NPR: How high fuel costs are affecting fishermen

Source: http://www.turnmaineblue.com/showDiary.do?diaryId=...

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This evening, National Public Radio had this report about how high fuel costs are affecting fishermen, and it features those that ply the waters from Maine:

Nobody enjoys filling up his gas tank these days. But it could be worse - you could be a fisherman. The men and women who catch the cod, swordfish and salmon that we eat have to run their engines around the clock when they are at sea. And when they’re pushing 60-foot-long steel ships through the water with 500-horsepower diesel motors, fuel prices are a heavy blow.
The expense is driving some fishermen out of business.
At a harbor in Saco, Maine, Craig Pendleton motors his 45-foot commercial fishing boat, the Ocean Spray, up to the pier.
This boat drags big nets for bottom-feeding fish like flounder and cod. And Pendleton says the higher fuel costs are devastating. "It’s getting to the point where it’s really frustrating," he says. Pendleton says he’s not looking to make a fortune, "but I’d like to have something at the end of the week."
That’s no exaggeration. Fuel has become such a huge expense that in fishing harbors around New England, fishermen are having trouble making any money at all. Up the coast in Portland, Maine, boat owner Brian Pearce has just unloaded his catch of cod and other bottom-feeding fish from a three-day trip.

It is a complaint that many of us on the coast have heard from our friends and neighbors, and that is echoed but teamsters inland, who have seen diesel prices near five dollars a gallon, making it unprofitable for them to even haul the load.

And higher fuel costs will obviously affect the price of everything that we buy that has been shipped any great distance, whether by boat or truck.

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