opening day, to highlight the organizations belief that lobsters feel pain and fear, and are killed in gruesome ways for human consumption. mpbn 18:07
Canada’s trawlers drastically cut bycatch, why can’t Alaska’s?
Sometimes there’s big money to be made prolonging a problem. One short sentence sums up nearly 20 years of work by the North Pacific Fisheries Management Council on trawl bycatch. During the February 1997 meeting of the NPFMC a representative from the Canadian Department of Fisheries and Oceans gave a presentation on how that country reduced trawl bycatch while catching ALL of its trawl quota. Read more here 18:00
Ocean Acidification Is an Imminent Threat for Alaska Fishing Communities
Keeping Alaska’s fisheries wild and sustainable is going to be a serious challenge in the years ahead as our oceans become more acidic, and that in turn, is going put many Alaskans’ subsistence way of life at risk, says a new report. Minor says the problem is “still far enough over the horizon” that local fishermen haven’t seen any impacts on the fishing grounds, but adds, “those of us who are paying attention are worried.” Read more here 16:45
This is Fish Radio. I’m Laine Welch – Putting a price tag on corrosive oceans and the KSM mine sails through approval.
Fishing communities in Southeast and Southwest Alaska face the highest risk from increasingly corrosive oceans.,, In another threat to the Panhandle’s fisheries – British Columbia’s KSM mine has sailed through the permitting process. Read more here 16:26
American Samoa: Loss of tuna treaty will hurt canneries
Banner year for gray whale calves
Marine observers spotted 431 pairs of mothers and calves swimming north to the Arctic this year, the National Oceanic Administration’s Southwest Fisheries Science Center reported. That count translates to an estimated total of 1,500 to 1,600 calves born in Baja lagoons this year, said researcher Wayne Perryman, although he said he hasn’t crunched the final numbers. Read more here 10:58
Coast Guard medevacs man from fishing boat in Pamlico Sound, NC
Watchstanders at Coast Guard Sector North Carolina in Wilmington received a call via VHF-FM radio from the operator of the 70-foot fishing boat Capt Ryan at about 11:20 p.m. Monday reporting an 18-year-old male crew member collapsed and experienced a seizure. Read more here 10:20
Research set-aside helps sustain Atlantic sea scallop fishery
A recent article in Nation’s Restaurant News calls the scallop “the mollusk of the moment,” but just 20 years ago, the U.S. fishery for Atlantic sea scallops was unsustainable, with the population near record lows and fishing at a record high. Now, a research set-aside program, funded entirely by proceeds from selling a , is helping to ensure that the fishery remains healthy. Read more here 09:17
The EU Discard Ban: Landing all catches is a recipe for disaster
Following a successful campaign by environmental non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and some of their celebrity friends in the catering trade, reforms to the European Union Common Fisheries Policy (CFP) mean that a ban on discarding fish at sea – known as the landings obligation – will come into force from that date. Let me state categorically that nobody, least of all fishermen, wants to see healthy fish being thrown back into the sea. Read more here 09:03
PEI: Oyster company receives $205K to fund expansion
An expansion at the. is expected to increase its annual sales of oysters by one million — or about 22 per cent. The federal and provincial governments are giving the company $205,000 to help fund the expansion. The money will be used to purchase new oyster grading and aquaculture equipment. Read more here 08:34
National View: It’s now or never for blue crabs
Two years ago, you could pretty much bank on it: Leave the dock at 5:30 or 6 a.m. and be back by 9 with a bushel or so of scrappy male crabs. Then it was just a matter of hooking up the cooker, herding the crabs into the steamer and sitting back for the 25 minutes or so it takes to turn them red and scrumptious. Read more here 08:15
Final tab for Cohen Commission tops $37 million
The federal inquiry into B.C.’s Fraser River sockeye fishery cost at least $37.3 million, according to a public disclosure this month. That’s far higher than the $26.4-million price tag has long been associated with the 2012 report by Justice Bruce Cohen. The difference is that the lower figure reflected direct Cohen commission costs. Read more here 22:59
55-year-old fisherman Coast Guard medevaced Monday afternoon, 8 miles offshore of Port Aransas
CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas — A Coast Guard rescue boat crew medevaced a 55-year-old fisherman suffering from diabetic symptoms Monday afternoon, 8 miles offshore of Port Aransas. Watchstanders at Coast Guard Sector Corpus Christi received a distress call from the captain of the commercial fishing boat Trissy Girl at approximately 12:30 p.m., saying one of his crewmembers was reportedly suffering from diabetic symptoms and that insulin was ineffective. Read more here 21:36
Fishermen prove good at predicting fish stock levels
Fishermen are just as good as scientists at predicting the level of commercial fish stocks, according to startling new research. A comparison of skippers’ knowledge and catch/effort data with scientifically collected data found that they reached similar conclusions about the distribution and abundance of stocks in the North Sea. Read more here 15:51
FREEPORT, Maine – Invasive green crabs creep back into Casco Bay
Despite cautious optimism earlier this year that midcoast mudflats would be spared, invasive European green crabs were apparently only waiting for warmer water to scurry back into the area and begin wreaking havoc on the shellfish industry. Read more here 15:33
Researchers tackle unseen crab mortality in Alaskan groundfish fisheries, win best paper award.
“The only way to have a substantial harvest of flatfish species is with a trawl. The question is how to make trawl fishing as sustainable as possible,” said Craig Rose, a biologist with NOAA’s Alaska Fisheries Science Center and the lead author of the study. “Some people think that’s not a tractable question. I believe it is.” This research would not have been possible without the participation of fishermen. Read more here 14:57
Garden State Seafood Association supports reform of the Endangered Species Act
The GSSA supports the following bill’s HR 4315, HR 4316, HR 4317, HR 4318. Read the letter to their delegation here, and visit the GSSA website here. 14:29
Deep-sea cameras reveal commercial fisheries having little impact on seafloor biodiversity
The Australia Antarctic Division has developed a new system of deep sea cameras to explore the impact of commercial fishing on biodiversity. They spent eight years studying the seafloor in the Heard Island and McDonald Island Marine Reserve in the Antarctic waters of the Southern Ocean, south-west of Australia. The cameras show 98 per cent of sensitive seafloor biodiversity remains pristine after 16 years of commercial fishing. Read more here 11:58
Economic Impacts of the Mississippi Seafood Industry
Rapid changes in the economic structure of the Mississippi commercial fishing and seafood-related industry were observed during the last decade. Local spending by both the harvesting and processing sectors declined due to changing internal and external environments affecting the industry. Read more here pdf report here 11:39
New Measures Proposed for Federal Waters Lobster Fishery
for Lobster Conservation Management Areas 2, 3, 4, and 5, including trap reductions in Areas 2 and 3, and broodstock measures is Areas 2, 3, 4, and 5. The proposed measures aim to reduce fishing exploitation and reduce latent effort in the trap fishery to scale the fishery to the size of the Southern New England lobster stock. The deadline for public comment is August 25, 2014. Read more here ASMFC info here 11:23Fred Woodman, veteran Newfoundland and Labrador advocate for seafood industry, dead at 83
Fred Woodman Sr., a fish processor who spent much of his career advocating for Newfoundland and Labrador’s fishing industry, has died. He was 83. Woodman founded Woodman’s Fisheries in 1972, and turned New Harbour, Trinity Bay, into a hub of the industry. Read more here 09:16
N.S. group wants answers about lobster levy
The province’s fish packers association says it’s surprised by the new provincial government’s proposed levy on lobster. Marilyn Clark, executive director of the Nova Scotia Fish Packers Association, says she and others heard about it only when the minister announced the plan to collect five cents-a-pound. Read more here 09:06
New regulations rankle lobstermen
Outer Cape lobster fishermen say that new federal regulations protecting whales don’t just threaten their livelihood, they threaten their lives. “This is the first (lobster) regulation where you will have wholesale civil disobedience,” predicted Orleans lobsterman Steve Smith, while transferring totes of lobsters from his skiff to his pickup truck at Snowshore Landing recently. “People just aren’t going to do it.” Read more here 08:53
The offshore oil clock is ticking
Maybe you saw the story recently about seismic testing in the Atlantic getting the green light from the feds. The AP story described it as “the first real step toward ,,,, The next sentence in the story summed up the perspective of those who were not thrilled by this decision by the Obama administration:“. . .[I]t dismayed people who owe their livelihoods to fisheries and tourism, and activists said it stains President Barack Obama’s environmental legacy.” Read more here 04:21
Marine Corps to comply with marine mammal protection
CHERRY POINT -The Marine Corps has requested a five-year authorization from National Marine Fisheries for incidental deaths of bottlenose dolphins during training at Brant Island Bombing Target and Piney Island Bombing Range. Read more here 21:27
Alaska: Governor’s appointments are a joke, but he’s not kidding
This is the time of year year when the governor appoints people to official positions. Parnell is delivering a couple of real doozies. In searching high and low (especially low) for a fisheries advisor, the governor landed on the six-year spokesmodel for the Pebble mine project, a guy named Ben Mohr. You know Pebble, the project that plans to build a giant poison lake at the headwaters of Alaska’s most productive salmon rivers. Mohr is definitely a guy you want making policy to ensure the health of our fisheries for the next millennium. Read more here 15:33
American Golds Seafoods faces $112,500 fine for 2013 oil spill near Anacortes
ANACORTES — American Gold Seafoods faces a $112,500 penalty for an oil spill caused by the accidental sinking of its vessel the Clam Digger in July 2013 near Anacortes. The state Department of Ecology investigated the cause of the sinking and spill and determined that negligence was a key factor. Read more here 15:18
