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Whale Wars

Boston Globe journalist threatens Maine filmmaker with $1 million lawsuit over whale video. Filmmaker Andrew Joyce released a YouTube video, “Weaponizing the Right Whale,” on April 25, in defense of the Maine lobster industry. Boston Globe journalist David Abel, the maker of the 2020 film, “Entangled,” which identifies Maine lobster gear as a major threat to the endangered North Atlantic right whale, is threatening to sue Joyce for copyright infringement over Joyce’s use of clips from Abel’s film.

GULF & SOUTH ATLANTIC

NOAA ruling on red grouper catch in the Gulf announced

NOAA Fisheries announced the final rule under Amendment 53 on May 2, allocating 59.3 percent of the annual catch to the commercial sector (down from 76 percent) and increasing the recreational allocation from 24 percent to 40.7 percent.

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CURRENT ISSUE

ALASKA

Three boats have kept work steady at Distinctive Finishes in Haines Alaska

It’s not your everyday repair job that John Schumacher at Distinctive Finishes in Haines, Alaska, was working on at the end of April. The Windbreakers, a 34-foot gillnetter was hauled to Distinctive Finishes after its keel folded over.

The fiberglass gillnetter had been run up on a grid made up of 12x12s at high tide. It had a bolted-on keel that Schumacher says wasn’t strongly built. That and the fact the boat was at a bit of an angle and was tied up wrong caused the keel to fold over when the tide went out, fold over all the way to the chine.

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NORTHEAST

Cultivating Tomorrow’s Fisherman Across New England

The kids who hung around Perkins Cove, Maine, back in the 1960s wanted to be fishermen. By the time we were 10 or 12 years old, the ocean, boats, and fish had cast their spell on us. We knew who Mickey Mantle and Carl Yastrzemski were, but our heroes parked their pickups by the bait wharf and harpooned bluefin tuna from their boats.