Daily Archives: September 22, 2023
Blue Harvest bankruptcy leaves millions in unpaid debt to local businesses
For Blue Harvest and Bregal Partners — which is part of a fund with over $18 billion under management — the $50,000 or so owed to Bendiksen is a small fraction of the debts the company had racked up during its eight-year roll up of the New Bedford fishing industry. But for Bendiksen, he said the notice that he will not be paid spells a serious financial blow. And he’s not alone. More than 1,000 independent contractors and companies will be left holding the bag as the private-equity backed fishing venture goes belly up, according to a list of creditors published in the bankruptcy filings. It includes many fishermen who had worked for Blue Harvest and countless small businesses on the New Bedford waterfront: welders, mechanics, supply stores and shipyards. >>click to read<< 11:20
Beaufort’s shrimping industry on the brink. Local boats sit while imported catch floods market
Thursday at Village Creek on St. Helena Island was another picture postcard-worthy morning with an American flag lilting in a slight southeast breeze near the shrimper Gracie Bell — idly tied to the dock. At Sea Eagle Market, a catch of shrimp swept up in the nets of trawlers in recent days are being processed by small group of dockside workers. They clean the valuable seafood crop harvested from waters as far away as North Carolina to the northeast coast of Florida before being sold locally and up and down the Palmetto State’s coast. After this recent harvest was completed, the boats returned, as they always do — to Village Creek, home base for shrimping on Fripp and Hunting Islands in Beaufort County and beyond. Against this serene backdrop, a storm is brewing that threatens destruction. It is not the threat of foul weather, these shrimpers have seen generations of bad weather days. The storm brewing is economic for the community of shrimpers and related businesses. >click to read< 10:10
Observer companies dumped from monitoring of N.S. lobster fishery
This season, DFO will rely solely on an inshore industry association to assess what other species are being accidentally captured — what’s known as bycatch — in the lobster fishery from Halifax through the Bay of Fundy. Observer companies Javitech Atlantic in Dartmouth and Halifax’s Atlantic Catch Data have been part of the bycatch monitoring program since it was launched in 2018 to assess and demonstrate sustainability in the fishery worth half a billion dollars. Both companies are out for now. In recent years, they have not delivered anywhere near the sampling provided by the Yarmouth-based Southwest Lobster Science Society, which was created by five fishing associations to provide bycatch monitoring. >>click to read<< 08:30
