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The Alaska Fishing Industry Relief Mission (AFIRM) is sending a $10,600 donation to Louisiana to help the Gulf Coast fishing industry. The money will underwrite an industry effort to create a citizen advisory committee to help oversee the Gulf of Mexico oil industry.If adopted by Congress, the Louisiana committee would be similar to those which already operate in Alaska’s Prince William Sound and Cook Inlet, where Regional Citizens’ Advisory Committees (RCACs) were established after the Exxon Valdez oil spill. Those committees monitor terminal and tanker operations, conduct research and provide advice to ensure industry operations are in accordance with environmentally sound practices. The Gulf fishing and oil industries have coexisted for many years, but the continuing disaster created ...

Kvichak Marine Industries, known for its aluminum fishing and work vessels is currently constructing a run of approximately 30 each 30-foot Rapid Response Oil Skimmers fitted with Marco Pollution Control CL-1 Filterbelt oil recovery modules for customers who are responding to the current Gulf spill. The Kvichak/Marco Filterbelt is proving to be one of the most effective oil recovery systems now operating in the Gulf, and is ideally suited for high volume recovery of the oil types encountered in this spill. The company expects to have more than 100 skimming vessels utilizing the Filterbelt to be in operation on this spill in the coming weeks. The Filterbelt system is adaptable to a variety of marine spill scenarios and is able to recover a very wide range of spills, from light sheens to th...

The 2010 commercial salmon season is set to open the 1st of July after two years of being closed. In anticipation of this opening, US Coast Guard and Coast Guard Auxiliary personnel will be walking the docks on the 22nd and 23rd June offering free no-fault exams and safety checks. Examiners are scheduled to be present at Moss Landing, Santa Cruz, Half Moon Bay, San Francisco, Bodega Bay and Fort Bragg from 9:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. Actual times may vary based response from fishermen for exams.Vessels that pass the dockside exam receive a Coast Guard Commercial Fishing Vessel Safety Decal. The benefit of obtaining a safety decal is a lower probability of getting boarded at sea. In the event a fishing vessel with a decal does get boarded at sea it may be an abbreviated inspection. Fishing vess...

By David RowlandTier 2? Tier 3? Interim Tier 4? Tier 4? To many of us, the aforementioned are meaningless terms. Thanks to EPA, these terms will haunt main engine, generator set and auxiliary power unit purchasers in future years, along with acronyms such as EGR, SCR, DOC, DPF, and a multitude not mentioned.In the past, there’s been a lot of confusion, and sometimes misinformation about how diesel engines are affected by the EPA tier system. Going to the EPA website only furthers, in my opinion, the confusion. After trying to decipher the language the website used, which I strongly suspect deviates from US English, I determined their postings were only decipherable with the assistance of a couple of attorneys and a cadre of engineers. Continued pondering of these websites might, in my opin...

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) are taking additional steps to enhance inspection measures designed to ensure that seafood from the Gulf of Mexico reaching America’s tables is safe to eat.The federal government, in conjunction with Gulf states regulatory agencies, is playing an active role in ensuring the safety of seafood harvested from federal and state waters. The federal government, led by FDA and NOAA, is taking a multi-pronged approach to ensure that seafood from Gulf waters is not contaminated by oil. The strategy includes precautionary closures, increased seafood testing inspections and a re-opening protocol. “Closing harvest waters that could be exposed to oil protects the public from potentially contaminated se...

A month after being awarded an international environmental certification, Alaska flatfish species are receiving new attention from seafood buyers and restaurateurs. After a three-year comprehensive evaluation, the fisheries earned Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) certification. Their products are now eligible to bear the MSC ecolabel recognizing that the seafood is harvested from a sustainable and well-managed fishery."The Alaska Seafood Cooperative (AKSC) recognized what a strong story there was to tell about stewardship and sustainability in the management of Alaska's flatfish fisheries. MSC certification allows us to better distinguish our products from others while also positioning us as a model for flatfish fishery management around the world," said John Gauvin, fisheries science proj...

The Seattle Times reported this week on word from the Washington State Fish and Wildlife office in Vancouver about some huge sockeye numbers being seen in the Lower Columbia River.The 25,011 sockeye counted at Bonneville Dam on Sunday, June 20 was the second highest single-day count since at least 1938. The record is 27,112 fish on July 7, 1955.The total number of sockeye that have passed up Bonneville Dam so far this summer is 82,055. The count at The Dalles Dam is 38,830; at the John Day Dam it is 21,354; at McNary Dam it is 9,199.This summer the preseason forecast calls for 125,200 sockeye back to the Columbia River. Of that the majority of are destined for the Okanogan River with a smolt-based forecast of 110,300.The rest of that 14,300 will be heading back to the Wenatchee River and t...

By Bob TkaczThe commercial fishing industry, by definition, knows that fish are money, but a recent international conference on seafood technology demonstrated, in molecular detail, the potential profit from tons of “waste” products that gets ground up, hosed off and otherwise discarded in fisheries in Alaska and around the world.How does $25 per kilogram for chitosan or $130 per kg for chitooligosaccharides sound for a fishery paycheck? Chitosan speeds up blood clotting and the US Marines are treating the battlefield dressings the use in Afghanistan with it. “COS” offers other health and food manufacturing benefits. Both organic compounds are among the many minerals, vitamins being refined from fish bones, skin, entrails and oils.Put together by the University of Alaska and the United Nat...

Workers at a Massachusetts shellfish plant were processing a load of clams when they made a potentially explosive discovery, 126 hand grenades, officials said.It's not unusual for grenades and other munitions to turn up in traps along the East Coast, but 126 is a relatively large number for one catch, WCVB-TV, Boston, reported.Workers at the Fair Tide Shellfish plant in New Bedford found the grenades in late April – some of them with pins still attached – in a catch of clams that had been dredged off Long Island."Come to find out, based on what the Navy said, they were live. They were loaded for bear so to speak," Fair Tide Shellfish Finance Executive Tom Slaughter said.The grenades were in wooden crates covered with dark muck, he said."When one broke open, we found all the grenades inside...

www.redorbit.comThe worst red tide in perhaps a decade has shut down shellfish beds all along Puget Sound and prompted serious public health worries, state officials said Wednesday. Expanded beach closures have not reached the heart of Washington state's large farmed shellfish industry, and the state said commercial shellfish on the market have been tested and should be safe to eat. But industry officials worried that more bad news could further damage businesses already reeling from a separate bacterial outbreak. The state Health Department said the newest round of beach closures means virtually the entire shoreline from Everett south to the Nisqually River just north of Olympia is off-limits for shellfish harvesting. The eastern Kitsap Peninsula also has been affected, along with areas n...