Daily Archives: May 2, 2021
A combination of record prices and bigger quotas driving excitement in N.L. crab fishery
“I think this will be the best year ever for the crab fishery,” Bussey said recently, standing on the deck of his 65-foot fishing vessel, the Eastern Princess II.,, “For me and my wife this is a good way to put in another good year and a successful one for us,” said veteran harvester Wayde Gillingham. “It will help us get through the year and be financially stable for a year,” added crewmate Jonathan Boone. A combination of record prices and bigger quotas is setting the stage for the best ever season in the Newfoundland and Labrador crab harvest, with insiders predicting that the landed value could exceed $500 million. But while harvesters are celebrating, the companies and buy and process crab are not. In a statement released late Friday afternoon, the executive director for the Association of Seafood Producers said the price is too high, and that the model used to set prices is broken. >photos, video, click to read< 19:50
Weather Delay: Spring lobster seasons in parts of three Maritimes provinces to open on Tuesday.
The decision came after the Lobster Advisory Committee met with DFO Sunday morning. The seasons for LFA 23 in northeastern New Brunswick, LFA 24 in northern P.E.I. and LFA 26A in southerneastern P.E.I. and northern Nova Scotia were originally scheduled to start April 30, but were delayed due to poor weather. “Safety is paramount,” Ian MacPherson, executive director of the P.E.I. Fishermen’s Association,,, >click to read< 14:35
Enviro groups point to chemical pollution, not overfishing, as main cause of fishery decline
According to the report “Aquatic Pollutants in Oceans and Fisheries,” chemical pollution is the bigger culprit since it “compromises reproduction, development, and immune systems among aquatic and marine organisms”. The report said that “overfishing is not the sole cause of fishery declines,” and that pollutants including industrial chemicals, pesticides, pharmaceuticals, heavy metals, plastics and microplastics “have deleterious impacts to aquatic ecosystems at all trophic levels from plankton to whales.” >click to read< 12:01 – Waste Water Treatment Plants – Mussels off the coast of Seattle test positive for opioids – Once home to thriving (natural) aquaculture, Great Bay is under great strain – Scientists concerned over health of fish species as wastewater treatment plants fail to remove drugs, and more, >click here<
Obituary: Captain Michael Lee Lindgren of Ketchikan – Commercial Fisherman
Michael Lee Lindgren, 65, died April 26, 2021, peacefully at home after a short battle with cancer. He was born on Nov. 20, 1955, in Mason County, Washingon. “Mike had a lifelong passion for fishing that started at a young age when he would go shrimping with his beloved Grandpa Johnny in Hoodsport, Washington,” He moved to Ketchikan in 1979 to work at Whitman Lake Hatchery, where he met Jill, who would later become his wife. After working at the hatchery, he worked as a deckhand on a longliner, troller, seiner, tender and processor. In 1991, he bought the F/V Seven Seas, a wooden fishing vessel built in 1944,,, >click to read< 10:13
How Newfoundland’s wild fisheries have gone from plentiful to pitiful – How did we get here?
The headline in the daily paper at the end of January 2019 had said it all: Cod recovery still far off: DFO. In the case of cod, the same factors that had contributed to a hopeful comeback — thriving capelin and warming waters — had since swung in unfavourable directions. Fewer capelin prey and changing environmental conditions did not bode well for cod. Now, in 2021, the prognosis for the cod population, capelin and the environmental 
conditions remains no better. How did we get here? DFO science shows several factors are predominantly to blame for declining cod and capelin populations, including: natural causes, especially lack of capelin prey in the case of cod; high predation, particularly from fish (more so than seals), in the case of capelin; and warming ocean waters, among other environmental factors. >click to read< 08:26
Fishermen should be listened to
It’s a typical story of David versus Goliath,,, That appears to be the case as prawn fishers on the Island take a stand against what looks to me to be an arbitrary and bureaucratic decision by the Department of Fisheries and Oceans Canada to change regulations regarding the harvesting of spot prawns, which now makes the sale of frozen-at-sea spot prawns illegal. Thanks to the efforts of many, has agreed to conduct an emergency review of the regulations and, hopefully, common sense will prevail and the new rules will be reversed. Unfortunately, that kind of common sense just didn’t appear to exist in DFO when the northern cod stocks collapsed off Canada’s east coast in the early 1990s. >click to read< 07:25
