Daily Archives: June 1, 2023
Southwest Nova Scotia seafood industry on edge as wildfires surge
As many as 20 seafood processing and holding facilities along Nova Scotia’s South Shore could be at risk because they fall within the wildfire evacuation order areas in Shelburne County, a scenario one industry veteran says would be economically devastating for the region. “When you’ve got a lot of inventory, millions of dollars, it’s critical and a significant concern to our members who have these facilities,” Osborne Burke, president of the Nova Scotia Seafood Alliance, said in an interview. Burke said between 15 and 20 of the alliance’s members are affected by evacuation orders. Some of the facilities have generators that kick in automatically when the power goes out, while others require a switch to be manually activated. Relying on generators to maintain operations and preserve live lobster in holding tanks presents its own set of challenges, Nova Scotia Fisheries Minister Steve Craig told reporters on Thursday, because someone has to get fuel to those generators to keep the plants operating. >click to read< 20:31
Murkowski, King introduce bipartisan bill to support rural fishing communities
U.S. Senators Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) and Angus King (I-Maine) have introduced bipartisan legislation to expand financial support for America’s fishing communities. The Fishing Industry Credit Enhancement Act would allow businesses that provide direct assistance to fishing operations, like gear producers or cold storage, to access the same loans from the Farm Credit System (FCS) already offered to service providers for farmers, ranchers, and loggers. The Fishing Industry Credit Enhancement Act is a straightforward, common-sense amendment to the Farm Credit Act of 1971,,, >click to read< 16:37
Areas closed to protect North Atlantic Right whales ready to re-open Friday in western P.E.I.
Charlie McGeoghegan, the chair of the Lobster Fishers of P.E.I., said the re-opening is good news. “They were fishing in 80 to 100 feet of water, a lot of them, and the lobster had just started to come on in that area. And then they were forced to pull all the gear out of that area and move it into 60 feet of water or less,” he said. “There’s basically 400 boats in that area or close to it. If you take all those boats and put them in a little narrow strip between the shoreline and 60 feet depth of water … it’s an over-congestion of gear.” McGeoghegan said losses over the past two weeks could be significant for some crews. >click to read< 14:28
Dead humpback whale floating in Raritan Bay. Another reported off N.Y.
The whales are floating in the Raritan Bay and off Wainscott, New York, the Marine Mammal Stranding Center said Thursday. “Biologists across multiple organizations are currently assessing their resources to respond,” the stranding center said Thursday. “The New York State Department of Environmental Conservation and New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection and New Jersey Fish & Wildlife Service are partnered in the efforts to relocate and respond to these whales as well. “Multiple dead whales washed up on New Jersey beaches in the winter, including in Seaside Park and Atlantic City. >click to read< 13:50
Army Vet/Commercial Fisherman Dale F Baines “Whaler” of Brookings, Oregon, has passed away
Dale was born on May 18, 1952, in Sacramento, CA to Vern and Marie (Barclay) Baines. At the age of 13 his mother and stepfather Leland Holmes moved the family to Gold Beach. Dale attended and graduated from Gold Beach High School in 1971. Soon after graduation he was drafted into the Army. Dale loved to fish from a young age. It was not surprising he became a commercial fisherman and in 1976 he bought his first F/V the TAKU a small salmon trawler which he fell overboard while fishing by himself off Eureka CA. Thankfully the Lord was not ready for him and saved him so that he could marry Mindy Payne on September 26, 1987. Dale spent many years working on others boats, until 2003 when he and his wife purchased the F/V Innisfree. >click to read< 13:04
How Commercial Fisherman Corey Arnold Got Hooked On Fishing
Chris Arnold was an avocado grower and nurseryman, in Southern California, who bought a fishing boat when Corey was a toddler. He was reeling in baby sharks while still in diapers. “My dad was obviously busy with work and running a business, so fishing was a hobby for him,” says Arnold. “But I was 100 percent on fishing.” It was on a summer fishing trip to Alaska with his dad that Arnold first observed a commercial fishing operation — by 19, he had his first fishing job. He went on to work for seven years as a crab fisherman in Seattle, and eventually made his way to Alaska fishing for king crab on the F/V Rollo (featured on Season 2 of the Deadliest Catch) in the depths of winter, on the Bering Sea. Photos, >click to read< 11:15
Teenage fisherman from Looe livid after crab pot thefts
Will Jaycock has his own 10-metre Fowey-registered fishing boat which he uses in Looe Bay to catch crab and lobsters. However, the 18-year-old discovered that some of his pots had been cut and raided for their content, annihilating days of work and hard toil in the process. He said it was impossible to prove who had done it but insisted it was unlikely to be other fishermen in the town. “It seems opportunistic perhaps from people on day boats or in their own little pleasure boats or kayaks or divers out spearfishing. It’s not other fishermen. It’s people with recreational boats.” >click to read< 10:10
AWARDS 2022 | BEST CRABBER – UGJIT MIJUA’JI’JG – NAVANEX & CHANTIER NAVAL FORILLON
Here is a comparatively simple but truly multi-purpose fishing vessel that can readily adapt from trawling to potting for crabs. Obviously, its primary target will be high-value crabs, but given the vessel’s ownership, it will be very useful for it to be able to change its target. The designer added that the fishing deck can be converted as a small trawler and the hull can be easily lengthened from 65 to 72 feet (19.8 to 21.9 metres) to keep the gross tonnage below 150 tonnes as per Transport Canada regulations. This modification can increase the capacity of the cargo to hold up to 90 cubic metres. >click to read<. and >read more here<, 08:51
Seafood industry contributes $3.2B a year to the Maine economy, report says
The first-ever report on Maine’s seafood sector as a whole, including downstream contributors, found in 2019, the sector contributed over $3.2 billion in total economic output to the Maine economy. The largest contributors were retail seafood, at $692 million, followed by lobster harvesting at $511 million and seafood processing at $343 million. The sector supported over 33,300 jobs statewide in 2019, including 23,846 in sector industries and 7,300 additional jobs supported by other indirect and induced multiplier effects. >click to read< 07:51
