Monthly Archives: May 2023
Congressman Van Drew Joins Chairman Westerman on Natural Resources in Leading Letter to GAO Requesting Offshore Wind Study
“BOEM and offshore wind companies have engaged in a sloppy and rushed environmental review process—ignoring national security concerns, ignoring concerns from our fishermen, and ignoring impacts on our ocean life—all in the name of ‘climate change,'” said Congressman Van Drew. “We must continue to demand transparency throughout this process. Without diligent oversight, we risk not only our natural resources and local economies, but the livelihoods of the constituents we serve as well. I thank Chairman Westerman for his support in uncovering the real impacts these offshore wind turbines will have on our coast, including the economic impact on pertinent industries and the effects on sensitive environments.” >click to read< 10:31
Alaskan fisherman turned ‘mad scientist’ now distills his popular rum on a MS Coast farm
Eli Underhill and his wife, Amy, left the wilderness and frigid temperatures for warm and sunny South Mississippi a few years ago, where he traded catching salmon and cod for experimenting to create a unique rum spirit. He is the brains and brawn behind Circle Hook Distilling, and she handles the marketing and branding while also tending to their animals just down the road. Eli spent years researching fermentation and spirit trends before deciding to open a distillery jin Harrison County. He said there wasn’t much education on research out there about rum distilling, and he learned much of what he knows from studying the wine fermentation process. His wife jokingly calls him a “mad scientist” for figuring out how the process on his own. Photos, >click to read< 09:55
How an historic Hastings fishing boat was saved from being scrapped
She was saved from being scrapped by local writer and historian Steve Peak who writes: She was the first Hastings fishing boat to be built with an engine and was constructed in late 1919 on the beach opposite the London Trader pub for landlord Edward ‘Tiny’ Breeds. She is 22.6 feet long on the keel and 28 feet overall, and was named after Tiny’s daughter Mary and his son Edward (always called Ned) who worked the boat. The Edward and Mary left Hastings in 1957 operating from nearby ports until the early 1980s. By then she was much altered, renumbered and renamed. In late 1982 she was laid up in Eastbourne and stripped of her engine and the rest of her gear. Photos, >click to read< 08:57
Mega Cut: Haddock, a staple Atlantic fish, is in decline off New England, regulators say
A recent scientific assessment found that the Gulf of Maine haddock stock declined unexpectedly, and that meant the catch quotas for the fish were unsustainably high, federal fishing managers said. “We seem to find plenty, but they can’t,” said Terry Alexander, a Maine-based fisher who targets haddock and other species. “It’s a disaster is what it is. A total, complete disaster.” The fishery management council mandated the 84% reduction in catch quotas for the current fishing year, which started May 1. The change applies to fishers who harvest haddock from the Gulf of Maine, a body of water off Massachusetts, New Hampshire and Maine. Fishers also harvest from Georges Bank, a fishing ground to the east where quotas were also reduced for this year, including adjoining areas overseen by Canadian officials who issued their own major cuts. >click to read< 08:02
Natural Resources Defense Council Announces STATE OF EMERGENCY for Atlantic Whales By Jim Lovgren
The National Resources Defense Council [NRDC] in a press release has declared a state of emergency for Atlantic Whales. Here are some excerpts from a piece written by Francine Kershaw, NRDC’s leading east coast Marine mammal expert. “Something is happening off our Atlantic coast. Unprecedented numbers of great Whales are washing up dead on our shores.” Over the last few decades, the NRDC has successfully challenged the US Military in regard to sonar effects on marine organisms, while also challenging seismic activity related to oil exploration. Both of these issues have national security implications that require a more robust examination of the possible causes of the legal actions taken, and why they were taken. What’s NRDC’s excuse for ignoring the growing amount of dead Whale carcasses that keep washing up on east coast beaches, while the same research vessels that would have been doing the seismic and sonar research for the oil companies are doing it for the wind factories? >click to read< 17:58
Facing mounting bills and a vanishing season, some crab fishermen are defying the union and heading out to sea
It’s been more than a month since crab fishermen in Newfoundland and Labrador decided to keep their boats docked in protest of this year’s catch price of $2.20 and for some, the tie-up has gone on long enough. Terry Ryan of La Scie is one of them. He and his son, who work together, have decided it’s time to head out on the water, defying the advice of the Fish, Food & Allied Workers union. “We gave it the good fight when we supported the tie-up that was orchestrated by Jason Sullivan,” he said. “All we’re getting out of this now is lost fishing time, lost money. We’ve got bills to pay, bank payments to make, and we’ve come to the conclusion that $2.20 is better 
than zero. Zero is your revenue off crab if you don’t fish crab.” Fellow La Scie fisherman Jimmy Lee Foss plans to keep waiting, though, calling $2.20 a “devastating” price. “I’m kinda fighting for my life here. that’s what I feel like,” he said. La Scie is divided, said Foss, and everyone has to make their own decisions — and he plans to keep holding out. Video, >click to read< 17:12
Charges filed against vessel operator for illegal trawling near Kodiak, Alaska
The State of Alaska filed criminal misdemeanor charges May 12 against a vessel operator for operating non-pelagic trawl gear within the Kodiak, Alaska, ground fish registration area. The trawl gear used in the area had attached to it chafing gear and chain rib lines suitable for fishing in contact with the seabed, all devices not authorized for legal pelagic trawl gear. A multi-agency law enforcement team embarked aboard Coast Guard Cutter Naushon boarded the trawler near Kodiak, Alaska, March 16, and issued several significant fisheries violations. “In response to the boarding, NOAA opened an investigation into the vessel for fishing in federal waters closed to non-pelagic trawl gear around Kodiak,” said Phillip Null, supervisory enforcement officer, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Office of Law Enforcement (NOAA OLE). >click to read< 15:27
Letter to Mads Nipper, CEO, Ørsted
Dear Mr. Nipper, We write as concerned citizens and residents of the State of New Jersey, U.S.A. Our groups total tens of thousands of volunteer citizen advocates including more than 500,000 signatories to various petitions supporting our efforts. The NJ Shore is a national treasure enjoyed by millions who live and work, visit and vacation here and have done so for generations. On behalf of all the good people who love and enjoy the NJ Shore and its communities, please treat this letter as public notice that: We oppose your company’s efforts to turn our ocean, coastal ecosystems, and shore communities into industrial electricity generation and transmission power plants; We will protect our shore communities, the environment and the lives and livelihoods of all species including the millions of us that reside, work, visit and vacation here against your thoughtless industrialization; We will not falter, and we will not stop opposing your developments. >click to read< 11:48
Three in one week.
They say a week is a long time in politics, or if you wait ages for a bus, three come along at once – in just one week Newlyn has just seen the loss of three members of its fishing community. First to make his way to the deck of the big fishing boat in the sky was Mr PCCM himself, son of a coastguard, Dick Harvey. Dick epitomised ‘old school’. Talking of HMRC and tax, fish buyer Geoff Davies, seen here with early-days mobile phone hitched to is belt, was a tax inspector in a previous life – that was before he came to fish from Newlyn and then, subsequently went ashore and worked for leading fish merchant Nick Howell when his premises were behind Waghorns. Fishing runs deep in the Stevens family, generations have fished from the port of St Ives. Ernest Stevens, David Stevens father had the second and much larger Rose of Sharon built in 1969 by Forbes of Sandhaven, the first built them back in 1964. Lots of photos, >click to read< 09:45
Morro Bay group plans initiative to block proposed battery storage plant
A group of Morro Bay residents who call themselves Citizens for Estero Bay Preservation has submitted a citizen’s initiative that aims to block construction of a battery storage facility near the old power plant. The 24-acre site for the proposed battery plant is adjacent to a major PG&E substation, where it would connect to the California grid via high-voltage power lines that climb the hills from Morro Bay across SLO County to the California transmission system. Some critics, however, don’t want to see these systems in their backyard. They point to the need to preserve Morro Bay’s fishing village atmosphere. There is another aspect to all this. Many of the same critics don’t want the offshore wind project either and lump their concerns together. >click to read< 08:52
For Atlantic Canada, Fishing Season Brings Yet More Violence
In the early morning dark of April 12, 2023, violence erupted along a Nova Scotia riverbank after a man engaged a woman and a youth in a heated argument. Soon after, seven people arrived. One allegedly assaulted the man with a pipe while another stood nearby wielding a knife and a taser. When the RCMP later arrested two members of the group a short distance away, the officers found two shotguns and a taser. Conflict around elvers is not new, nor is it the only fishery in Atlantic Canada that’s seen so much turmoil. Whether it’s around elvers, lobsters, or something else, “this will continue to play out, and play out, and play out, until the government deals with the issues on the table.” >click to read< 08:05
How warming waters around P.E.I. could affect snow crab and lobster
Research scientist Joël Chassé says as the atmosphere warms, the ocean waters around P.E.I. are also heating up. “Changes are happening. It’s not deniable anymore. And if the these changes don’t slow down, we will have to adapt to these changes.” Chassé said there are implications for some fish species, some positive and some negative. Fisheries and Oceans biologist Tobie Surette said that while lobster is a warm water coastal species, snow crab prefer deeper, colder waters. “Lobster has largely benefited from the warming climates, at least so far,” he said. Surette said they don’t know exactly why that is. (Snow Crab) And for now, they are doing well: “We’re at the third-highest biomass in the history of the survey right now.” But Surette knows that could change. He has been in contact with snow crab scientists from Alaska. Photos, >click to read< 18:51
Old lumber port preps for new life as California offshore wind hub
Eureka’s halcyon days as the “timber capital” of California are long gone, but the deepwater port city 270 miles north of San Francisco may see its fortunes turn as the hub of the state’s first foray in offshore wind energy. Eureka sits across two of the five swaths of Pacific Ocean along the California coast that the federal government auctioned off to offshore wind developers this past December for a total of $757 million. The three other leases are on the Central Coast across from Morro Bay. Humboldt Bay, the second-largest bay in California after the San Francisco Bay, is ideally suited to become the final assembly port for the massive turbines. >click to read< 15:43
New Norwegian combined trawler, purse seine and crab vessel heads north
It is the Norwegian fishing company Asbjørn Selsbane who, after a few months delay in delivery from Karstensen Shipyard in Skagen, has now been handed over their new combined and very versatile trawler and purse seine vessel, which can also be rigged for crab fishing. The vessel is named ‘Stødig’ and will have its home port in Tromsø. It is rigged with shrimp trawls and Danish seines as well as for crab fishing and also packed with massive high-tech equipment, with smart solutions incorporated into the 39.30-metre-long and 11.50-metre-wide vessel. >click to read< 11:08
HPMAs: Tiree’s economy could sink unless plans are scrapped
In Tiree, there are good years and bad years. Years when crab and lobster are plentiful, years when they are not. Small boats work using fixed-line, static gear. Tiree fishermen place their creels with the precision afforded by sonar technology. There is no bycatch. Anything which will not be landed is thrown back alive. Many are voluntarily notching lobsters to ensure future stocks. Now, with the government’s proposals for statutory HPMAs, we are being told that our seas must be even more highly protected – from the people who live and work here. From us. >click to read< 10:01
New Bedford fisherman sentenced for evading $431,000 in federal taxes
A New Bedford man was sentenced in federal court in Boston for evading more than $431,000 in federal income taxes over the course of seven years. Victor M. Cruz, 43, was sentenced on May 9 by U.S. Senior District Court Judge Rya W. Zobel to time served (10 months in prison) followed by one year of supervised release. Cruz was also ordered to pay $431,835 in restitution to the IRS. On Feb. 12, 2023, Cruz pleaded guilty to three counts of tax evasion. >click to read< 09:11
Environmental Regulations and Wind Turbines Are Backing New England Fishermen into a Corner
Just three weeks ago, Jerry Leeman was a commercial fishing captain in New England and a very successful one at that. Now, as executive director of the newly formed New England Fishermen Stewardship Association, he’s leading the charge against Biden administration policies that threaten the industry he loves, including overregulation and wind-turbine development in the Gulf of Maine. Leeman said that he and fellow New England fishermen have serious concerns about the accuracy of the NOAA data. Fish-population assessments fell to the wayside during the Covid years — 2021 and 2022 — and the data-collection process has not yet been corrected. “Whether you’re a lobsterman or a ground fisherman, a trend up and down the coast here is that nobody wants wind turbines placed in our environment. It’s going to mess up our stocks and our species. Not to mention it’s going to change the viability for generations to come in the fishing grounds,” Leeman said. Photos, >click to read< 07:51
Enterprise III Joins the Fraserburgh Fleet
Enterprise III has been delivered to James Lovie and his partners, and is a Vestværftet design, outfitted and completed at the yard in Hvide Sande on a hull fabricated in Poland. The new trawler headed for Fraserburgh to start its fishing career and to make its first landings. Accommodation on board is for up to eleven and is fitted out to an exceptionally high standard. The deck is laid out with three trawl winches controlled by a Scantrol autotrawl, three pairs of sweepline winches at the head of the long trawl desk with drums large enough to spool ground gear, three net drums over the trawl lanes, pairs of bagging, outhaul and codend winches, and a forward mooring winch. Photos, >click to read< 17:37 and partners
Alleged shrimp boat bandit arrested in Houston, ran boat aground, damaged 2 others
After weeks, an arrest was finally made in the case of the Shrimp Boat Bandit. Able Antonio Martinez, 22, was arrested and charged with two felony warrants for Unauthorized Use of a Vehicle and Criminal Mischief. On April 16, Port of Galveston Police officers responded to reports of a shrimp boat, which belonged to Alex Gutierrez, that was stolen while it was moored at Pier 19. Investigators discovered a man, now alleged to be Martinez, boarded the F/V Santana in slip 24W, backed out of the slip, and damaged two other vessels that were moored in the area. Video, >click to read< 12:02
Governments and bureaucrats can fix the N.L. inshore fishery by consulting directly with harvesters
In 1992, a government of Canada MP loudly responded to demonstrators by saying, “I didn’t take the fish from the God damn water.” In 2023, a government of Newfoundland and Labrador MHA told demonstrators, “There is nothing I can do about fish pricing.” Those two statements are indicative of, past and present, attitudes of politicians toward the N.L. fishery. In 1992, the northern cod fishery was shut down because of lack of cod to harvest and in 2023 the industry is being shut down because of issues around pricing. For a few years now, fish harvesters have been pointing out problems with the price-setting system but those in control ignored their concerns and nothing was done. >click to read< by Harvey Jarvis 11:05
Fisherman asks court to quash licence to investigate offshore wind farm sites
A fisherman is asking the High Court to quash a licence allowing a renewable energy firm to investigate sites off the coast of Dublin and Wicklow in connection with a proposed €1.5 billion offshore wind farm. On Friday, Mr Justice Richard Humphreys gave permission for Ivan Toole, of Ashford, Co Wicklow, and his company, Golden Venture Fishing Limited, of the same address, to bring their action against the Minister of State with responsibility for planning and local government over his granting of the foreshore licence to RWE last January. RWE proposes to undertake geotechnical and geophysical site investigations, including drilling boreholes, and to monitor wind and waves to refine its design of the Dublin Array offshore wind farm, says Mr Toole. >click to read< 10:05
Alaska trollers will feel pain and unnecessary hardship from ruling on orca lawsuit
As president of Seafood Producers Cooperative, representing nearly 400 fishermen-owners, who reside in California, Oregon, Washington and Alaska, I want to convey our great disappointment and frustration with the recent ruling concerning the Wild Fish Conservancy and their lawsuit directed at our Salmon Troll fleet. The WFC found a technicality in National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s biological opinion for troll-caught king salmon. No other fishing gear groups are being attacked and other commercial and sports fishermen in the region – and in the Puget Sound – will continue to harvest king salmon. >click to read< 08:59
From Wheatley: Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea (Part 2)
Cec Balkwell is at the helm of the Lake Erie gillnetter, Everett H, owned at the time by Omstead Foods of Wheatley. Doug Johnston, his twin brother Don, Jim Whitesell and Gary Hickson are working the deck. Setting net in about 10 metres of water, just off Hen Island – 25 kilometres due south of Kingsville. Doug Johnston continues his story. “The anchor was on the rail at the stern. Cec gunned the engine; nothing unusual about that. There was a knot in the anchor line; it caught on my wedding ring. Before I knew it, I was over the stern going to the bottom.” >click to read< 08:09
Where have all the dead whales gone? By Nils Stolpe, FishNet-USA
Beginning in December of last year and extending through most of the first quarter of 2023, New Jersey and New York beaches were inundated with abnormally high numbers of dead or dying whales and smaller marine mammals. These majestic creatures-though not so majestic when being pushed about willy-nilly by tides, wind, waves and various types of earth moving machines-have never expired in such large numbers in such publicly accessible locations in local residents’ memories. Perhaps coincidently, intensive hydroacoustic surveys to determine the suitability of potential sites for the construction of thousands of gigantic windmills and their supporting infrastructure (supposedly to help us all survive what is being sold as an imminent energy/climate crisis) were being committed offshore of the beaches where all of these marine mammal deaths and strandings have been concentrated. To us inveterate observers of that hunk of Atlantic Ocean real estate known as the New York Bight, and the critters that temporarily or permanently live there, and of the actions of the public agencies charged with-and entitled to tens of millions of taxpayer dollars each year to do so-administering the Endangered Species and the Marine Mammal Protection Acts, that surely hints at, at best, ineptitude at that’s ineptitude at a fairly advanced level. >click to read the article< 16:14
NO TO 2.20: Harvesters Protest at ASP and OCI Offices
Harvesters expressed their frustration today by protesting outside of two locations in St. John’s after the Association of Seafood Producers (ASP) walked back on their counteroffer yesterday. The two sides converged outside of the Ocean Choice International (OCI) office in St. John’s, where harvesters were clear they won’t be fishing for 2.20 per pound. “ASP may have reneged on their offer, but our organization still carried out significant consultation with members on whether it would have been accepted. The writing is on the wall: harvesters aren’t fishing unless there’s movement on the minimum starting price. Photos, >click to read the press release< 13:44
SEA-NL: Premier Andrew Furey government must intervene in snow crab tie-up or pay the political price
Seaward Enterprises Association of Newfoundland and Labrador (SEA-NL) warns Premier Andrew Furey there will be a political cost if his Liberal administration does not urgently move to free the inshore fleet from the hostage situation with seafood processors. “The Andrew Furey government holds the chains that processors and buyers are using to hold the inshore fleet hostage,” says Ryan Cleary, SEA-NL’s Executive Director. “Owner-operators, the crews, and their families will remember if the Furey government stands by and does nothing as they’re starved out.” >click to read the press release< 12:12
Game Changer for Prawns
The Notus Echo, introduced a few years ago to the Irish and Scottish fleets fishing for nephrops, has proved itself an invaluable tool to streamline trawling for nephrops. The approach Notus took in detecting nephrops (prawns, langoutine), which don’t show up on regular fishfinders, is to use a simple grid mounted in the aft part of a trawl which acts as a sounding board. The sound of prawns hitting the grid is routed from this pickup device to the wheelhouse and a real-time display of the rate of catch entering the gear. >click to read< 11:35
Shrimpers gather at La. capitol to protest rising prices, falling profits
Dozens of local fishermen and women gathered on the steps of the State Capitol Thursday morning to voices worries over the low prices of freshly-caught shrimp and their competition with imported seafood. “Inflation went up, shrimp’s down, can’t even afford fuel to go out,” one protestor said. “We shouldn’t be [at the Capitol] right now,” said fisherman Gareth Leblanc. “We should be working.” His brother, Lanvin Leblanc, is a 65-year-old fisherman who has been working in Louisiana waters for 25 years. Lanvin said that if prices stay up for another year, it could be too late. >click to read< 10:35
Fishing tech all set to net the catch of the day and nothing else
Dom Talijancich has every available sensor technology on board his 24-meter trawler, FV Mako. Everything but a camera and AI system that identifies what type of species are entering his net during a tow. If the technology were available, the Nelson fisherman and businessman would have got it immediately. But there was gap in the market for a piece of equipment like that, and it led him to developing his own company and the technology to do the job. Talijancich’s tech company Advanced Conservation Solutions (ACS) have tech that can improve the sustainability of commercial fishing using artificial intelligence (AI). >click to read< 08:53
R.I. fishermen threaten legal action over South Fork wind farm
A group of fishermen in Rhode Island is threatening to sue the state’s coastal agency, the federal government, and developer Ørsted over the under-development of the South Fork wind farm in federal waters off Rhode Island. The Fishermen’s Advisory Board and the individual fishers it represents said in a letter Wednesday that the deal to approve the South Fork wind farm did not adequately compensate them for their losses. Making matters worse, they say, a fishing vessel working on the project broadcast over a radio channel used for emergency and distress calls in April that nobody was allowed within a mile and a half of either side of recent work to construct the project’s cable. >click to read< 07:46
