Fishing Back When

By Jessica Hathaway

2011— Mustang saves Ford: Bristol Bay setnet skipper Shannon Ford was bringing in her skiff with crewmen Don Ward and Tyler Schuldt in heavy weather when the skiff got hung up on another net, ooded and dumped the crew. Fortunately, they were all wearing Mustang PFDs.

Delta Marine in Seattle launches the 42-foot berglass purse seiner Alpha Centauri, powered by a Detroit Diesel.

A hovercraft, also called an air cushion vehicle, is scheduled to run six months of trials in Chesapeake Bay for the Coast Guard Rescue Station on Milford Haven between the Rappahannock and York rivers.

The crew of the Massachusetts-based Point Allerton Life Saving Station gathers with family of Joshua James, a celebrated lifesaver, to form his funeral cortege in 1902, complete with a horsedrawn lifeboat.

On the cover: Diving for urchins in Maine’s winter shery. Skipper Bimbo Carter loads a skiff with the catch from diver Ray Stevens before transferring the haul from the skiff to the lobster boat Miss Nancy out of Rockport, Maine.

Three major water-control structures form the backbone of Louisiana’s diversion plan to restore the proper salinities to valuable marshlands. The Bonnet Carre, Caernarvon and Davis Pond spillways will affect nearly 1.5 million acres.

Kodiak shing group launches 150-foot longliner Alaskan Leader out of Alabama.

NF announces our 2011 Highliners from the West Coast and Alaska:

Bill Webber Jr., an inventive and innovative salmon gillnetter from Cordova, Alaska; Dan Falvey, Sitka, Alaska-based salmon troller and blackcod longliner; and Larry Collins, a veteran San Francisco sherman who launched the San Francisco Community Fishing Association on Fishermen’s Wharf.

The wooden halibut schooner Tordenskjold celebrates 100 years of shing, having been built and launched by John Strand in Ballard, Wash., in 1911.