Monthly Archives: September 2014
Maine’s problematic green crabs dwindled in 2014
University of Maine at Machias marine ecology researcher Brian Beal says the amount of crabs is 10 percent of last year’s level at a key Freeport trapping site. Beal says the harsh winter may have culled population. Read the rest here 12:47
The Gulf of Alaska is unusually warm, and weird fish are showing up
Something odd is happening in Northern Pacific waters: They’re heating up. In fact, it hasn’t been this warm in parts of the Gulf of Alaska for this long since researchers began tracking surface water temperatures in the 1980s, according to the NOAA. Read the rest here 12:26
Maine Voices: Dredging of Searsport Harbor would be economic folly – Rocky Allen, Maine Lobstering Union
Sen. Susan Collins has observed: “In parts of Maine, the environment is our economy.” No place epitomizes that principle more than Penobscot Bay. The members of the Maine Lobstering Union unanimously oppose the Searsport dredging project, as proposed, because it simply makes no economic sense for Maine. Read the rest here 11:53
Fraser River sockeye run still avoiding U.S. waters, frustrating Whatcom County fishermen
With the sockeye salmon run into the Fraser River nearly complete, the fortunes of local U.S. commercial fishermen haven’t improved much. In recent years about 50 percent of the sockeye run went south through the Strait of Juan de Fuca, putting the fish in U.S. waters. This season nearly the entire run has gone around the north part of Vancouver Island through Johnstone Strait into Canadian waters. Read the rest here 11:35
Trade agreement sparks Canadian interest in Grimsby, the UK gateway to seafood retailing
Grimsby played host to a strong delegation from Canada’s fishing fraternity, with companies with a combined turnover of £500 million travelling up from London to take in the award-winning cluster and meet with businesses keen to receive their exports. Read the rest here 09:23
Cod cut would increase discards, Shetland fishermen warn
Fishermen in Shetland are urging the EU and Norway to abandon a controversial cod management plan and increase North Sea quotas to help reduce dumping of healthy fish at sea.,, “On the one hand they want to eliminate discards, but on the other they want to cut quotas which would have the direct effect of increasing discards. Read the rest here 08:39
Listen in – 0800 September 15, 2014 NEFMC Scientific and Statistical Committee Meeting
Meeting: The public is invited to listen in to the September 15, 2014 Scientific and Statistical Committee Meeting (SSC). It is scheduled to begin at 8:00 a.m. at the Courtyard Marriott Boston/Logan Airport, 225 McClellan Highway, Boston, MA 02128. Listen by webinar here Meeting Materials here Press release here 18:11
Apalachicola: Fully-funded oysterman retraining stirs scant interest – they like what they do.
“This is understandable, this is generational work,” said Bodine. “They like what they’re doing. They like being their own boss. It’s difficult for them (to transition). They can make quite a bit of money out there, so it’s kind of a hard sell, to go to making less money after taxes and reporting to someone else.” Read the rest here 17:19
The Government of Canada Invests in Mission Harbour
Randy Kamp, Parliamentary Secretary to the Honourable Gail Shea, Minister of Fisheries and Oceans, and Member of Parliament for Pitt Meadows-Maple Ridge-Mission, announced today that the Government of Canada is investing in a harbour improvement project at Mission Harbour, British Columbia. Read the rest here 17:02
Dick Pinney’s Guidelines: New Hampshire’s Great Bay’s natural resources declining
THIS COLUMN is a copy of a report about the decline of the Great Bay natural resources that has happened over the span of my 76 years of living and loving Great Bay,,, “Anyone that doubts the harmful effects of the millions of gallons of sewerage that is released into the Great Bay watershed by the many municipalities has to have their head buried in the heavily polluted sand and muck around the shorelines.” Read the rest here click for larger image 16:40
OPINION: A better bay: Sustaining local fishing jobs
Here’s a few more numbers though. Since the inception of limited entry in 1975, local permit ownership has declined from 1,372 to 707. This loss stems from permit transfers to non-locals, but also and increasingly from the out-migration of permit holders from the region. Read the rest here 14:47
Spiegel: Germany’s Large-Scale Offshore Windpark Dream Morphs Into An Engineering And Cost Nightmare – Cape Wind?
So far things hardly could have gotten any worse technically, and now financially and legally. One thing is becoming very clear: In the mad rush to green energy, investors and politicians leaped before they looked. Warnings were abundant, but were simply dismissed as offhand. Now the investors and proponents are moaning loudly about the hard landing that is coming soon. Read the rest here 11:54
More studies of Wellfleet Harbor’s horseshoe crabs
This summer, though, there were no commercial crab boats harvesting in the harbor, Wellfleet Harbormaster Michael Flanagan said recently. In Wellfleet Harbor, the crabs traditionally have been harvested in May, June and July, usually by hand from boats, to be sold as bait to conch and eel fishermen. . Read the rest here 10:13
Rhode Island Fishermen’s Alliance Weekly Update, September 14, 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 here 09:34
Processor puts challenging sockeye sales down to greed, with prices down 20-30% y-o-y
Prices are down compared to last year due to the high supply, although not nearly as drastically as buyers had hoped,,,The president of a sockeye processor in Canada told Undercurrent sockeye wholesale prices are currently down 20 to 30% from last year’s price due to low supply, but the price is far less attractive than buyers had anticipated. Read the rest here 23:05
Drawing The Line – Full Documentary – 2014
Drawing The Line is a revealing tale about Australia’s oceans and the men and women who depend upon it for their livelihood. The ocean is a fickle mistress, friend one day foe the next, but the Australian Fishing Industry faces a threat that is far greater than any they immediately face at sea. 18:31
Vessel Incidental Discharge Act awaits action – If you wash your deck or pump a bildge, it affects you.
Commercial fishermen like Bradley Styron, owner and operator of Quality Seafood of Cedar Island, wash their decks and pump out their bilge water on a regular basis during their everyday operations. But if a bill currently before the Senate doesn’t get passed, they might have to meet tougher environmental regulations to do so. Read the rest here 17:46
Fraser sockeye shun U.S. waters, fill B.C. nets
A quirk of nature has handed B.C. commercial fishermen a huge catch of sockeye salmon this summer, while leaving their American counterparts almost empty handed. Commercial fishing is winding down and the tally of the totes so far shows U.S. fishermen out of Washington State have caught barely 440,000 sockeye, a mere five per cent of the total Fraser-bound catch as of Friday. Read the rest here 17:18
The Real “Seafood Fraud” Mislabeling Miscreants
What is this “mislabeling” and “seafood fraud” scuffle all about these days? Why, you might ask, is Oceana suddenly so concerned about “truth in packaging” for fish? And what is behind their somewhat baffling concern for the fish-consuming public? Actually, Pew, Oceana, EDF, NRDC, and CLF (and too long a list of their additional subsidiaries to cite here) have for many years been doing some of their own “mislabeling” and “seafood fraud”. They’ve been “mislabeling” fishermen as overfishing-greedy-habitat-
Tomorrow’s Catch: A Proposal to Strengthen the Economic Sustainability of U.S. Fisheries – Costello
This proposal calls for an amendment to the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act, the federal law currently guiding the management of U.S. fisheries, that would, for certain fisheries, require transparent comparison of the economic, social, and ecological trade-offs between status quo management and these alternatives. Read the rest here Full paper here 14:49
Pacific Bluefin tuna fishery on the hook
The U.S. sport fishery is only a portion of the total catch of bluefin throughout the Pacific, and U.S. commercial fishing operations play an even smaller role. Commercial fisheries in Mexico, Japan, Korea and Taiwan out of bluefin, and are also under pressure to act. Japan recently agreed to cut its commercial catch by half, and both the U.S. and Mexico recently closed their commercial fisheries, Read the rest here 11:47
Deep Sea Fishing Threatens to Wipe Out a $150 Billion Carbon Sink
Marine life in the high seas soak up an amount of carbon equivalent to 30 percent of the US’s annual emissions. This carbon-sequestering service is worth about $148 billion a year, according a new study from the Global Ocean Commission. At the same time, increased fishing activity threatens the whole process, according to the researchers. “Most would not be fishing the high seas without subsidies,” Sumaila told me. Read the rest here 10:13
North Carolina Fisheries Association Weekly Update for September 12, 2014
Read the update here 08:59
Catch Shares: Investment Firms are taking over the Fishing Rights
What does it take to buy a share of the American ocean? Policymakers assured the nation that fishing rights would never migrate out of U.S. control through catch shares or end up as properties of investment firms. Environmental groups have similarly touted catch shares as a tool for communities and fishermen and overlooked the role investors can and do play. As the Snow’s deal now makes clear, those pacifications are baloney. Read the rest here 22:29
The Southeast Alaska summer troll fishery is being extended by 10 days
That allows continued fishing through the end of this month. The Alaska Department of Fish and Game’s Pattie Skannes says all species of salmon except Chinooks can be harvested. But the fishery is mostly about cohos. Read the rest here 19:10
New Regulation to Prevent Gear Conflict Between Lobster and Herring Fishermen
The Maine Department of Marine Resources
has implemented an emergency regulation to prevent potential gear conflict between herring fishermen and lobstermen working in an area off the coast of Mount Desert Island. Read the rest here 18:21
Just as Americans start to see lower gas prices, big oil wants to sell US crude overseas
But just as American consumers seem to be benefiting from this system,,, interested parties in the oil industry are pushing to allow greater exports of crude from the US. (US crude exports have been banned since the Arab oil embargoes of the 1970s.) They can get higher prices from the global market,,, But to allow more crude exports would essentially undermine the strides America has made in becoming energy independent. Read the rest here 17:28
Coast Guard medevaces fisherman 90 miles south of Nantucket, Massachusetts
Coast Guard rescue crews from Air Station Cape Cod medically evacuated a 64-year-old man 90 miles south of Nantucket, Massachusetts, Friday. Watchstanders at the Sector Southeastern New England Command Center received notification at 10:36 a.m. from a crewmember on the fishing vessel Albi that a man onboard was suffering from chest pains, numb limbs, and dizziness. He did not have his prescribed blood pressure medication. 16:20
At the Pacific Fishery Management Council Meeting Today, A Citizen Made a Public Comment
Sometimes I wonder why I invest time listening to Fishery Council Meetings. I listen to plenty of them. Today, I was tuned into the PFMC webinar, listening to Public Comments, and a fella named Jonathan Gonzales from Santa Barbara California made his. You’ve got to read it, and look at the presentation he put together. I listened, but didn’t see the slides he put together, but, they are in this power point. Leave a comment here. You’ll want to be ready to be impressed. I am. Read it here 22:09 On September 13, this was released by Center for Biological Diversity. New Data Shows California Drift Gillnets Not Sustainable, Continue to Kill Marine Mammals. “Every year that drift gillnets are used off the California coast to catch swordfish, the result is that iconic whales, dolphins, sea turtles, sharks and thousands of fish are ensnared and killed as bycatch,” said Geoff Shester, California campaign director for Oceana. “Ultimately this gear type must be fully prohibited off the West Coast so we can have a sustainable swordfish fishery.” Jeff Shester is in Jon’s power point. I wonder what he thinks of it! 22:11
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