Monthly Archives: August 2018
Trollers call for Murkowski’s aid with treaty
“You take our fish, you take our lives!” This is the fourth time salmon trollers have taken to the streets during the 2018 season to protest proposed cuts to the chinook harvest in the Pacific Salmon Treaty. In May, trollers gathered outside Sitka’s Centennial Building prior to the start of a state salmon symposium hosted by ADF&G Commissioner Sam Cotten. When Governor Bill Walker visited Sitka in June, dozens of fishing vessels paraded up and down the harbor, asking that Walker refuse to sign the treaty, if it forced Alaska trollers to trade a share of the king salmon harvest to Canada, to protect endangered stocks in Washington. Trollers then organized a rally in Sitka’s harbor prior to the start of the July 1 opener, where one fisherman symbolically used a flare to burn his boat payments. >click to read<17:41
Exposed wind farm electric transmission line at Block Island beach causing concern
There is a controversy over a high voltage power line to and from Block Island that’s supposed to be buried. But it’s not. In fact, at low tide on Wednesday, it was just below the waterline at State Beach, which is also known as Crescent Beach and is the most popular on Block Island. You can still see the yellow covering wrapped around the 37,500-volt National Grid powerline that runs the juice generated by the Deepwater Wind turbines through a buried junction box, to the mainland, and the electricity back again to island ratepayers. National Grid released a statement, noting that shifting sediment is the cause for the lines exposure, but added that they are “confident” it’s safe. >click to read<14:02
Cable exposed near shoreline – >click to read<
Louisiana Shrimpers seek more federal protection
Speaking during the Louisiana Shrimp Association meeting at the American Legion Hall in Houma, shrimpers said import tariffs aren’t enough to protect their business. And foreign companies should not be able to sell shrimp in the U.S. if they are using banned antibiotics. “We’re being treated differently than other businesses that are in the same situation we’re in,” said Dean Blanchard, owner of Dean Blanchard Seafood Inc. in Grand Isle. “We’re comparable to rice farmers and sugar-cane farmers.” When these farmers, many of them in Louisiana, couldn’t compete with imports, they received help, Blanchard said. The federal government provides them subsidies. He added that they would be out of business if they had to work as hard as shrimpers. >click to read<12:30
Fall lobster fishery is underway in Lobster Fishing Area 25
A crowd was on the dock with cameras, smart phones and cheerful waves as loaded lobster boats sailed out the mouth of Miminegash Harbour at 6 a.m. Thursday. They were there to see the fishermen off on setting day, the official start of the fall fishery in Lobster Fishing Area 25. The scene was repeated at wharves from Borden to Skinners Pond in the Northumberland Strait, and around North Cape at Seacow Pond and Tignish. >click to read<11:08
The clock is ticking,,, Endangered Salmon Prevention Act to remove problem sea lions faces time crunch
A bill making its way through the U.S. Senate would allow the states and tribal interests to remove problem sea lions in the Columbia River, including by lethal force, to reduce predation on endangered salmon and steelhead. However, the timeline for the passage of this legislation is growing very short.,, The bill was passed out of committee last week and will be addressed by the full senate soon, but there is a time constraint. If the bill is not passed before Congress adjourns for the year, its future is uncertain. SB 3119 represents the best effort to date to amend the MMPA since its inception to allow stronger management of problem sea lions. It specifically targets animals that take up positions at pinch-points where salmon are forced to concentrate and are easy prey for the pinnipeds. >click to read<10:36
Bay State Wind alters layout for offshore wind farm, but fisheries call foul
Bay State Wind LLC is changing the turbine layout of its 800-MW Bay State Offshore Wind Project to accommodate the U.S. commercial fishing industry’s ability to work between turbines. But fisheries say the changes are too little, too late and underscore their growing frustration with the offshore wind sector. However, the commercial fishing industry is not satisfied with Bay State Wind’s changed layout. Meghan Lapp, fisheries liaison for Rhode Island-based frozen seafood producer Seafreeze Ltd., said one-mile-wide transit lanes can make it dangerous for trawl vessels to fish with their nets without hitting other boats or project infrastructure. Buffer zones for each side of a transit lane are also needed due to potential radar interference from the turbines. >click to read< 09:48
Chile accuses Marine Harvest of damaging environment after 600,000 salmon injected with antibiotics escape
Chile’s environment ministry on Monday (Aug 6) accused the local unit of Norway’s Marine Harvest of damaging the environment after hundreds of thousands of salmon escaped from one of the company’s fisheries last month. The ministry said in a statement that it had asked the State Defense Council, which represents the government in legal matters, to investigate the incident and initiate legal action against Marine Harvest with the aim of repairing the environmental damage. Some of the 600,000 fish that swam into the wild last month after a storm damaged enclosures near the southern city of Calbuco had been injected with a course of antibiotics that was incomplete at the time of their escape, making them unfit for human consumption. >click to read<08:49
Why the U.S. Needs More Worker-Owned Companies
The gap in wealth in the United States between the ultrawealthy and everyone else has reached its widest point in decades. One way to narrow the divide is through the use of worker buyouts, in which ownership of a company transfers from a single person or a small number of people to the workers of the company. Currently, about 10% of Americans hold equity stakes in their workplaces.,,, Worker buyouts are particularly likely to blossom in industries with organized workers who transition to union cooperatives. Last year 400 members of IAM Maine Lobstering Union bought the wholesale operation of Trenton Bridge Lobster Pound and turned it into a worker-owned cooperative called Lobster 207. >click to read<07:59
Mount Pleasant builder has background to save Shem Creek shrimp dock
Brett Elrod was 11 when he took his first job at the Shem Creek shrimp docks, shoveling ice onto a conveyor belt to move to the boats. That meant keeping up with the moving belt.,, Elrod’s situation now isn’t too far removed. The man who holds the fate of the creek’s Wando shrimp dock doesn’t want it all in his hands. He wants “everybody to pitch in together,” he said, to remake the place.,, “If everybody puts in their two cents and their ideas, I think they could have the whole thing for shrimping,” he said. >click to read<20:16
Passengers on whale-watching boat spot snake floating in water off Cape Cod
Passengers and crew on a whale-watching boat off Cape Cod spotted something very unusual in the water last week. The Cape Cod Times reports the Hyannis Whale Watcher was about a mile north of Race Point Beach when someone suddenly yelled “snake.” Marine biologist Joanne Jarzobski told the newspaper that an eastern hognose snake was floating alongside the boat. Herpetologist Scott Buchanan told the paper that it was “puzzling” to see the serpent so far out in the ocean but noted snakes are good swimmers and that he believes it was just trying to cool off.>link<17:41
Marine Harvest pursuing radical new salmon farm designs
Marine Harvest is proposing to build radical new salmon farms that could answer nagging concerns about sea lice infestations, virus transfer and escapes from conventional Atlantic salmon farms. Ocean-based closed containment and semi-closed farms would avoid the massive energy requirements of land-based systems, with a goal of eliminating contact between farmed and wild salmon. The Marine Donut is a closed, escape-proof farm that protects farmed fish from sea lice and pathogens. The futuristic-looking Egg is a semi-closed tank that extends 40 metres below the surface of the water. >click to read<16:16
Jaws of life (Release the Kracken!)
“Conserving our planet one fish at a time.” You do a double-take when you see the sign. Because Randy Hupp’s a commercial fisherman. But he is serious about this. What he’s started, from his home in La Mesa, is not just a program to throw back fish from fishing boats — fish that are too young to be eaten, or too old, or too endangered — but to make sure they survive the throw-back. Because from the depths he fishes at, the fish get the bends, the excruciating decompression sickness fish and divers alike suffer if they come up from depth too quickly.,, “So I got this idea to somehow grab each fish by the mouth, take him off the hook, clamp him to a weighted line, and send him back down to 150, maybe 300 feet.” >click to read<14:42
Athearn Marine Agency Boat of the Week: 43′ Fiberglass Scalloper with Ma. CAP, CAT 3406, 12 KW Northern Lights
Specifications, information and 6 photos >click here< To see all the boats in this series, >Click here<12:50
FISH-NL accuses NL NDP leader of applying double standards in labour relations
The Federation of Independent Sea Harvesters of Newfoundland and Labrador (FISH-NL) accuses provincial NDP leader Gerry Rogers of applying double standards in supporting locked out workers in Gander while turning her back on the province’s inshore fish harvesters. “While Gerry Rogers rallied today with workers at Gander’s D-J Composites, who’ve been locked out for 597 days, she’s turned her back on upwards of 3,000 inshore harvesters who’ve been waiting 583 days for the Labour Relations Board to grant them a vote to choose their union,” says Ryan Cleary, President of FISH-NL. >click to read<11:15
Fears that thousands of escaped salmon could ‘pollute’ wild stocks on Newfoundland’s south coast
The escape of thousands of farmed salmon on the south coast of Newfoundland is a significant concern, as is the lack of public notification about the incident, the Atlantic Salmon Federation says. Cooke Aquaculture confirmed Monday that over the course of four days last week between 2,000 and 3,000 salmon escaped from the company’s fish farm in Hermitage Bay.,, The primary concern is that the escaped salmon will mate with wild salmon, which Sutton said will “pollute the genetics” and harm a salmon population already assessed as threatened. Interbreeding has already happened between wild and farmed salmon in the province. >click to read<10:24
Raimondo looks to further offshore wind, to fishermen’s dismay
Governor Gina Raimondo is promising a “greener” Rhode Island with at least 5,000 new jobs by expanding offshore wind initiatives if she’s reelected. “High-end, high wage jobs – Rhode Island ought to be the Silicon Valley of offshore wind,” said Raimondo. Raimondo eventually wants factories in Rhode Island to manufacture the equipment instead of outsourcing it. She plans to further invest in the state’s ports so they can handle the work on a larger scale. For Spencer Bode, a local commercial fisherman, this is a race he wants no part of. Bode hasn’t been impacted by the five turbines off Block Island, but the dozens more set to be built halfway between the island and Martha’s Vineyard are another story. >click to read<09:25
Derelict boat leaving mounting debts in wake
The Artemis, the derelict scalloper whose owner left a trail of woe and unpaid bills around Gloucester’s shoreside businesses, may soon be gone. But its saga could have the shelf life of a Norse legend. The 43-foot, steel-hulled vessel, which spent four months grounded on a Provincetown breakwater after being towed out of Gloucester, is tied up at a Provincetown pier, awaiting demolition. And Provincetown is paying the tab — estimated ultimately to cost about $39,000 — to haul the boat off the breakwater and cut it up. The town, according to local reports, has said it will try to recoup the costs of the salvage (about $30,000) and demolition (about $8,500) from vessel owner John Christiansen. Scott Memhard of Gloucester’s Cape Pond Ice on Monday basically said good luck with that. >click to read<21:40
Abandoned puppies rescued from uninhabited Canadian island
The puppies were spotted by local fishermen JR Cook and his friend, who said they could hear barking coming from the island late in the evening. So the two fishing buddies went back the next day, and saw some movement in the brush. “The fellas could see some dark figures on the island across the water and thought it might be wolves fighting”, she said in a telephone interview. “As they got closer, they realized there were seven abandoned, 3 1/2-month old puppies on the island starving to death”, said Debra Vandekerkhove with Norway House Animal Rescue. The pups have since become known as the “Little Gilligan’s Island Puppies”. They’ve got a Facebook page and a Go Get Funding page if you fancy contributing something to the upkeep of the puppies. >click to read<20:09 
Asleep at the Wheel: Fatigue Led to Capsize of Fishing Ship and $27,200 Fine
Crew fatigue led to the grounding and loss of commercial fishing vessel Jan and its owner, Wild Fish (NZ) Limited, being fined $27,200 following prosecution by Maritime NZ. Maritime NZ Northern Regional Manager, Neil Rowarth, said the sole helmsman at the time of the grounding, a 17-year-old deckhand, fell asleep soon after going on watch in the early hours of 11 January 2016. The helmsman had worked a full day, slept for between only one hour and three-and-a-quarter hours, and was then woken to take his turn on watch. He had never before been on watch by himself at night. >click to read<19:38
Three Coast Guard aircrews transit more than 1,200 miles to medevac man from fishing vessel west of Dutch Harbor
A Coast Guard Air Station Kodiak MH-60 Jayhawk helicopter crew medevaced a man from the 116-foot commercial fishing vessel Patricia Lee 190 miles west of Dutch Harbor, Alaska, early Tuesday morning. The helicopter crew safely transported the 27-year-old man from the fishing vessel Patricia Lee to awaiting air ambulance personnel in Dutch Harbor for further care. The man was reported to have been in stable condition. District 17 command center watchstanders received a report Monday evening from the fishing vessel’s master that a crewman had been hit in the head by a crab pot. >click to read<18:29
P.E.I. fisherman prepare for fall lobster season
Lee Knox is hoping the forecast for this Thursday’s setting day of relatively light wind of up to 15 knots holds, as it will allow for good conditions for fishermen to unload their traps.,, The Department of Fisheries and Oceans has a conference call with port representatives set for this morning to assess setting day weather conditions and make the decision on whether the season opens Thursday, as scheduled, or gets delayed. Knox is anticipating it will get started on time. Approximately 218 western P.E.I. fall fishermen share Lobster Fishing Area 25 in the Northumberland Strait with mainland fishermen from Chatham, N.B., nearly to Amherst, N.S. >click to read<
Ocean Beauty permanently closes Petersburg cannery
Ocean Beauty Seafoods will permanently close the company’s Petersburg cannery. Company president and CEO Mark Palmer said in an Aug. 2 letter to Petersburg borough that Ocean Beauty’s facilities at Excursion Inlet, Cordova and Kodiak provide it with adequate canning capacity to meet customer demand. The processor invested money in its Excursion Inlet plant, about 40 miles west of Juneau and will focus on more fresh and frozen processing. The letter also mentions a multi-year agreement with a floating processor vessel Ocean Fresh. >click to read<14:45
Cape Sable Island fisherman recalls ‘sea monster’ encounter 42 years later
Shag Harbour UFO Festival goers were treated to an eye witness account of a sea creature encounter, experienced by Cape Sable Island fisherman Rodney Ross in July 1976, while fishing with his father on the fishing grounds known as Pollock Shoal. The opening night of the UFO Festival (Aug. 3) was only the third time that Ross has told the story to an audience. He is the last of the five fishermen aboard three different boats that saw the creature during a one-week period 42-years ago. “Some like to call it the South Side sea monster and I think I probably agree it looked like a monster,” said Ross. The story begins on a Monday when a fellow fisherman, the late Eisner Penney, was out fishing on the Pollock Shoal. >click to read<13:18
Commercial Fisherman Plead With State Consultant For License System Overhaul
The young men who work the decks of Hank Lackner’s dragger, Jason & Danielle, spend up to three weeks at a time far over the horizon from their homes in Montauk, toiling in heat and high seas. “My crew just spent 13 days at sea, working 20-hour days—these are true commercial fishermen,” Mr. Lackner told a consultant who has been hired by the state to craft new licensing guidelines at a meeting in Southampton last week. “They spend 200 days a year on my boat, they don’t have a lot of chances to get out. They shouldn’t be eliminated from this process. We don’t want them to go away. We have to figure out a way where the [landings of] trips they worked gets them some kind of credit for being on the boat.” For years, young commercial fishermen have been stalled from setting out on their own by the state’s embargo on issuing “new” licenses, and by inflexible rules for transferring existing licenses from those who are leaving the industry to those trying to get in. >click to read<10:58
New Brunswick officials suspected pesticide use near lobster pens
An email exchange between employees of Northern Harvest Sea Farms and New Brunswick environment officials reveals the tensions at play last summer and fall during sea lice outbreaks in the Bay of Fundy. The documents — obtained by CBC News through a right-to-information request — surround attempts by the salmon aquaculture company to apply pesticides to its salmon cages in Campobello Island’s Head Harbour. Pesticides can be fatal to lobster, and the salmon farm is near lobster-holding facilities maintained by local fishermen. >click to read<10:19
Narragansett Bay – Invasive Asian Crab Outcompeting Young Lobsters
Speculation about the cause of the decline of lobster populations in Narragansett Bay has focused on an increasing number of predatory fish eating young lobsters, warming waters stressing juveniles, and a disease on their shells that is exacerbated by increasing temperatures. A new study by a scientist at the University of North Carolina points to another contributing factor: Asian shore crabs.,,, Adult lobsters live in much deeper water than the shallow intertidal zone inhabited by Asian shore crabs, so the two species seldom interact. But some larval lobsters settle in the intertidal and subtidal zones, which they use as nursery habitat. Prior to the arrival of Asian shore crabs, it was an area that had fewer predators and an abundance of food. But now the young lobsters are finding themselves in competition with the crabs for food and shelter. >click to read<09:25
Four are charged with illegal commercial fishing in Dog Fish Bay.
The state has filed charges against four commercial fishermen accused of illegal harvesting salmon in a bay south of Homer. Alaska Wildlife Troopers wrote in a dispatch Monday that Eric Winslow, 61, Paul Roth, 35, and Mark Roth, 64, all of Homer, and Robert Roth, 39, of Anchor Point, are charged with working together to illegally drive salmon out of a closed area near the mouth of a creek in Dog Fish Bay into an open fishing area, where they harvested them. Altogether, 33,328 pounds of salmon were illegally harvested, according to the dispatch. >click to read<08:42
Wicklow widow suing ‘those with an interest in’ fishing boat after husband drowned without life jacket
Brigid Hughes has taken an admiralty case, as of 13 July, against ‘all persons claiming an interest in’ the fishing vessel Kerri Heather, based out of Arklow, Co Wicklow. Her husband, Leonard (49), better known as Lenny, an experienced fisherman, drowned after falling from the boat while hauling bait pots off the Wicklow coastline on the morning of Wednesday, 16 November, 2016. The Kerri Heather had been at sea for just over an hour at the time of the incident. The precise nature of the lawsuit is not currently known, nor which defendants are intended by the broad nature of the claim. >click to read<20:24
After Tyler Hamlin was stripped of her crown, the Maine Lobster Festival board faced reactions ‘almost like a lynch mob.’
The 2018 Maine Sea Goddess was forced to step down less than 24 hours after she was crowned because of photos she posted on social media that were forwarded to Maine Lobster Festival organizers. – The decision by the executive board of the Maine Lobster Festival to strip the Sea Goddess of her crown created a firestorm that made festival organizers fear for their safety. More than 10,000 comments and messages have been sent to the Maine Lobster Festival since The Courier-Gazette reported Thursday evening that Taylor Hamlin, who was crowned the 2018 Maine Sea Goddess on Wednesday night,> was forced to step down< less than 24 hours later over photos she had posted on social media. >click to read<18:55
Potent drugs found in West Coast sewage threaten chinook, study reveals
A Seattle expert in environmental contaminants who has linked sewage flushes into Washington state estuaries to higher juvenile chinook salmon death rates suspects human drugs found in fish put them at risk. James Meador of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric administration (NOAA) said he believes pharmaceuticals found in the contaminated water — such as amphetamines and antidepressants — are in part to blame. These drugs and chemicals pass through human digestive systems — and some are flushed directly down the toilet.,, He tested 49 fish for 150 pharmaceuticals, personal care products and industrial chemicals. >click to read<14:08
