[Previous entry: "Scuba News for June"] [Main Index] [Next entry: "Scuba Club News for August"]
07/07/2004: "July Scuba News"
FRIDAY - JULY 9, 2004 THE HISTORY CHANNEL
10:00 PM to Midnight and again at 2:00 AM to 4:00 AM
Blind Man's Bluff
In a 2-hour special, based on the best seller by Christopher Drew and Sherry Sontag, we document the stories of the brave men who dedicated their lives to stalking the world's oceans during the Cold War. Submarines were the super-secret frontline of the Cold War and played an undersea game of hide and seek with the fate of the world as stakes. NEW: For the first time on TV, U.S. and Russian submariners share their stories and harrowing experiences.
U -701 to be protected off Diamond Shoals
George Lock sent this up to me:
- - -
Saving a sunken sub from salvage
By CATHERINE KOZAK, The Virginian-Pilot
© June 30, 2004
HATTERAS - Under the churning seas off Diamond Shoals, a recently rediscovered German submarine lies on the edge of the continental shelf.
It's an underwater tomb, war artifact and historic gold mine that has been virtually untouched for 62 years.
In an innovative effort, the diving community is working with the Graveyard of the Atlantic Museum and the German government to create a diving preserve that will ensure that the U-701 is protected from
salvage and looting.
"It's rare that you find an intact wreck like this," said Craig Cook , a Richmond physician who frequently dives off Hatteras. " It's a piece of history. We really don't want to see it disturbed."
Although there are other diving preserves in American coastal waters, none so far have been created outside of U.S. territorial waters, said Joseph Schwarzer, the executive director of the museum in
Hatteras Village.
"This whole thing was started by the diving community," he said. "This is an enormous step. It'll be, really, the first of its kind in terms of a collaborative effort."
The U-701 sank July 7, 1942, in 110 feet of water about 22 miles off Cape Hatteras.
It was first discovered in 1989 by diver Uwe Lovas, but the coordinates of its location were kept secret. The wreck was recently rediscovered by a local diver.
With the secret out, some feared it was only a matter of time before divers started taking artifacts.
Two other U-Boats, the U-85 off Oregon Inlet and the U-352 off Morehead City, have been essentially stripped of artifacts, most of which have never been seen again, Schwarzer said.
Some divers have been known to take a dredge down to a wreck to suck out its contents. Local lore tells about one diver who tried to use dynamite to remove the propellers from an Outer Banks shipwreck.
But after the U-701 was rediscovered, Cook said, Hatteras divers agreed that it would be much better to dive on the wreck if it was preserved intact. With as many as 10 German sailors entombed in the
submarine, it is also a matter of respect, he said.
At a meeting Cook and Schwarzer attended held last week at the German Embassy in Washington, the German representatives reaffirmed that any unauthorized salvage of the U-701 would be regarded as a violation of the laws of the Federal Republic of Germany, of international law and of U.S. policy.
Representatives from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the U.S. Justice Department and the Coast Guard also attended.
The wreck sits in an area that starts 12 miles and ends 24 miles offshore, where international and some territorial laws apply, said Ole Varmer, an attorney at the NOAA office of general counsel for
international law.
"This is one of those wrecks that falls in between the cracks of maritime law," Varmer said.
Varmer said that NOAA is not directly involved in the creation of the dive preserve, but instead has acted as a technical advisor about the options that are available to protect the U-701.
With the cooperation of the involved parties, the diving preserve could be created by Congress and would be the most realistic way to both encourage diving and prevent looting of the boat, Varmer said.
Divers love getting souvenirs off the ships they explore, Cook said. But they also recognize the value of diving an undisturbed wreck. It's like the difference, he said, between visiting a historic battlefield that has been preserved and one that has been trampled, dug up and has a shopping mall built on top of it.
"It's not that it has to be a U-boat," he said. "It just has to be a virgin wreck that no one has salvaged."
The U-701 has a dramatic history, said Kevin Duffus, president of Board of Directors for the Graveyard of the Atlantic Museum.
The mission of the U-701 was to lay mines in the channel leading into the Chesapeake Bay in Hampton Roads and to then operate off the coast of North Carolina until its torpedoes were gone.
Sub commander Horst Degen surfaced frequently to launch attacks, Duffus said. During its one year in service, the submarine was responsible for the sinking of 14 ships.
On July 7, 1942, the U-701 was hovering off Hatteras when it was spotted by U.S. Army pilot Harry Kane from his A-29 bomber. After dropping three depth charges, he watched the U-boat sink and saw its surviving sailors bob to the surface.
When he circled back around, rather than spraying them with machine gun bullets, Kane dropped life preservers and a raft for the men.
Of the 33 men who survived the sinking, only six sailors and Degen were rescued three days later from the shark-infested waters of the Gulf Stream.
Kane and Degen were later introduced, and Degen reportedly saluted his enemy's skill. The two men eventually became friends.
"If you had to take the story of one German U-boat to best describe the general experience encountered by U-boat sailors, I guess the U- 701 is the best example," Duffus said. "This one U-boat represents all the successes and calamities experienced by U-boat mariners."
Diver Dies on Iberia
Diver dies near shipwreck off Atlantic Beach
BY TOMOEH MURAKAMI TSE, STAFF WRITER
Newsday - Long Island News
July 2, 2004
Anthony Lobue enjoyed the routine of gazing at the calm water, chatting with fellow divers and strapping on his scuba gear before plunging into the underwater world that captivated him.
But a late-night dive on Wednesday was his last.
Lobue, 46, of Valley Stream, apparently drowned after becoming entangled in his own safety line 60 feet under water, near a century-old shipwreck three miles south of Atlantic Beach, Nassau police said. The Iberia, which sank in 1888, rests halfway between Debs and Jones inlets, in an area known to
divers as Wreck Valley.
According to police, Lobue and three other recreational divers headed to sea on The Karen, a 42-foot dive boat based at Gerritsen Beach in Brooklyn. They went into the water around 9:40 p.m., and about 30 minutes later, one of the three crew members found Lobue snarled in his own safety line, said
Homicide Squad Commander Det. Lt. Dennis Farrell.
"He was found unconscious," Farrell said. "The mate [from the dive boat] ... was just cutting away at every part of the line" to untangle Lobue. The cause of death is under investigation.
Divers carry what is known as a wreck reel, so they can put out a safety line to find their way back to the anchor line attached to the boat.
The crew member who found Lobue was down at the sea bottom looking for lobster, police said, and fetched one of the divers' safety lines to lead him back to the anchor line. Instead of finding the anchor line, the crew member found Lobue, a computer technician turned day trader. He brought
Lobue's unconscious body to the surface and the boat took him to the Atlantic Beach Bridge. From there, Lobue was taken to St. John's Episcopal Hospital in Far Rockaway, where he was pronounced dead at 11:37 p.m. on Wednesday.
Peter Lobue said his younger brother began scuba diving 15 years ago and loved diving for lobster and exploring wrecks. Lobue immigrated to the United States from Italy in 1972, and graduated from Valley Stream High School.
"He liked to discover things and see things," said Peter Lobue, 56, of Valley Stream. Besides his brother, Lobue is survived by an older sister, Maria Castronovo.
"There's no way of knowing how he was entangled in his line," said Robert Hayes, captain of The Karen. Hayes said he had taken Lobue out many times over the past 12 years and believed Lobue had gone on at least 200 dives.
Copyright © 2004, Newsday, Inc.
http://www.newsday.com/news/local/longisland/ny-lidive0702,0,371748,print.story?coll=ny-linews-headlines
Titanic Treaty - signed by US!
Peter Hess comments:
The TITANIC Treaty, if ratified, would allow the US to assert regulatory authority (i.e., ban the collection of artifacts) over a foreign shipwreck lying in international waters. This is a very dangerous precedent that should be vigorously opposed by anyone interested in underwater exploration. Moreover, it is in direct violation of the Law of the Sea, which reserves international waters for the open and equal use by any nation or its citizens.
Peggy Comments: Ballard wants to save all the wrecks for himself - Salt water is doing a number on the Titanic. No matter what they do, it isn't going to last underwater!
+ + +
Business Times - 21 Jun 2004 (sent in by Glenn Arthur)
US signs treaty to protect Titanic wreck
(WASHINGTON) The United States has signed an agreement to protect the Titanic from admirers and would-be scavengers whose dives more than two miles into the icy abyss of the North Atlantic are damaging the increasingly fragile remains of the world's most famous shipwreck.
Federal and private experts said the agreement, if backed by Congress, would set a legal precedent that in time could help protect thousands of other lost ships. But critics denounced it as clumsy meddling that could hurt international commerce in sunken artifacts.
The signing took place in London. Last November, Britain became the first country to endorse the accord. Canada and France are expected to follow suit, and possibly Russia, creating a bloc devoted to regulating the stream of visitors to the wreck of the luxury liner, which sank on April 15, 1912, with 1,500 lives lost. It lies in international waters 380 miles off Newfoundland, upright but split in two.
'Any country that signs the agreement pledges to prevent its citizens and vessels flying its flag from making unregulated, illegal dives to the wreck or selling artifacts from it,' said John F Turner, an assistant secretary of state.
'It also ensures that artifacts from the Titanic are collected and curated in accordance with current scientific standards and kept intact and available to the public as a collection.' Hundreds of tourists and
salvagers, explorers and moviemakers have visited the wreck since American and French scientists discovered its resting place in 1985. In July 2001, a New York couple were married in a submersible resting on the Titanic's bow. Tourists have paid up to US$36,000 a dive. Partly as a result of all these
visits, the vessel is rapidly falling apart.
At a news conference last week announcing the accord, Dr Robert Ballard, who led the 1985 discovery team, said the agreement was not intended to discourage visitors but rather to make them act more responsibly.
If Congress passes an accompanying law, which the State Department is now drafting, the new accord would set up a system of rules and permits, guardians and perhaps even electronic monitoring devices to supervise undersea visitors.
Britain became the first country to sign the agreement because of an uproar that followed disclosure that a surreptitious expedition had sailed out of England in 2002 and lowered a robot to the wreck, by some accounts leaving it damaged.
David G Concannon, a Philadelphia lawyer and director of the Explorers Club who has represented Titanic salvagers, moviemakers and tourist companies, said the accord was a move into uncharted and potentially dangerous legal waters. - NYT
Copyright (c) 2004 Singapore Press Holdings Ltd. All rights reserved.
http://business-times.asia1.com.sg/story/0,4567,120271,00.html
Recall: Oceanic Reliant BC Power Inflators
From The Scuba Sports Club e-mail (THANKS!)
http://BeneathTheSea.org/TSSC/
--------------------------------
Oceanic Reliant Buoyancy Compensators
Oceanic has been informed by its supplier that they have received isolated reports of BC Inflator mechanisms exhibiting continual flow of air into the BC after release of the power inflation button. Affected are Oceanic Reliant model Inflators that are fitted on various models of Oceanic's BCs that were sold between February 1, 2004, and June 24, 2004. BCs sold prior to February 1, 2004, do not have these inflators and are not affected.
Testing and evaluation has shown that the Power Inflator Button may stick in the depressed position. Engineers have designed new replacement parts that will prevent the Button from Sticking.
Oceanic asks that all owners of Oceanic BCs that have Reliant Inflators return them to an Authorized Oceani! c Dealer for a retrofit at no charge.
WARNING: Do Not Continue Use of the BC or attempt to disassemble any components of the Inflator. Take the BC with Inflator to your nearest Authorized Oceanic Dealer for inspection and service. Only Authorized Oceanic Dealers and their trained service technicians must perform this retrofit. Non-authorized personnel who attempt the retrofit procedure risk voiding the product's warranty and rendering the product dangerously unsafe for normal SCUBA use.
http://www.oceanicww.com/2004/pdf/OCE_Consumer_Notice_062404.pdf
A picture of the power inflator is on this page.
Doc. No. 12-2647 (6/24/04)
Shadow Divers Book Review
Book Review - BOOKS OF THE TIMES |
'SHADOW DIVERS' June 24, 2004
Bones Amid the China in a Sub at the Bottom of the Atlantic
By JANET MASLIN
SHADOW DIVERS
The True Adventure of Two Americans Who Risked Everything to Solve One of the Last Mysteries of World War II
By Robert Kurson
Illustrated. 375 pages. Random House. $26.95.
The story told in Robert Kurson's new book features undersea thrills, a gripping mystery, incredible discoveries, true-blue friendship, life-or-death crises and history unfolding before the reader's eyes. In
terms of finding the right material, writers of adventure nonfiction just don't get any luckier than this.
"Shadow Divers" would work on those ingredients alone. But it also happens to be written with great you-are-there intensity and dynamic verve. "It is one thing, wreck divers will tell you, to slither in near-total darkness through a shipwreck's twisted, broken mazes, each room a potential trap of swirling silt and collapsing structure," Mr. Kurson writes with typical brio. "It is another to do so without knowing that someone did it before you and lived."
Forget whatever you know about deep-sea exploration. Mr. Kurson's reporting emphasizes the unusual, even if the book's two heroes find themselves remembering the standard music from "Das Boot" at important moments. They are John Chatterton and Richie Kohler, described by the author as his "business partners in the writing of this book." To the credit of all three, "Shadow Divers" never has the ring of a vanity project or authorized version.
The point at which this story really begins is 1991, when a fellow diver raises his palms and shrugs his shoulders at Mr. Chatterton: the clearest way of asking "what's up?" while underwater. Mr. Chatterton takes out a slate and writes three destiny-changing letters: SUB. Off the coast of New Jersey, he has just seen a torpedo on the ocean floor and found the vessel that it came from. As he tells himself, "this shape is unlike any other shape in the world."
Mr. Chatterton is part of a relic-seeking diving culture. It is made up of tough men who can go wild with excitement over finding pewter sherbet dishes in the wreckage of a famous ocean liner. Among the many undersea perils described here, not the least is the mental condition that makes a man china-crazy. "He knows that it is narcosis talking when, after recovering six dishes, he sees a seventh and thinks, `I can't live with myself if someone else gets that dish,' " Mr. Kurson explains.
Neither Mr. Chatterton, the maverick grandson of a United States rear admiral, nor Mr. Kohler, who as a boy wrapped his G.I. Joes in aluminum foil because he wanted to be an astronaut, is a detective or a historian. But when they meet over the discovery of this rogue submarine, they become a team of fanatical researchers trying to identify their find. Much of the work goes on underwater, as they look for clues to the sub's origins and explore it in ever greater detail. But for all its aquatic action, this is
a pulse-quickening real-life thriller that has no trouble generating excitement on dry land.
Through their remarkable feats of discovery, these two learn that not even established historical records can be trusted. "Unless a person was willing, as Chatterton and Kohler were, to ditch work and sneak off to Washington," Mr. Kurson writes, "chisel away at mountains of opaque original documents, sleep in fleabag motels, eat street-vendor hot dogs and run outside every two hours to shovel quarters into a parking meter, he would presume the history books to be correct." These two aren't Woodward
and Bernstein with air tanks. But there are times when "Shadow Divers" makes them seem that way.
Eventually, in the bizarre world where "nine-foot doorways become two-foot doorways," the divers discover that not all the white objects they find are submarine china bearing the insignia of the Third Reich. Some are human bones. And "Shadow Divers" switches gears to offer an idea of who went down
on the fallen sub and what their last days were like. Mr. Kurson uses letters, interviews and the story of one guilt-stricken but lucky German crew member (yanked off the sub at the last minute for medical reasons) to construct these scenes without embroidering the truth.
At one point, the book visits a submarine buff who wears an Iron Cross and a German sailor's uniform. This man has a female mannequin that he calls Eva, as in Braun. But the book also winds up describing teenage German sailors trapped during the last days of World War II, realizing they will never come home.
In the end, Mr. Kurson makes their destruction palpable while also capturing the era of the U-boat threat with chilling authenticity. The book's history ranges vividly from the blimp-versus-submarine battles of the early war years to the so-called Sour Pickle Time, when German submarines became sitting ducks for Allied forces.
"Shadow Divers" combines this overview with the idiosyncrasies and anecdotes that make Mr. Chatterton and Mr. Kohler such three-dimensional figures. Even the secondary players in the divers' world manage to spring off the page; for instance, there is the onetime star now drinking himself
to death, as "his shoulder blades became spires on his emaciated frame, his jaundiced skin and stringy hair a goulash of self-abandon."
Mr. Kurson even illustrates the toll that a diving obsession can take on the men's marriages, as when Mr. Kohler tries in vain to get along with his wife: "Summoning facial muscles he'd never known he owned, he smiled as Felicia announced vacation plans to Disney World." Needless to say, no
theme park can compete with the thrills and chills of Mr. Kohler's real life.
Only occasionally does the book go overboard. "This is why I dive, Richie," Mr. Chatterton tells his partner at a dramatic juncture. "This is the art." Some day "Shadow Divers" will make a terrific movie, especially if it loses that movie line.
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/24/books/24MASL.html?
San Diego Bomber Crash on Deep Sea Detectives
Dan Brown sent this in:
- - -
Bomber crash in '52 may be TV show topic
San Diego UNION-TRIBUNE by Diane Bell
June 22, 2004
Deep-sea diver Steve Donathan made it his mission a few years ago to find and explore the remains of a B-36 bomber that plummeted into the ocean off Mission Beach on Aug. 5, 1952. Six of the eight civilian crew members jumped from the burning plane and survived, a seventh drowned and pilot Dave Franks was never seen again.
In the days following the crash, military divers retrieved parts of the B-36 from a broad debris field but eventually aborted their salvage efforts as too dangerous.
Nearly 50 years later, Donathan, a Loma Portal dive instructor, undertook his own search. He pinpointed a likely location after considerable research and consultation with eyewitnesses, including Myron Smith, who was 15 when he saw the crash from the boardwalk at South Mission Beach. In his hunt, Donathan crisscrossed a patch of ocean about three miles from shore. Previously, in 57 feet of water near La Jolla's Bird Rock, he had discovered a jet engine that had fallen off the bomber's right wing.
The search Using sonar and underwater drop cameras, Donathan finally found what he was looking for in about 260 feet of water. The unmistakable image of the tail of the 162-foot-long plane rose like a ghostly cross out of the seabed. After charting the location, he returned to explore the wreck. At this
depth, each dive allows only 20 minutes for exploration.
What Donathan found was a hunk of crumpled, twisted metal encrusted with marine life. He brought up a small patch of the aircraft's "skin" to prove he had located it. But he guarded the news of his discovery for fear scavengers might desecrate the deep-sea tomb.
Last week, however, Donathan broke his silence. He led Dan Crowell, a veteran videographer for several of The History Channel's "Deep Sea Detectives" episodes, to the wreck. Diving with them was Joel Silverstein, an experienced underwater explorer who has visited what remains of the Monitor gunship in 230 feet of water and the sunken ocean liner Andrea Doria. The divers filmed the B-36. The story of the bomber and the mystery surrounding its crash may become the subject of an upcoming episode.
Donathan also is hopeful that publicity will inspire steps to guard the wreck. He has shared his findings with the military and with Scripps Institution of Oceanography.
The last test flight The B-36 had undergone modifications at Convair's San Diego plant. It was returning from a test flight before being turned over to the U.S. Air Force. As the bomber flew southeast down the coast near La Jolla, an engine caught fire. Flames quickly engulfed one wing, then spread across the
entire plane. Franks banked his disabled craft away from shore and headed out to sea, presumably to avoid plowing into homes. The cause of the crash was never proved, but the fire was believed to have
emanated from an engine alternator that overheated and ignited its magnesium alloy housing.
"The wing went up like tissue paper," recalls Smith, now a retired CHP officer. He saw the first engine drop off just north of La Jolla's Tourmaline Canyon. Then he watched, frozen, as the crippled plane neared the South Mission Beach jetty before the pilot banked and headed out to sea. "He was a brave, brave man," says Smith. "When he hit the water, there was a big ball of fire that burned ferociously for a couple of minutes. Then it was gone."
No one is left The last surviving crew member, second engineer Don Maxion, died 1½ years ago. Donathan escorted Maxion's widow and family members to the crash site, where they scattered some of his ashes. Donathan also entombed some inside the plane. (Union-Tribune staff writer Mark Sauer interviewed Maxion for a story about the crash on its 50th anniversary in 2002.)
On the same day – June 13 – that Donathan and the video team were 267 feet deep visiting the B-36 site, memorial services were being held atop Mount Soledad for Dave Dixon. The La Jolla man would have been on that doomed aircraft during its final test run but for a last-minute change of plans.
"He was scheduled to go on that flight," recalls the engineer's widow, Anne Dixon. "I was very grateful he wasn't on the plane that day."
NJ Eating Fish & Crabs Advisories - 2004
The 2004 Guide to Health Advisories for Eating Fish and Crabs Caught in New Jersey Waters has been posted on the DEP website at the following link:
http://www.state.nj.us/dep/dsr/njmainfish.htm
This booklet combines all the consumption advisories related to Mercury, PCB and Dioxin that were formally listed in several publications.
Peggy's notes:
The booklet is an Adobe pdf file - 23 pages
http://www.state.nj.us/dep/dsr/FishAdvisoryBrochure%20Final.pdf
The webpage at the top has links to other local states consumption advisories.
Alaska Divers can collect artifacts!
>From Peter Hess - and his comment: 'State waited too long to assert rights to 1929 shipwreck'
- - -
SS ALEUTIAN: Discoverer to go ahead with dive trips; removal of artifacts allowed.
By SHEILA TOOMEY
Anchorage Daily News (Published: June 17, 2004)
The state has no rights to a sunken ship discovered off Kodiak because state lawyers waited too long to assert a claim, a federal magistrate has concluded in a dispute over the remains of the SS Aleutian, a 375-foot steamship lost 75 years ago near the town of Larson Bay.
The Aleutian sank on May 26, 1929, in 200 feet of water after hitting a submerged rock in Uyak Bay.
Divers with Shoreline Adventures LLC found the wreck in August 2002. The company claims the Aleutian is of little historic value but will be a great draw for a high-end tourist diving enterprise.
The state disagrees about the ship's historic value and sought to get title to the wreck under a 1987 law that grants ownership to states of abandoned shipwrecks imbedded in submerged state lands.
The real issue, according to both sides, is the fate of surviving items on the wreck, like dishes, lamps and other artifacts. Shoreline wants to let its customers bring them up, document them, preserve them and eventually take some of them home. The company has hired an archaeologist to develop a removal
plan and supervise the recovery.
The state says the ship is on state land and belongs to the people of Alaska. Assistant attorney general John Baker argued that nothing should be removed from the wreck except under the supervision of an archaeologist with a state permit and a state approved removal plan. The head of the state office of history and archaeology said the Shoreline plan is inadequate.
Shoreline attorney Peter Hess said the ship may be on state land but it was never legally abandoned by the insurance company that owns it, so the state has no legal claim.
In his decision, Magistrate Harry Branson did not decide if the state has a valid ownership claim. Instead he concluded that the state failed to make its legal claims in a timely manner, so has lost its chance to dispute Shoreline.
But Branson said in his decision that the state may be able to exercise some regulatory muscle over diving on the wreck. Baker, the state attorney, noted at a court hearing last month that there may still be some fuel oil trapped in the wreck.
The state is considering its options in light of Branson's ruling, Baker said Wednesday, including an appeal of the decision to a higher court.
Meanwhile, Shoreline is continuing with its diving tour plans, said Steve Lloyd, a Shoreline partner. A couple of people dove the Aleutian in May and a group from the East Coast is scheduled to dive in July, he said. People signing up need special deep water training and generally have experience on other
sunken ships, like the Andrea Doria, which sank off the coast of Massachusetts in 1956, he said. Divers are especially attracted to the Aleutian because it is a newly discovered wreck.
Divers are bringing up artifacts, like dishes, after photographing and documenting them, Lloyd said. They have not taken anything home because everything has to be conserved by being soaked for months in fresh water, he said.
The fight over the Aleutian mirrors an old tension between adventurers and treasure hunters who search for shipwrecks, often at great expense and peril, and historians who are concerned about preventing rare remnants of cultural history from displacement and destruction, or from vanishing into the marketplace.
Shoreline first filed a legal salvage claim to the Aleutian in August 2003. At that time it also talked to the state about the discovery and gave the state a copy of the court papers. Those papers clearly noted that Shoreline was seeking "exclusive title, ownership and possession of the artifacts" recovered
from the shipwreck," Branson said in his order, dated June 10.
The state failed to express any interest in the fate of the wreck until six months later, on March 3, 2004, the same day Branson issued a final judgment awarding Shoreline salvage rights.
Traditionally, people who find a shipwreck are entitled to be paid for their work, either by the ship owner or by a court awarding them title to the ship and its cargo. The Abandoned Shipwreck Act of 1987 has placed some restrictions on the old ways, but Shoreline argues that the act doesn't apply to the Aleutian.
Still, Lloyd said, Shoreline hopes to work something out with the state, "some common ground, a way we can work together, in a context other than the state just telling us what to do. ... We want our work to be respected. ... We feel like we're temporary caretakers of the artifacts."
Freedom to Fish out of Committee
Fishing access measure passes first hurdle Published in the Asbury Park Press 6/08/04
by John Geiser
New Jersey saltwater fishermen are not going to lose the Shrewsbury Rocks or any other fishing ground because of an environmental whim, if the Freedom to Fish Act passes. The bill moved out of the Assembly Agriculture and Natural Resources Committee Thursday with a unanimous vote of support.
Herbert Moore Jr., director of government affairs for the Recreational Fishing Alliance, said the measure establishes important standards that must be met before any of the state's marine waters can be closed off to fishermen and designated no-fishing marine protected areas or marine reserves.
The bill was introduced by Assemblymen Robert J. Smith, D-Camden, and Steve Corodemus, R-Monmouth. "The entire committee recognized the need for reasonable, scientifically based standards that must be met before any of our state's marine waters can be closed off to fishermen," Moore said.
The bill was introduced in reaction to environmentalists' successful campaign to close important fishing grounds in California without scientific justification.
http://fishing.injersey.com/sports/fishing/story/0,20939,978643,00.html
Copyright © 1997-2003 IN Jersey.