January 30, 2019 — The US Coast Guard has sent a Seattle, Washington-based high-endurance cutter to the South Pacific to join in the fight against illegal, unregulated and unreported fishing.
The cutter Mellon and its crew of 150 left Seattle shortly after Christmas and stopped in Hawaii before venturing on to patrol the waters of the Western Central Pacific Fisheries Commission (WCPFC), the Coast Guard said in a press release.
Read the full story at Undercurrent News
January 18, 2019 — The U.S. Coast Guard has signed off on a Jones Act waiver for America’s Finest, a USD 75 million (EUR 65.8 million) vessel commissioned by Fishermen’s Finest, according to a press release issued by U.S. Rep. Rick Larsen (D-Washington) earlier this month.
That means the boat built by Dakota Creek Industries is free to fish in U.S. waters and deliver products to American ports.
“The Coast Guard worked hard to create a thorough report absolving Dakota Creek and giving the green light to the America’s Finest vessel,” said Larsen in the statement. “The employees at Dakota Creek support a job-creating industry that strengthens national defense and fosters innovation and contributes to the maritime economy in Washington state and Alaska. I am proud to be a part of giving the hard working employees at Dakota Creek a stronger future.”
January 18, 2019 — On the Outer Cape there are 23 U.S. Coast Guard members, at least eight Transportation Security Administration (TSA) employees and around 60 Cape Cod National Seashore workers not receiving paychecks due to the partial shutdown of the federal government.
And it’s not just federal employees who are missing their paychecks. Contract workers, like those who are rebuilding Herring Cove’s north parking lot in Provincetown, are also affected.
“It’s wrong,” said Arthur “Butch” Lisenby, the Provincetown Municipal Airport manager, of the TSA employees who, because they are deemed “essential,” are now working without compensation. “They are trying to do their jobs and not getting paid. That’s not fair. They have a nice attitude. I’m kind of surprised. I don’t know if I could do the same thing. They are doing their job and dealing with it the best they can.”
The TSA employees themselves were not allowed to speak to the press, according to an employee at the Provincetown airport.
Read the full story at Wicked Local Wellfleet
November 30, 2018 — A former captain of one of Carlos “Codfather” Rafael’s fishing boats has been sentenced in Boston federal court for interfering with a U.S. Coast Guard vessel inspection off the coast of Massachusetts.
South Portland, Maine’s Thomas D. Simpson, 57, was sentenced to two years of probation – with the first four months to be served in home confinement with electronic monitoring – in U.S. District Court this week, after pleading guilty in August 2018 to one count of destruction or removal of property subject to seizure and inspection. Simpson was also ordered by the court to pay a USD 15,000 (EUR 13,195) fine, according to a report from WBSM.
The former captain of Rafael-owned fishing vessel Bulldog, Simpson and his crew were engaging in commercial fishing practices on 31 May, 2014, when the U.S. Coast Guard came onboard to conduct a routine inspection of the boat and its equipment.
November 23, 2018 — The U.S. Senate has passed the Coast Guard Authorization Act of 2018, and the final text includes several amendments of note for commercial operators – like a permanent Vessel General Permit exemption for fishing vessels.
The Act includes a repeal of the EPA’s Small Vessel General Permit (sVGP) program for boats under 79 feet. In addition, it exempts any and all fishing vessels, fish processing vessels and fish tenders from the regulation of discharges incidental to normal operation. This discharge category includes gray water, bilge water, cooling water, weather deck runoff, stern tube lubricant leakage, OWS effluent and – notably – ballast water.
The new legislation will provide regulatory relief for American factory trawlers and fish processing ships, the largest of which measures 680 feet in length and 19,000 deadweight tonnes. These vessels would normally be subject to VGP requirements – including ballast water management rules – if classified as ordinary commercial vessels.
“[The Act] will provide Alaska’s fishermen with a long sought peace of mind from the threat of federal regulation. While this issue has taken over a decade to resolve– with a series of 11th hour, temporary extensions over the years – I’m pleased to see Congress provide Alaska’s fishermen with a permanent exemption from these over burdensome regulations,” said Senator Dan Sullivan (R-AK) in a statement.
October 25, 2018 — Divers recovered the body of Scott Chandler, a 51-year-old West Jonesport, Maine, lobsterman, on Tuesday evening after he went overboard in the morning.
“Chandler was seen falling off his 20-foot lobster boat near the island at approximately 9:20 a.m. Tuesday… by commercial seaweed harvesters in the area who reported the incident,” said Jeff Nichols, a spokesman for the Maine Department of Marine Resources.
Nichols reported that divers recovered Chandler’s body near Doyle Island, about 200 yards west from where he entered the water near Hopkins Point in Jonesport, at about 5:10 p.m. on Oct. 23.
Local weather conditions on Tuesday afternoon included waves roughly a foot high and light and variable winds, according to U.S. Coast Guard spokeswoman Chellsey Phillips. A rescue crew, including members of the Coast Guard, Maine Marine Patrol, Maine State Police and the Maine Warden Service, searched 233 square miles. Phillips said rain started to fall around midafternoon, reducing visibility.
October 24, 2018 — The Oregon crab industry is putting up money to launch a new research study on where whales swim and feed along the Pacific Coast. The study stems from growing concern West Coast-wide about whales getting tangled in fishing gear.
Many of the confirmed entanglements in the last few years involved whales snagging crab pot lines.
The Oregon Dungeness Crab Commission voted unanimously Tuesday to underwrite the first year of a three-year aerial survey of humpbacks, gray whales and blue whales off the coast. Oregon State University researcher Leigh Torres said the Marine Mammal Institute, which she leads, and the state Department of Fish and Wildlife hope to win a federal grant to cover years two and three.
“One of the best known ways to reduce whale entanglements is to reduce the overlap between where fishing gear is and where whales are,” Torres said. “In the state of Oregon, we have pretty good information about where the fishing gear is, but not that great information about whale distribution in our waters. So that is really the knowledge gap that this project wants to fill.”
Torres said the best way to track whales is typically from the air.
“But hiring a plane to fly regular surveys monthly over a long period can be quite costly,” Torres said in an interview Tuesday. “So we were trying to brainstorm about ways to do that more cost effectively. And we had the idea to reach out to the U.S. Coast Guard.”
Torres said she was uncertain if the Coast Guard would let whale spotters ride along on routine helicopter patrols twice per month. She was delighted when her request was greeted positively.
Read the full story at Spokane Public Radio
September 12, 2018 — The U.S. Department of Justice and the U.S. Coast Guard have reached a consent decree with Hawaii-based operator Asure Fishery over the discharge of oily waste from a commercial longliner. It is the fourth MARPOL enforcement action that the USCG has brought against a Hawaiian longline fishing firm this year.
In a federal complaint filed last Friday, federal prosecutors alleged that the tuna longliner Jaxon T was not equipped for the treatment or storage of oily bilge waste under way, and she often discharged these wastes at sea. The complaint alleges that company managers Khang Quang Dang and Hanh Thi Nguyen had reason to know that the vessel lacked proper equipment for handling oily waste, but still allowed it to sail.
According to the complaint, the bulkhead separating the Jaxon T’s engine room from the fish hold had penetrations that allowed “free flow of fluids” between the two compartments. Apart from the potential safety implications of this arrangement, “substantial” amounts of water from melted ice would flow into the engine room, where it would raise the level of the water in the bilge. To address this problem, the crew would allegedly pump the bilge water directly over the side using a portable electric water pump, “one or more times per day.”
Read the full story at the Maritime Executive
August 30, 2018 — The second right whale death of 2018 has been recorded near Martha’s Vineyard.
North Atlantic right whales are one of the most endangered marine mammals with an estimated population of 450.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said the young whale was first reported floating off Tom’s Neck Point, Martha’s Vineyard, on Sunday. The carcass of the 30-foot whale again was spotted Monday and the agency began planning to tow it to shore to perform a necropsy.
On Tuesday, however, the U.S. Coast Guard and two staff members of the NOAA Fisheries Woods Hole Laboratory sailed to the carcass and determined it was too decomposed to bring to shore. The crew attached a satellite tag and took tissue samples. If the whale carcass does make it to land, they will collect more samples.
August 24, 2018 — The former captain of a New Bedford-based commercial fishing boat, admitted Thursday to interfering with a U.S. Coast Guard inspection of his vessel after he sunk the ship’s fishing net, prosecutors said.
Thomas D. Simpson, 57, of South Portland, Maine, pleaded guilty in federal court in Boston to destruction or removal of property subject to seizure and inspection, the U.S. attorney’s office said in a statement.
Sentencing was set for Nov. 28.
Simpson was the captain of the Fishing Vessel Bulldog, which was fishing off the Massachusetts coast May 31, 2014, when the Coast Guard conducted a routine inspection of the vessel, the statement said.
Officers asked Simpson, who was in the ship’s wheelhouse, to haul in the vessel’s fishing net. Instead, Simpson let out more of the cable attached to the net until it detached from the ship and sank to the ocean floor, officials said.
Read the full story at The Boston Globe