Learn Fishing, Fly Fishing, Boating & More Cotonti Thu, 09 Jul 2009 16:27:29 +0000
"As we came back upon it, I realized it was a little fat dog," said Truche, of Manchester, Mass. "It was having trouble keeping its head above water. Its big eyes were looking at us. It was almost as if it was saying, 'Don't leave me here!'"

The couple leaned over the boat and made their only catch of the day: a 5-year-old cairn terrier named Tigger, The Key West Citizen reported Monday.

Tigger was apparently thrown from Diane and Richard Beckman's boat on their way from Key Largo to Marathon.

The Beckmans searched frantically for 2 1/2 hours with no sign of the dog.

"We went back and forth, back and forth," Diane said. "Finally we just gave up, because we thought he couldn't have survived in the water for that long. I was just heartbroken. "

Since there was no answer at the home listed on Tigger's tag, Truche and Largrassa dropped him off at the Upper Keys Animal Shelter.

Diane was elated when she got home and listened to her messages. She went quickly to pick up Tigger.

"He didn't know me. He was so terrified. As soon as he realized it was me, he jumped in my arms and wouldn't let go," she said. ]]> Sat, 05 Jan 2008 09:53:35 +0000
But their way of life will end in just over four years because of the vast marine monument President Bush has established out of the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands.

"I just think it's a way of making a living that we can do at our speed. And we really like doing it," said Timm Timoney, 60, who travels with her husband to the region about a thousand miles from the main Hawaiian Islands for about three weeks at a time.

Bush's creation of the monument in June brought an end in the protected waters to bottomfishing — a technique that involves trolling for fish using hooks and lines. The technique is the last form of fishing still allowed in the area.

Though it was applauded by preservationists, Bush's announcement didn't address compensating the anglers for their loss of livelihood. There are now eight permit holders, including four boats said to be actively fishing the region.

Bringing in just $645,150 in 2006, the fish from the remote islands make up less than one percent of Hawaii's $70 million local fishing industry. So the end of fishing in the area is not expected to have a major effect on the general supply of fish for local restaurants or fish markets.

The Pew Charitable Trust, a private Philadephia-based group focused on public interest issues, met with the area's bottom fisherman more than a year ago in an effort to speed up the process of creating a strict conservation zone. But after an offer to pay the anglers five times their average annual income to stop fishing, negotiations went nowhere.

Since creation of the monument was announced, Pew has abandoned its efforts to persuade the fishermen to leave early.

Two of the permit owners demonstrated interest in Pew's offer, two possibly had interest, and four were unresponsive, according to trust officials.

All permit holders would have had to participate in the offer for it to go through — which didn't sit well with some fishermen.

"Fishermen are kind of independent in general, and so getting them to agree on whether the stop light is red or green is not always easy," said Sean Martin, chairman of the Western Pacific Fishery Management Council.

Fisherman Gary Dill said it would be difficult to put a price on never fishing the islands again.

The experience of fishing the region is a far cry from the busy harbors, city lights and honking horns of Oahu, said Dill, who takes three-day trips to pull in a catch.

"It's the wild, wild west. There's no lines on the highway," he said. "You're immersed in mother nature doing a job, a task that somehow you find exciting."

The biologically rich region of tiny islands and churning waters teems with 14 million nesting seabirds, with about 7,000 species of birds, fish and marine mammals in all, a quarter of which are unique to Hawaii.

Several of the islands have a long history of human use, including as military landing strips, guano mines and sources for bird parts and eggs. But the islands have been protected for nearly a century as wildlife refuges, with protections generally stretching out to a depth of 60 feet in surrounding waters.

Federal waters extending out about 50 miles became a coral reef ecosystem reserve under executive orders in 2000 and 2001 from President Clinton. That started a five-year clock on a process to fashion a marine sanctuary out of the region and answer such questions as whether or not to allow fishing.

Bush trumped the sanctuary process with his decision to ban fishing in the 137,792 square-mile area, creating the largest no-take marine sanctuary in the world.

The state had already banned fishing in the state waters, extending three miles out from the islands' coasts, in September 2005.

"There should be a place in the world where we don't take things away, just protect them," Gov. Linda Lingle said Friday, following a ceremony giving a new Hawaiian name to the monument, Papahanaumokuakea Marine National Monument. ]]> Thu, 25 Oct 2007 04:27:23 +0000
Officials at the 16-story jail, which holds about 2,500 inmates, said some inmates have been dropping weighted strings out of small openings that let air into indoor-outdoor recreation areas in each pod of the facility.

People on the outside then tie contraband, including tobacco and marijuana, to the strings, which are then reeled in by the inmates.

Because the jail has no outside yard, it must allow fresh air to flow through the recreation areas by law, Maj. James Donis, a top jail official, told the Pittsburgh Post Gazette for a story Thursday.

The jail may install security cameras to try to catch the perpetrators. A barbed-wire fence was also installed on one side of the jail, near a trail that officials believe is used by people who provide the contraband.

Rural jails often have an internal yard that is easier to police, but that's not an option in the industrial area of Pittsburgh where the jail is located.

"It's one of the drawbacks of having an institution in an urban setting," Donis said.]]> Mon, 24 Sep 2007 08:00:38 +0000
So-called catch share programs that allocate a percentage of the overall catch to fishermen create economic incentives while promoting healthy marine fisheries, concluded a report being released Wednesday by Environmental Defense, an environmental advocacy group.

Under catch share plans, fishermen are allowed to buy and sell shares of a fishery's total catch.

"That's the missing puzzle piece here," said David Festa, oceans program director at Environmental Defense. "When you drop that little gear into this complex mechanism, all of a sudden the watch starts to tick smoothly."

But catch-share plans, also known as limited access privileges or quotas, have generated controversy in areas such as New England where some fishermen fear the shares of smaller boats would be bought up by big corporations bent on monopolizing the region's centuries-old industry.

Some critics also see it as privatization of a public resource.

"It's supposed to be a national resource that belongs to everyone," said Jim Kendall, a New Bedford, Mass., seafood industry consultant. "What about the people who are excluded from the fishery? How do you treat people fairly? Who decides?"

If a fishery is well-managed, the value of shares owned by fishermen should increase as science-based conservation measures take hold and the fishery rebounds, Festa said. That would give fishermen a stronger interest in making sure stocks aren't depleted, he added.

Fishermen already operate under a complex system of federal regulations as government regulators wrestle with overfishing and collapsing fisheries. The 14-month, $1.2 million study focused on 10 fisheries in the United States and Canada that use catch-share programs. Environmental Defense said it was the largest such study since Congress lifted its moratorium on catch-share programs five years ago.

The report comes more than two months after President Bush signed into law a major bill that overhauled management of marine fisheries and boosted protections of dwindling stocks. The reauthorization of the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act supports catch-share programs, said Festa. ]]> Sun, 09 Sep 2007 15:34:08 +0000