Daily Archives: March 15, 2023
MPA’s: Scottish island faces being ‘wiped out’ by SNP’s green crackdown on fishing in its rich waters
Tiree, population 653, is known as the Hawaii of the North but islanders say it will become ‘non-viable’ if a Highly Protected Marine Area is imposed by Holyrood ministers. Now the risk is that a new environmental protection area would kill the island’s fishing boat trade, which is one of the few economic growth sectors. Having gone from two boats in 1995 to nine boats today, which provide 20 full time jobs, the annual catch of crab and lobster has a value of £1million. Tiree fisherman Neil MacPhail said: “If this (HPMA) landed on top of us we would be wiped out overnight, with one stroke of the pen on a chart.”He added: “My boat alone puts food on the table for eleven people. One boat’s worth of economic impact is huge in a community such as Tiree. It’s the only industry in the island which has genuinely bucked the depopulation trend.” >click to read< 18:07
Price outlook diverges for Canada’s top 2 seafoods – Snow crab prices plunged by 60 % in 2022
Canada’s lobster industry is poised to claw its way out of a down year, say analysts, while unsold snow crab stuck in cold storage remains an anchor dragging on the bottom line. Snow crab sales sank and prices plunged 60 per cent in 2022, thanks in part to U.S. consumers who stayed away from luxury seafood as they were battered by inflation. Lobster also took a hit last year, with prices down 30 per cent. The value of Canadian live lobster exports dropped as well, but volumes actually ticked up slightly. Kelly Zhuang of World Link Food Distributors in Nova Scotia says 800 tonnes of live lobster is flown to China from Halifax and Moncton per week. And more charters are expected.>click to read< 13:55
Athearn Marine Agency Boat of the Week: 36′ Northern Bay Lobster/Tuna, portside haul,1200HP MANN Diesel
To review specifications, information, and 11 photos’, >click here<, To see all the boats in this series >click here< 11:59
Before tuna fishing was ‘wicked’
Before tuna fishing became “wicked,” local fishermen had been capturing and hauling giant bluefin tuna off the coast for years. The dangerous task has gone on to gain notoriety with the popular show “Wicked Tuna,” but the history of catching giant bluefins has deep roots in Newburyport going back generations. Newburyport residents Lee and Bob Yeomans are both experienced at fishing for tuna and hand-lining. “My husband, Bob, and I have a goal to preserve the history of this very dangerous, challenging way of capturing giant bluefin tuna,” Lee Yeomans said. She is leading a project to capture the stories of fishermen. Eighty-eight-year-old Newbury resident Carl Beal Jr. wrote of his experience fishing for giant bluefins with his father off Newburyport in summer 1948 in “Tuna Fishing Peril,” one of many stories about the history of local tuna fishing. >click to read< 11:02
No California salmon: Fishery to be shut down this year
Last year, California’s commercial and recreational fishing fleet, from the Central Coast to the Oregon border, landed about 300,000 salmon. But this year, Davis and other salmon anglers won’t be fishing for salmon at all. Last year, the industry’s economic value was an estimated $460 million for fish sales and related businesses, including restaurants, tackle shops, private fishing guides, campgrounds and other services. Salmon season usually runs from May through October. Only in two previous years — 2008 and 2009 — has California’s salmon season been shut down completely. That closure came as the numbers of spawning fish returning to the Sacramento River, the state’s main salmon producer, crashed to record lows. Now California’s Chinook runs have collapsed again. >click to read< 09:54
Blue-collar lobstermen sue environmental group for defamation: ‘The harm is intentional’
A coalition of lobster businesses and industry groups from Maine filed a federal lawsuit this week, accusing a powerful environmental group that doles out “sustainability” ratings of defamation. The coalition, led by the Maine Lobstermen’s Association (MLA), argued that the California-based Monterey Bay Aquarium Foundation has made defamatory statements about Maine lobster fishing practices, misleading consumers and commercial lobster buyers about the state’s lobster harvest, according to the lawsuit filed Monday in the U.S. District Court in Maine. “This harm is intentional: The Aquarium told businesses and consumers to ‘avoid’ and ‘take a pass’ on purchasing Maine-caught lobster and lobster products on the basis of its false statements,” the lawsuit stated. Video, >click to read< 08:58
Ban Mega Trawlers from Irish waters says Sinn Féin as F/V Margiris ploughs seas off Cork coast
It’s already been banned from Australian waters – now Sinn Féin’s spokesperson on fisheries says the FV Margiris and so called “super trawlers’ like her should not be allowed to fish off the Irish coast. The giant fishing vessel – which is less than 40 nautical miles off the Cork coast this afternoon – has been called the ‘Death Star of the Ocean” and can land up to 250 tonnes of fish a day, 14 times what a regular Irish trawler might take, while often leaving tonnes of unwanted ‘by-catch’, non-profitable marine life, dead in its wake. >click to read< 08:01
