Daily Archives: January 12, 2023
Cornish family business Rowse Fishing Ltd fined for illegal lobster fishing
A Cornish family business supplying crab and lobster to local and international markets and a vessel master have been fined big for illegal lobster fishing. On Wednesday (January 11) at Truro Magistrates’ Court, Cornwall Inshore Fisheries and Conservation Authority (IFCA) successfully prosecuted Rowse Fishing Limited and Ben Rowse, 26, of Penzance, the respective owner and master of the vivier potting vessel Emma Louise TO60. Rowse Fishing Ltd and Ben Rowse pleaded guilty to the offences of fishing for berried, v-notched or mutilated lobsters. Magistrates sentenced the company to a fine of £20,000 and the payment of prosecution costs amounting to £6,309.90. The master was fined £2,338 plus a victim surcharge of £190. >click to read< 20:30
Hull Maritime gets £250,000 from Foyle Foundation for Arctic Corsair visitor attraction
The grant has come from The Foyle Foundation, a leading UK supporter of learning and the arts, and will help towards developing the new centre at the former North End Shipyard, the future permanent home for the Arctic Corsair. Work to transform North End Shipyard is under way and is expected to open to visitors in 2024. Hull Maritime is a major regeneration project funded by The National Lottery Heritage Fund and the city council. Five key maritime treasures will be transformed to create a new maritime experience for Hull. Elements include the restoration of two ships – Arctic Corsair and the Spurn Lightship – the regeneration of the former North End Shipyard, Dock Office Chambers and the Hull Maritime Museum will be refurbished. >click to read< 17:29
Advocacy Groups Demand Transparent Investigation into Deaths of Six Endangered Whales
Calling the deaths of six endangered whales that have washed up in 33 days on the beaches of New Jersey and New York “alarming and environmentally harmful,” local, state and regional ocean advocacy groups are calling for President Joe Biden to immediately address the unprecedented trend. “The noise from the offshore wind vessel is a potential cause of the recent whale stranding and increased near-shore sightings,” said Bob Stern, president of Save LBI, a nonprofit, non-partisan coalition opposed to the placement of offshore wind farms off Long Beach Island. “The beached whales bear no sign of vessel strike or fishing gear entanglement, leaving natural causes or noise as the potential causes and raising the likelihood that our concerns were well-founded.” >click to read< 16:03
Mississippi Scientists Develop Unique Method Using Sound To Track Sea Turtle Data
Wayne Carpenter, senior research and development engineer, and Bradley Goodwiller, research scientist, are using sound to monitor turtles that exit shrimp trawls through turtle exclusion devices. “Acoustic impacts with TEDs have implications in understanding the population, migration and allocation of the species,” Carpenter said. “All of this contributes to important conservation work.” The project, Acoustic Enumeration of Sea Turtle Impacts with TEDs (Turtle Excluder Devices), was funded through the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Bycatch Reduction Engineering Program. The federal government has mandated TEDs in the shrimping industry since 1987. They have been shown to be highly effective; however, obtaining information about sea turtle interactions with TED-equipped shrimp trawls has been challenging. >click to read< 14:25
Amid fishing deaths, calls rise for small boats to have stability checks
After the Caledonian capsized off Vancouver Island in 2015 with three lives lost, the Transportation Safety Board called for all small fishing vessels to undergo a stability assessment and adhere to standards ensuring stability information “is adequate and readily available to the crew.” However, seven years later, Transport Canada says on its website that enacting the regulation would be “functionally challenging and prohibitively expensive for the industry.” The department declined a request for an interview with a senior official to provide further explanation. It’s a stance the Transportation Safety Board describes on its website as “unsatisfactory,” while a lawyer for the mother of a deckhand who died when the scallop dragger Chief William Saulis flipped over off Nova Scotia on Dec. 15, 2020 argues the federal government needs to act. >click to read< 11:50 – Search Results for “Caledonian” – fisherynation.com – Search Results for “Chief William Saulis” – fisherynation.com
South Jersey Times Editorial Board – N.J. whale death mystery may not lead to mighty wind
Depending on who’s counting, at least six whales have been discovered ashore since late fall. Let’s not to jump to conclusions, though, about why these whales died, at least not to the degree that we need to shut down everything that’s going on offshore. Pressure groups are already calling for moratoriums on any work related to offshore wind energy development, even though none of structures related to the turbines system exist off the Jersey coast. (The survey work is happening, though.) The developers of offshore wind, and cheerleaders who include our governor, are finding more pushback against these planned installations than they anticipated. It’s not just Clean Ocean Action that has a beef; commercial fishing groups and others concerned about shoreline aesthetics are weighing in, too. >click to read< 10:48
Opinion: How to Solve the Lobstermen vs Whalers Problem: Water Capitalism
The lobstermen and the whalers are at each other’s throats in Maine. The former need to use strong ropes to pull up their lobster traps from the ocean floor. The latter claim that this gear they use enmeshes their bread and butter, that is, whales, who are needlessly killed in this manner. It would be difficult to name other industries, or commercial interests that contended against one another in any such manner. Yes, those producing peas and those producing carrots compete against each other, as do bicycles and fish, shoes and socks. But none of them are suing the others over infringement of their territory. >click to read< 09:16
P.E.I. fishermen welcome extension on deadline for gear to protect whales
Some members of the P.E.I. fishing community are welcoming DFO’s decision to extend the deadline for break-free fishing gear until 2024. This is when fishers will be required to use gear designed to break under 1,700 pounds to help species like the endangered North Atlantic right whale escape during an entanglement. “I mean, we’re certainly happy to see it extended,” said Marvin Jollymore, a lobster and eel fisher from New London, P.E.I. “There’s so many questions as to, you know, how long does [the gear] last? You put it in, does it last one season? Does it last two seasons, does it last forever? Is it only good for half a season?” >click to read< 07:59
