Other News

Hatteras Island, NC fishermen help feed the elderly and infirm with fresh fish.

Watch the video from ABC News.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

NOAA's Teacher at Sea Program is NOW ACCEPTING APPLICATIONS for the 2011 Field Season until November 30, 2010

The mission of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) Teacher at Sea (TAS) program is to give teachers a clearer insight into our ocean planet, a greater understanding of maritime work and studies, and to increase their level of environmental literacy by fostering an interdisciplinary research experience. The program provides a unique environment for learning and teaching by sending kindergarten through college-level teachers to sea aboard NOAA research and survey ships to work under the tutelage of scientists and crew. Then, armed with new understanding and experience, teachers bring this knowledge back to their classrooms.  Indeed, the greatest payoff of NOAA's Teacher at Sea program is the enthusiasm for learning more about our ocean planet generated between teachers and students.

Read all about it and learn how to apply from NOAA's website.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

REEDVILLE The venerable smokestack, once part of a fish processing plant  and long a beacon for boat captains, is perhaps Reedville's most iconic structure, a towering monument to the industry that built this town.

It has weathered dozens of hurricanes, as well as fires and who-knows-what-else thrown at it over the past century at its position near the Chesapeake Bay. But when lightning scored a direct hit on the crumbling stack in early August and was followed by a violent windstorm a few days later, bricks around the top of the tower tumbled into Cockrell's Creek, and those fighting to save this tall piece of history wondered if the battle was lost.

"We were a month away from starting restoration," said Monty Deihl, general manager of Omega Protein, the company that owns the long-dormant stack and a member of the Save The Stack committee, "and we were afraid . . . that something was going to happen and it was going to crash the effort."

Read the complete story from The Richmond Times-Dispatch.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Despite still being short of fundraising goal, grass-roots group oversees restoration work on the Reedville Stack.

REEDVILLE, Virginia – 9/28/2010 – Last year, not long after Omega Protein picked local Fleeton native and retired Air Force Lt. Col. Monty Deihl to run its menhaden fleet and processing plant here, the new manager and former boat crewman found himself in a skiff out on Cockrell's Creek.

Cruising about on a nice day, Deihl and his wife found themselves passing by the 130-foot, round smokestack on Omega Protein property, the only remnant of the first menhaden plant in a Northern Neck county that once had many.

"We saw the damage lightning had done at the top and bricks that had tumbled down from it," Deihl said. "My wife looked at me and said, 'Monty, if this falls down, it's going to be your fault.'"

This week, thanks to an ongoing Save the Stack grass-roots community effort that Deihl and Omega Protein are playing a big part in, critical repairs and restoration work is finishing up what will keep that from happening.

A crew from Industrial Access in Alpharetta, Ga., has spent the better part of the month on scaffolding, restoring the structure, which was built around 1902.

Deihl, one of more than a dozen locals in a steering committee for the Save the Stack effort, said the work has included replacing damaged brick and mortar, as well as the steel straps that help support the structure.

"They've also installed a stainless-steel cap on top to keep water out," he said, noting that a system is included to handle lightning strikes.

Work on the restoration effort, expected to be finished by the end of this week, doesn't mean the Save the Stack fundraising will stop.

The group set $350,000 as its goal, but decided to start the work even though recent counts showed the total had yet to reach $200,000.

"We knew lightning had struck it twice this summer alone, doing more damage at the top," said Deihl, who was proud to announce Omega's pledge to put $86,000 into the project.

Read the complete story from The Free Lance-Star Publishing Co.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Richard Gaines, the Times' staff writer whose investigative coverage of the fishing industry, the federal regulations that govern it, and the genesis of government policy and science behind them, has been honored — along with the Times itself — with one of the New England commercial fishing's most prestigious awards.

Gaines and the Times were honored Sunday in New Bedford with the Offshore Mariners' Wives "Friend of the Fishermen" award, presented as part of New Bedford's annual Blessing of the Fleet that highlights that city's Working Waterfront Festival.

The awards drew applause Sunday from more than 100 fishermen and fishing activists, and a stage of guests that included state Attorney General Martha Coakley and New Bedford Mayor Scott Lang.

The honor marks the first time the award has ever gone to any journalist or media outlet, with past winners including several people within the fishing industry and Congressman Barney Frank, who again is in a lead role in fighting the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's regulatory policies and enforcement. The award presented to Gaines and the Times also marked the first time it has been presented to someone outside the greater New Bedford community.

In accepting the award on behalf of the Times, Editor Ray Lamont told the audience at the New Bedford State Pier that "we are absolutely humbled by this award."

Read the complete story from The Gloucester Times.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

CHATHAM, MA – September 27, 2010 – The midwater trawlers fishing for herring in federal waters from Chatham to Provincetown went over their catch limit by almost 40 percent this year, according to NOAA Fishery's Atlantic Herring Weekly Landing Report released last week.

By greatly exceeding their quota in Area 1B, a sensitive habitat located a mere three miles from shore, the herring boats are taking even more fish away from the striped bass, cod, pollock and tuna that Cape Cod fishermen depend on for their businesses. And with inadequate monitoring and rules governing this fleet, the trawlers were allowed to go over their limit by around 3.7 million pounds with no consequence this year or next.

"The Cape's commercial fishermen can't go over our allowance by a single pound of fish without being shut down and these guys went over by 38 percent," said John Our, a Chatham-based groundfish fisherman. "Those boats went over by more pounds of herring than the weight of all fish Chatham boats caught last year."

"If National Marine Fisheries is going to make everyone accountable, that's got to include the herring industry too," he added.

The overage in Area 1B is just another example of the fact that there is not adequate monitoring of this fishery.

"If observers had been on board the boats to track their catch, this area could have been shut down when it should have been and those herring would be there for stripers and tuna," said Darren Saletta, a commercial striped bass fisherman from Chatham.

A plan to enhance monitoring on midwater trawlers is in the works at the New England Fishery Management Council, but there are still important measures that need to be included in Amendment 5 in order to ensure the rule changes actually have an impact and stop overage events like what happened in 1B this year.

The Council is scheduled to take up this issue tomorrow — Tuesday, Sept. 28 — when it meets at the Hotel Viking in Newport, R.I.

·     READ the Atlantic Herring Weekly Landings Report.

·     CHECK OUT the agenda for the September Council meeting.

·     FOLLOW our Tweets on the CCCHFA Twitter page for updates on tomorrow's meeting.

 

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More than 150 groundfish trawl fishermen and fishery experts from up and down the west coast have gathered in Santa Rosa, California today to learn how to structure their businesses under a new catch share program that will start Jan. 1st.  Fishermen will hear from other fishermen who have made the transition to catch shares as well as government officials, fishery monitors, business and finance planners, and other fishery experts.  The goal is to give fishermen the tools to thrive under the new system.

The workshop started this morning with introductory comments from Brian Mose, a trawl fisherman from British Columbia. Mose said that when his fishery – nearly identical to the U.S. groundfish fishery – moved to a catch share, fishermen had no help to figure out the new system.  He described fishermen as “shell shocked.”  But within a few months, fishermen began making changes, and today, the program is a success.  Fishermen are making money and the fish stocks are stable or growing. 

The new Pacific catch share was seven years in the making and should be a turning point for fishermen and the groundfish they harvest.  Just ten years ago, the fishery was declared a disaster.  Landings have plummeted 70 percent in the last two decades, and since 1998 revenues have dropped from $47.3 million to $22.2 million.

Read the complete story from EDF.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Herring are no longer a major food fish in New England, and the few dozen boats in the region that still catch the fish — commonly known as sardines — sell them primarily as lobster bait.

But the small, silvery fish that swim in huge schools are at the center of a fierce controversy. On Tuesday, the New England Fishery Management Council is scheduled to start forming a new management plan for the fishery. The effort has pitted the fleet of mid-water trawlers that catch herring against environmental groups, commercial groundfishermen and recreational anglers.

"This one has been a tough one. It is complicated and extremely controversial," said Lori Steele, the council's management plan coordinator.

The herring fishery comprises 35 to 40 boats, most of them mid-water trawlers based in Maine and Massachusetts. That's a small number relative to the groundfishing fleet in New England.

Read the complete story from The Portland Press Herald.

 

 

 

 

 

 

NEW BEDFORD, Mass. – Sunday Sept 26, 2010 – The Friend of the New Bedford Fisherman award was presented to Richard Gaines and the Gloucester Daily Times at the Working Waterfront Festival in New Bedford.  The following is Mr. Gaines' acceptance speech, delivered on behalf of himself and Gloucester Times editor Ray Lamont, at State Fish Pier, New Bedford.

 
Jim (Kendall), Mayor Lang, Attorney General Coakley, municipal officials, friends and all the good folks of New Bedford and the Ocean Nation. You have welcomed us, trusted us to tell your stories honestly, and now you have given us a bouquet of honor.
 
I consider this award the highest and most gratifying in my 42 years of scribbling, trying to decipher what’s happening to our civilization and give readers a series of stories that can be read as a narrative to help them decide what to do about it.
 
I learned a little about your industry and culture in the two years the Gloucester Daily Times, to which I will be forever grateful, has allowed me to devote all my energies to fishing. On the other hand, over my life, I learned quite a little about newspapers.
 
I won’t waste your time and talk about fishing – something you know a lot more about than I. But I’d like to give you a few thoughts about the press.
 
Newspapering and fishing have some things in common, other than that they are both endangered ways of life, each a synthesis of values and required commitments that the rest of society doesn’t share, understand or value much any more.
 
Of course, and needless to say, the great difference is danger. Newspapering does not require the embrace of mortal danger, and that distinction overwhelms all else, and makes fishing very special all by itself.
 
But fishing and newspapering are both deadline driven production line businesses. Either you get the product to market on time or you fail.
 
Both are professional crafts, with unwritten ethical codes employed by members of the guild who need no degree of any kind to be admitted and prosper or fail based on their talent effort and luck.
 
Both are hunter-gatherer industries…and demand a perpetual contest with the unknown, with the risk of crushing disappointment to match the elation of being in the right place at the right time.
 
As I said, both are endangered. But the impending tragedy of the decline of the fishing fleet is much greater than the loss of newspapers. For while the fishing industry has been struggling to survive, the death of newspapers is mostly self-inflicted.
 
Newspapers die when they stop doing the essential work only they can do. What that is was put well by Walter Lippmann, one of the 20th century’s great journalists.
 
Lippmann asserted that a newspaper’s job is to report the “truth,” and truth-seeking he defined as the effort to “bring to light the hidden facts, to put them in relation with one another and to create a picture of reality on which man can act.”
 
That’s what the Gloucester Daily Times and your own Standard Times have been trying to do, belatedly for both newspapers, but still, now, perhaps not too belatedly to help inform the rest of the people of the shameful tale … of how the federal government and false altruists wrapped in green and blue camouflage have been trying to elbow the fishermen out of the way so that investment capital can begin exploiting the vast array of riches in the sea.
 
These include but are not limited to the fish themselves. Despite what the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Boston Globe and other elite, privileged papers insist on writing and perpetuating, the fish are returned.
 
And the descendants of America’s original industry should be allowed to work to keep their culture alive.
 
The decision of those papers to give tacit approval to the federal government’s plan to displace and dispossess the fishermen is nothing less than collaboration.
 
The Globe warrants special contempt. Unlike The New York Times and the Washington Post, the Globe‘s market includes all of New England’s fishing communities.
 
It’s performance exposes an elitist ignorance and cowardice. It allowed itself to be duped by the federal fisheries police and enlisted in the effort to destroy the Gloucester Seafood Display Auction.
 
And when its role was exposed, instead of fessing up and trying to fix the harm it caused with a burst of truthful reporting, The Globe continued its willing blindness to the story.
 
Shame on the Globe.
 
In promulgating these lies, these powerful newspapers have insulted the inspiration of Lippmann and Jefferson who predicted accurately that without a free and courageous press, democracy would whither and disappear.
 
We row as best we can against that tide. And inspired by Gloucester’s great fisherman Howard Blackburn, we will row until the oars rot away, then we'll paddle with our hands.
 
This is my Pulitzer Prize, and I will cherish it always.
 
Thank you.
 

The scallop shells flew fast and furiously off the stage and onto the table and tarp below.

The competitors kept their eyes down as they gripped a knife in one gloved hand and a scallop in another. They shucked feverishly at the Working Waterfront Festival on Saturday, as the fastest to 100 won.

Richie Canastra, co-owner of Whaling City and Boston Display Auction Co., emceed the competition, entertained the crowd early with scallop factoids. He explaining that markets in different parts of the world favor different scallops.

"You need 600,000 of these to get to 30,000 pounds," said Canastra at one point.

Read the complete story from The South Coast Today [subscription site]