Tag Archives: Opioid Crisis
The Mayday Call: How One Death at Sea Transformed a Fishing Fleet
About 40 miles east-southeast of Barnegat Light, N.J., the Jersey Pride, a 116-foot fishing vessel with a distinctive royal blue hull, was towing a harvesting dredge through clam beds 20 fathoms down when its crew found a deckhand unresponsive in a bunk. The captain suspected an overdose. After trying to revive the man, he rushed to the radio. “Yes, Coast Guard, uh, I just tried to wake a guy up and he’s got black blood in his nose,” he said, sounding short of breath on Channel 16, “I got guys working on him. Come in.” About 17 miles to the Jersey Pride’s southeast, the fishing vessel Karen Nicole was hauling back its two scallop dredges and preparing to swing aboard its catch. Mate Hollis Nevells listened to the conversation crackling over a wheelhouse radio. Nevells had lost a brother-in-law and about 15 peers to fatal overdoses. When the Jersey Pride’s captain broadcast details of his imperiled deckhand. “His last name is Murphy,” he said. Nevells understood what he heard in human terms. That’s someone’s son or brother, he thought. more,>>CLICK TO READ<< 17:08
Opioid Crisis Taking Toll On Maine Lobster Industry
The nation’s opioid crisis has hit hard in Maine, where at least one person died every day last year of drug overdoses. It’s also penetrated the state’s lobster industry. Some fishermen are suffering in silence in a community that rarely asks for help. Josh Kane has spent more than 15 years fishing off the coast of Maine. For 10 of those years, he struggled with an opioid addiction as his fellow lobstermen looked the other way. In Washington County, economic leaders say the impact of the opioid epidemic on the lobster industry could easily affect an entire generation. “If you look around a coastal town, you have a sense of the value of the catch coming in,” Rudelitch said. “That new roof, that investment that should have come from a series of good years, just isn’t.” click here to read the story 15:16
