February 20, 2018 — Well, the boys of spring are heaving the ol’ horsehide around in the warmer climes of Florida and Arizona and that’s always a good thing, knowing that the calendar is about to flip over to baseball any minute.
Quick thought: What if baseball had been invented in, well, Norway or Iceland? Well, then the ball probably would be covered with fish skin rather than horsehide or the cowhide baseball switched to in 1974.
Be way better with fish skin. That way, any wild pitch truly would be the one that got away.
Meeting and greetin’
As we mentioned in last week’s column, things should be hopping in Boston on Feb. 27 when the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management hosts a public hearing on the Trump administration’s proposal to open the ocean floor off New England to potential drilling and exploration for gas, oil and whatever else is down there that can make a buck for somebody.
The meeting is expected to be packed with fishing stakeholders, conservationists and public officials — all of whom seem to be against any systematic mechanical intrusion into the marine ecosystem off the coast of New England.
One programming note: The venue for the event has been changed to the Omni Parker House hotel from the Hyatt Regency Boston. The time remains the same — 3 to 7 p.m.
We also were remiss last week in our discussion of the issue not to mention that the New England Fishery Management Council has submitted comments setting out its concerns about the possibility of gas and oil drilling off the Eastern Seaboard.
The council has recommended BOEM exclude the North and Mid-Atlantic areas because “oil and gas exploration and extraction activities in the Atlantic Outer Continental Shelf involve inappropriate risks that may harm living marine resources and communities that depend on them.”
Last summer, the council listed five general concerns: direct displacement of fishing activities due to survey or extraction activities; harm to sensitive deepwater habitats, such as corals; negative impacts on living marine resources from the high-decibel sounds produced during surveys and drilling; negative impacts to near-shore fish habitats from infrastructure necessary to support oil and gas industries; and risks associated with leaks and spills resulting from extraction and transport.
That’s a lot of concerns.
Read the full story at the Gloucester Times