Daily Archives: June 5, 2016
British Fishermen ‘offered 25 times a day’s wage to smuggle people into UK’
British fishermen have disclosed people smugglers have been offering them 25-times a normal day’s pay, across the Channel. At least one former fisherman was so worried about the ease of smuggling people into the UK’s unwatched coves and bays that he wrote to the Home Office, only to be assured “everything is fine”. Home Office and Ministry of Defence officials will this week meet to discuss bolstering security in the Channel, after the rescue of 18 Albanians and two Britons from a sinking boat off the Kent coast last week raised fears about the scale of people smuggling along Britain’s coastline. “I have been approached in the past by a man who asked if I was interested in making more money,” said one fisherman, who asked not to be named. Read the rest here 22:22
Fishermen protest marine reserve at Kaupulehu
KAUPULEHU — The sea is full of fish. Especially on one stretch of North Kona coastline whose closure for 10 years needs only the governor’s signature to be final. That’s according to the 40 or so fishermen who lined Queen Kaahumanu Highway waving signs on Saturday to protest the establishment of the Kaupulehu Marine Reserve, the island’s first initiative to put a reef off-limits to fishing while a subsistence plan is drafted for the 3.6 miles of coastline at Kaupulehu Bay. Anglers who troll, cast nets and fish with spears were angered that such bounty was being placed out of their reach, and questioned the state’s motives for the closure. “Out of all of the areas on the island, they want to close the one in front of the millionaires and billionaires,” said Abram Boido, owner of Mobile Marine Repair Service in Kailua-Kona. “Ask yourself, is it the fishing?” Read the story here 21:54
Groundswell – Opposing Catch Share Embezzlements for the Gulf of Alaska
Gulf of Alaska groundfish trawl bycatch amendments for analysis top this week’s North Pacific Fishery Management Council meeting in Kodiak. First up is the 10-year review of the Crab privatization quota system. It put roughly 1,350 fishermen out of work and shifted roughly $800 million of labor’s surplus to some sealords — embezzled from captains and crew. Into today’s capital flight torrent enters 40 groundfish trawlers, also wanting a mixed economy of brutish capitalism combined with another socialistic program of government giveaways. That’s Alternative 2 in the analysis outline, an IFQ proposal. It will result in more capital fleeing Alaska, robbing our communities of the labor surplus that drives rounds of respending that stimulate coastal economies. Greed and lazy are common economic bedfellows. They’ll embezzle 70% off the top, too. IFQs are euphemistically called “catch shares,” while those who do fish get less of a share than before. Since they saw trawl IFQs as inevitable politically, a splinter group of weak feeling local fishermen came up with a nonsensical idea to at least get one piece of the giveaway trawl pie, in something misnamed a Community Fishing Association. Read the op-ed here 20:51
Western Australian fishing company issues plea to be able to catch great white sharks again
A long-time WA fishing company says the latest fatal shark attack in coastal waters makes a case for commercial fishers to be able to catch great whites again. Shark fishing off the metropolitan coast was banned in 2007 but on Saturday Southwestern Fresh Fish took to Facebook writing a long post arguing in favour of shark fishing off metro beaches. “Over more than 35 years here at Southwestern Fresh Fish we have encountered hundreds of great white sharks. In our opinion they are definitely increasing with the main time of year to see them now increasing from just a few months per year to around eight months per year,” said the Bunbury firm. Read the rest here 16:54
The North Pacific Fishery Management Council is meeting June 6, 2016 at Kodiak Harbor Convention Center
The Council will meet the week of June 6, 2016 at the Kodiak Harbor Convention Center, 236 E. Rezanof Drive, Kodiak, AK. The AGENDA and SCHEDULE are available and will be updated as documents become available. Alaska Air is offering Travel Discounts. Details of meetings to be held during the week follow. The Council’s meeting will be broadcast live beginning their first day via Adobe Connect Click here to Listen Online. 14:55
Woman diver found dead in suspected ‘large white shark’ attack two days after Australian surfer Ben Gerring died
A woman’s body was discovered near Perth in Western Australia and police reports say she had “significant injuries consistent with a shark attack”. It is believed she had been diving near the northern suburb of Mindarie on Sunday morning local time. The Fisheries Department is setting up shark capture gear, saying there is a significant threat to public safety. The 60-year-old female was with a 43-year-old male diving partner in the reefs off Mindarie. The tragedy comes just two days after the death of Australian surfer Ben Gerring who died in hospital three days after losing his right leg in a shark attack. Read the rest here 13:30
Quebec fishermen catch first invasive Asian carp found in St. Lawrence River
There may be plenty of fish in the sea, but two fishermen in the Lanaudière region caught what may be the only Asian carp in the St. Lawrence River last week. Pierre Thériault and Gerald Boucher, commercial fisherman from Lanoraie, reeled in the 29-kilogram invasive species on May 27. “We really weren’t sure what it was. It looked like a carp… it had the same colour, but it was huge! We could see it was different from the others,” said Thériault. Not long after contacting biologists from Quebec’s Forests, Wildlife and Parks Ministry, it was confirmed that the fishermen’s catch was a one-metre-long female grass carp, one of four Asian carp species. Read the rest here 11:54
DAVID G. SELLARS’ ON THE WATERFRONT: Hodgepodge of ships crowd Port Angeles Harbor
The cargo ship Alaska moored to the Port of Port Angeles’ Terminal 3 to take on a load of logs for export to China. The 616-foot ship was launched earlier this year from the Shin Kurushima Dockyard in Japan and made her maiden voyage to the United States in April. I daresay before 2016 runs its course, we will see Alaska in Port Angeles again. Platypus Marine, the full-service shipyard, yacht-repair facility and steel-boat manufacturer on Marine Drive in Port Angeles, hauled out Jamie Marie. She is an 80-foot commercial fishing boat that ran aground in the early morning hours of May 23 in Ocean Shores. About 24 hours later, with the help of a couple of tugs and a high tide, the vessel was freed from her predicament and now sits on the hard while personnel paint the bottom, replace the cutlass bearing and the keel cooler, and assess the need for possible future maintenance and repair needs due to her out-of-water experience. Read the report here 11:28:45
South Atlantic: Move surfaces to overhaul red snapper restrictions, limits
Following the recent announcement that anglers will continue to be prohibited from keeping red snapper in the Atlantic Ocean this year, a member of the regional council that oversees fishing in the Southeast’s federal waters wants to overhaul how the species is regulated. Ben Hartig, a commercial fisherman from Hobe Sound, sent a letter last week to members of the South Atlantic Fishery Management Council that said current regulations are based on unreliable information about the red snapper population and number of fish caught. Hartig proposed a range of possible changes to the years-long, controversial plan in place to help increase the species’ numbers that, if pursued by the council, could go into place as early as 2018. Read the rest here 10:24
