Daily Archives: February 18, 2023
Stability class aims to keep fishing vessels and crews upright
The Burlington-based nonprofit Fishing Partnership Support Services came to Coast Guard Station Gloucester on Harbor Loop to give 13 people who risk their lives at sea to make a living training on how to best keep their boat stable while fishing. Some local commercial fishermen traded a day on the water for a morning in the classroom Friday as they learned from instructors the importance of removing ice from the decks and rigging to prevent raising a boat’s center of gravity, making sure deck scuppers are clear to allow water to drain, preventing loads or equipment on deck from shifting rapidly, and battening down hatches to make sure water cannot get below deck. >click to read< 14:55
Commission cuts halibut limits across Alaska, Canada
The International Pacific Halibut Commission adopted its annual catch limits for halibut in 2023 from California to the Bering Sea at its meeting Jan. 27. Coastwide, the total constant exploitation yield, a term for how many total halibut longer than 26 inches are removed from the population, regardless of reason, is just shy of 37 million pounds, a 10% drop from 41.2 million pounds last year. Every regulatory area received a cut except for 2A, which covers California, Oregon and Washington. Area 3A, which covers the central Gulf of Alaska, and area 4A, which covers the eastern Aleutians, saw the largest cuts at 17% each. Southeast Alaska only saw a 1% cut, while the western Gulf, western Aleutians and central Bering Sea each saw 6% cuts. The Canadian coast saw a 10.3% cut. >click to read< 11:50
Coast Guard swimmer describes rescue of alleged Ore. yacht thief and ‘Goonies’ prankster
On the morning the U.S. Coast Guard in Astoria received a frantic mayday call from a yacht sinking near the treacherous mouth of the Columbia River, John “Branch” Walton was in his fifth and final day of advanced training as a rescue swimmer. Walton and his classmates leapt at the chance to respond. But it was a quick game of rock-paper-scissors that settled which swimmer would plunge into the churning, frigid waters nearby. Walton won. He was the least experienced of the bunch. Unbeknownst to the 22-year-old who learned to swim only after joining the Coast Guard a few years earlier, he’d soon execute a very difficult rescue seamlessly. And he would be thrust into the national limelight as millions viewed video of his first real-world rescue, taken from a camera mounted to the Coast Guard helicopter that flew him to the imperiled boater. >click to read< 10:29
The last fishermen of Castletownbere?: ‘We are in extinction mode’
“I suppose it was death by a thousand cuts,” Jason Sheehan says from his upstairs office on the harbour. Outside, it’s squally, leaden-skied, and the afternoon holds a children-still-at-school feel. He wears a grey hoodie and a small cut on his nose – a souvenir from a recent fishing trip in the Hebrides. He is one of the younger fishermen in the community. “Yeah. A hundred per cent. If I had my time back, there is no way on God’s earthly hour I’d have gone fishing. Now, I have great childhood and teenage memories but the way the job has gone… it is just horrible, like. Every day – and I mean every day – there is a drama. There is somebody on your case about something. Fuel hikes, quota counts, additional red tape, lack of young local men going fishing is a big one. And that boils down to the fact that the money is not in the job anymore. If you go back, the money at sea was probably five times what it was on shore. Now it is about even. There was a reward for the effort. >click to read< 08:24
Crab fishermen weather a bruising season
It was a dream season for Oregon’s Dungeness crab fishery last year. Fishing began on the traditional Dec. 1 opener for the first time in years. Domoic acid, a marine toxin that has hampered the valuable commercial fishery time and again in recent years, was almost nowhere to be seen in Oregon or Washington state waters. “Last season, everything that could go right went right,” said Tim Novotny, executive director of the Oregon Dungeness Crab Commission. “And this year — I don’t know if it’s been completely the opposite, but it’s been close.” >click to read< 07:22
