Saving Seafood

MASSACHUSETTS: You Can’t Scallop Over Zoom: New Bedford Works to Vaccinate Seafood and Fishing Communities

April 14, 2021 — New Bedford is the country’s largest commercial fishing port and has the largest collection of seafood processing plants in the United States.

But these two accolades also create some unusual circumstances for the city when it comes to reaching and vaccinating those communities.

This past weekend, New Bedford held a vaccine clinic specifically geared towards those working in these industries. More are planned for this week.

Mayor Jon Mitchell said the city made a push with workers, as well as their employers.

“One of the big barriers to vaccine uptake, not just here in New Bedford but everywhere, is the fact that shift workers just have a harder time, for reasons that everyone can understand, getting away from work and going to a vaccine appointment,” Mitchell said. “If you’re a professional, if you’re a lawyer, a doctor, or an accountant, it’s no matter just to go break away from your work for an hour to go get your shot. But if you’re on a shift, and you are, like many shift workers, given two specififed periods of the day to take a break, you can’t readily get away to get a shot.”

Read the full story at WGBH

MASSACHUSETTS: ‘We’re helping make a difference’: New Bedford waterfront center administers 1,100 vaccines

April 13, 2021 — The new vaccination center on New Bedford’s waterfront vaccinated 1,100 people on Saturday, many of whom work in the fishing industry, according to Greater New Bedford Community Health Center leadership.

Noelle Kohles, chief nursing and clinical operations officer at the health center, said there were about 1,200 appointments on Saturday and that most belonged to workers from the fishing industry.

Cheryl Bartlett, CEO of the health center, said all the fish house businesses encouraged their workforce to sign up or signed them up directly through the health center.

The city’s stated focus for the new center is workers in the fishing industry, of which there are about 6,200, according to a 2019 report from the New Bedford Port Authority.

Read the full story at the New Bedford Standard-Times

MASSACHUSETTS: A New Exhibit About New Bedford and Fishing

April 12, 2021 — Restrictions are slowly being lifted and more COVID-19 vaccine is becoming available, and the people running the New Bedford Fishing Heritage Center are hopeful they’ll be welcoming more visitors this spring and summer to their 38 Bethel Street location.

When those visitors arrive, they can enjoy a new exhibit about New Bedford and its fishing industry.

The Center’s Executive Director, Laura Orleans joins Townsquare Sunday to discuss the new exhibit, entitled “More Than A Job: Work and Community in New Bedford’s Commercial Fishing Industry.”

The exhibit attempts to explain the culture of New Bedford and its connection to one of the world’s most dangerous professions.

Read the full story at WBSM

MASSACHUSETTS: New Bedford mayor calls offshore wind ‘generational opportunity’

April 12, 2021 — New Bedford Mayor Jon Mitchell is of two minds about Vineyard Wind, which after lengthy regulatory delays seems poised to finally get underway.

The mayor is excited about the potential for offshore wind farms to transform New Bedford the way they have many older European port cities, but he also worries that Massachusetts may be missing the boat when it comes to capturing the true value of the industry.

“Offshore wind is really a generational opportunity for a city like ours to leverage its competitive advantages in a way that brings in investment, creates jobs, and improves a city’s quality of life,” Mitchell said on The Codcast.

“We’re looking at roughly a $3 billion capital expenditure with this project,” he said. “That means a considerable amount of local procurement here in New Bedford from things as simple as hotel rooms and restaurant food to welders to any number of things. But it also means the more that the industry settles in here, the higher the likelihood that there will be investment in operating facilities and permanent enterprises. That really is, for us, the ultimate goal, to have an industry cluster here like we have with fishing.”

Mitchell said New Bedford, with its fishing port, is well-positioned to support the offshore wind industry, but it is unlikely to snare manufacturing operations because the city’s waterfront is so densely packed already. Even so, New Bedford has been expanding beyond the state-built New Bedford Marine Commerce Terminal to provide more space for offshore wind development. The mayor also said he hopes to tap federal infrastructure funds proposed by President Biden to modernize the city’s port facilities.

Read the full story at Commonwealth Magazine

MASSACHUSETTS: Women in the Workplace, Women on Deck: Fisherpoets Virtual Round Robin Thursday, April 8th, 7:00pm

April 7, 2021 — The following was released by the New Bedford Fishing Heritage Center

Tune in to the Center’s Facebook page for a virtual event featuring female fisherpoets from around the country! These women will share stories, poems, and music related to their experiences in the fishing industry and community. This event will be led by Moe Bowstern and will feature Tele Aadsen, Meezie Hermansen, Kat Murphy, Alana Kansaku-Sarmientos, Billie Delaney, and Melanie Brown plus others to be announced! For more information on the performers, click here.

This event will take place on the Fishing Heritage Center’s Facebook page as a Facebook Live event. You can watch by visiting the Center’s Facebook page at 7:00pm EDT on Thursday, April 8th.

Women in the Workplace, Women on Deck is supported by a Bridge Street Scholarship from Mass Humanities. This program is part of Women’s Work, the Center’s series about women’s roles in commercial fishing, which is funded by the National Endowment for the Arts, the Women’s Fisheries Network, Mass Cultural Council, and the New Bedford, Fairhaven, Dartmouth, Westport, Marion, and Mattapoisett Cultural Councils. The program takes place on April’s AHA! Night and is free and open to the public.

As New Bedford lags behind Massachusetts, Sen. Markey visits city to push vaccines

April 7, 2021 — U.S. Sen. Ed Markey on Tuesday exhorted New Bedford residents to get immunized against COVID-19, as the city’s vaccination rate remains well below the statewide average.

Home from Washington due to the Senate recess, Markey stopped in New Bedford to tour a federally funded vaccination clinic at the McCoy Recreation Center in the West End. The clinic, which is targeting senior citizens, received an extra supply of 1,000 Johnson & Johnson doses this week on top of its usual allotment of 600 Moderna shots.

“New Bedford is a little bit below the state average, so the message to the residents of New Bedford is very clear: we want to get you vaccinated,” Markey said.

Data reviewed by Target 12 shows all four cities in Bristol County are lagging behind the statewide pace of inoculations.

While 35% of all Massachusetts residents were at least partly vaccinated as of April 1, only 21% of New Bedford residents have gotten at least one shot. The rates were also below average in Fall River (22%), Attleboro (25%) and Taunton (25%).

New Bedford Mayor Jon Mitchell said “deep-seated” challenges are driving the comparatively low level of vaccinations in his city. He cited a lack of access to technology in order to make appointments online, language barriers, and jobs with limited flexibility.

Read the full story at WPRI

F/V Heritage: Nordic Fisheries builds an innovative and nimble 85-foot scalloper

April 5, 2021 — You can tell a healthy fishery when people are building new boats for it, and the Atlantic scallop fishery fits solidly in that column. Nordic Fisheries, the company that Roy Enoksen started in 1968 with the purchase of the venerable Sea Trek, is now in the process of replacing much of its extensive fleet. The latest addition, the 85-foot F/V Heritage, came out of Junior Duckworth’s yard, Duckworth Steel Boats, in Tarpon Springs, Fla., in early February 2021.

Junior Duckworth watched boats being built as a kid.

“There was a yard near where I grew up where they were building wooden boats, steaming the ribs in and all that,” says Duckworth. But when he got out of the Army in 1965, he went to work building steel boats at a local yard. “I learned a lot, and worked my way up,” he says, and in 1978, he launched his own company.

Duckworth builds his steel boats the old-fashioned way, stick built, fitting and cutting each piece of plate onto the frames.

“It takes a little longer, but you don’t waste as much material,” he says. Maine-based naval architects Farrell & Norton send Duckworth a set of offsets, and he lofts them full-size in a roofed section of his yard. Duckworth takes the three-dimensional shapes of the frames off the two-dimensional loftings, the same as the wooden boatbuilders he watched as a kid. “I do it the way we’ve always done it. I’m too old to learn all the computer stuff,” says Duckworth, 78.

Read the full story at National Fisherman

MASSACHUSETTS: New Bedford Fishing Heritage Center to Reopen and Launch New Exhibit

April 5, 2021 — The following was released by the New Bedford Fishing Heritage Center:

New Bedford Fishing Heritage Center will reopen to the public and launch its new exhibit, More than a Job: Work and Community in New Bedford’s Fishing Industry, on Thursday, April 15th.

More than a Job: Work and Community in New Bedford’s Fishing Industry will provide visitors with an introduction to the workings of the fishing industry as well as explore themes including labor history, immigration, sustainability, and the changing nature of work and community. This exhibit will feature a replica working deck, scallop dredge, galley table, bunks, historic and contemporary images and footage, and more than sixty audio clips sharing the many voices of the fishing community.

Funding for More than a Job: Work and Community in New Bedford’s Fishing Industry is provided by a major grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities and significant support from Bristol County Savings Bank. Major in-kind support for this exhibit was provided by Fairhaven Shipyard and Blue Fleet Welding.

Located in the nation’s most valuable fishing port, New Bedford Fishing Heritage Center is dedicated to preserving and presenting the story of the commercial fishing industry past, present, and future through exhibits, programs, and archives. Beginning April 15th, the Center is open Thursday-Sunday, 10:00am-4:00pm. Admission is free. To schedule a small group tour of the new exhibit or to learn more about the exhibit, contact
programs@fishingheritagecenter.org or call (508) 993-8894.

MASSACHUSETTS: New Bedford to Open Vaccination Center for Seafood Workers

April 2, 2021 — New Bedford Mayor Jon Mitchell, joined by U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren, Congressman Bill Keating, and members of the New Bedford City Council and state legislative delegation, announced Wednesday that the City of New Bedford has established a waterfront vaccination center on Tichon Avenue to vaccinate essential seafood industry workers.

The site is located at the former Environmental Protection Agency Dewatering Facility on the waterfront, recently turned over to the New Bedford Port Authority by the EPA. It will launch in the coming weeks with additional vaccine supply and through a partnership with the Greater New Bedford Community Health Center.

The waterfront vaccination center will be operated as a partnership between the City and the Greater New Bedford Community Health Center which will staff the vaccination site. The Greater New Bedford Community Health Center recently received an award of nearly $4 million from the Health Resources and Services Administration as part of the American Rescue Plan to support its work, including direct receipt of vaccine, which makes possible the operation of this site.

Read the full story at WBSM

Communities, companies taking steps to get COVID vaccine to seafood industry workers

April 2, 2021 — Later this month, an old U.S. Environmental Protection Agency facility on the waterfront in New Bedford, Massachusetts, will be teeming with seafood industry workers taking the next step toward the industry’s – and the nation’s – recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic.

Thanks to nearly USD 4 million (EUR 3.4 million) in funds from the recently enacted American Rescue Plan, the facility will become a COVID-19 vaccination site. A release from the city indicates it will handle up to 125 inoculations an hour and potentially up to 1,000 people daily, and the focus will be on fishermen and others in the commercial seafood industry.

Read the full story at Seafood Source