Daily Archives: July 28, 2024

James Watt: ‘My father is dying, I do not want to go through life without him’

My father’s journey to end-of-life care has been both sudden and tragic. Having lost one of my closest friends, Dan Bolton, to pancreatic cancer only in January, my dad’s stage four pancreatic cancer diagnosison June 22 hit our family like a sledgehammer. I still can’t imagine my life without my father playing a very prominent role in it. I still can’t quite wrap my head around the fact that up until a few weeks ago my dad was working full time on his lobster fishing boat, hauling 300 lobster pots every single day. Lobster fishing is incredibly hard and manual work, and the north Atlantic is an infamously dangerous and difficult place to work — my dad was fitter and stronger than I am. That strength forged through hard graft in the face of unforgiving northerly gales. Photos, more, >>CLICK TO READ<< 12:09

‘A blessing.’ Grand Isle locals left homeless by Ida get new houses built by nonprofit

Christian and Terrill Pizani braved Hurricane Ida three years ago from his 67-foot shrimp boat in Port Fourchon, where the storm unleashed 130 mph winds as it made landfall. By the time it passed, their home back in Grand Isle — Louisiana’s last inhabited barrier island 17 miles east — was left decimated. The couple spent seven months living on the shrimp boat before eventually using money from an insurance payout to buy an RV they parked among the wreckage of their former home. “We didn’t want to be caught with no place to live,” Christian recalled. But after nearly three years without a house, the couple on Tuesday received the keys to a brand-new, storm-resilient home built by a local nonprofit. Photos, more, >>CLICK TO READ<< 09:55

Long-sought-after shipwreck with tragic history discovered at popular Lake Michigan fishing spot over a century later

An intrepid team of marine archaeologists has discovered the wreckage of a long-sought-after schooner, more than a century after it sunk beneath Lake Michigan. The Margaret A. Muir was found 50 feet below the surface several miles off the coast of Algoma, Wisconsin in May, the Wisconsin Underwater Archaeology Association announced this month. “The Margaret A. Muir was lost to history” in the last 130 years since, despite its relatively close proximity to shore, according to the experts. “It had lay undetected for over a century, despite hundreds of fishing boats passing over each season.” Photos, >>CLICK TO READ<< 08:45

TX Fishing Industry Under Threat From BlackRock Wind Farm Project

The massive destruction wrought on Massachusetts’ Vineyard Wind project has raised new questions about the safety and prudence of a similar BlackRock-backed project planned off the coasts of Louisiana and Texas near Port Arthur. Bonnie Brady of the Long Island Commercial Fisherman’s Association posted several pictures of broken and mangled offshore wind turbines from a recent storm to her X account on July 20. The images depict turbines with snapped blades hanging from their mounts. They also show large shards of metal and other debris washing ashore. Brady directed her post to every East Coast governor and the major presidential contenders, save for Vice President Kamala Harris, who had not yet announced her presidential candidacy, warning of what could happen to the fishing industry. “Stop the madness while you still can, because when the fiberglass lands on your shores you will (eventually) be out of the job. Ps we will never forget you threw US commercial fishing industries under the bus,” she wrote. more, >>CLICK TO READ<< 07:14