Watch these two bull sharks turn guy’s trophy fish to chum off the coast of Florida.

Sorry buddy, better luck next time.

The kayaker is Isaac Brumaghim (he’s been described as an “Extreme Kayak Fisherman”) and he’s from Honolulu, Hawaii. He fishes with a group called Aquahunters, whose mission is to promote, expand, and advance the sport of kayak fishing in Hawaii and around the world.

Let’s see that again!

The attack is believed to have occurred 20 miles from the Kutubdia Channel in Bangladesh, marked here.

Pirates in the Bay of Bengal are believed to have killed as many as 31 fishermen in a brazen attack on three trawlers on March 25.

According to reports, the Bangladesh Navy and Coast Guard launched a joint operation on Tuesday to recover the bodies of the deceased fishermen after three bodies turned up Monday night. Reports indicate that Tuesday’s operation resulted in the recovery of 18 bodies, bringing the total death toll to 21. As many as 10 are believed to be still missing.

The attack occurred on March 25 approximately 20 miles off the coast of Cox’s Bazar, a district in the Chittagong Division of Bangladesh.

“Today our boats have found 17 bodies floating about 12 kilometres west of the lighthouse of Kutubdia Island,” Navy commander Mustafizur Rahman told AFP on Tuesday.

“All the bodies were in decomposed state. They had their hands tied up and were thrown in deep sea,” Rahman added.

Media reports indicate that 34 people were on board the three trawlers at the time of the attack.  There are three known survivors.

In a separate incident, robbers boarded a product tanker at Chittagong Anchorage ‘A’ on March 22 and made off with ship stores and property. That incident was the fourth reported off the coast of Chittagong in 2013, according to IMB Piracy Reporting Centre data.

Water vapor image of the storm last night off Nova Scotia, Canada. Via Stu Ostro, Senior Meteorologist at The Weather Channel, click for larger

In a wicked storm off Canada late last night, fishermen on a swordfish and halibut boat activated their Emergency Position Indicating Radio Beacon (EPIRB) which alerted the Joint Rescue Coordination Center in Halifax to an unknown and desperate situation unfolding 70 miles off the Canadian coast.

At first light, a Royal Canadian Air Force helicopter and two Coast Guard vessels were dispatched to the scene of the distress call.

The 13.5-meter vessel was found capsized shortly thereafter, along with a nearby life raft, yet there was no trace of the 5 crew.

“I don’t have any hope right now,” George Hopkins told CBC News. His son, 27-year-old Joel Hopkins, is the father of two young children.

OSLO, Feb 11 (Reuters) – The high seas that cover almost half the Earth’s surface are a treasure trove with little legal protection from growing threats such as over-fishing and climate change, according to a new international group of politicians.

“High levels of pillage are going on,” David Miliband, a former British foreign secretary, told Reuters. He will co-chair the Global Ocean Commission, which will start work this week and give advice to the United Nations on fixing the problems.

Over-fishing and environmental mismanagement cost the world economy $50 billion a year and about three-quarters of world fish stocks are over-fished or fished to the maximum, according to World Bank and U.N. data.

“The hidden depths are a treasure trove, and a treasure trove that we neglect or raid at our peril,” Miliband said of the high seas, the area beyond national limits that stretch 200 nautical miles (370 km) from coasts.

His co-chairs will be former Costa Rican president Jose Maria Figueres and Trevor Manuel, a minister in the South African cabinet in charge of planning.

The commission will include ex-cabinet ministers from nations such as Chile, Australia, Indonesia, Canada and Nigeria, as well as business leaders and Pascal Lamy, head of the World Trade Organisation (WTO). It will produce advice in 2014.

Miliband said vast areas of the oceans, from the Atlantic to the Pacific, were “a neglected area of global governance” despite a 1982 U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS).

The Commission says the high seas are under severe and increasing threat from over-fishing, damage to habitat, climate change and ocean acidification caused by a build-up of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.

SEABED MINING

There are some regulatory mechanisms – the Jamaica-based International Seabed Authority was set up in 1994 to control mining of deep-sea deposits such as nodules rich in manganese, iron, aluminium and copper.

And a 2001 U.N. pact seeks to control stocks of fish such as highly migratory tuna, sailfish, swordfish and sharks. Regional fisheries management groups also try to oversee the high seas.

But the Commission says tougher rules and “future-proofing” are needed – to take account of emerging risks and technologies that could make mining or oil and gas drilling more feasible in the ocean depths, perhaps down to 5,000 metres (16,400 feet).

The drilling group Transocean says one of its oil and gas drillships in 2011 set a world record by drilling in the seabed off India at a depth of 3,107 metres.

“The global ocean is essential to the health and well-being of each and every one of us,” Figueres, the former Costa Rican head of state, said in a statement.

“It provides about half of the oxygen we breathe and absorbs about a quarter of our carbon dioxide emissions; but we are failing to manage it in ways that reflect its true value.”

Miliband said the 1982 UNCLOS pact had not properly anticipated, for instance, that giant trawlers could stay at sea for weeks, freezing and processing fish before returning to port.

Ole Kristian Fauchald, a law professor at the Fridtjof Nansen Institute in Oslo, said possibilities for change included limiting the use of “flags of convenience” that let fishing vessels register in nations that are lax in imposing U.N. rules.

And ports could be stricter in refusing access to ships pillaging the high seas. Cutting subsidies to fishing fleets would also help, despite a lack of progress at the WTO, he said. U.N. studies estimate subsidies at up to $34 billion a year. (Reporting By Alister Doyle; Editing by Stephen Powell)

(c) 2013 Thomson Reuters, Click For Restrictions

Provide your best caption in comments section below…

Photos courtesy of Marlin Magazine’s Facebook page.

Image (c) Greenpeace

Kiyomura K.K., a Tokyo-based sushi chain, paid a record 155.4 million yen ($1.76 million) to outbid an affiliate of a Hong Kong-based rival for a tuna it said would be enjoyed by Chinese and Japanese customers alike.

The fresh whole tuna weighed 222 kilograms (489 pounds) at the market’s first auction of 2013 yesterday. The price compares with the 56 million yen Kiyomura paid last year to take an auction Itamae Sushi Japan K.K., an affiliate of the Hong Kong- based Taste of Japan Group, won the previous year.

Kiyomura could lose as much as 154 million yen on the purchase, based on the estimated 15,540 yen it paid for each piece of sushi and the minimum 128 yen it charges per serving. The chain’s president said last year it made the record bid to ensure the fish was won by a Japanese following the March 11, 2011, earthquake. This year, amid heightened geopolitical tension with China, President Kiyoshi Kimura said he expected people from both countries to partake.

“There are some political difficulties, but Japanese customers and Chinese customers come to our restaurant, and what we want is for everyone to enjoy our sushi,” Kimura said in an interview at his Tsukiji restaurant after the 5:30 a.m. auction. He said that while his bid was “expensive,” the company would serve the auspicious fish at regular prices.

By 3:30 a.m., bidders had begun arriving at the warehouse- like tuna auction building to inspect the fish. Two hours later, at the ring of a hand-bell, traders started thrusting arms up, hands signaling the amounts of their bids. Seconds later, the deal was done for the year’s first tuna.

Global Pace

Auctions at Tsukiji, the world’s largest fish market that stretches over an area the size of 43 football fields, influence prices all over the world, according to Sasha Issenberg, author of “The Sushi Economy.”

“It’s like a combination of Wall Street and Sotheby’s in the art market and a commodities trading floor,” he said.

Itamae had bid as much as 151 million yen for the fish, Makoto Kondo, a spokesman for the Hong Kong-based sushi chain, said by phone yesterday. He also said the company’s intention was to share the fish with Japanese customers.

“Until last year, we took the tuna to our customers overseas, but we really wanted to deliver it to the Japanese people, so the fact that we lost is very unfortunate,” Kondo said.

The bluefin, caught off the coast of Japan’s northeastern Aomori prefecture, will be carved into about 10,000 pieces of sushi, Kimura of Kiyomura said.

Fish Country

Japanese eat more fish per capita than any other developed country, consuming about 56.7 kilograms (128 pounds) annually, compared with a global average of 17.1 kilograms, according to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization.

The winning bid for tuna at the first auction of the year at Tsukiji averaged about 14.5 million yen over the past 10 years, according to the Tokyo Metropolitan Central Wholesale Market website. Daily trading volume at Tsukiji averaged about 1.55 billion yen in 2011, according to Hiroshi Mochizuki, a spokesman for the market.

Tsukiji, where visitors gather as early as 4 a.m. Tokyo time to observe competing buyers using hand signals to bid at tuna auctions, is listed among Japan’s most popular attractions by the Japan National Tourism Organization.

The Tokyo Metropolitan Government has delayed plans to relocate fish market to neighboring Koto Ward by a year as soil decontamination at the new site is taking longer than expected, the Nikkei newspaper reported Dec. 31, 2012.

Tensions between Japan and China escalated last year after Japan nationalized a set of South China Sea islands claimed by both countries.

- Anna Mukai and Yuki Yamaguchi, Copyright 2013 Bloomberg.

A report by NOAA in 2006 warned that “despite the implementation of domestic and international management measures, the status of Atlantic blue and white marlin has continued to decline. Currently, the status of sailfish and spearfish is uncertain. Atlantic white marlin has been identified as one of the most severely overfished species of any stock under ICCAT’s purview for the past four years, but nevertheless continues to be subjected to unsustainable levels of fishing mortality throughout the Atlantic.”

Supported by a study conducted in 2000 that showed a significant increase in the incidental catching of billfish such as blue marlin, white marlin, sailfish, as well as under-sized swordfish when using live bait, the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) has since prohibited the use of live bait fishing while using longlines in the Gulf of Mexico (65 FR 47214, August 1, 2000).

On Tuesday, the United States Coast Guard and NOAA seized nearly 8,000 pounds of illegally caught fish from the 62-foot fishing vessel Blue Fin in Dulac, Louisiana on Tuesday.  The Dulac-based vessel Blue Fin crew was allegedly using live bait and was cited for other fishery violations approximately 90 miles off the Louisiana coast.

The catch and estimated pounds that was reported seized is as follows:

• 7,133 pounds of yellowfin tuna;
• 535 pounds of escolar (oilfish);
• 220 pounds of wahoo;
• 44 pounds of mahi-mahi.

The overall estimated price of the catch was more than $20,000.

While local fishermen may share the anger and resentment of Napoleon and Admiral Nelson, the battle tactics of the French more closely resembles that of Paul Watson than of Napoleon.

According to the New York Times, the first blows of aggression were struck by the French on Monday, when their fishing boats surrounded British vessels and pelted them with catapults, stones, nuts and bolts to which the British of course responded by dropping trou and mooning the French.

At stake are lucrative scallop stocks the French claim are being poached by their British competitors. At the center of the debate are new French laws which limit fishing in the region to a five-month period ending on October 1.

British trawlers however, can catch scallops year-round.

According to Sky News, the French fishermen were attempting to close off the disputed waters to British boats, but were soon dispersed by French navy ships.

So, the Great Scallop War, and its moonings and stone throwings, will likely resume again in the near future until this issue is resolved.

Or perhaps it will continue until all the scallops are gone.

Or, perhaps even more likely, it will continue until after the scallops are gone, all the way through to the end of time itself.

Image (c) CreativeNature/Shutterstock

(Bloomberg) — Gulf of Mexico fisheries are rebounding from the BP Plc oil spill, landing more fish last year than in 2009, the year before the worst U.S. offshore marine disaster, the government said.

The total Gulf catch was 25 percent bigger last year than in 2009, 55 percent more than in 2010 and the largest since 1999, the National Marine Fisheries Service said today in a report. In April 2010, the Deepwater Horizon oil rig exploded, killing 11 workers and triggering a spill the government estimated at more than 4 million barrels.

“Our fisheries are on the way up,” Harlon Pearce, chairman of the Louisiana Seafood Promotion and Marketing Board, said in an interview. Some species are doing better than others, and the industry will “need another year or two of stabilization” before it’s back completely, he said.

The disaster hurt fisheries that last year provided about a fifth of the seafood landed by U.S. fishermen, a catch valued at a record $5.3 billion, according to the report. The country’s haul was the biggest in volume since 1994. The U.S. is the world’s fifth-biggest fishing nation, after China, India, Indonesia and Vietnam.

The 2011 catch from Gulf states totaled 1.984 billion pounds, up from 1.283 billion in 2010 and 1.583 billion in 2009, the National Marine Fisheries Service, a unit of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, said in the report. Landings of menhaden, a fish used mainly for oil and meal, were up 66 percent over 2010. That species accounted for much of the Gulf’s growth, while oysters, crabs and shrimp still haven’t bounced back from pre-spill levels, Pearce said.

Report Challenged

Dean Blanchard, chief executive officer of Dean Blanchard Seafood Inc., a shrimper based in Grand Isle, Louisiana, said the government statistics are misleading and fail to tell the tale of individual operations. Fishing operations are constrained by geography, because going greater distances to find fish raises transportation costs and eats profits, he said.

The company is suing BP, claiming its settlement offer comes nowhere near meeting the needs of those most affected by the spill.
London-based BP agreed in March to pay an estimated $7.8 billion to resolve most private plaintiffs’ claims for economic loss, property damage and injuries. The company declined to comment on today’s report.

“We’re not recovering. Where the oil went, there’s nothing left living,” Blanchard said in a telephone interview. “I’m losing customers. I’m just stuck.” Blanchard called the proposed settlement “a joke” and said his catch is about 10 percent to 15 percent of normal.

Large amounts of weathered oil and tar that washed up last month after Hurricane Isaac came ashore along the Gulf Coast show that the spill is still affecting the region, Stuart Smith, a lawyer for hundreds of property owners and fishing and tourism businesses, said last week in a letter to the U.S. magistrate judge overseeing spill litigation.

-By Alan Bjerga. Copyright 2012 Bloomberg.