Daily Archives: September 16, 2019
New Brunswick: Fundy fishermen rescue suspected great white shark in Back Bay Harbour
William Hanley said it’s not uncommon for porpoises or smaller sharks, like makos, to become trapped in fishing weirs or other netting, but the fish that emerged from the depths in Back Bay Harbour on Sunday morning was something new for him. “First when I saw it, I thought it was just a little wee small shark that was only about four or five feet long,” Hanley, a St. George fisherman of 30 years, recalled of the encounter just after dawn. “Then [it] come up underneath me and that’s when I realized we had a big one, the biggest one I ever encountered in the weir.” Video, >click to read< 18:56
Daniel Pauly’s Three Big Moves to Save the World’s Threatened Fisheries
In the last 60 years, globalization has transformed largely sustainable, small-scale local fishing enterprises into something very different. Now “largely corporate-owned and controlled” fleets subsidized by taxpayers roam the world’s oceans, depleting fish stocks either legally or illegally, Pauly says. Pauly’s pioneering and often provocative work has shed light on what the scientist calls “the toxic triad of fisheries” — the under-reporting of catches, overfishing and the tendency to blame depleted catches on “the environment.” >click to read< 17:04
New technology allows fleets to double fishing capacity—and deplete fish stocks faster – “This ‘technological creep’ is also ignored by most fisheries scientists in charge of proposing policies,” said Daniel Pauly, the Sea Around Us principal investigator. >click to read< 17:16
New Jersey Fishermen Demand a Say in Decisions on Offshore Wind Farms
Fishermen insisted Monday to a congressional subcommittee looking at offshore wind energy that they be consulted,,, Fishermen should have been brought into the planning process from the start, Peter Hughes, of Atlantic Cape Fisheries, told U.S. House members from New Jersey and California who were holding a hearing at the Jersey Shore. “Look at these slides,” he said, referring to diagrams of where proposed wind projects would be built. “They’re right smack dab where we are fishing. This is going to put people out of business.” >click to read< 14:26
Federal subcommittee hearing opens lines of communication between offshore energy company and fishers – Photo’s >click to read< 19:28
Copeland man accused in his father’s death aboard a fishing boat in March sentenced
A Copeland man accused in his father’s death aboard a fishing boat in March was sentenced to just fewer than 10 years in prison at the federal courthouse in Fort Myers on Monday. Casey Hickok, 32, originally faced a second-degree murder charge and was accused of bludgeoning the sleeping Robert Hickok, 54 of Copeland, to death with an alternator aboard the fishing boat No Bitchin’ on March 18. >click to read< 14:07
Humpy catch ends, coho opener wait for rain
“We still haven’t gotten a lot of rain, so we’re tracking behind in escapement and the (coho) commercial harvest is below anticipated,” said Jeremy Botz, gillnet area management biologist for the Alaska Department of Fish and Game in Cordova. “We had been fishing once a week and now we have been closed for more than a week.” The last opener for coho salmon was Sept. 2. >click to read< 12:59
Offshore Wind Energy Looks More Promising for Oregon
A stretch of the Pacific Ocean off the coast between Humboldt County, California, and Coos Bay, Oregon, has some of the highest wind power generating potential in the country. The area north of the California border looks particularly promising to green energy advocates because the region already has a functioning electric grid. But a past attempt to install five floating turbines off Coos Bay faced rising costs and opposition from the fishing industry, and was eventually moved to California when no one could be found to buy the high-priced power the facility planned to generate. >click to read< 11:24
A no-deal Brexit would likely end access for French boats to British waters
Sophie Leroy, whose Armement Cherbourgeois company operates three fishing vessels off the northwest coast of France, says there have been almost daily checks of their boats by the British authorities. Earlier this month, her boats were stopped for what she described as an interminable set of checks 21 miles off the English coast. Her boats were also surrounded by 15 British fishing vessels, she said. “And they were saying, ‘We are going to do the same as what the French did to us last year’. >click to read< 10:15
A trip with the lone company chasing menhaden in a 140-year tradition on the Chesapeake Bay
It’s an industry that once made the village of Reedville one of the most prosperous in the state — big, brightly-painted three-story Victorian mansions, bedecked with gingerbread woodwork under their generous shade trees line Main Street in testimony to those long gone days. These days, menhaden are at the center of an obscure, if fiercely fought, political battle over who should catch them where, and whether the Omega Proteins fleet that still sails from Reedville is harvesting too many from the Bay. Among the reasons for that concern: Menhaden are an important food source for striped bass. Photo’s >click to read< 07:54
