July 2022 – Page 2 – Fishermens News

Offshore Wind Towers Make for Dangerous Seas

Operators of commercial fishing boats and other maritime vessels need to be aware of new and heightened concerns about how offshore wind (OSW) towers can interfere with and degrade radar systems. Mariners can be impacted on at least two fronts, including interference with marine vessel radar. According to a report released earlier this year by the National Academy of Sciences, wind towers undercut a radar’s central purpose: safety. The steel towers can distort information about a vessel’s relative location, a degradation that affects all vessel classes. Turbine blades clutter a radar’s display, resulting in an ambiguous and confusing picture for the operator. Correcting for these effects may make smaller vessels “disappear” completely. The other impact is interference with high freque...

Discovery Health MD: Maritime Safety Preparedness Driven by Values

How calculated health and safety planning saves lives In recent years, preventative health methods and risk management practices have been front-and-center on the world’s stage. And for the maritime industry, one of the most daring and inherently dangerous industries in the world, new health and safety risks have been introduced, and the same approach rings true: Be aware, be prepared, and be safe. For years, marine-centric companies have adopted health and risk management methods ranging from pre-employment health screenings to medical emergency management. Varying levels of preparation impact both seafarers and the companies that they dedicate their efforts to. Different companies have different safety goals and the ultimate reason to achieve those goals is clear: caring for peo...

King Cove Fishing Community Awaits Decision on Road to Cold Bay

Residents of King Cove on the Alaska Peninsula are still waiting for a decision by Interior Secretary Deb Haaland on whether she will approve a land exchange and completion of a gravel road leading to the all-weather airport at Cold Bay. King Cove, with fewer than 1,000 permanent residents, is the home of a major Peter Pan Seafood processing facility that operates all but about two weeks of the year, processing a variety of seafood. Residents have been trying for years to have a road between King Cove and Cold Bay built that would allow for ground transportation in stormy weather to so people with medical emergencies can reach the providers they need. The route for completion of the road goes through a small area of the Izembek National Wildlife Refuge, an area several conservation en...

Congress Approves American Fisheries Advisory Committee Act

Legislation to create an industry-led committee to assist in administration of fisheries marketing and research and development grants has now passed both houses of Congress and is headed to President Biden’s desk to be signed into law. Approval of S.497, the American Fisheries Advisory Committee Act, came late last week in the U.S. House. The measure, sponsored by Sen. Dan Sullivan, R-Alaska, earlier passed the Senate. Among the co-sponsors were senators Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska and Maria Cantwell, D-Wash. Sullivan hailed passage of the bill, saying that once signed into law “our fishermen will again have a seat at the table to offer appropriate input and oversight of the Saltonstall-Kennedy grant process” while maintaining “Alaska’s status as the superpower of seafood.” The Saltonst...

NOAA Prepares EIS For SoCal Aquaculture Opportunity Area

NOAA Fisheries has published a notice of intent in the Federal Register announcing preparation of the Southern California Aquaculture Opportunity Area Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement. The EIS seeks to assess impacts of identifying one or more aquaculture opportunity areas in federal waters of the Southern California Bight, a 430-mile stretch of curved coastline that runs from Southern California to the Mexican peninsula of Baja California. The notice of intent initiates a formal 60-day public scoping period for the programmatic EIS that closes on July 22. During this time, NOAA would seek public comment to inform the scope and content of the programmatic EIS. NOAA Fisheries’ effort is in partnership with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Los Angeles District. U.S. Coast Gu...

Use Ergonomics to Prevent Pains, Strains & Chronic Lames

Ergonomics is about adapting the workplace and tools to fit you better, so that you have less strain and chronic pain. After interviewing 426 fishermen on the West Coast in 2015, the Fisherman Led Injury Prevention Program at Oregon State University learned that sprains and strains were the most common limiting injuries, with handling gear on deck the most common cause. For over 30 years Alaska Fishermen’s Fund data has demonstrated that muscular skeletal disorders are the main source of insurance claims. When fishermen think about inherent risks, we usually think of things like weather, loading our vessels, handling gear, etc. But the risks to our bodies from repetitive motion, strain on the back, lifting and other forces cause injury over time and can lead to chronic muscular/skeleta...

NSEDC to Resume Purchases of Norton Sound Red King Crab

The Board of Directors for the Norton Sound Economic Development Corp. has voted to resume purchases of Norton Sound red king crab this summer. NSEDC is a private nonprofit corporation representing 15 member communities and about 8,500 people in the Bering Straits Region of Northwestern Alaska. The board’s decision came after two years of decreased fishing pressure and the maturing of a new cohort of crab. The board said data now indicates that crab populations have rebounded to a level that allows for a responsible harvest. An Alaska Department of Fish and Game 2021 summer trawl survey, which provides essential data for establishing crab harvest guidelines, showed a significant pulse of legal sized male crab moving into the fishery. Reports of productive winter subsistence fishing ap...

Refrigeration Trends Focus on Efficiency, Eco-Friendly Systems, Preserving Catch Quality

Modern, eco-friendly and consumer-focused solutions are making their way into the marine refrigeration industry, while old processes are on the chopping block. Industry insiders say they’re seeing trends aimed at automated efficiency, reducing environmental impact and systems that better preserve catch quality. It’s important to keep up with technology and trends, said Lars Matthiesen, president and mechanical engineer for Highland Refrigeration, a Seattle-based company that designs and manufactures marine and industrial refrigeration systems. At Highland Refrigeration—a small company of about 25 people, including a handful of refrigeration engineers—they utilize worldwide connections to stay current with the latest industrial and technical developments, including safety and energy-eff...

Alaska’s Copper River Commercial Fishery Opens

There was still plenty of ice, and waters were running low in rivers where fish were headed to spawn as commercial harvesters in the Copper River commercial fishery in Alaska headed out on May 16, returning home with a catch some 12,800 king and 12,800 sockeye salmon. “We had 384 deliveries,” said Jerry Botz, gillnet area management biologist for the Alaska Department of Fish and Game in Cordova, Alaska. The average Chinook weighed in at 13 pounds and the average sockeye at 5.3 pounds, he said. By May 17, some 30,000 pounds of the overall catch had been airlifted to Seattle for a red carpet ceremony later that day, and another 4,000 pounds to Anchorage, where Copper River Seafoods was holding a smaller ceremony at the Alaska Airlines cargo terminal. Jim Kostka, marketing director for...

U.S. Commerce Dept. Allocates $144M for Fisheries Disasters

Alaska, the Confederated Tribes of the Chehalis Reservation and the Port Gamble S’Klallam Tribe in Washington state will share in $144 million awarded by the U.S. Commerce Department for fisheries disasters suffered between 2018 and 2021. The allocation, announced May 5 by Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo, applies to previously declared fishery disasters including the 2019 Norton Sound king crab fishery, the Port Gamble Tribe’s 2018 Puget Sound coho salmon fishery and the Chehalis Tribe’s 2019 Chehalis River spring Chinook salmon fishery. Eligible fisheries in Alaska that experienced disasters between 2018 and 2021 include the 2018 Upper Cook Inlet East Side Setnet and 2020 Upper Cook Inlet salmon fisheries, the 2018 Copper River Chinook and sockeye salmon fisheries, 2020 Prince Willia...