Fishermen

The Virginian Pilot (VA), June 1 2008-- The six sun burned men stood together on the pier at Hatteras Harbor Marina and smiled as charter boat captain Rom Whitaker snapped their photo.  After hooking a 350-pound marlin off Whitaker's 53-foot sport-fishing boat, the Release, it didn't matter to them that they had to pay more to fish.  "There's no consideration of gas when you're having fun," said Steve Ward of Northern Virginia.  Not every angler feels the same way.  In the first two months of the year, the number of for-hire trips by North Carolina's 700 charter, guide and head boats dropped 30 percent, from 4,300 trips to 3,000, compared with last year, according to the state Division of Marine Fisheries.  "It was a one-two punch," said Doug Munford, a state biologist who coordinates data collection in Washington, N.C.  Read More

AFP, May 17 2008--  Ireland is to tackle the growing problem of so-called "ghost nets" that are destroying fish stocks in the northeast Atlantic Ocean, the Irish Sea Fisheries Board said Sunday.  The organisation said a series of pilot clean-up schemes, involving one Spanish and three Irish ships contracted to retrieve some of the thousands of kilometres of lost, dumped and abandoned nets, will run from June to September.  The scheme -- Operation Deepclean -- is being funded by the European Union at a cost of more than 500,000 euros (775,000 dollars) and will also seek to estimate the extent of the problem off the British and Irish coasts.  "The retrieval exercise will alleviate the problem of ghost fishing and help prevent further fish being caught in these nets," said Dominic Rihan, from the Irish Sea Fisheries Board.  "We also hope to get an estimate of the amount of lost nets in the particular areas."  "Ghost nets" are so called because they drift in the ocean after being abandoned or dumped and some have been found to be still catching fish and ensnaring other marine life for up to three years.  Read More

WLBZ2.com-- There'll be a free lobster giveaway next week. But you'll have to go to Canada's Prince Edward Island to load up. Lobster fishermen will protest low prices they're being paid by handing out lobster to the public free of charge this Wednesday at a mall in Charlottetown. Lobsterman Joe Banks says it's better to give the lobster away than to accept low prices fishermen are getting from processing plants. The Canadian lobster season is different from the traditional season in Maine. In Maine, most lobstermen won't be heading out to fish until next month.

WildlifeExtra.com--  At the beginning of the fishing season, WWF sources have identified two pirate purse seine vessels operating in Mediterranean waters. The unregistered vessels, originally flagged as Bolivian, docked in Malta where they reflagged as Libyan (using duplicate names of boats already in use) before setting sail to plunder bluefin tuna from the Mediterranean.  WWF sources indicate that French, Maltese and Libyan interests are most likely related to these vessels.  Read More

Helly Hansen Newport Presents: Discovery Channel’s Deadliest Catch Captain Sig Hansen

Friday, May 16 th 11am – 1pm & 3pm – 5pm at the Newport Spring Boat Show

 

The Associated Press, May 8 2008--  For the first time in 24 years of building lobster boats, Wayne Beal doesn't have any job orders.  He has a 42-footer under construction at his boatyard - but he's building it for himself, so he can give up boat building and go lobster fishing instead. In Maine, where lobster is king, Beal and other lobster boat builders are braving tough times. With the lobster catch down and fishermen feeling an economic squeeze, boat sales have hit the skids.  So even with the uncertainties facing lobster fishermen, Beal believes he's better off doing that than sitting around and hoping for more boat orders to come in. "There's not a lot of guys making the move to take on a new boat. And the economy is on its face, too," Beal said in the cavernous, high-ceilinged boat shop where he has built scores of fiberglass boats over the years. "This is the first time I've had to lay crew off."  In Down East Maine, lobster boat building has a long tradition as a provider of jobs and money in a region that is short on both.

The Anchorage Daily News (AK), April 22 2008--  The last minutes aboard the doomed fishing vessel Alaska Ranger were spent in a desperate effort to launch the boat's life rafts into the Bering Sea, a survivor of the disaster told a federal inquiry board. 

Twenty-two-year-old Ken Smith of Pasco, Wash., told investigators on Monday in Seattle that no one assigned to his life raft knew how to launch it.  All of the Alaska Ranger's life rafts were eventually launched, though not all crew members made it into a raft.

Five people died when the 203-foot catcher-processor sank March 23.  At an earlier hearing in Anchorage, crewmen and Coast Guard rescuers described battling freezing seas and terror as the ship went down on a pitch-black night 120 miles west of Dutch Harbor. Both the captain and the fish master died, as did crewman Byron Carillo, who plunged 40 feet into the raging sea after falling from a rescue basket pulling him to the safety of a helicopter, according to hearing testimony.

SeattlePI.com-- Edward Cook heard about the Alaska Ranger's mayday, knowing his brother was aboard the ship taking water in the icy Bering Sea. Cook was in the same corner of the Bering Sea on the Alaska Warrior, a sister fishing vessel, which aided in the rescue. The crew worked for hours, pulling survivors huddled in life rafts or scattered in the water to safety. Upon finding a lifeless body, he knew without having to check that it was his brother Daniel, said Edward Cook's wife, Cindy, who lives in Gold Bar. "When they got down to the point that they were checking for anyone who hadn't survived, he knew by the shape of his brother's body that it was him," she said. "He was totally, totally a wreck" when she talked to her husband by phone shortly afterward. "They were as close as you can imagine -- they did the same thing and they loved their family." Chief engineer Daniel Cook, 58, a San Diego father of three, Harley-Davidson devotee and fisherman who loved nothing more than stocking up at Costco in anticipation of a stint at sea, was among the four victims of the Easter Sunday sinking. Read More

 

Sou'Wester, March 4 2008--One of the most challenging problems faced by the owner of a ‘double-decker’ lobster fishing boat built by D’Eon Boatbuilding in Middle West Pubnico, Yarmouth County, N.S. was the size of the vessel. “You just couldn’t get far enough away from the boat in the shop to see what it was really like,” says Curtis Rodgerson, the boat’s owner, who communicated what he wanted through rough drawings he’d sketched over eight years.

The wheelhouse was built on the shop floor and attached to the vessel outside later. Rodgerson designed Papa Russ specifically for safety and comfort and his goal of getting “up and over” the crew as they worked. It bothered him to be in front of the men as they worked, having to continually turn around or step aft to monitor them. Read More

Military.com, March 3 2008-- The Coast Guard assisted a Boston-based fishing crew after their boat became disabled 30 miles east of Chatham, Mass. The crew of five aboard the Miss Lindsey II radioed Coast Guard Sector Southeastern New England in Woods Hole, Mass., at 3:15 a.m., and reported they were adrift and suspected a head gasket had blown in the 80-foot trawler's engine. The sector issued a radio broadcast asking any nearby vessels to assist. After getting no response, they directed the 270-foot Coast Guard Cutter Spencer, based in Boston, to make way toward the Miss Lindsey II and tow it to Provincetown, Mass. The wind speed on scene was about 30 knots and the seas were 15 to 18 feet. The water temperature was about 40 degrees. Read More