Fishermen

Re "GOP-backed bill would retain 'no-otter zone,'" April 27 I find it offensive that Rep. Elton Gallegly (R-Simi Valley) would sponsor a bill limiting sea otters' reclaiming their historical range off Southern California. The article states, "Fishermen say their livelihood would be hurt by the unfettered expansion of sea otters into their fishing grounds. " Otters have been inhabiting "their" grounds much longer than humans have. Maybe we need a "no-fisherman zone" to protect the sea otters.

MASINLOC, Philippines - The fishermen were sailing the azure waters off the Philippine coast when Richard Caneda saw the morning sunlight glinting off a vessel "bigger than the biggest ship in the Philippine navy. " Caneda could see a red Chinese flag. The words "Chinese Maritime Surveillance" were written on the ship's side. The ship came close enough that Caneda could see crew members on deck making hand gestures as though to shoo away a fly. Caneda, who had moved from the fishing boat to a tiny skiff to haul in nets left out overnight, soon saw a large gun mounted on the ship's deck pivoting directly toward him. A helicopter whirred overhead.

Talk about pirate booty. In a dramatic shift of fortunes on the high seas, 34 Egyptian fishermen kidnapped by Somali pirates four months ago overpowered their captors and were sailing home Saturday with eight marauders locked up in a room and ready to be delivered to police. Usually it's the pirates who get away with bragging rights and ransoms, but the fishermen, whose two vessels had been seized in the notorious waters around the Gulf of Aden, were steaming toward the Egyptian coast with an impressive haul.

The California fishing industry appears to be on the upswing. After overfishing and conservation efforts limited the catch for fishermen in recent years, those who ply the seas are now enjoying bigger hauls and raking in more profits, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Some fishermen who were initially skeptical of tighter regulations say they now see the benefit of the curbs, and towns along the Pacific Coast that depend on fishing are enjoying a rebound, the Associated Press reported.

The newspaper headline captured the latest cuisine controversy in this seafood-crazy country: "Can eating octopus heads be hazardous to your health?" A favorite dish for generations of Koreans, octopus heads have long been associated with good nutrition, not to mention their reputed qualities as an aphrodisiac. But a Seoul city government study last month determined that the delicacy contains dangerous levels of the heavy metal cadmium. The findings touched off what newspapers have dubbed "the octopus head war," pitting city health officials against irate fishermen protective of the $35-million industry.

About 650 unionized fishermen went on strike Thursday at one of the nation's most profitable fishing ports in a dispute with boat owners over how to divide the catch and hire crews.

Oars skim the marsh grass and men slip their nets upon the water. Two fish are in a bucket near the prow, a meager catch for a morning's work, but the Nile is stingy in this stretch, not like when Mohamed Hassan was a boy and fish as long as your arm raced through the moonlight of the unfinished city. Forty some years ago, it was. Before Hassan had ever heard of a man named Hosni Mubarak. The river, like the country, grew meaner and less forgiving after he became president.

It is an unfortunate coincidence of geography that this lush region of wild rivers, grassy tundra and windy sea is home to two competing treasures of almost unimaginable value: the world's largest sockeye salmon run, supporting a fishery worth $440 million a year; and in the hills behind it, a massive deposit of copper, molybdemum and gold worth at least $300 billion. With that much money at stake, preventing the construction of what could be the largest open-pit mine in North America — at headwaters above Bristol Bay — seems an impossible task.

The Navy cruiser that mistakenly shot down an Iranian airliner last month has rescued five Iranian fishermen who had been adrift at sea for more than a week, the Pentagon said Monday. The Vincennes spotted the five men drifting in a small dinghy Sunday night in the Gulf of Oman, said Lt. Col. Keith Schneider, a Pentagon spokesman. At the time, the Vincennes was on a routine patrol in the Gulf of Oman just below the entrance to the Persian Gulf at the Strait of Hormuz, Schneider added.

Nearly 750 fishermen were reported missing in the Bay of Bengal, three days after a cyclone battered the Bangladesh coast, killing about 100 people. "About 750 of our men are still missing," said Kabir Ahmed, a fishing association leader. "They went to sea before the cyclone struck Monday but did not return. We only hope they . . . come back alive, but no official search has been launched."

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has decided to allow sea otters to roam freely down the Southern California coastline, abandoning its program to relocate the voracious shellfish eaters from waters reserved for fishermen. Federal officials determined that their sea otter trans-location program had failed after 25 years and thus they were terminating it, according to a decision published in the Federal Register on Wednesday. "As a result, it allows sea otters to expand their range naturally into Southern California," the notice said.

The title of Nick Dybek's debut novel, "When Captain Flint Was Still a Good Man," hints at transitions to come, and the phrase "was still" suggests that the changes will not be good. Flint, if you've forgotten your children's classics, was the captain of the Walrus pirate ship, the man who buried the gold around which revolves the plot of Robert Louis Stevenson's "Treasure Island. " In Dybek's novel, protagonist Cal Bollings' father began reading aloud from that book before bedtime the summer the boy was 8 years old. The favorite story quickly became too familiar, so a father-son tradition emerged in which the father sent the boy off to sleep with conjured tales about Flint and his life before he turned bad, buried his treasure and killed his crew.

Re "GOP-backed bill would retain 'no-otter zone,'" April 27 I find it offensive that Rep. Elton Gallegly (R-Simi Valley) would sponsor a bill limiting sea otters' reclaiming their historical range off Southern California. The article states, "Fishermen say their livelihood would be hurt by the unfettered expansion of sea otters into their fishing grounds. " Otters have been inhabiting "their" grounds much longer than humans have. Maybe we need a "no-fisherman zone" to protect the sea otters.

Princess Cruises says it will continue to investigate why the Star Princess cruise ship in March passed up a fishing boat in distress, leaving two Panamanian men in the boat to die. The cruise line also said it “deeply regrets” the incident off the South American coast that it blames on a communication glitch. Passengers aboard the cruise ship spotted the small boat and alerted crew members, but the message never got to the ship's captain and no action was taken, the cruise line said.

A Navy destroyer rescued 13 Iranian fishermen held hostage by Somali pirates in the Arabian Sea only days after Tehran warned the United States to keep its ships out of the nearby Persian Gulf. Sailors from the guided-missile destroyer Kidd boarded the Iranian dhow Thursday and detained 15 Somalis after one of the fishermen was able to reveal in a radio communication that his vessel's crew was being held captive. Seeing a publicity windfall at a time of growing tension with Iran, Pentagon public affairs officers quickly swung into action, setting up a conference call for reporters with Navy commanders in the region.

The bait was irresistible. One by one, the anglers were lured by the close-out sale at Fishermen's Hardware in Long Beach. On a recent afternoon, they made their way past the open wooden-frame glass door covered with fish stickers. A cacophony of squeaks from the overly scratched floorboards filled the room, as the old fishermen wandered along the walls of dry-scented baits, colorful jigs and long fishing rods. There's the furniture too: the empty showcases, the dented file cabinets, empty fishing pole racks, a well-worn fridge and gray copy machine that were slapped with sheets of paper that read "Make a bid on it. " For 25 years, this family-owned store at Anaheim Street and Temple Avenue served as a repair shop for broken rods and a popular hangout for fishermen to share tips or swap fish stories.

The U.S. Coast Guard, employing a Falcon jet flown in from San Diego, resumed its search Friday for two Santa Barbara commercial fishermen whose boat was found capsized with "HELP" scrawled on the hull. Ted Hashamoto, 36, and William Dawson, 32, were several days overdue when the Coast Guard on Wednesday found their boat, the Carol Lee, upside down and partially submerged in an area where winds had whipped waves to heights of 18 feet.

When Port of Los Angeles officials approved a plan in 1981 to invest millions of dollars to overhaul the dilapidated facilities at Fish Harbor on Terminal Island, commercial fishermen thought their fortunes had finally changed.

NASA officials confirmed Tuesday that debris revealed by the receding waters of a drought-stricken Texas lake is from the space shuttle Columbia. The object was found by fishermen last week in Lake Nacogdoches after severe drought in the state caused water levels to drop, said Sgt. Greg Sowell of the Nacogdoches Police Department. The space shuttle exploded upon reentering the atmosphere over Texas on Feb. 1, 2003, killing all seven crew members on board. The explosion scattered debris across the eastern portion of the state.

It's finally time to fish, and Duncan MacLean is ready. His deckhand, Paul Pelt, is not. When MacLean arrives at his boat in darkened Pillar Point Harbor at 4:30 in the morning, Pelt is snuggled into a tiny bunk below deck with his girlfriend, Donna. "Let's go, get up," MacLean hollers, and then invites Donna to leave. She rubs her eyes and wanders into the darkness in shorts and a T-shirt. Like scores of fishermen, MacLean once earned a handsome living trolling for salmon in these waters south of San Francisco.