Daily Archives: January 24, 2021
Unlocking the secrets of rogue waves
Captain Cody VanBuskirk and the crew of the No Excuses were ten days into a sword fishing trip south of Sable Island. Despite the forecast for 40 knot winds that led them to take the evening off fishing, it wasn’t rough. Then a wave significantly larger than any of the others smashed into the boat’s side, rolled her on her beam, caved in the wheelhouse windows.,,, Twenty-six years ago a mathematician probably wouldn’t have believed VanBuskirk’s claim he’d been hit by a rogue wave. They were the stuff of mariners’ tales, not far removed from Davey Jones’ locker. They didn’t make sense on paper so they probably didn’t exist. >click to read< 16:20
Falklands Squid – A Fisheries Management Success Story
A suite of conservation measures overturned a negative trend in squid abundance in the 1990s, turning this into a stable fishery with total annual catches ranging between 60,000 and 80,000 tonnes over the last three years. Most of these species have short life cycles with completely new generations joining the fishery every year. The annual turnover, together with climatic variability, results in high abundance fluctuations that make 
squid fisheries notoriously difficult to manage and risky for fishing companies and their production chains. >click to read< During seasons, the stock biomass of squid remaining is estimated by depletion models, which are continually updated with mandatory daily reports of catch and effort from trawlers. >click to read< 14:45
Enviros sue for North Atlantic Right Whale protections from ship strikes
Four conservation groups filed an injunction in a Washington, D.C., court last week asking the National Marine Fisheries Service to expand its efforts to protect right whales and their calves from being hit by ships. Although entanglement in fishing lines gets a lot of headlines, ship strikes have emerged as a prime killer of the right whales, whose numbers have dropped from a peak of 481 in 2011 to 356 this year. Eleven calves, including two that were spotted Wednesday off Amelia Island, Florida, so far this calving season are not accounted for in that estimate. >click to read< 09:50
Brexit has left us all at sea – even the fishing industry
Teething troubles? Bumps in the road? Pull the other one, Mr Gove. As the daily news from fishing crews, farmers, road hauliers, wine merchants, musicians and thousands of businesses up and down the land, not least in Northern Ireland, confirms, Brexit tier 3 is indeed a disaster. Far from having teething troubles that disappear, many of these businesses are having their commercial teeth extracted. It becomes increasingly manifest by the day that this is a Conservative act of conscious economic self-harm which, in an ideal world, would be rescinded before things get a lot worse. >click to read< 08:50
“This is an absolute shambles –fishermen always seem to get used as a bargaining chip”
Following the UK’s departure from the EU at 11pm on Hogmanay, new rules governing trade have crippled the sector, which is hugely important to many fragile communities across the Highlands and Islands. As a result, many creel boats have stopped fishing altogether, while the transport firms responsible for delivering crab, lobster and langoustine to European buyers staged a drive-slow protest in London on Monday of this week. Fisherman Duncan McAndrew, from Duncraig in Lochalsh, told the Free Press that those reliant on the live export of shellfish had been “absolutely shafted” by UK ministers, who “knew this was going to happen for months. >click to read< 07:45
