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Freezer ship to help fishermen target mackerel, herring fisheries

By David Sharp, Associated Press Writer | December 4, 2006
PORTLAND, Maine --A long-time fisherman who owns five trawlers is bringing to the city a 380-foot freezer ship that will allow fishermen to target New England's healthy herring and mackerel stocks.
American Freedom is due to arrive later this week in Portland Harbor after more than $24 million in upgrades at shipyards in Norway and Poland, according to Jim Odlin, president of American Pelagic Seafood, which owns the boat.

The freezer ship will allow smaller fishing boats to pursue offshore fisheries currently targeted by larger vessels, he said.
Odlin said his "mother ship" will provide an opportunity for struggling operators of trawlers that target cod and haddock to supplement their incomes by catching and offloading high-volume fish that are plentiful.
"That may be enough to get them over the top so they'll continue to have a viable business," Odlin said Monday.
American Freedom, which left Europe two weeks ago, will utilize fish caught by about 20 vessels, Odlin said.
Two or three of Odlin's five trawlers will help support the operation, and the rest of the fish will come from independent vessels that aren't equipped to catch and refrigerate large quantities of fish, he said.
It'll be the first mother ship operation in four or five years in New England waters, and the first U.S.-flagged operation, he said.
In the past, Russian factory ships have partnered with local trawlers but those operations ended as onshore processing operations grew, said Lori Steele, fishery analyst with the New England Fishery Management Council.
The herring stocks, in particular, have been at record levels in recent years after recovering from a collapse in the 1960s, she said.
Odlin said both fisheries are healthy with only 35 to 40 percent of the annual quotas for offshore herring and mackerel being caught.
The problem is that currently only large boats -- from 100 to 150 feet long -- are capable of landing large quantities of herring and keeping them refrigerated at sea to maintain quality until they return to port, he said.
Fishing boats between 70 and 100 feet long that previously couldn't target the fish can do so if they offload at sea, he said. All of the five trawlers operated by Odlin's Atlantic Trawlers are in the 85- to 100-foot range.
Although its home port will be Portland, American Freedom may also offload fish in Boston, New Bedford and possibly ports in the Chesapeake.
The herring and mackerel, which will be frozen whole, will be shipped to fast-growing markets of Africa and Eastern Europe, Odlin said.
The freezer ship will have a capacity of 400 tons of fish a day caught at Georges Bank and the region south of Cape Cod, Steele said. Fishermen can target fish in parts of the Gulf of Maine, but those fish cannot be offloaded at sea, she said.

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