Tag Archives: dolphin
A 1945 ship, restored and ready to work another salmon run in Bristol Bay
When Jim Henry first saw Dolphin, an 80-foot power scow, on the beach at Portland in 2006, he knew he had to have it. Built in 1945 by Maritime Shipyards in Seattle for the Alaska Packers Association’s cannery, the old tender had been sitting there five years. In its prime, Dolphin had served the sailboat salmon fishing industry in Bristol Bay by towing the vessels out of port and later loading their catch on its open deck for transport to the canneries.,, Old wooden boats could be a problem, but Henry grew up around those vessels on Peaks Island in Casco Bay off the Maine coast. His Scottish ancestors came to the area a few hundred years ago as political prisoners and settled on Peaks and nearby islands, working as fishermen. Henry’s been working in commercial fishing since he was 12 years old. click here to read the story 08:38
New rules for dolphin proposed
A federal fishery council has approved a rule that could keep the 
open so that by the time the migrating fish makes its way to the Florida Keys, the commercial fishery will not be closed. The National Marine Fisheries Service closed down the commercial dolphin fishery in July, the height of dolphin fishing in the Keys. For the past two years, fishermen off North and South Carolina, who generally fish for tuna, have targeted dolphin heavily and the annual commercial allocation has been near run out by the time Keys fishermen start fishing for dolphin. Read the article here 15:15
Study: Dolphin catch rate declines off South Carolina
The American Fishing Tackle Co. released an update on a study in South Carolina that it supports. However, commercial fishermen met their dolphinfish quota for the first time, leading Clark to believe it might have been location, not lack of abundance, that contributed to the drop. “The fact that these commercial vessels had unusually good catches of dolphin this year indicates there was an increased abundance of dolphin on the eastern side of the stream,” Clark argued. Read the rest here 10:56
National Marine Fisheries Service commercial dolphin season closure forces Keys restaurants to import
Florida Keys restaurants are searching for other sources of mahi-mahi, after federal authorities brought an early closure to the island chain’s commercial dolphin season. In the Keys, mahi-mahi is the usual catch-of-the-day for sandwiches and entrees on most menus. Eateries will soon begin outsourcing the popular dinner fish, after the NOAA Fisheries last week closed the commercial dolphin season early for the first time on record. Any other mahi being served will most likely be imported from elsewhere in the Caribbean, and Central America. Read the rest here 19:53
NOAA Study Ties Deepwater Horizon Spill To Dolphin Deaths
These findings support those of a 2011 health assessment of live dolphins in Barataria Bay, Louisiana, a heavily oiled area during the spill which showed those resident dolphins had poor health, adrenal disease, and lung disease. The timing and nature of the detected lesions support that contaminants from the Deepwater Horizon oil spill caused these lesions and contributed to the high numbers of dolphin deaths within this oil spill’s footprint. Increased dolphin deaths after the oil spill are part of the northern Gulf of Mexico unusual mortality event investigation. Read the rest here 07:59
A Must Read! FishNet USA / Dogfish and seals and dolphin, oh my!
The bottom line is that while commercial fishermen from North Carolina to Maine are at work catching on the order of half a million mt of fish and shellfish a year, it appears as if it takes an annual 20,000,000 tons or more to keep all those marine mammals and low-value spiny dogfish and various other predatory fish going. How much of that 20 million tons is commercially/recreationally valuable species or the forage species that sustain them? No one seems awfully interested in finding that out, but they sure should be. Read the rest here 10:55
