Saving Seafood

Cape Cod’s great white sharks head closer to shore

August 31, 2015 — July and the first week of August are often thought of as the dog days of summer, but if last year and this year are any indication, August and September could become the shark days of summer.

On Monday, researchers encountered 23 great white sharks from Chatham to Orleans, including three off Nauset Beach. The burgeoning population of sharks visiting the Cape has prompted local officials to rethink how they protect the swimming public from a potentially dangerous encounter.

While video footage of each shark seen Monday will still have to be analyzed to make sure they are 23 unique sharks and not repeats, it continues a trend in recent weeks, with 17 new sharks identified in one day three weeks ago and 19 in one day a week and a half ago.

More disturbing to beach managers is a pattern in recent weeks of great white sharks cruising in shallow water at swimming beaches along the coastline of the Outer Cape, prompting the temporary closing of some of the region’s most popular beaches.

Read the full story at the Cape Cod Times

 

MASSACHUSETTS: ‘It’s really wicked bittersweet’

August 31, 2015 — Well, they could have just laid him out atop a wooden pyre and lit him up like a viking, but that might have been a tad extreme even for Bill Skrobacz’ friends at the Crow’s Nest.

So, the dozens that showed up at The Nest on Thursday night to bid adieu to Scrobacz — Billy or Skrobie to just about everyone but the IRS — had to settle for personalizing the wooden cap the long-time fisherman built over the back of his Dodge truck in anticipation of his final move to Florida.

Many of the messages were touching, wishing him fair winds and all that. Some were bawdy because, well, this is The Nest, and this is Skrobie. And some had absolutely no shot of making it verbatim into a family friendly newspaper. If you want to read them, you’re just going to have to stake out Interstate 95 this weekend and look for the old salt heading south.

In his 63rd year, after more than four decades of being whipsawed by the life of a commercial fisherman, William Dixon Skrobacz has had enough. He’s had enough of the physical rigors of fishing that have gnarled his hands and hobbled and scarred his legs. He’s had enough of NOAA regulations up the ying and last winter’s snow up the yang.

Read the full story from the Gloucester Daily Times

An Open Letter to John Bullard

August 26, 2015 — To NOAA Regional Administrator John Bullard: As a fellow MIT alumnus, I am baffled at your stubborn adherence to a fish monitoring plan that the most cursory analysis shows is not only unsustainable, but will simply not provide the data you say you need to understand New England fish populations.

Unfortunately, you have painted yourself into a corner by making enemies of the most valuable source of information on New England fish — the fishermen themselves:

–You have branded them as biased liars whose reports cannot be trusted — hence the need for “monitors.”

— You have established draconian quotas that force fishermen to avoid certain species, then use the low quantities seen of these fish to prove there aren’t any.

— You have attempted to find fish with your own boats and use your lack of success as proof that the fish have not recovered.

Read the full letter at the Gloucester Daily Times

 

 

Massachusetts: Oars and Flowers: Gloucester Remembers Lost Fishermen

August 25, 2015 — There were tears — there always are — as the flowers were thrown on the water, recognizing Gloucester’s many losses to the sea.

There were Carol Figurido, Vincie Curcurum and Josie Russo, Gloucester women who lost loved ones to the ocean deep. They were just three among the many who attended Gloucester’s annual Fishermen’s Memorial Service held Saturday evening at the Fishermen’s Memorial on Stacy Memorial.

Figurido spoke of her grandfather — and the 5,383 other Gloucestermen whose names grace the Fishermen’s Memorial Cenotaph — at the ceremony. She came to know Thomas Isaac Moulton through relatives and family history. A ship’s cook, Moulton, 48, and five other Gloucestermen went down with the fishing vessel Mary E. O’Hara in 1941, before Figurido was born.

Vincie Curcuru lost her brother, John Orlando, 59, when the fishing vessel Patriot went down on Jan 3, 2009. He was crewing for his son-in-law.

Read the full story at the Gloucester Daily Times

Massachusetts: 15 shoreside businesses to receive disaster aid

August 25, 2015 — In this case, for Gloucester and 15 of the city’s shore-side businesses, the glass is decidedly half-full.

Those Gloucester businesses comprise precisely half of the 30 Massachusetts businesses that will receive groundfish disaster aid.

Collectively, they will receive by far the largest portion of the $750,000 set aside to assist shoreside businesses affected by the federally declared ground fish disaster now grinding through its third year.

The 15 Gloucester fishing-related enterprises — the most from any single Bay State groundfishing community — will share $380,360, or 50.7 percent of the $750,000 included in the second phase, or Bin 2, of the federal groundfish disaster relief distribution plan.

Mayor Sefatia Romeo Theken said the city’s success in garnering more than half of the available aid earmarked for businesses underlined the city’s prominence at the epicenter of the groundfish disaster, both on the water and on the waterfront.

Read the full story at the Gloucester Daily Times

 

 

‘The Long Haul’ looks at the future of Cape Cod fishing

August 23, 2015 — PROVINCETOWN, MA — Eight years ago, Pedro Verde, captain of the dragger F/V Blue Ocean, stood on MacMillan Pier and blasted scientists and fisheries regulators for allowing him to fish only 52 days the previous year. He was talking to Sean Corcoran, a reporter at public radio station WCAI who was investigating the decline of the Provincetown dragger fishery.

“We catch tons and tons of the dogfish here,” Verde told Corcoran. “So the guys close up the dogfish for 17 years. Endangered species. The guys don’t even know what they are talking about.”

Eight years later, the dogfish fishery is not just open but is booming, and it is a sustainable local species of whitefish, though you will be unlikely to find it in many local markets or on local tables.

The complex issues surrounding the decline of the Cape Cod fishing industry, the tensions between fishermen and regulators, changing people’s attitudes about which fish they want to eat, and the future of fishing here were the subjects of a gathering at the Provincetown Public Library last week. Corcoran, now news director at WCAI, and Heather Goldstone, the station’s science editor, presented some of the findings of a series of reports broadcast over the last two years.

Read the full story at the Provincetown Banner

State leaders express concern about NOAAs “oppressive” observer funding decision

August 19, 2015 — NEW BEDFORD, MA — Public officials statewide are criticizing a recent decision by the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Association requiring fishermen in the groundfishing industry to pay for federally mandated observers.

The Baker-Polito administration sent an letter to federal partners Monday expressing “serious concern” about the requirement, and urging their support in covering the costs of the At-Sea-Monitoring (ASM) program for the Northeast fishery, according to a news release from the governor’s office.

“While we, too, respect the importance of proper fisheries management, we question the fiscal and programmatic decisions that the agency has made of late with regards to the Northeast Fishery,” states the letter, which was sent to the U.S. Secretary of Commerce and members of the U.S. House and Senate appropriations committees.

Read the full story at South Coast Today

Granddaughter of Massachusetts ship cook to speak at service

August 19, 2015 — Carol Figurido of Gloucester never knew her grandfather.

Thomas Isaac Moulton and five other Gloucester men “went down to the sea in ships” aboard the fishing vessel Mary E. O’Hara in 1941, before Figurido was even born.

But through speaking with relatives and tracking down her family history, Figurido says she’s learned a good deal about Moulton, who was lost at sea at the age of 48. So, come Saturday, she will speak of her grandfather — and the 5,383 other Gloucestermen whose names grace the Fishermen’s Memorial Cenotaph — at the annual Fishermen’s Memorial Service.

Read the full story at the Gloucester Daily Times

 

Coast Guard rescues disabled fishing vessel off Nantucket

August 17, 2015 — Coast Guard crews aboard the cutters Escanaba and Hammerhead brought a disabled fishing vessel safely to shore early Monday.

Watchstanders at the Coast Guard Sector Southeastern New England Command Center, in Woods Hole, received a phone call from the captain of the vessel Challenger Sunday morning, stating a line had fouled their propeller, and they were disabled and adrift 70 miles southeast of Nantucket, Massachusetts.

Search-and-rescue coordinators from the Sector Southeastern New England command center diverted the Coast Guard cutters Escanaba and Hammerhead to assist.

The crew of the Escanaba arrived on scene and took the vessel, loaded with 650 pounds of scallops, in a stern tow at 9:30 a.m., Sunday. Later, at about 1 p.m. the crew of the Hammerhead relieved the Escanaba and continued to bring the fishing vessel toward shore.

Read the full story at CapeCod.com

 

DAVID GOETHAL: Fishermen’s anger justified

August 18, 2015 — Recently, Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker called the requirement for fishermen to pay $710 per day for catch monitoring “the most perfect example of an unfunded mandate” and continued on to call the policy “ridiculous” and “outrageous.” As a fisherman with close to 50 years experience in the fishery, I could not agree more but think your readers and editors need more context to understand the fishermen’s anger.

Philosophically, we are opposed to this idea because other industries do not pay for their monitoring. The airlines do not pay for the TSA, agribusiness does not pay for meat inspection, and pharmaceutical companies do not pay for the FDA, to name a few. These are considered functions of government and so is catch monitoring.

Read the full letter at the Gloucester Daily Times