Daily Archives: February 15, 2019
Coast Guard assists good Samaritan vessel to rescue five people from sunken fishing vessel near Dutch Harbor, Alaska
Two Coast Guard Air Station Kodiak helicopter aircrews searched and assisted the good Samaritan fishing vessel Kona Kai with locating five people in a life raft from the sunken commercial fishing vessel Pacific 1, approximately 40 miles west, southwest of Dutch Harbor, Alaska, Friday. The Kona Kai safely recovered all five people from an inflatable life raft that was deployed from the Pacific 1 upon sinking. All five people were safely transported to Dutch Harbor and were reported to have been in good condition. >click to read<18:34
North Carolina Fisheries Association Weekly Update for February 15, 2019
>Click here to read the Weekly Update<, to read all the updates >click here<, for older updates listed as NCFA >click here<16:50
Mourners pay final tribute to Congressman Walter B. Jones
He was a devoted husband and father who wanted to be remembered for his integrity and love of God and the Catholic Church. He also was the voice for veterans, farmers, fisherman, businessmen and everyone in between. And when he went off to Washington, he was not afraid to go against his own political party if it meant doing the right thing. These tributes and others were shared as friends and colleagues of the late U.S. Rep. Walter B. Jones Jr. gathered in Greenville to honor him on Thursday afternoon. >click to read<15:52
The Salmon Wars in the Pacific Northwest: Banning the Rough Customer
This week in Olympia, the Senate Agriculture Committee held a public hearing on Senate Bill 5617 to ban nontribal gillnetting in Washington state. The legislation would eliminate 445 small fishing businesses in rural and coastal areas. Despite the treacherous snow conditions throughout western Washington, commercial fishermen and tribal representatives packed the chamber and an overflow room, driving through the slush from far-flung places like Wahkiakum, Skamania, Ilwaco, Astoria, the San Juan Islands, Willapa and Bellingham. Also present was a sprinkling of red-hatted CCA sport fishers, hoping to drive a stake through the heart of the commercial fishing industry. >click to read<15:24
B.C.-led international expedition to probe ailing Pacific salmon stocks
An unprecedented international collaboration could revolutionize salmon science and fisheries management, return forecasting and even hatchery output. Nineteen scientists from Russia, Canada, the United States, Japan and South Korea are set to probe the secret lives of five Pacific salmon species with a four-week grid search and test fishery across the Gulf of Alaska. The expedition begins next week aboard the Russian research ship MV Professor Kaganovsky. “We know virtually nothing about what happens to salmon once they leave near-shore waters in the Salish Sea,” said expedition organizer Dick Beamish. >click to read<13:56
MSC Sustainability rating drops for Clearwater’s offshore lobster fishery
Clearwater Seafoods’ offshore lobster fishery in Eastern Canada has lost its “recommended” rating from Ocean Wise, a seafood sustainability recommendation program of the Vancouver Aquarium. It’s more fallout from a 2018 conviction for what the Crown called a “gross violation” of a Canadian fisheries regulation by Halifax-based Clearwater. In a separate action, the Marine Stewardship Council, another much larger eco-sustainability organization, has moved up its scheduled “full surveillance audit” of Clearwater’s offshore lobster fishery by two months to April. >click to read<11:00
Gulf of Mexico: 14-year Taylor Energy oil leak could be two times larger than BP spill
A toppled oil platform that has been leaking into the Gulf of Mexico for more than 14 years may have released much more oil than recent estimates have indicated, possibly pushing the total volume well beyond BP’s Deepwater Horizon oil disaster. New research indicates 2,100 to 71,400 gallons of oil are escaping each day from the Taylor Energy platform site, about 10 miles from the mouth of the Mississippi River. The high estimate of 71,400 gallons per day is more than two times larger than the highest potential rate cited by the Coast Guard when it ordered Taylor to fix the problem late last year. >click to read<10:24
