Daily Archives: April 22, 2018
A $49 lobster roll? A recent shortage has lobster prices soaring.
It’s no shell game: As the price per pound has skyrocketed over the last few months, the costs of lobster dishes on restaurant menus across the city have been off the charts as chefs have been looking to claw back some of the margins. A combination of lousy weather, international demand, and iced-over Canadian fisheries has created a shortage that has driven whole hard-shell lobster prices to as high as $15 a pound this spring, up from about $8 a pound last year.,, Federal permits mean that only 25 percent of Maine’s fleet can go out to the,, In Massachusetts, fishermen are getting $9 to $11 a pound off the boat right now, said Beth Casoni,>click to read<22:51
Tough Conditions – A windy start for Togiak herring fishing Sunday
The Togiak herring fishery opened this morning at 6 a.m. It has been a windy start for the state’s largest sac roe herring fishery. Gusts over 30 miles per hour are posing a challenge for fishermen said area management biologist, Tim Sands. “The seine fleet is over there, and it’s pretty tough conditions today because of weather. I know some fish is being taken, but I don’t think a lot.”
The Alaska Department of Fish and Game surveyed the district Saturday and concluded the enough herring had arrived to meet the threshold for opening the fishery—35,000 tons. >click to read<20:13
Commercial Fishing in the U.S. Exclusive Economic Zone – What was being caught and where back to 1950
What is the status of commercial fishing in the U.S. Exclusive Economic Zone, the waters from 3 to 200 miles off our coastline? Generally speaking – something that the “bureaucrats in charge” have developed a great deal of facility in doing – it’s pretty good. Since the National Marine Fisheries Service started getting serious about tracking commercial landings (or at making those landings readily accessible) in 1950, the total weight of our domestic landings has increased from 4.9 billion to 9.8 billion pounds. The value of those landings, when corrected for inflation, has increased from $3.3 billion to $5.2 billion, almost as good. Nils E. Stolpe/FishNet USA >click to read<17:03
East Coast offshore drilling just got dumber
Seismic testing for potential offshore oil or gas — long opposed by Beaufort Mayor Billy Keyserling and City Council — just got dumber. Frank Knapp Jr., president and CEO of the SC Small Business Chamber of Commerce, has been bird-dogging opposition to offshore drilling and seismic testing. “Government documents and firsthand accounts of munitions and radioactive waste being dumped off the Atlantic Coast from Massachusetts to Florida came to our attention only recently,” Knapp said. On Friday, Knapp sent out a news release with this warning: >click to read<16:26
What’s going to have two claws and a hard shell? Shippagan’s new roadside attraction
Shediac has the giant lobster. Campbellton has the giant salmon. You can see giant fiddleheads in Plaster Rock and a giant cow and calf in Sussex. And if Shippagan has its way, there will soon be a giant crab, a tribute to its fishing industry. The Town of Shippagan believes the sight of big crab boats dry-docked at its sprawling wharf is not enough for tourists to see when visiting during the summer, said Jules Desylva, who manages tourism for the town. >click to read<15:53
Freeze on illegal lobster magnate’s multi-millions
The Royal Court has decided to maintain a freeze on the assets of Arnold Bengis, who admitted his involvement in a conspiracy to land huge amounts of the prized shellfish in excess of permitted quotas between 1999 until 2001. The illegally caught lobster were shipped to the US. The court was asked to rule on whether Bengis could have access to more than $23 million, which formed part of the $37.2 million [£26.4 million] which had been the subject of a forfeiture order. An appeal against the order was launched by a Lichtenstein-based trust company. >click to read<15:06
N.H. seafood program starts sixth season
Monkfish. Jonah crabs. Dogfish shark. Dabs. As New Hampshire Community Seafood starts its sixth year of operation, the species being served may not always be familiar. But the idea of a local CSA seafood is becoming almost routine. NHCS, a cooperative that buys directly from commercial fishing operations based on the state’s seacoast, began the season Thursday with the first of weekly seafood deliveries at 21 locations in New Hampshire – including Cole Gardens in Concord, Brookford Farm in Canterbury and the Contoocook Farmers Market – plus Kittery, Maine, and Dracut, Mass. >click to read<10:56
Still on the hook
Alaska officials are denying they’ve officially cut a deal to let off easy Kami Cabana, the now notorious seine-boat skipper indicted on charges of felony assault with a weapon after a Prince William Sound ramming, but they admit plea bargaining is underway. The 27-year-old Cabana was at the controls of the 58-foot, 81-ton Chugach Pearl in the summer of 2016 when a 49th state fish war escalated into actual ship-to-ship combat. Part of a Cabana-family led effort to wall of the back of Hidden Bay on Culross Island about 20 miles east of Whittier prior to a commercial, pink salmon opening, Cabana took aggressive action when the F/V Temptation tried to run the blockade. >click to read<08:04
