Monthly Archives: January 2016
Portland-based fishing boat captain and daughter to be featured on ‘Wicked Tuna’
Pete Speeches sees himself as a competitive guy, competing against the unpredictability of nature every time he sets foot on his boat. So when Speeches and his daughter Erin signed up to be featured on the new season of the popular tuna-fishing reality show “Wicked Tuna,” he wasn’t looking to just get his face on TV or for a career in acting. He was looking to win. “I’m not in the habit of not catching fish, I like to be the guy who catches fish,” said Speeches, 54, who fishes out of Portland on a boat named for his daughters, the Erin & Sarah. Read the article here 12:51
King: Offended by cooking show
On Jan 16, Saturday eve, we were watching a cooking show on WACA-TV (cable TV in Ashland) where the top item on the menu was a ‘traditional’ Italian lobster dish. We’d just viewed an earlier preparation of part of the meal and it was well planned and executed. There is a degree of enjoyment watching people who know what they’re doing to the extent it seems to be an art. Then they talked about the lobster. It was clear the lobster was still alive. (Oh no!) Read the rest here 11:02
Harrowing tale of how 20 fishermen aboard Grimsby trawler Laforey paid the ultimate price
An audio play reliving the events in which crewmen aboard a famous Grimsby trawler sadly died is to be broadcast. The story of the 20 fishermen onboard the Laforey GY85 is the theme of a powerful new play, due to be aired next month. The story will explore how the trawler grounded off the coast of Norway during heavy seas and snow in February 1954, resulting in the loss of all 20 crew. Named The Price Of Fish: GY85, the play will be broadcast on Compass FM on Sunday, February 7, at 7pm, the 62nd anniversary of the loss of the ship. Read the article here 10:40
Some lobstermen dislike proposal to ease long waits for Maine lobstering licenses
It can take years for someone to move off a waiting list to become a commercial lobsterman in Maine, and for years fishermen have been trying to figure out a way to make the licensing process work while protecting the health of the lobster population. Now a bill that aims to accomplish both goals appears to be headed for a fight when it goes before the Legislature’s Marine Resources Committee on Feb. 10. “People who live in struggling coastal communities care about this,” said Rep. Walter Kumiega, D-Deer Isle, sponsor of the bill and House chairman of the Marine Resources Committee. Read the rest here 10:19
Governor Kasich and the New Hampshire Fishermen
When John Kasich tells you that he is a skilled executive, believe him. Governor Kasich met with several New Hampshire fishermen on 8 January. David Goethel, owner and captain of the 44-foot fishing trawler Ellen Diane, is suing NOAA (the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) for bureaucratic overreach and has explained his position in a Wall Street Journal op-ed. Governor Kasich read the op-ed and as a result requested the meeting. This was not a campaign stop. Nobody took names for a mailing list; nobody handed out bumper stickers. The governor was there to learn and to help. Read the article here 09:06
Bluefin Tuna Early Migration Focuses OLE Officer’s Attention On Compliance, Outreach
Atlantic bluefin tuna are beginning to appear off the coasts of North Carolina and Virginia. The early arrival of the highly sought-after finfish may be generating an enthusiastic stir among fishermen, but the interest is in ensuring compliance throughout the season. “Bluefin tuna fisheries are among the most highly regulated in the world” said OLE Enforcement Officer Justin Hanacek. “In order to safeguard the species’ stability it’s important to comply with all the regulations intended to protect and manage the population throughout all stages of the migration along the Atlantic and Gulf coasts of the United States.” Read the rest here 08:16
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
Sportsmen, commercial fishermen disagree over Columbia River reforms
Three years ago, Washington and Oregon adopted the most sweeping reforms of lower Columbia River sport and commercial fishing policies since the 1930s. Saturday, in Vancouver, the Washington Fish and Wildlife Commission was told: By sportsmen, that the reforms are working and eventually the Columbia can be a world-class fishery rivaling Alaska. By gillnetters, that the reforms have serious flaws, promises made to the commercial fishing industry are not being met, and revisions are needed. Read the article here 21:18
A Canadian Threat to Alaskan Fishing
Carpeted in rain forest and braided with waterways, southeast Alaska is among the largest wild salmon producers in the world, its tourism and salmon fishing industries grossing about $2 billion a year. But today, the rivers and the salmon that create these jobs — and this particular way of life, which attracted me from Philadelphia to Sitka almost 20 years ago — are threatened by Canada’s growing mining industry along the mountainous Alaska-British Columbia border, about a hundred miles east of where I now write. Read the article here 16:27
Coast Guard escorts disabled RI fishing vessel ahead of winter storm
With a major winter storm approaching, Coast Guard crews from Station Menemsha, Massachusetts and Station Castle Hill, Rhode Island, aided a distressed fishing crew about 10 miles east of Block Island, Rhode Island Saturday. At approximately 8:30 a.m. Saturday, watchstanders at Coast Guard Sector Southeastern New England in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, received a call via VHF channel 16 from the captain of the 50-foot Tamara stating his vessel’s navigation equipment had failed and he was having trouble steering. Winds in the area are 30 to 40 knots with gusts up to 55 knots. Seas are 12 to 17 feet and building. Read the post here 14:13
Stanford biology professor Barbara Block warns that the bluefin is trouble because of decades of overfishing.
When you mention tuna, most minds probably swim to the ubiquitous cans of the fish, or maybe a delectable piece of sashimi decked out with roe and wasabi. But when Stanford biology professor Barbara Block contemplates tuna, her mind goes to images of bluefin tuna — the massive, speedy fish that regularly traverse oceans in a single year. “Over a lifetime they might travel tens of thousands of miles,” Block said, flanked by California’s Monterey Bay. Block is warning that the bluefin, once thought to be incredibly bountiful, is now facing peril because of decades of overfishing. Read the article here 12:02
Do “Catch Reconstructions” really Implicate Overfishing?
A new paper led by Daniel Pauly of the University of British Columbia that found global catch data, as reported to the FAO, to be significantly lower than the true catch numbers. “Global fish catches are falling three times faster than official UN figures suggest, according to a landmark new study, with overfishing to blame.” 400 researches spent the last decade accumulating missing global catch data from small-scale fisheries, sport fisheries, illegal fishing activity and fish discarded at sea, which FAO statistics, “rarely include.” – Comment by Michel J. Kaiser, Bangor University – Comment by David Agnew, Director of Standards MSC Read the post here 11:31
NOAA scientist says federal fish counts suffer from ‘perception issue’
It’s not easy counting fish. Just ask the people who have to do it. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s fisheries division is responsible for estimating the health and size of dozens of fish stocks in U.S. waters, measurements that help eight regional councils determine which fish commercial and recreational anglers are allowed to catch. The accuracy of NOAA’s counts is at the heart of a national debate over whether to loosen current catch limits. NOAA defends the data, obtained through a combination of sampling methods and statistical models. But recreational fishermen and their backers on Capitol Hill, who want to loosen the catch limits, claim they’re based on “flawed science.” Read the rest here 09:19
Rainbow coloured lobster caught by Nova Scotia fisherman
Fishermen off the coast of Nova Scotia have been hauling up strange-coloured lobsters for years, but a rainbow lobster caught just before Christmas may top them all. It was caught on Dec. 19 by Captain Chad Graham on the Chad & Sisters Two, sailing out of Westport, Brier Island. Graham’s sister, Amanda Graham, says he pulled the multi-coloured crustacean out of the water at the mouth of St. Marys Bay. “He has caught all blue and yellow lobsters before, but this one was the most purple — with blues, yellow, and white — that’s he’s ever caught or seen,” she said. Read the rest here 08:14
“Super-sized 11-million-pound commercial fish factory” protested
Water-quality advocates with San Diego Coastkeeper announced this week that the group is petitioning the federal Environmental Protection Agency to deny a discharge permit for the proposed Rose Canyon Aquaculture Project , which detractors say would place a development “like large-scale feedlots, but in our ocean” just a few miles off the coast of Ocean Beach. The project, the first of its kind aimed at farming large quantities of deep-sea fish such as yellowtail in American waters, was developed by Hubbs-SeaWorld Research Institute, a nonprofit arm of the SeaWorld theme-park chain. Read the post here 20:51
Fishermen await decision about at-sea monitoring lawsuit
CONCORD, N.H. (AP) — East Coast fishermen are awaiting a judge’s decision about their contention that the federal government’s plan to hand them the cost of at-sea monitoring is illegal. The fishermen’s challenge was the subject of a hearing at U.S. District Court in Concord on Thursday. The judge didn’t issue an order from the bench, so a decision is expected in the future. Link 17:39
F/V Eagle III Memorial Fund
On the night of January 19th the crew on the Eagle III was out crabbing near Charleston, Oregon. They capsized after colliding with the jetty. The captain made it to shore, but one of the crew did not survive and two more are still missing. The boat is owned by Leesa Cobb of Port Orford, who has worked together with the members of the Port Orford Ocean Resource Team on many projects over the years to benefit small boat fishermen and their community. We are raising funds to support the families of the crew who died, and we are so thankful for anything you can contribute to help them get through this tragedy. Click here, and please donate whatever you can. 16:38
Why is it wrong for the fishermen to bring a lawsuit but is alright for Mr. Shelly’s CLF to profit from lawsuits?
CLF’s Peter Shelley at Talking Fish wrote: Blowing Up the New England Fishery Management Council. He won’t post the rebuttal comments but we will!
Comment on Talking Fish that doesn’t seem to be accepted. Mr. Shelly and CLF make a living from suing NOAA and fishing for dollars. For that they get nonprofit tax status. So the taxpayers pay twice 1) for nonprofit status and 2) because they file so many lawsuits they win by default (a scam all NGOs have perfected). Unlike fishermen who do pay taxes and support local economies. Contrary to Mr. Shelly’s claim the majority of people on the councils are not fishermen, and one of the so called fishermen that is on the council is a paid spokesman for the ENGOs (John Pappalardo).
Legal fish, Illegal stop – Fishermen Turned Medical Students Settle Civil Rights Case Against Washington F&W
Washington’s Department of Fish and Wildlife will formally acknowledge Friday that it violated the constitutional rights of two brothers who commercially fished the Columbia River. The agency’s admission of wrongdoing is part of a settlement in a lawsuit that has changed agency practices. It stems from a traffic stop nearly nine years ago in rural southwest Washington. The traffic stop happened on the morning of March 23, 2007. The location was tiny Wahkiakum County across the Columbia River from Astoria. It was captured on video. Read the article here 12:52
Fishermen’s union takes fight to Minister Tootoo, story and video
The United Fishermen and Allied Workers’ Union is hoping residents of Prince Rupert can dust off their pens, stamps and notebooks and put them to good use in the coming days. The union (UFAWU-Unifor) was hard at work last fall, rallying North Coast MLA Jennifer Rice, Skeena-Bulkley Valley MP Nathan Cullen, the City of Prince Rupert and the District of Port Edward to support them after ), a division of the Jim Pattison Group announced the closure of salmon canning operations at its Oceanside Plant. While they received sympathetic voices in all those representatives, mayors and council members, UFAWU is taking the fight federally. Read the article here 12:08
Bill aimed at helping younger fishermen
As young Alaskans gather in Juneau for the sixth annual Young Fishermen’s Summit next week to explore ways to get a leg up in an increasingly challenging and expensive industry, Rep. Jonathan Kreiss-Tomkins, a member of the House Fisheries Committee, is trying to help. Kreiss-Tomkins and other members of the committee are working on a bill to create community banks to buy limited entry permits from people selling out in order to be able to lease them to people primarily in rural communities who cannot afford to buy them outright. Read the article here 10:47
Men involved in Oregon crabbing boat tragedy identified
The Coos County Sheriff’s Office identified the captain on Thursday as 52-year-old Port Orford resident Glen Burkhow. Burkhow survived the Tuesday night accident in which the commercial fishing boat, F/V Eagle III , sank after hitting a Coos Bay jetty. The sheriff’s office said a man whose body was recovered Wednesday has been identified as 52-year-old Blane Steinmetz of Port Orford. Officials said 37-year-old Daniel Matlock and 31-year-old Joshua Paulus, also of Port Orford, remain missing. A search conducted through Wednesday afternoon was suspended after a U.S. Coast Guard spokesman said the search area had been saturated. Read the post here 09:22
Removal of derelict fishing gear has major economic impact
A new study by researchers at William & Mary’s Virginia Institute of Marine Science shows that removal of derelict fishing gear could generate millions of dollars in extra harvest value for commercial fisheries worldwide. The study focused on a 6-year, collaborative program to remove derelict crab pots from Chesapeake Bay, showing that the effort generated more than $20 million in harvest value for area watermen. Extending their methodology to estimate the economic benefits of removing derelict crab pots and lobster traps on a global basis,,, Read the article here 08:49
Secretary of Commerce adopts halibut bycatch cuts
The Secretary of Commerce adopted Amendment 111 to the Magnuson-Stevens Act on Wednesday, which cuts halibut bycatch limits for groundfish trawlers. The amendment aims to reduce the bycatch in Bering Sea and Aleutian Islands groundfish fisheries. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration believes the measure will reduce the overall amount of halibut bycatch in the Bering Sea and Aleutian Islands by 361 metric tons compared to 2014, or nearly 800,000 pounds, freeing up more of the lucrative fish for the directed halibut fishermen in the central Bering Sea. Read the rest here 07:38
Kasich understands plight of commercial fishermen – Stephen Joyce
I’d like to thank John Kasich for taking the time to meet with commercial and recreational small business owners at Yankee Coop in Seabrook , N.H. It was interesting listening to John ask questions in order to ascertain where the problems lie. There was a point where John readily understood the problem, it isn’t lack of fish, weather or climate change. It is Washington politics and the fact that no one at NOAA or the NMFS can be held accountable for the damages they have caused what is left of the N.H. fishing fleet. Read the rest here 19:47
Coast Guard responds to multiple fishing vessel incidents participating in Miss. Oyster Recovery Project
The Coast Guard and partner agencies have responded to an increase in incidents involving oyster fishermen in Bay St. Louis, Miss., over the past two days. One serious marine incident took place, which involved injury to a crewmember. The other incidents involved capsized fishing vessels. The incidents, due to unsafe work practices and overloading of oyster fishing vessels, coincide with the State of Mississippi initiating the , Jan. 18th, to relocate oyster beds from St. Joe Reef to Pass Christian and Biloxi Bay. Read the post here 16:54
