Daily Archives: December 7, 2016
FISH-NL takes its message to Port de Grave
FISH-NL (Federation of Independent Sea Harvesters of Newfoundland and Labrador) is just about finished its provincial tour, with a scheduled late-afternoon meeting Wednesday in Torbay being the last stop for now. But a few hours before that, president Ryan Cleary and fellow FISH-NL executive Jason Sullivan met with a few harvesters at St. Luke’s Church Hall. Less than 10 people showed up, and Cleary said that wasn’t unexpected, given Port de Grave is among the ports where inshore harvesters still have it pretty good thanks to a strong crab fishery. “3L is a little different from anywhere else in the province,” Cleary told The Compass prior to the meeting. “It’s doing better because the crab is still good, because money is coming in and people are not suffering here like they are everywhere else.” Read the story here 17:12
Arraignment set for man accused of landing 183 illegal lobsters
James A. Santapaola Jr., the Gloucester lobsterman accused of landing 183 illegal lobsters last month at a local lobster wholesaler, committed a similar offense in 2006, according to the incident report filed by Massachusetts Environmental Police. On Wednesday, Gloucester District Court Clerk Magistrate Margaret Crateau issued a criminal complaint against Santapaola, 40, of 16 Forest Lane, for allegedly landing the illegal lobsters at Captain Joe & Sons Inc. on East Main Street on Nov. 8. Crateau set Jan. 20 for Santapaola’s arraignment in Gloucester on the misdemeanor charges. The criminal complaint charges Santapaola landed 569 lobsters at Captain Joe & Sons on Nov. 8 that included 144 undersize lobsters, two egg-bearing female lobsters and 37 lobsters with V-notches indicating a breeding female. Earlier, Environmental Police officials said the wholesaler is not culpable in the illegal landings because it never took the lobsters into its possession. Read the rest here 16:09
3 rescued, 2 still missing after fishing vessel sinks near Dutch Harbor
A Coast Guard Air Station Kodiak MH-60 Jayhawk helicopter aircrew and four good Samaritan crews responded to the sinking of fishing vessel Exito after it began taking on water 14 miles northeast of Dutch Harbor, Alaska, Tuesday evening. Three of the vessel’s five crewmembers were located by the good Samaritan crew of the Afognac Strait. The crewmembers were brought on board the vessel and are being transferred to Dutch Harbor. The Jayhawk aircrew and good Samaritan crews on the commercial fishing vessels Commitment, Blue North and Northern Lead continue to search for the remaining two crewmembers of the Exito. The crewmembers brought on board the Afognak Strait reported that one of the remaining crewmembers had put on immersion suit and was last seen preparing to abandon ship. Coast Guard Sector Anchorage watchstanders received a phone call at 9:38 p.m., Tuesday, from the owner of the Exito reporting that the vessel was taking on water and the crew was preparing to abandon ship. Coast Guard 17th District watchstanders diverted Coast Guard Cutter Alex Haley and requested the launch of the Air Station Kodiak Jayhawk. Link 15:37 About F/V Exito
Coast Guard rescues 5 fishermen from aground fishing vessel off Moclips Beach, Wash.
The Coast Guard rescued five fishermen off an aground commercial fishing vessel in the vicinity of Grenville Bay, north of Moclips Beach early Wednesday morning. The five-man crew was removed from the vessel by an MH-60 Jayhawk helicopter crew from Coast Guard Sector Columbia River and transferred to Quinalt Indian Reservation emergency medical services. Watchstanders at Sector Columbia River in Warrenton, Oregon, were notified of the grounding at 3:30 a.m., by the crew of the Qualaysquallum, a 58-foot, steel hulled tribal fishing vessel, homeported in Westport. No injuries or pollution have been reported. The vessel’s crew deployed the vessel’s anchor before abandoning ship via helicopter. The fishing vessel reportedly has less than 3,000 gallons of diesel fuel and 8,000 pounds of crab aboard. The cause of the incident is under investigation. Link Watch video here 14:41
Athearn Marine Agency Boat of the Week: 104ft. Steel Canadian built Seiner
Specifications, information and 39 photo’s click here To see all the boats in this series, Click here 12:55
Mystery surrounds alarm failure on sunken Alaska Juris, a siren that could “wake the dead”
When water first began flooding into the Alaska Juris on July 26, a network of bilge alarms should have unleashed a cacophony of sound to alert the crew that something was wrong. “The siren can wake the dead. Anywhere on the vessel you can hear the alarm,” said Ben Eche, an electrician who did shore-side work on that alert system, in testimony Tuesday during Coast Guard hearings in Seattle into the sinking of the vessel. All 46 crew members survived. But crew testified the alarm did not go off, a troubling development that prompted Coast Guard officials to question Eche about how the system operated. Eche said he had tested the alarm system while the Alaska Juris was in port, and it worked properly. Read the story here, and watch the proceedings here 11:36
Will lobstermen/fishermen wear PFDs?
Think of the Maine lobsterman, and a few iconic images come to mind: a rugged boat with a wire trap on the rail; gloved hands holding a thrashing lobster and a gauge to measure whether it’s of legal size; a salty-looking fisherman wearing a T-shirt, oil pants and rubber boots, but no PFD (personal flotation device) or life jacket. According to an NEC report, fishermen generally described themselves as being proactive about safety whenever possible. Virtually all boats carry and maintain the safety gear required by the U.S. Coast Guard. A few years ago, many lobstermen began rigging rope ladders off the sterns of their boats to help them climb back on if they went overboard, and some run a line under the rail to a “kill switch” they can tug to shut off the engine if they are being pulled overboard. Lobstermen cited several reasons for their reluctance to wear PFD’s,, Read the rest here 11:04
Controlling Agreements – Who owns the fishing licence?
According to an official from the Department of Fisheries and Oceans (DFO), controlling agreements in the inshore fishing fleet on Canada’s East Coast are almost a thing of the past. In 2007, DFO asked fishers throughout the region to declare whether or not they had such agreements. Those who declared themselves to be party to such deals were given a deadline, 2014, to get out of the agreements. Morley Knight, Department of Fisheries and Oceans says about 700 fishers declared controlling agreements and almost all of them have complied with the department’s policy. He added that since 1979, the department’s policy regarding controlling agreements has been clear. A policy to preserve the owner/operator rule — simply that the holder of a commercial fish licence is the person who has control of the management and operation of the fishing enterprise — was enacted in 1979, during the tenure of former fisheries minister Romeo LeBlanc. Still, many fishers entered into agreements with third parties — fish processing companies and other business enterprises — that saw control of the fishing enterprise go to those companies. Read the story here 10:29
Tiger Shark Caught 10 Years To the Day After Being Tagged
Fishermen sometimes think they can tell when a fish they’ve hooked has been caught before. Maybe it fights harder, or tries every trick in the book to shake the hook loose, but it’s hard to know for sure. Except when surf fisherman Zach Wolk reeled in an 11-foot, 5-inch female tiger shark at Cape San Blas in northwestern Florida back in October; he knew for sure because of the embedded tag. What he didn’t know, until later, was that he’d caught the tiger shark 10 years to the day that it was first tagged in the Gulf of Mexico – Oct. 25, 2006. The information came courtesy of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Wolk jotted down the shark’s tag number, and, after taking a few photos for posterity and releasing the creature back into the Gulf, sent the info off to NOAA. Photos, read the rest here 09:47
The North Pacific Fishery Management Council is meeting in Anchorage December 6 thru 14, 2016
The North Pacific Fishery Management Council will begin their meeting week on Tuesday, December 6, and continue through Tuesday December 14, 2016 at the Hilton Hotel, 500 W. 3rd Avenue, Anchorage, AK 99501. The AGENDA and SCHEDULE are now available. The Council’s meeting will be broadcast live beginning their first day via Adobe Connect Listen Online 09:16
Ocean City Letter States ‘Unconditional Opposition’ To Baltimore Canyon Marine Sanctuary Designation
Calling a potential designation of the offshore Baltimore Canyon as the nation’s first Urban National Marine Sanctuary potentially “devastating” to the multi-million dollar fishing industry, resort officials this week agreed to send a letter of opposition to state and federal representatives. In October, National Aquarium officials announced they were seeking an Urban National Marine Sanctuary designation for the Baltimore Canyon, a vast 28-mile long and five-mile wide submarine canyon off the coast of Ocean City that lies at the center of the resort’s multi-million dollar fishing industry. According to the National Aquarium’s petition drive, a designation of the nation’s first Urban National Marine Sanctuary for the Baltimore Canyon “presents a unique opportunity to connect an urban population to the ecological treasure using cutting edge deep sea exploration technology.” Read the rest here 08:42
