Daily Archives: July 11, 2018
House of Representatives – Debate and Passage of HR-200
July 11, 2018 House Session The House meets with debate scheduled on a fisheries management bill sponsored by Rep. Don Young of Alaska. >click to watch<20:52
House votes to overhaul fishery management law – “I’m proud to say that my bill protects our commercial and recreational fisheries’ interests and allow councils to do their jobs in a more streamlined and effective manner,” Rep. Don Young (R-Alaska), the bill’s sponsor, said on the House floor. >click to read<21:41
Hurricane Chris heads toward Newfoundland
Environment Canada updated its forecast for Chris Thursday afternoon, with a warning that heavy rain, strong winds, significant waves and storm surges could hit coastal areas of the island on Thursday. Between 40 and 70 millimetres of rain is now forecast for the northeast Avalon Peninsula — which includes St. John’s and several suburban towns — while about 30 to 40 mm are possible for the southeast Avalon. Chris is expected to be a post-tropical storm by the time it arrives Thursday. Right now, it’s expected to pass well under Nova Scotia, then slowly weaken as it moves toward the Avalon Peninsula as a post-tropical storm late Thursday evening. >click to read<
Twenty-five pound, 100 year old lobster caught off Maine coast
Too big for even a trap, a 25-pound lobster required some serious muscle to pull it out of the ocean off the coast of Phippsburg. Lobsterman Eric Wallace caught the monster male crustacean that he estimates to be at least 100 years old. Lucky for Wallace, the Moby Dick-sized lobster snagged his giant claw in the rope of Wallace’s trap resulting in the brief capture. In the state of Maine, lobsters’ backs must measure more than 5 inches to be kept. >click to read< 15:45
NYDEC halts commercial fluke fishery for about two weeks, sets harvest limit
New York State will close its commercial fishing grounds, a staple of the Long Island fishing fleet, for about two weeks effective Sunday. The closure, which applies to fishing in state waters up to 3 miles from shore, will last until month’s end, when it reopens with a harvest limit of 50 pounds per day. Local commercial fishermen, who dealt last month with a similar closure of another plentiful staple in New York waters of black sea bass, say the closure is another blow to their livelihood at a time of pricing stresses and amid state pressure to ease federal restrictions. “It really hurts us,” said Phil Karlin,,, >click to read<13:46
Athearn Marine Agency Boat of the Week: 42′ Bruno Dragger,Lobster,Scalloper, CAT 3306
Specifications, information and 8 photos >click here< To see all the boats in this series, >click here<12:19
Gulf shrimp season opens Sunday in state and federal waters while shrimp boats will set out lacking workers
Tuesday’s blessing-of-the-fleet event at the Brownsville Shrimp Basin felt similar to the one a year ago, with a sermon from Father Mark Watters and an issue over the shortage of workers. After facing a slight scare of almost not making it to Brownsville, Watters said his 13th year blessing the Brownsville-Port Isabel shrimp fleet was not only a number, but a message of multiplication of double profusion.“Now, 13, in the kingdom of heaven, that number, when you see it in scripture, what the enemy has stolen and made people superstitious about is actually a kingdom number that equates to double profusion,” he said. Still, the shortage of foreign workers will remain a challenge the shrimp industry has to overcome. >click to read<10:56
Roughly 150 Boats Take Part in ‘Blessing of the Fleet’ – The executive director of the Texas Shrimp Association says, however, a shortage U.S. citizen and foreign workers will cost the industry an estimated $700,000 per day this year. Video,>click here<
UGA researchers dive into a sea of questions
Captain Wynn Gale knew it was bad. He’d been commercial fishing off the coast of Darien, about 50 miles south of Savannah, since he was 12, and his decades of shrimping told him the industry was in trouble. Again..,,, But this time, off the coast of Georgia in the 1990s, there weren’t as many shrimp to catch, and the ones Gale and other commercial fishermen were pouring onto the decks of their boats had something wrong with them. They weren’t flopping around like normal; in fact, they barely moved. And their gills were black, a stark contrast to the milky clear color of Georgia’s famously sweet white shrimp. >click to read<09:43
Lobster-Hauling off Maine Becoming a Less Popular Livelihood
Chipper Zeiner has been hauling American lobsters off the East Coast of the United States since 1973, when he was just 11 years old, but in recent years he has noticed a decline in the number of people taking up the practice to earn a living. Chipper, who has about 600 pots in various sections of the waters off the coast of Maine, heads out into the Atlantic Ocean at 6 am six days a week, hauling in about 200 lobsters each day. “You have to love it to do it. If you don’t love it you won’t be doing it for long. Many kids today won’t do it, it costs too much to get into it,” Chipper said. >click to read<, video, photo’s, >click here<08:39
