Saving Seafood

Studies aim to restore habitat of imperiled Northwest fish

February 8, 2016 — BOISE, Idaho (AP) — Scientists in the Pacific Northwest are studying more than a dozen watersheds to develop templates on habitat restoration that could be used in similar streams to bolster struggling fish populations.

The federal government lists 28 populations of salmon and steelhead on the West Coast that need protections due to low numbers despite spending millions of dollars every year on restoration efforts.

 The studies aim to make those efforts more successful. They focus on 17 watersheds in Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Northern California and British Columbia and examine the benefit of everything from dam removal to building artificial beaver dams in tributaries.

Creating templates for habitat restoration could save time and money by using strategies known to produce good results in similar habitats in the region, said George Pess, a research fisheries biologist for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

“The overall goal is to learn enough to be smart about our restoration,” he said, noting that the studies will offer recommendations to private, tribal and government entities but won’t produce any legally binding regulations.

 

Read the full story from the Associated Press at the Houston Chronicle

115-year-old oyster fishing skipjack finally getting new life

July 3, 2015 — MARYLAND — Faded, dusty boat paraphernalia littered a warehouse on the Eastern Shore as a small group of people worked Thursday to lift the anchor on an old fishing vessel and send it home.

For a decade, the skipjack George W. Collier lay at the end of a long road in Cape Charles, literally and figuratively.

The 72-foot-long boat was built in Maryland in 1900 and was once used as an oyster fishing vessel, able to easily navigate shallow waters. But when engine-powered boats replaced skipjacks, the George W. Collier was left on a mud bank. Fewer than 30 of the traditional boats remain today.

The Allegheny Beverage Corp. found and restored the vessel in the ’60s and in 1978 donated it to the city of Norfolk, where it was renamed after the city and used in boat parades and to train teens. It even made a journey to New York City for the 100th birthday of the Statue of Liberty.

But the Norfolk City Council left the boat, in disrepair, to a nonprofit in Cape Charles 10 years ago, when even a $110,000 donation was not enough to repair it.

Thus, the George W. Collier found its way to the back of a Wako Chemicals building in Cape Charles, where it sat on a bed of grass, slowly decaying while the nonprofit lacked the resources to restore it. Its sister, the E.C. Collier, lives at the Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum.

On Thursday, the skipjack was finally sent to a shipyard, on its way to being restored in its birthplace on Deal Island in Maryland.

Read the full story at the The Virginian Pilot