Daily Archives: September 15, 2019
UPDATED: Blockage removed from Skinners Pond harbour entrance
An excavator spent most of the day Saturday on the south block of the Skinners Pond Harbour breakwater, scooping seaweed out of the port’s entrance. That’s after about a half dozen boats got caught up in the seaweed while returning to port on low tide Friday afternoon.,,, “We did it as quickly as we could for the safety of all the fishermen,” Doyle said of Saturday’s cleanup. Sixty-one lobster boats fish out of Skinners Pond. >click to read< 21:07
State officials to field questions on offshore wind at meetings on LI
The state and wind-farm developers are expected to face questions about cost, views and impacts on fishing and birds at three open-house informational meetings,,,, “I’m petrified of them,” said Mark Phillips, one of the most experienced commercial fishermen on Long Island and one of the last operating out of Greenport. His chief concern, he said, is the turbines’ potential impact on the region’s vital squid fishery.,,, “The potential to lose the whole inshore squid fishery is real to me,” he said. >click to read< 17:02
South Atlantic Fishery Management Council Meeting September 16 – 20, 2019 in Charleston, SC
The public is invited to attend the South Atlantic Fishery Management Council to be held in Charleston, SC, Town & Country Inn, 2008 Savannah Highway, Charleston, SC 29407. >click here< for Agenda details. >click here< for Webinar Registration: >Click here< To visit the SAFMC >click here< 16:03
Legislators say Pebble mine could spark a cataclysmic mistake
Claims of Gov. Mike Dunleavy to a potential investor in the Pebble mine project that the state will actively help defend the project from “frivolous and scurrilous attacks” are drawing a sharp rebuttal from 20 Alaska legislators and the Bristol Bay Native Corp. In their Sept. 9 letter to Randy Smallwood, president and chief executive officer of Wheaton Precious Metals Corp., in Vancouver, British Columbia, the legislators said that while the mine “may provide some economic benefit to Alaska, it sits near the headwaters of the largest salmon run in the world. Dewatering and re-routing these headwaters could devastate our cherished resource, as would a single cataclysmic mistake.” >click to read< 13:28
Aquaculture poses threat to the lobster industry
As president of the Maine Lobstering Union, I know we have struggled with several concerns this summer from right whales to bait shortages to aquaculture leases. We need to take steps now to fix rules and regulations around aquaculture. If we don’t, it will encroach on ocean space for everyone. The lease sizes have gotten so large we are making Maine’s oceans attractive to out-of-state corporations. By Rock Alley >click to read< 11:40
13 years ago, the Nature Conservancy desperately wanted to protect groundfish. Now it wants you to eat them
In 2006, the crash of the groundfish population — bottom-dwelling fish like petrale sole, chilipepper rockfish and sand dabs that used to be common on Bay Area tables — led the Nature Conservancy to buy up 13 fishing permits and some California fishermen’s vessels. The state worked with a handful of the state’s remaining groundfish trawlers to change how they fish and protect vulnerable habitat. Now that groundfish populations have rebounded, the Nature Conservancy wants the public to know they’re OK to eat again. >click to read< (if you don’t get propaganda sick) 10:27
Nation’s first mega-offshore wind project stalled for additional study
On most afternoons in Point Judith, Rhode Island, commercial fisherman Brian Loftus steers his trawler back into port after a 12-hour day. Loftus unloaded some 1,500 pounds of whiting, scup, skate and squid. Estimated revenue: $3,000. Loftus has fished for three decades here, but to him there’s a looming problem: Offshore wind developers plan to plop turbines more than 70 stories high into his fishing grounds. >click to read< 08:46
“We don’t even know what the rules of the road are,” Fishermen unsatisfied with wind turbine plans
Rhode Island commercial fishermen sat down a year ago with offshore wind developers, they say they made it clear that for the sake of navigational safety the minimum spacing of any turbines installed in ocean waters needs to be at least one nautical mile in every direction.,,,“It’s the exact thing we’ve been saying for years,” said Lanny Dellinger, the Newport lobsterman who chairs the board. “That’s the minimal ask for us.”,,,In Rhode Island, representatives of Ørsted were conciliatory and the meeting was generally cordial, but at the heart of the discussions over the South Fork project is a larger clash between two industries, one legacy and the other nascent,,, >click to read< 07:46
