Ernest Hemingway's Cuba logs could be source for deep-sea fish data

"He was a fisherman," grandson Patrick Hemingway said, looking at the men gathered to greet him. "He considered them his brothers."

Along with a team of US researchers, Hemingway and his brother John were on a five-day mission to leverage their famous name to encourage closer ties between the United States and Cuba and, hopefully, open the way for scientists to gain access to the writer's fishing logs, a long-concealed and potentially valuable source of knowledge about the area's massive predatory game fish.

LINK (via:The Sydney Morning Herald)

Unfortunatley Cuba's National Cultural Heritage Council said that marine scientists on a tour with the author's grandsons wouldn't be able to see the authors fishing logs but will work to let researchers see them eventually.

LINK (via: ABC News)

Making it float

A history of the long drawn out war against waterlogged flies.

LINK (via:The Fishing Museum On-Line)

Howells: The Bamboo Rods and Fly Fishing Legacy of Gary H. Howells

Howells: the Bamboo Rod & Fly Fishing Legacy of Gary H. Howells by Joseph H. Beelart, Jr. is the saga of an American master craftsman whose bamboo fly rods are among the finest ever built.  It speaks of a man who transcended craft into art.  But this book is more than Howells life-long devotion to bamboo rods and fly fishing.  It is a memory of a wide San Francisco and Montana fly fishing circle during the last half of the 20^th century. 

LINK (via:Idaho State Journal)

A Defense of Fisherman

In 1901, the Saturday Evening Post printed former President Grover Cleveland's “Defense of Fishermen,” in which Cleveland rose to protect the honor of the American angler. Critics, he claimed, were unjustly accusing fishermen (there is no mention of fishing women) of  “certain shortcomings and faults”: laziness, profanity, and dishonesty.

LINK (via: The Saturday Evening Post)

The Boldt Decision - 39 years Later

On February 12, 1974, Federal Judge George Boldt issued his historic ruling reaffirming the rights of Washington's Indian tribes to fish in accustomed places. The "Boldt Decision" allocated 50 percent of the annual catch to treaty tribes and his ruling is still being litigated today in the court of public opinion.

Back to the River tells the story of the treaty rights struggle from pre-Boldt era to tribal and state co-management. The movie includes the voices and personal accounts of tribal fishers, leaders and others active in the treaty rights fishing struggle.

In 2004 the Seattle Times did story on the 30th anniversary of the Boldt Decision. The tag line on that piece was, the fish bonanza is over; now, preserving habitat is a paramount issue.

Nine years later and we're still in the same boat. 

You Dropped a Bomb on Me

While well known to anglers around the globe as a tropical fishing paradise, Christmas Island also played a starring role in the testing of the hydrogen bomb and subsequent efforts to ban nuclear testing.

Between 1957 and 1962, the island played involuntary host to 30 nuclear explosions conducted by the British and U.S. militaries. Code-named Operation Grapple, Britain’s tests at Christmas and neighboring Malden Island ranged from a 3,000-kiloton explosion 8,200 feet in the air and far out to sea, to a 24-kiloton balloon-suspended air burst over land. For reference the bomb dropped on Hiroshima had a yield of 15-kilotons.

For reasons of economy and logistics, the later bomb drops were carried out off Christmas Island itself rather than over the distant Malden Island, the eyewitness descriptions of theses tests and their aftermath is chilling.

A partial test ban treaty signed in 1963 put an end to testing in the area but the cleanup of debris and the question of radioctive contamination is still being debated today. It wasn't until 2007 that the British Ministry of Defense completed a clean-up operation and 3,500 tons of scrap vehicles and equipment were removed.

Thousands of serviceman who took part in the bomb tests sued the British Govermnent for compensation for illnesses they attribute to exposure to the radioactive fallout. In March of 2012 the British High Court ruled their suit could not go forward.

Janes Resture has a number of pages and photo galleries dedicated to the history of the Christmas Island bomb tests.