State and Local

June 14, 2014 (SitNews) — You’ve heard it before and you’ll hear it again: The seafood industry is Alaska’s largest private employer, putting more people to work than mining, oil/gas, timber and tourism combined. The annual revenue the seafood sector contributes to State coffers is second only to Big Oil. So where does the seafood industry rank among the major candidates running for Alaska Governor and the US Senate?
Here’s what a thorough look at each of their campaign websites reveals, starting with the race for Governor (all in alphabetical order) —

Byron Mallott (Democratic candidate) only mentions fishing commercially in Southeast in the “About Byron” section. www.byronmallott.com/

Gov. Sean Parnell (Republican, incumbent) only mentions fishing in the “Issues/Standing Against Federal Overreach” section, saying he “fought off the federal government’s attempt to implement “ocean zoning”—known as marine spatial planning,” and “To protect the livelihoods of our fishing fleet in Southeast, the State of Alaska petitioned to de-list the Eastern stock of Steller sea lions that had been protected by the Endangered Species Act.” An article about “Wal-Mart to keep buying Alaska salmon” appears in the Blog section. www.parnell2014.com/

Bill Walker (Independent candidate) has a complete section listed under “Issues/Fish Management” saying: “Having spent 30 years in Prince William Sound, I am familiar with the importance fisheries play in all aspects of the economy…. Furthermore, I will protect, maintain and improve the fish, game and aquatic plant resources of the State, and manage their use and development for the well-being of the people of the State, consistent with high-sustained yield principles.” www.walkerforalaska.com/

Candidates running for US Senate need to be aware that nearly 85% of Alaska’s seafood harvests fall under federal jurisdiction –

Senator Mark Begich (Democrat, incumbent) lists fishing resources under the “Priorities/Economy and Jobs” section saying: “In Alaska, fishing isn’t a hobby or a sporting event. More than 76,000 jobs in our state are directly or indirectly linked to the fishing industry. Our fisheries bring in $5 billion to our state’s economy. For us, fishing is a way of life.” Begich also mentions his ongoing fight against genetically modified salmon called Frankenfish. www.markbegich.com/

Read the full story from Sit News

June 12, 2014 — Summer weather has finally returned, and it's time to head to the ocean to celebrate our city by the sea with "Portraits of a Port," at AHA! Head downtown June 12 to celebrate Whaling City's historic port — complete with live music, new art, good food, great shopping — and yes, a giant whale puppet.

HA! (Arts, History and Architecture!) is held rain or shine the second Thursday of each month from 5 to 9 p.m. in downtown New Bedford. All events are free and public.

Sponsored by the Charles W. Morgan Homecoming and the National Park Service, this month's AHA! is a pre-celebration for the Morgan Homecoming.

Here are just a few of the evening's events. For a full list of the night's events, visit www.ahanewbedford.org.

Take a dock walk with the Working Waterfront Festival. Walk steps off at 5:30 p.m. from the National Park Visitor Center (33 William St.)

Create your own "Portraits of a Port" with BCC photography instructor Denise Donatelli. Meet in front of BCC (800 Purchase St.) at 6 p.m.

The Schooner Ernestina offers hands-on activities for kids from 5:30 to 7 p.m. on the 54th Regiment Plaza.

The 19th-century Morgan sailors come to life as Ruth and Abby, the National Park's 1850s Ladies, tell tales of adventure. 6 to 8 p.m. at the New Bedford Whaling National Historical Park (33 William St.)

It's a bird, it's a plane … it's the new Superhero Academy! It's happening this summer at the Andrea McCoy Rec Center, but learn about it at Wing's Court. Plus hands-on kids' activities.

Buzzards Bay Coalition (114 Front St.) presents "Make Your Own Portrait of a Port" from recycled materials.

The Charles W. Morgan Special Event Series from 5 to 8 p.m. at the New Bedford Whaling Museum (18 Johnny Cake Hill.) Preview the 40-foot sperm whale skeletal sculpture puppet on display in the Whaling Museum Plaza. Includes free admission to select galleries.

Read the full story from The New Bedford Standard-Times

June 12, 2014 — The conditions at the dock at the T Wharf early Wednesday morning were calm and pleasant, but the waves picked up in the quickening tide as Bill Lee motored the 44-foot Ocean Reporter out through Rockport Harbor and off toward Ipswich Bay.

“This is a little sloppier than we’d like, but we’ve been in worse,” said Mark R. Fregeau, a professor of marine biology at Salem State University. “You should have seen it in February.”

Lee is piloting the Ocean Reporter toward Hodgkins Cove, to a patch of open water and a tiny stretch of aquaculture that might hold the key to growing domestic mussels in open U.S. waters.

The project, started in 2006, first centered on determining the best type of gear and the optimum setups for cultivating mussels on an enormous scale, as well as learning about the shellfish’s spawning cycle and how to seed the lines.

In 2012, with the help of a $65,000 grant from NOAA, it began looking at the intricacies of developing a federal permitting process for mussel culture, and engaging local fishermen in the project.

Read the full story at the Gloucester Daily Times

June 12, 2014 — The N.C. House and N.C. Senate have big differences in their respective budget bills, and in the realm of saltwater fisheries, a big one is a fund created to help the commercial fishing industry that takes money collected from the public and allows a group of private citizens to determine how it is spent. The Senate wants it; the House doesn’t.

In the Senate’s budget bill that passed on May 31, the North Carolina Commercial Fishing Resource Fund was created by earmarking a percentage of the sale of every commercial fishing license and every recreational commercial gear license to the fund.

The establishment of the fund was no big surprise was needed to cover the cost of observers required by Incidental Take Permits for endangered sea turtles. The legislature funded the observers last year but told the N.C. Division of Marine Fisheries it needed to find other funding in the future. The surprise was who the Senate thought should administrate this fund. 

The bill establishes a board of directors for the NCCFRF that would be comprised of one member each from the North Carolina Fisheries Association, North Carolina Watermen United, Ocracoke Working Waterman’s Association, Albemarle Fisherman’s Association, Carteret County Fisherman’s Association and Brunswick County Fisherman’s Association.

Read the full story from North Carolina Sportsman

June 11, 2014 — If you’re a landlubber wondering what it’s like to cast a line from the ocean or North Carolina’s sounds and rivers, head to the North Carolina Maritime Museum.

The museum’s newest exhibit, Recreational Fishing in North Carolina, takes a look at the types of fish anglers are catching and gives visitors an opportunity to make a catch of their own. The exhibit includes a game that lets visitors battle and reel in a fish from the “fighting chair.”

The exhibit also has a display of vintage rods, reels and fishing lures and a model of a Jarrett Bay 43-foot Express Hull crafted by Newport resident Jim Brode, a member of the Carolina Maritime Model Society.

The exhibit was funded, in part, through a grant from the N.C. Division of Marine Fisheries through its Coastal Recreational Fishing License fund.

Read the full story at the Jacksonville Daily News

June 11, 2014 — Two popular fish species – spot and Atlantic croaker – will be the topics of much discussion in coming days and weeks.

North Carolina is one of four states gathering public comment at meetings today through Wednesday on draft addenda to fishery management plans being prepared by the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission.

The N.C. Division of Marine Fisheries hearing is planned for 6 p.m. Tuesday at the Central District Office, 5285 U.S. 70 W., Morehead City. For information, contact Michelle Duvall at 252-808-8011.

A hearing will be held Thursday in Annapolis, Md. Other hearings are Monday in Newport News, Va., and Wednesday in Brunswick, Ga.

The draft addenda are available at www.asmfc.org/about-us/public-input. Comment by 5 p.m. July 2 via fax to 703-842-0741 or via email to krootes-murdy@asmfc.org (subject line: croaker/spot draft addendum).

Read the full story at the Raleigh News and Observer

June 10, 2014 — As the Bering Sea's largest fishery opened on Tuesday, pollock fishermen were looking forward to a strong B season. They were also wading through a tide of criticism from rural users, who believe the industry's catching too much salmon.

Brent Paine represents more than 70 pollock trawlers for United Catcher Boats.

"I think a lot of the cooperatives are going to start early — like right now or this week — because of their concern for Chinook salmon bycatch," Paine says. "That tends to increase in the later part of the B season."

On top of that, many vessels will be using excluder nets to let salmon escape. And Paine says they'll all participate in the rolling hotspot closure program — avoiding areas where other trawlers have run into high concentrations of salmon.

But those tactics aren't enough to relieve tension between commercial and subsistence fishermen. It came to a head last week, when the North Pacific Fishery Management Council met in Nome.

"It was probably one of the toughest meetings I’ve attended in 20 years," Paine says.

Read the full story at KUCB

June 10, 2014 — Progress is on schedule with the Miami Harbor deepening and widening project, including the successful construction of artificial reefs and relocation of about a thousand healthy corals.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Jacksonville District, and its contractors are at the 35 percent completion mark, with more than one million cubic yards of material safely removed from the federal channel and the majority of mitigation construction completed.

Operations in the outer channel, which began in November 2013, calls for dredging approximately 2.1 million cubic yards of material from the harbor entrance channel, relocating coral, creating artificial reef, and constructing seagrass mitigation sites. The Corps estimates completing the outer channel construction by November 2014. This work will bring the entrance channel depth to 52 feet, plus one foot allowable over-depth, and widen the outermost portion of the entrance channel to 800 feet. Additionally, the project includes deepening and widening the inner channel, with full project completion scheduled for July 2015.

The Corps’ contractor, Great Lakes Dredge & Dock Company, are constructing approximately ten acres of artificial reefs and divers and scientists have already transplanted healthy corals greater than 25 centimeters and more than 700 healthy corals more than 10 centimeters in size from the project area to adjacent natural reef tracts and onto a portion of the newly created artificial reefs. Divers carefully harvested the corals from the channel’s edges, as collecting from the channel bottom was too dangerous in the busy port.

Read the full story form Dredging Today

June 9, 2014 — Salmon prices at wholesale show marked seasonal variations for both wild and farmed fish. It’s a pattern that has been tracked for decades by Urner Barry, the nation’s oldest commodity market watcher in business since 1895. The prices tend to decline through June, July, August and September and they begin rising again from November through the following April or May.

Two things drive the well-established pattern, said market expert John Sackton who publishes Seafood.com, an Urner-Barry partner.

“There’s a growth cycle for farmed salmon when they eat more and grow faster at certain times of the year, and so the harvests, particularly those that come into the US market from Chile for example, really peak in June, July and August, which are our summer months and the winter months in Chile,” Sackton explained. “Then there is the opening of the wild salmon season each summer and all of a sudden you get a lot more diversity and availability of Alaskan salmon.”

Sackton said buyers of both wild sockeyes and farmed salmon are starting to push back a bit on high prices. That’s likely reflected in the $3.50 advances for the first reds at Copper River in mid-May, which was down 50 cents from last year’s starting price.

A big wild card for North American salmon this summer is the projected 72 million sockeye return at British Columbia’s Fraser River. Sackton said Japanese buyers, who have been somewhat priced out of the sockeye market in recent years because there has been so much demand elsewhere and a drop in the yen has made it harder for them to buy, are hoping that a big run will open up more opportunities for them. Even though they’ve been buying less, Japan is still an important part of a three legged stool.

Read the full story at SitNews

June 9, 2014 — A proposal that would create a Commercial Fishing Resources Fund has made it into the budget proposal now being considered by legislators in Raleigh.

The plan, brought forward by the North Carolina Fisheries Association (NCFA), calls for a fund that would help the state meet requirements for the protection of sea turtles while also providing funds for projects to enhance the state’s commercial fishing industry.

NCFA president Jerry Schill said the plan as they presented it was included in the Senate version of the budget bill and now awaits consideration by the House of Representatives this week.

Schill was in Raleigh last week as the bill was reviewed on Senate side and will be back next week to continue meeting with legislators.

“There seems to be more questions about it on the House side so I’m not real sure how it will fare. I’m fairly confident it will make it in the budget,” he said.

If it goes in the House version, the question will be in what form.

“The Senate side has word for word what we proposed,” he said.

Read the full story from the Jacksonville Daily News