Daily Archives: June 11, 2023
Next Level Plotter
The market for marine electronics isn’t short of chart plotters, but Håvard Holm at Norwegian company SailorsMate is certain that he and his team have come up with a set of new approaches that brings a new level of integration to plotting specifically for fishing. SailorsMate is now in use on around 700 Norwegian vessels, plus there are some Faroese users, and the company feels it’s time to branch out and expand its user base to other areas. ‘We’re getting enquiries from Denmark, Canada and the UK. We’re able to offer SailorsMate at an attractive price that currently includes all of the modules that are expensive add-ons with other systems. >click to read< 16:05
British Columbia: Steveston fishermen race against time for spot prawn season
The annual spot prawn season may feel short and sweet to seafood enthusiasts, but it’s even more pressing for the few spot prawn fishermen at Steveston’s Fisherman’s Wharf. The wild spot prawn, known for its eponymous spots, has a four-year life cycle and lives in “crystal clear, pristine waters” deep in the ocean. “By year number two, they transition into a female. And they spawn at year number four, and then they die,” said Frank “Fisherman Frank” Keitsch, who has been catching spot prawns for around 30 years. With the fishing grounds being far away from Steveston, only around four local boats are able to cover the distance. >click to read< 11:35
New England Fishing Culture
In New Bedford, fishing is more than a business—it is a way of life, passed down through generations of families like a tradition instead of an occupation. Born into a family of fishermen, Tyler Miranda grew up on the water, going out on trips in his father’s lobster boat—a wooden vessel about 14 feet long and half-covered in ocean-worn lobster traps—since he was six. Kellen O’Maley, a fisherman from Gloucester, Mass., chose not to pursue opportunities using a business degree. (Gloucester, a town two hours north of New Bedford, is the second largest fishing port in the state.) Instead, he dove into the fishing industry. >click to read< 10:19
Pipe Dream: The wind and solar power myth has finally been exposed
Many governments in the Western world have committed to “net zero” emissions of carbon in the near future. The US and UK both say they will deliver by 2050. It’s widely believed that wind and solar power can achieve this. This belief has led the US and British governments, among others, to promote and heavily subsidize wind and solar. These plans have a single, fatal flaw: they are reliant on the pipe dream that there is some affordable way to store surplus electricity at scale. Wind and solar need to be backed up, close to 100 per cent, by some other means of power generation. If that backup is provided by open-cycle gas or worse, coal, net zero will never be achieved: nor anything very close to it. >click to read< 09:02
The man who changed Canada’s lobster industry and his $1B deal to sell Clearwater
In Nova Scotia, John Risley is arguably a household name, synonymous with the seafood industry and his many conspicuous possessions. On both fronts, his reputation is well earned. In 1976, he and his brother-in-law Colin MacDonald started Clearwater, a dumpy retail lobster shop on the side of a suburban Halifax highway. From that simple start, Risley fundamentally changed the Atlantic Canadian lobster industry — transforming it from a seasonal, afterthought business to a year-round, $3-billion sector where lobsters are shipped overnight by air to customers in Europe and Asia, a premise unheard of before Risley entered the industry. Along the way, Clearwater matured into a global seafood company. >click to read< 07:43
