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ORLANDO — Despite angry calls from fishermen about bad science and ruined livelihoods, fishery managers went ahead Wednesday with a long-term ban on red snapper fishing.

By a 9-4 vote, the South Atlantic Fishery Management Council made permanent an interim ban that was set to expire Dec. 5.

The council compromised — a little — shrinking the area affected from 6,161 square miles off Florida — from near Melbourne to Georgia — to 4,827 square miles. The ban covers depths of 98 to 240 feet.

Originally, officials had proposed closing off as much as 10,300 square miles from Florida to South Carolina.

Read the complete story at Florida Today.

 

 

 

 

 

New Bedford Mayor Scott Lang conducted an award ceremony today at the Commercial Marine Expo to honor three individuals that have made a significant contribution to the development, growth and sustainability of the New Bedford/Fairhaven working waterfront.

The awards are sponsored by The Professional Mariner Magazine, the City of New Bedford and the Commercial Marine Expo.
 
Harriet Didriksen was honored for her longtime service and efforts in support of the New England fishing communities.

In addition, posthumous awards were given to the late Capt. Martin "Marty" Manley, and the late Howard Nickerson.

The citations follow:

Harriet Didriksen

Harriet Didriksen is constantly fighting for fishing families, the fishing way of life, and the American dream.  She steadfastly attends New England Fisheries Management Council meetings from Connecticut to Maine, and never misses a gathering where she can help fishermen oppose government bureaucrats' undue interference.  She is a regular at hearings in Washington – which she attends at her own expense – and is a tireless advocate.

Harriet owns the F/V Settler.  She owned the F/V Bagatell, which is now an educational vessel at Stony Brook University.  She is owner and operator of New Bedford Ship Supply, one of the oldest ship chandleries on the East Coast.

Mrs. Didriksen's father dragged in the winter and scalloped in the summer. He emigrated from Norway to Brooklyn and moved to New Bedford to be closer to Georges Bank. Her uncles were also fishermen. Her brother is a shore-side business and vessel owner.  She is the mother of two.

New England fishermen are fortunate to have her on their side.

Martin S. Manley

The late Capt. Martin "Marty" Manley was a commercial fisherman for 38 years, and at the age of just 19, was one of the youngest skippers out of the Port of New Bedford.

Captain Manley was a tireless advocate for the commercial scallop fishing industry. He was a recognized industry leader and received numerous awards and accolades, including Helmsman of the Year from the Port of Gloucester. He was a member and former President of the Offshore Mariners Association.

During his career, Captain Manley owned and operated several scallopers along the eastern seaboard, the last being the F/V Mary Anne, which he designed, built, and operated with great pride. He served as the director of the City of New Bedford Harbor Development Commission, and later served as manager of the Popes Island Marina until his retirement in 2007. The building of that marina was one of his life's accomplishments.

He served as a member of the New Bedford Redevelopment Authority and the Economic Development Commission.

Howard W. Nickerson
 
The late Howard Nickerson watched over the New Bedford waterfront for 65 years. He began his career as a young man, tub trawling in a sailing vessel, and moving to commercial fishing on Georges Bank as vessel engineer. Through the decades, Mr. Nickerson participated in the industry from every angle: as a fisherman himself; representing fishermen, seafood dealers, seafood workers, and boat owners; and directing state and municipal agencies — always fighting for fairer regulations.

Mr. Nickerson served as head of the Harbor Development Commission, the State Pier, the Seafood Dealers Association, the Seafood Workers Health-Pension Fund, the New England Fisheries Steering Committee and the Offshore Mariners Association.

A strong advocate of seafood marketing, Mr. Nickerson was involved in organizing the New Bedford Seafood Council and the New Bedford Scallop Festival in the 1950s and '60s, which helped build the market demand that allowed the scallop to become the port's cash leader.
He was a life member of the New Bedford Port Society and proudly served on the Board of Managers for many years. He was deeply concerned about the preservation of the Mariner's Home and the Seaman's Bethel on Johnny Cake Hill and its history with the city waterfront. After his retirement he was a regular guide at the Bethel talking with tourists and citizens alike about the buildings, the waterfront and its history.

 

 

 

 

 

For an entire decade, there were no female swordfish boat captains in the United States.

That's because Linda Greenlaw — who broke down gender barriers in the commercial fishing industry 24 years ago when she became the only working female swordfish boat captain in the U.S. — decided to take a decade off from life at sea.

After 10 years of lobstering and writing in Maine, however, the siren call of the deep blue water drew Greenlaw back to the world of long-line offshore fishing. At 47, she signed up to captain the Seahawk, a rusty craft with faulty equipment and a small crew, for a 60-day expedition off the coast of Nova Scotia.

Seaworthy, Greenlaw's account of her time captaining the Seahawk,contains details about the major setbacks she faced during the swordfishing trip, including almost losing a man overboard and (briefly) spending time in a Canadian jail after inadvertently crossing into Canadian waters.

Greenlaw tells Fresh Air contributor Dave Davies that despite the setbacks and the uncertainty, she couldn't envision herself leaving commercial fishing again.

Listen to this at NPR.

 

 

 

 

 

NEW BEDFORD — Firefighters have narrowed the origin of a fire that wiped out a 50-ton-a-day ice operation and ruined tens of thousands of pounds of scallops to a piece of malfunctioning refrigeration machinery inside the Eastern Fisheries unloading and storage plant.

Firefighters said Thursday the exact cause had yet to be determined and the owner of Eastern Fisheries, Roy Enoksen, was reticent to talk about specifics in terms of damage, business impact or product lost. He said he did not want to give estimates until he was sure they were accurate.

Sipping a black coffee on a picnic table just outside the Hervey Tichon Avenue plant Thursday afternoon, the palm of his right hand stained by soot, Enoksen said: "I don't want to be like BP. You're probably a day early."

Read the SouthCoastToday.com story in full

 

 

NEW BEDFORD — Nearly 30 firefighters battled a general alarm fire at Eastern Fisheries in New Bedford Wednesday night that sent plumes of dark smoke above a harborside parking lot.

The fire was reported shortly after 6:30 p.m., according to a dispatcher for the New Bedford Fire Department. First responders reported no one was inside the building, which was locked upon their arrival, Chief Brian Faria said.

As of about 8 p.m., Faria didn't know the cause of the fire but said it appeared contained to a bumped-up portion of the structure he described as a well-insulated refrigerated area.

Read the SouthCoastToday.com story in full

 

 

 

 

NEW BEDFORD — It was Nov. 30, 1977, when the 73-foot fishing vessel Navigator, with Capt. Norm Lepire and 12-member crew on board, left New Bedford for a 10-day Christmas trip in the waters east of Nantucket.

Around midnight that night, the scalloper made radio contact with another New Bedford boat, the Oceanic, near the Great Round Shoal channel.

And then it was gone. Forever.

Read the entire story in SouthCoastToday.com

 

 

A short-lived plan that would have seen two Montauk commercial fishing docks put on the selling block was scuttled Friday night after a four-hour conference among East Hampton town officials and attorneys.

"It's off the table," said supervisor Bill Wilkinson, who hatched the plan to sell the two town-owned commercial fishing docks in Montauk harbor as a way to plug a $30 million budget deficit.

Read the complete story at News Day [subscription site]

 

 

 

 

 

For too long, the National Marine Fisheries Service has turned a blind eye to New England’s coastal economy, ignoring its legislative mandate to balance ending overfishing and minimizing adverse economic impacts on fishing communities. The simple truth is that NMFS must increase catch limits on the "choke stocks" that are otherwise sure to close down this fishery prematurely. 

I find it patently unacceptable that despite the admissions of NMFS’s own scientists that their data was insufficient to make policy recommendations for some stocks, other than a previously announced commitment to revisit the catch limit for pollock, we did not receive any assurances during our meeting that other choke stocks would be addressed.

As ranking member of the Subcommittee on Oceans, Atmospheres, Fisheries and Coast Guard, I recently joined a dozen other members of the New England congressional delegation in a meeting with Commerce Secretary Gary Locke to discuss the future of the New England groundfishery.

Specifically, my colleagues and I urged Locke, along with Dr. Jane Lubchenco, administrator of NOAA, and Eric Schwaab, director of NMFS, to exercise the secretarial authority granted by the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act and implement emergency regulations to increase the 2010 annual catch limits for certain fish stocks in the groundfishery.

Fishermen deserve more than lip-service when their livelihoods are at stake.

Read the complete story at Village Soup.

 

 

 

 

 

We had an unusual story on our front page Thursday.

While it touched on a key issue relating to our Gloucester and New England fishermen, it was primarily a story about another story, one that had been put out by another "news" agency. And that's not the kind of story readers are used to seeing in the Times.

The story in question was Richard Gaines' piece on a "report" put out by an online service called Seafoodnews.com. And it noted that the so-called report indicated that fishermen's landings had been up by some 15 percent for the first week that fishermen were working under the new catch-share system.

If true, the information would have been significant — especially given our own reports that, with few fishermen going out under the confusing new system, landings appeared to be down at both the Gloucester Seafood Display Auction and in New Bedford.

Read the complete story at The Gloucester Daily Times.

 

 

 

 

 

WEYMOUTH — The four men donned protective gear, headlamps, and carried large nets as they descended a 35-foot ladder into a 10-foot-wide, water-filled tunnel today on a mission to save tens of thousands of herring that had become stranded in recent days on their annual pilgrimage to spawn in Whitman’s Pond.

The snub-nosed, silver-colored fish had become the latest victims of the statewide floods in March, when rushing water and debris forced open a gate designed to prevent the herring, known as alewives, from entering the flood-control tunnel.

Read the Boston Globe story in full