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December 2, 2013 — At the Fontainebleau in Miami Beach, its gilled guests have accommodations nearly as posh as its two-legged ones.

The resort recently poured $100,000 into its “Water World,” an underground stack of pristine aquariums that hold live fish and seafood for the Fontainebleau’s nine on-site restaurants. It also spent six figures on a 43-foot boat docked at Dinner Key Marina that delivers hundreds of pounds of fish daily.

Designed and built by Fort Lauderdale’s Living Color Aquariums, Water World includes fish-friendly amenities like temperature-controlled water — Florida spiny lobsters like the thermostat set to 70 degrees; Maine lobsters prefer to chill at 50 degrees. An artist painted a blue-hued sea mural on the walls, and the tanks’ lights are kept on timers to mimic the ocean’s patterns.

“We want them to feel as much at home as possible,” said Thomas Connell, the Fontainebleau’s executive chef. “The less stress a fish feels, the fresher it’s going to taste when we pull it from the tanks.

“And that’s the whole reason we did this: to give guests the freshest seafood experience possible.”

Connell said the ideas to invest in a Torres commercial fishing boat, christened the BleauFish, and to upgrade Water World came from Fontainebleau owner Jeffrey Soffer. “He’s very into the culture of food and the mystique of the ocean,” Connell said.

Read the full story from the Miami Herald

December 1, 2013 — Arthur 'Artie' James Odlin died peacefully on Nov. 26, 2013, surrounded by his loving family. He was a skilled hunter and sport fisherman and instilled in all his children a love of the outdoors. All of his sons are enthusiastic hunters and fondly remember learning about the woods with their Dad, a patient teacher and a great marksman.

In 2004 he was the recipient of the Annual Award of Excellence from the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission for his scientific and technical contributions toward the restoration of the Atlantic fisheries.

At the age of 14 Artie began working on Portland's waterfront. While Artie was primarily a draggerman, he worked in almost every fishery. He lobstered, long-lined for swordfish, shrimped, gill-netted, and purse-seined. Artie was the captain of at least 10 fishing trawlers.

Artie was a man of many talents and reinvented himself more than once. He became a pilot in 1955. Throughout the seventies and eighties he periodically worked as a fish spotter from his small Cessna. His youngest son Rob recalls how his father took the front seat out of his plane and installed a 55 gallon barrel for extra fuel in order to reach Georges Bank to spot for swordfish.

In 1987 Artie was appointed to the New England Fisheries Management Council. He served for nine years. Eldest son Jimmy points out that his father was an early advocate for the implementation of many conservation management tools that forever benefit the fishing industry in New England. Four of his sons and two grandsons worked along side their father and grandfather and are now successful fishermen in the New England fishing industry.

Artie was honorably discharged from the Marine Corps Reserves in 1950. In 2001 he earned a master's license from the Coast Guard. He was a member of the South Portland Harbor Commission, the Quiet Bird Club, Sportsmen Alliance of Maine, and Spurwink Rod and Gun Club.

Read the full obituary at the Portland Press Herald 

 

November 30, 2013 — For Patrice McCarron, whose goal is to sign up hundreds of Maine lobstermen for medical insurance, a faulty health-insurance Web site is more than a mere inconvenience. It’s a major logistical headache.

With uninsured lobstermen scattered along 3,500 miles of coastline, McCarron, executive director of the Maine Lobstermen’s Association, can’t risk driving to a remote community to host an insurance-enrollment fair only to discover that ­HealthCare.gov is down, again.

“Mileage is expensive. Hotels are expensive,” she said. “So we’re really trying to be strategic.”

McCarron’s group is one of about 100 organizations across the country that received government grants to help people sign up for coverage. These groups of “navigators” have been stymied by the same technical problems that have thwarted individual consumers, and many say they have become worn down and discouraged.

Now they are hoping that this weekend will mark a turnaround for the program, which they once promoted with enthusiasm and more recently have had trouble defending.

Saturday was the Obama administration’s self-imposed deadline for getting the online marketplace working much more smoothly.

Read the full story at The Washington Post 

 

 

November 30, 2013 — How to make dead fish look attractive? That's the challenge New York-based duo Shimon and Tammar Rothstein faced when they were hired to do the photography for famed French chef Eric Ripert's book On the Line.

The book has been out for a few years, but it caught our attention again when it popped up on photography blog Feature Shoot this month.

Ripert specializes in delicately prepared fish. And the motto of his Michelin three-star-rated restaurant Le Bernardin in New York is "The Fish is the Star of the Plate."

So in his book, Ripert wanted to show off all the fresh ingredients that went into his cooking — especially the fish. But as Tammar tells The Salt, no one wants to shoot a dead fish.

The photographers' brilliant solution? Pose the dead fish as if they're still alive. The resulting images might not make your mouth water, but they are strikingly beautiful.

Read the full story at NPR affiliate New York Now 

 

November 26, 2013 — Cam Newton is crediting his newfound pescetarian diet with spurring his bounce back year this season.

According to TMZ, Newton has been on a fish-only diet for eight months now, refraining from turkey, ham and even chicken. This year marks the first Thanksgiving he will be celebrating without meat.

"It's kind of challenging my parents and my grandmother to think outside the box to try to incorporate fish," Newton told reporters Monday night as he hosted his 2nd annual 'Cam's Thanksgiving Jam' in his native North Carolina, where he helped serve more than 700 underprivileged kids and family members.

Read the full story and watch the video at Sports World News 

 

November 22, 2013 — Many people know the Thanksgiving legend of Squanto (Tisquantum), the Native American who taught Pilgrims how to plant crops and survive in New England. But not many know that Squanto’s legend is a fish story—in more ways than one.

Scientist and author John Waldman is the latest to take a deeper look into this part of the Thanksgiving story. His new book, Running Silver, has a fascinating chapter on how important river-running fish were for many American Indians. Waldman also reminds us how far from the facts our Thanksgiving legend of Squanto has drifted, becoming what he calls a “highly mythologized account.”

The actual historical record tells quite another story. Squanto didn’t just happen to take a liking to the pilgrims of Plymouth. Waldman says Tisquantum was a good English speaker and teacher “because he had been kidnapped from his village.”

An Englishman had attempted to sell Tisquantum into slavery in Spain where he was taken in by Spanish Friars, converted to Christianity, and later travelled to London. Tisquantum eventually returned to North America only to find, in horror, that:

Read the full story from the Herring Alliance

November 22, 2013 — Many people know the Thanksgiving legend of Squanto (Tisquantum), the Native American who taught Pilgrims how to plant crops and survive in New England. But not many know that Squanto’s legend is a fish story—in more ways than one.

Scientist and author John Waldman is the latest to take a deeper look into this part of the Thanksgiving story. His new book, Running Silver, has a fascinating chapter on how important river-running fish were for many American Indians. Waldman also reminds us how far from the facts our Thanksgiving legend of Squanto has drifted, becoming what he calls a “highly mythologized account.”

The actual historical record tells quite another story. Squanto didn’t just happen to take a liking to the pilgrims of Plymouth. Waldman says Tisquantum was a good English speaker and teacher “because he had been kidnapped from his village.”

An Englishman had attempted to sell Tisquantum into slavery in Spain where he was taken in by Spanish Friars, converted to Christianity, and later travelled to London. Tisquantum eventually returned to North America only to find, in horror, that:

Read the full story from the Herring Alliance

DURHAM, N.H. — November 16, 2013 — W. Jeffrey Bolster grew up with an affinity for the sea. He has spent his life fishing, sailing and seeing firsthand the changes taking place in the North Atlantic.

So it is no wonder that his professional life would follow this passion. For 23 years, Bolster has been teaching early American history at the University of New Hampshire. He has contributed to five books looking at various aspects of maritime history, including two that he solely researched and wrote. Both of those books, including his most recent, "The Mortal Sea: Fishing the Atlantic in the Age of Sail," have earned international acclaim.

This year, "The Mortal Sea'' earned both the American Historical Association's Albert J. Beveridge Prize and the James Rawley Prize in Atlantic History. Columbia University named Bolster one of two recipients of the 2013 Bancroft Prize, considered one of the most distinguished academic awards in the field of history.

Bolster spent about a decade researching and writing the real-life parable.

It is largely a sad story of a cornerstone American industry that has been in peril for more than 150 years, long before the advent of factory trawlers.

It is a story about the long impact of humans on their environment and the dire consequences attributable to the idea that the sea and its abundance were immortal and everlasting.

Read the full story at NewHampshire.com 

 

November 18, 2013 — Leviathan is an extraordinary collision of genres: an art film made by a pair of British and French anthropologists that works as a stupendous cinematic spectacle. Lucien Castaing-Taylor and Verena Paravel – founders of Harvard's radically interdisciplinary Sensory Ethnography Lab – set out to make a film based in New Bedford, the "whaling city" of New England and the historic background for Herman Melville's 1851 novel Moby-Dick. But they then became increasingly fascinated by the city's contemporary status as a fishing port.

Sailing on an 80ft-foot "dragger", FV Athena, to the Grand Banks fishing grounds of the open Atlantic, Castaing-Taylor and Paravel equipped themselves and the crew with miniature GoPro cameras – new HD technology that has become beloved of documentary film-makers. The result, a dialogue-free 90-minute tumult of long takes and jump-cut editing, throws the viewer into a nausea-making, overturned world so vivid that it's hard to believe its scenes are real and not a clever CGI construction.

With the fish-eye cameras strapped to their heads, the film-makers and crew recorded the raging midnight seas from which are hauled the fish and scallops that will end up on china plates and linen tablecloths in smart restaurants. Remorselessly, they expose every aspect of this visceral business – often conducted in the dark, out of sight of land, on trips lasting up to 18 days. It is a weird otherworld, filled with bug-eyed fish slathering over the decks, clanking rusty chains and hooded figures like medieval torturers, all perpetually doused by the rising Atlantic.

Shrieking gulls plunge up from the dawn-slashed sky in vertiginous, inverted scenes as the cameras tumble upside-down. Starfish float beneath the surface like coral-coloured confetti. On deck, scarred, tattooed men eviscerate fish dragged up from the depths. In one shocking sequence, a skate dangles from a chain as its wings, the only edible parts, are excised – a scene not far from the notorious trade in definned sharks. Meanwhile, an indeterminate heavy-metal track grinds out from a radio, sounding more like the knell of an aquatic apocalypse.

Read the full story at The Guardian

November 12, 2013 — Seafaring life is still a major part of New Bedford’s identity, but this Southeastern Massachusetts city, with the strong influence of its Portuguese and Cape Verdean communities, has other tales to tell.

Required to read “Moby-Dick’’ over a school holiday break, a memory that still haunts us, we weren’t keen to visit New Bedford. Herman Melville, of course, shipped out from here in 1841, and his experience inspired the classic. Seafaring life is still a major part of New Bedford’s identity, but this Southeastern Massachusetts city, with the strong influence of its Portuguese and Cape Verdean communities, has other tales to tell. It was an important stop on the Underground Railroad and home to abolitionist Frederick Douglass for five years. Artists such as Albert Bierstadt and William Bradford helped forge its commitment to the visual arts. New Bedford has a texture and vibrancy that might surprise. Young families are especially smitten, thanks to attractions like the Ocean Explorium and Buttonwood Zoo.

STAY

If you’re traveling with a small fry, the Marriott Fairfield Inn & Suites (185 MacArthur Blvd., 774-634-2000; www.marriott.com; rates from $109) is a good bet, thanks to the free hot breakfast, indoor pool, and the cookies they put out in the afternoon. The newish (2010) hotel sits close to the waterfront, with nice views. The Marriott is on the city shuttle route (you can ride all day for $1), but you can walk to most attractions. New Bedford also has a clutch of bed-and-breakfast places. The five-room Orchard Street Manor (139 Orchard St., 508-984-3475; www.the-orchard-street-manor.com; from $125) wins rave reviews, thanks to personable innkeepers Al and Suzanne Saulniers. This circa 1845 sea captain’s home is filled with treasures gleaned from the innkeepers’ overseas travels. Davenport House B&B (124 Cottage St., 508-999-1177; www.bbonline.com; rooms from $75) is another favorite; you can walk to downtown and the historic sites from this handsome 1912 three-bedroom Victorian inn.

Read the full story at The Boston Globe