Daily Archives: May 11, 2016
Another push for catch shares – Nils E. Stolpe, FishNet-USA
Don’t get the idea from this that I oppose any fisheries management regime. What I do oppose is having the future of particular fisheries determined by people and/or organizations and/or corporations with no meaningful ties to and no concern about the existing industry and the people in it. Irrespective of whether the decisions have their roots in in corporate, ENGO or foundation board rooms, the halls of academe or “investment” seminars, as the ongoing debacle in the New England groundfish fishery so clearly and tragically demonstrates, if the fishing industry doesn’t have final say in the imposition of measures that its members will be working with, the affected communities will suffer.) With talk in the air of an upcoming Magnuson Act reauthorization which is coincident with the 40th anniversary of its passage, the proponents of catch shares in general and individual transferable quotas in particular, are mounting a public relations barrage in a continuation of their efforts to “privatize” our fisheries. Most recently, the April 19 New York Times Opiniator column How Dwindling Fish Stocks Got a Reprieve by freelance journalist Sylvia Rowley, touted the benefits of catch shares by citing the example of the West coast groundfish fishery. It also quoted catch shares proselytizer and NOAA ex-head Jane Lubchenco, back on the Environmental Defense board after her brief sojourn in the almost-real world of the federal bureaucracy, on catch shares: “If you have 5 percent of the pie, you’d like to see the pie grow.” Read the rest here
Ottawa’s hiring wave to bolster federal science at sea
The federal government is about to do something it hasn’t done much of for years: hire scientists – a lot of them. At an event scheduled for Wednesday morning in Ottawa, Hunter Tootoo, the Minister of Fisheries, Oceans and the Canadian Coast Guard, is expected to announce that his department is looking to add 135 science-related personnel. The new hires would boost science staff at the department by about 15 per cent, its largest increase since the seventies and early eighties, when international agreements expanded Canada’s exclusive control of its ocean resources out to the 200-nautical-mile limit. “This level of hiring will almost certainly strengthen the capacity of ministry staff to provide high-quality science advice to decision-makers,” Jeff Hutchings, a fisheries scientist and professor at Dalhousie University in Halifax, said.Hang on Fishermen! Read the rest here 14:16
Profile: Joseph Branin – From Selling Bait to Managing the Belford Seafood Co-Op — A Fish Story
Who: Joseph Branin Age: 69 Family: Married, two daughters, one son Home: Highlands What he does: General manager of Belford Seafood Co-op for nearly 20 years. How many fishermen in the co-op: There are 18 to 20 boats active in the Belford fishing fleet, and some 50 families make their living there. How does the co-op work: Fishermen bring in their haul, and the fish are then sent to a market, and the fishermen are paid according to the price the fish is selling for that day. “It all sells. You just never know what price you’re going to get for it. If there’s a lot of that species in the market, you’re going to get a lowball price. If it’s something less plentiful, you’ll get a good price,” Branin says. How he got there: Branin started selling bait and gas at a dock in the Highlands when he was 12 years old. Read the rest here 14:06
Changing Migration Patterns Upend East Coast Fishing Industry
Summer flounder that once amassed in North Carolina have gradually shifted about 140 miles to New Jersey—one facet of the northward migration of fish species that is upending traditional fishing patterns. The move north has sparked debate among regulators over how to respond to changing natural resources that could affect commercial fisheries across the eastern seaboard. For the first time, a group of researchers backed by the federal government is trying to ascertain what the northward movement means for fishermen’s income and way of life. “Some fisherman will end up losing out and some will win big,” Read the rest here 13:04
Athearn Marine Agency Boat of the Week: 44′ 11″ Offshore Lobster-Gillnetter Cat 3408TA
Specifications, information and 50 photos click here To see all the boats in this series, Click here 12:39
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Protection and Indemnity Insurance: Without insurance, skippers can be on the hook for medical bills
When a fisherman falls sick or injured during the season, who pays the medical bills – the crewman or the skipper? That was the topic covered by Dillingham attorney Jürgen Jensen at a recent Business of Fish session at the Bristol Bay Campus. Boat captains can sometimes be on the hook for “maintenance and cure,” which Jensen explains is similar to workers’ compensation. “Injuries are pretty obvious: somebody’s gonna get hurt. If you lose a finger, obviously that’s an injury that could happen on the boat,” said Jensen. “But this can also come up with illnesses. If somebody falls ill with cancer and they’re on your boat fishing, the court will say that you owe maintenance and cure. You will owe for medical bills while they’re getting cured of cancer, and you’ll owe the daily maintenance rate, which generally ranges between $35 and $55 dollars a day.” There are some exceptions; Read the rest here 10:37
Saving Phyllis A hits a snag – $200K in state aid never came; fundraising off track
The Phyllis A is looking a little dispirited these days, ensconced in the shadows thrown by the cluster of boats in the storage lot of Gloucester Marine Railways on Rocky Neck. The 91-year-old gillnetter, the oldest former commercial fishing boat in a place where that should mean something, sits under a tarp on the railway’s ubiquitous boat stands, its hull a warren of good wood and bad. On the pavement next to it, the old boat’s pilot house, removed to allow access to on-deck work areas, rests like a tiny sidekick. “She’s drying out,” said Douglass Parsons, the longtime foreman at the railways. “We should have had her back in the water last month. The longer she stays here, the more work that will have to be done.” Read the story here 09:48
Busted! 20 kilos of cocaine discovered stashed inside of frozen fish.
The fish tale began May 4 when U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers seized an air cargo shipment of “large, frozen fish” from Suriname at Miami International Airport, according to U.S. Homeland Security special agent Ryan Varrone. Agents filleted the fish and removed the cocaine, which has a street value of about $600,000, according to authorities.The fish was replaced in the shipping boxes and transported by truck to a storage facility in Queens which was kept under surveillance, Varrone’s complaint states. Daniels, 32, and Gonsalves, 33, showed up at the warehouse on Friday in a white van. They picked up the boxes and drove to another storage facility in Brooklyn where they were arrested,,, Read the rest here 09:29
