Daily Archives: January 18, 2023
South Carolina Shrimper Finds Smooth Sailing with Help of EDA Revolving Loan Fund Program
James Bradley is a second-generation commercial fisherman from South Carolina. He’s the owner of Bradley’s Commercial Fishing, a family-owned business on St. Helena Island. The company provides shrimp and other seafood items to local restaurants. Fishing has been a proud tradition for the Bradley family, which has been in the seafood business for more than 100 years. An able seaman who learned how to shrimp and fish from his father, Bradley served as captain of the company’s shrimp trawler, F/V Bradley’s Pride, which would sail the Atlantic off the South Carolina coast. It served as the centerpiece of Bradley’s company and its main source of revenue. After more than five decades in business, however, he realized it was time to buy a new boat.>click to read< 19:46
New research reveals shifting identities of global fishing fleet to help bolster fisheries management
A new study published today in Science Advances combines a decade’s worth of satellite vessel tracking data with identification information from more than 40 public registries to determine where and when vessels responsible for most of the world’s industrial fishing change their country of registration, a practice known as “reflagging”, and identify hotspots of potential unauthorized fishing and activity of foreign-owned vessels. The study, “Tracking Elusive and Shifting Identities of the Global Fishing Fleet” found that close to 20 percent of high seas fishing is carried out by vessels that are either internationally unregulated or not publicly authorized, with large concentrations of these ships operating in the Southwest Atlantic Ocean and the western Indian Ocean. >click to read< 18:28
Days of gillnetting on lower Columbia River may be numbered
Senate Bill 5297 would remove nontribal mainstem gillnet use in the Columbia River downstream of Bonneville Dam to off-channel locations beginning in 2025. Tribal gillnetting in the Bonneville, The Dalles and John Day reservoirs would be unaffected by the bill. “It’s amazing to me that our state would be so incredibly inconsiderate in proposing such a thing,” said longtime gillnetter Irene Martin of Skamokawa. Martin argued that the legislation would jettison the Columbia River Interstate Compact, a bistate agreement between Washington and Oregon that manages commercial fishing on the lower Columbia River. >click to read< 12:44
Athearn Marine Agency Boat of the Week: 40’x15′ North Shore Lobster Boat, 450HP, Cummins QSL9 Diesel
To review specifications, information, and 6 photos’, >click here<, To see all the boats in this series >click here< 10:15
Kodiak waters remain quiet as fishermen demand higher price for crab
Captain of the F/V Isanotski Shawn Dochterman said that fishermen are not heading out to drop crab pots. “At the present time, every vessel between the Alaska Peninsula and Kodiak are standing down to get a fair and equitable price,” Dochtermann said. Commercial fishers are keeping their boats tied to the docks after Kodiak canneries offered them a $2.50 per pound price for crab this season, which is almost $6 less than they were being paid last year. Commercial fishers say they are waiting to get a better offer from the Kodiak canneries. In the meantime, they are also eying other potential opportunities. Abena said canneries in both Dutch Harbor and King Cove are offering them at least a dollar more than Kodiak canneries. Video, >click to read< 08:38
What really killed the whales? Environmental groups in New Jersey are squaring off.
Following the discovery of a 30-foot humpback whale that washed ashore in Atlantic City earlier this month, several groups including Clean Ocean Action wrote to President Biden demanding a pause on all wind-energy activity off the Jersey coast and an investigation into why a total of seven whales have perished in less than five weeks. According to Jennifer Coffey, the executive director of the New Jersey Association of Environmental Commission, suggestions that the Garden State’s plan to construct a huge wind farm out in the ocean have anything to do with the whale tragedies are unfortunate and misguided. >click to read< 08:15
