Free Republic

For the first time, crews in Alaska won’t be braving ice and sea spray to pluck snow crab from the Bering Sea. The Alaska Department of Fish and Game canceled the snow crab season earlier this week after a catastrophic population crash of the sizable crustaceans. The red king crab season was canceled for the second year in a row, making it a two-pronged disaster for Alaska’s economy and for those whose livelihoods rely on crab. “It’s going to be life-changing, if not career-ending, for people,” said Dean Gribble Sr., a 63-year-old crab boat captain who has fished for “opies”...

Minutes after New England fishery managers took a vote that cast doubt on the historic industry’s future, the prospects most clear to Gloucester fishermen Paul Vitale were his own. “I’m bankrupt. That’s it,” said the 40-year-old father of three. “I’m all done. The boat’s going up for sale.” The New England Fishery Management Council on Wednesday approved a year-to-year cut of 77 percent on the Gulf of Maine cod limit and 61 percent for Georges Bank cod. The cuts come on top of a slew of other reductions, ranging from 10 to 71 percent, on the catch of other bottom-dwelling...

Palin sounds like candidate in return to New Hampshire Former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin swept into New Hampshire on Thursday sounding like a candidate, but stayed mum on her plans for the 2012 presidential election and beyond.The 2008 vice presidential candidate and conservative star took her "One Nation" bus north from Boston to the seaside town of Seabrook, New Hampshire.It was the first visit to the key early primary state since Palin's failed run for the White House with John McCain."I want people to focus on my record," Palin told reporters outside the small blue house where a few dozen...

In 1983, when the seafood processing plants on the New Bedford waterfront broke the back of the Seafarer's Union, the starting salary for a line worker was around $7.50 an hour. Twenty-five years later, the starting salary for processing and packing workers at the New Bedford fish houses was about the same, $7.50 an hour.

Icky algae alarms New England fishermen By LISA RATHKE, Associated Press Writer Aug 26, 2007 STOCKBRIDGE, Vt. - It looks like a clump of soiled sheep's wool, a cottony green or white mass that's turning up on rocks and river bottoms, snarling waterways. Already a scourge in New Zealand and parts of the American South and West, the aquatic algae called "rock snot" is creeping into New England, where it is turning up in pristine rivers and alarming fishermen and wildlife biologists. "It scares me," said Lawton Weber, a fly fishing guide, who first spotted it on the Connecticut River...