Daily Archives: January 24, 2016
Coast Guard rescues 5 fishermen from sinking vessel near La Push, Wash.
The Coast Guard rescued five fishermen after their vessel took on water and sank 30 miles outside of La Push, Washington, Sunday. A Coast Guard Station Quillayute River 47-foot Motor Life Boat crew recovered the fishermen from their life raft and brought them back to La Push without medical concerns. The master of the 65-foot fishing vessel Captain John, called Coast Guard station Quillayute River watchstanders via VHF radio channel 16, stating that they were taking on water and not able to keep up with the flooding. Read the post here 21:01
Gulf of Mexico Fishery Management Council meeting January 25 – 28, 2016 in Orange Beach, Alabama
The Gulf of Mexico Fishery Management Council will meet January 25 – 28, 2016, at the Perdido Beach Resort in Orange Beach, Alabama. Committee meetings will convene Monday at 8:30 am, concluding at 10:30 am Wednesday. The full Council will convene Wednesday morning beginning at 10:45 am. The Council is expected to adjourn by 4:00 pm Thursday. Council meetings are open to the public and are broadcast live over the internet. To register for the webinar, click here Read the agenda here 12:57
CG36500 – Renovated rescue boat ready for the spotlight
Following an $18,000 renovation this fall at Chatham’s Pease Boatworks, the 36-foot wooden Coast Guard motor lifeboat is ready for the red carpet. The CG36500 is on the National Register of Historic Places, so stunt doubles were used in the new movie, “The Finest Hours,” which has its premiere tomorrow at Grauman’s Chinese Theatre in Los Angeles. While Andy Fitzgerald, the sole surviving crewman of what is hailed as the greatest small boat rescue in Coast Guard history, and his wife, Gloria, are headed to that premiere, the real rescue boat that safely transported four Coast Guardsmen and 32 crewmen from a stricken tanker back from a hellish nor’easter will be on display at the Chatham Bars Inn Thursday night for a pre-release party. Read the article here 12:06
Heroic Coast Guard rescue off Cape Cod now major motion picture
Andy Fitzgerald had a purpose in hanging around the Coast Guard station in plain sight. “I was the lowest class engine man there, and I didn’t get to go out too much,” he recalled. “I’d never really been out in a rescue of any size where you’re really rescuing people’s lives when they were really in danger.” “I was really trying to figure out how to go on that rescue,” he added. Fitzgerald got what he wished for, and more, when he volunteered to be the boat engineer to rescue men off a stricken tanker on Feb. 18, 1952. He and the three other Coast Guardsmen on the CG36500 were awarded the Gold Lifesaving Medal, the Coast Guard’s highest honor for plucking 32 men off the SS Pendleton. Read the article here 10:49
The Sea Lords – Kingpins of the Gulf make millions off red snapper harvest without ever going fishing
A little-known federal program has turned dozens of Gulf of Mexico fishermen into the lords of the sea — able to earn millions annually without even going fishing — and transformed dozens more into modern-day serfs who must pay the lords for the right to harvest red snapper. A four-month probe by AL.com has found that roughly $60 million has been earned since 2007 by this small number of fishermen whose boats never left port. That money was collected from the labor of fishermen who have no choice but to hand over more than half of the price that their catch brings at the dock. As it stands today, the right to catch 77 percent of the annual red snapper harvest is controlled by just 55 people, according to an AL.com analysis of hundreds of pages of federal documents, reports and websites. Read the article here 09:39
