Daily Archives: October 15, 2023
Unexpected Drama in Yarmouth as Fishing Boat Seized by Police
In an unexpected turn of events, the quiet harbour of Yarmouth, Isle of Wight, was the scene of a dramatic police operation on Tuesday. Armed officers seized a fishing boat, leaving local residents in shock and curiosity. The incident took place in the early hours of Tuesday when a group of armed officers boarded the fishing vessel. The operation, carried out with precision and efficiency, saw the boat swiftly taken under control without any reported injuries or casualties. The boat was then towed to a secure location, hinting at a more in-depth investigation to follow. >>click to read<< 21:31
A struggle to dodge salmon in pursuit of a massive pollock bounty
Onboard the F/V Northern Hawk — Some 400 miles northwest of Dutch Harbor, Bering Sea pollock congregated in spectacular fashion. In the wheelhouse of this factory trawler, Captain Jim Egaas scanned a sonar displaying a dense red band that represented millions of fish in a school that stretched for miles. He could see the pollock up close on another screen that relayed images from an undersea camera stitched in the mesh of a quarter-mile-long net. The video feed showed swarms of them deep in the funnel-shaped trap. Once pulled on board, the tail end of the net bulged with more than 220,000 pounds of tightly packed pollock. A crewman 
unstitched a seam. Raised by a powerful winch, the net spewed a silver avalanche of fish into below-deck holding tanks to await processing in a plant primed to operate 24 hours a day. Egaas was in hurry-up mode. Even before the last of this catch was shaken from the webbing, he called for crew members to unfurl a second net from a giant reel. “I like what we are seeing. We’re on the stock,” Egaas said. Photos, video, >>click to read<< 15:42
How I restored an old arctic trawler to explore the Scottish islands
Amelia Dalton was at her father-in-law’s funeral when she got the phone call. And it wasn’t good news. The Arctic trawler she had bought, named Monaco, to establish her own cruising business had started to sink in the North Sea. “Off I went up to Peterhead with a background in cooking and antiques to get this boat pulled out of the water and on goes the story of how we converted this 85-foot trawler into a small expedition boat,” Dalton explains. Laughing as she recalls the memory, Dalton admits that “pretty well everything went wrong that you could imagine,” starting with the boat sinking in the North Sea. Photos, >>click to read<< 11:47
Review of the Byline TV documentary – Betrayed: The Big Brexit Lie
Up to 70% of voters in Grimsby supported Brexit because they believed it would usher in a return to the days when the docks effectively constituted a small town, complete with cafes, shops and banks. The trade was so lucrative, crews returning to land their catch would be known as ‘three-day millionaires’. A return to past prosperity is what politicians like Boris Johnson and Nigel Farage appeared to promise, with both taking advantage of photo opportunities to rally support at the daily fish market. Yet when the EU-UK trade and cooperation agreement was finally delivered, the betrayal became strikingly evident. Barry Deas of the National Federation of Fisherman’s Organisations declared the industry had been “sacrificed”, and Martin Boyers, CEO of Grimsby Fish Market described it as “… just rhetoric and broken promises”. The deal that Johnson and David Frost had negotiated had essentially made it much harder for British fisheries to sell into their largest market – the current accumulated trade deficit for the industry amounts to £1.7bn. >>click to read<< 10:26
More than 50 Indigenous fish harvesters in the Maritimes charged or on trial
Three years after a First Nation started a self-regulated lobster fishery that sparked protests and violence in Nova Scotia, federal prosecutors are pressing ahead with charges against dozens of Indigenous fishers, some of whom are planning constitutional challenges. On Sept. 17, 2020, the Sipekne’katik First Nation issued five lobster licences to its members, saying they could trap and sell their catch outside the federally regulated season. The bold move came exactly 21 years after the Supreme Court of Canada affirmed the treaty right of Indigenous groups in Eastern Canada to hunt and fish for a moderate livelihood, but interpretations of that landmark ruling remain in dispute. >>click to read<< 09:25
David and Ellen Goethel talk with Roger Wood About Their Favorite Subjects
David Goethel of Hampton may have retired from commercial fishing, but he’s still on the water on a regular basis. Ellen Goethel, his wife and partner can’t stop teaching about and researching the ocean and its creatures. Together they form a formidable duo in life and in science. David survived a bout with cancer, and while recovering wrote a book. Endangered Species is about his life on the water, his favorite place. But it’s also about the losing battle that those who still go down to the sea in ships have been facing when the rules go against them at a time when scientists are declaring that overfishing has put the species at risk, especially in the productive Gulf of Maine. In this podcast, Roger Wood speaks to both of them, learning about David’s newly published book and their shared passion, the sea. >>click to read/listen<< 08:17
