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January 19, 2003

Cummins Repower for California Seiner

Brothers Ciro and Joe Ferrigno fish the family-owned steel-hulled 70 by 24-foot purse seine boat Ferrigno Boy out of San Pedro in Southern California. The Ferrigno family had the table seiner built in Louisiana in the 1970s and have fished it on the Pacific coast ever since. In summer the target mackerel and tuna. In winter Ciro, the skipper, searches out the sardines and squid. While tuna was once the life blood of southern California fisheries, a number of factors have combined to change this. "We fish primarily, yellow fin and blue fin," explains Ferrigno, "But now that we can’t fish Mexican waters anymore and most of the canning has moved off shore, we haven’t done so well in the past three or four years."

Yellow fin is fetching around $500 per ton. But at these prices it is not economical to run too far off shore in search of the fish. In winter, when fishing is done closer in and at night for sardines and squid, financial returns can be better. "We go out each night and start by looking for squid which is getting around $400 per ton, but if there are no squid we look for sardines for which we get about $80.00 per ton. The sardines go to Australia for tuna feed or to off shore canneries."

The same 250 fathom long and 30 fathom deep 1 1/8-inch mesh seine net is used for both squid and sardines. For squid a light boat is brought in to attract the fish before the seiner sets, but southern California sardines are not attracted by lights. For this fishery Ferrigno uses his Wesmar 600 and 800 model sonars to find a school. The Ferrigno Boy will pack 140 tons so the closer they fish to home the better. "We don’t set so fast on the sardines as they are not spooky like mackerel and tuna," says Ferrigno.

Ciro and Joe, who is the boat’s engineer, took out a 1000 HP two-cycle diesel in the spring of 2002 and replaced it with a Cummins KTA38 M2 with a continuous rating of 1200 HP at 1800 RPM. The coupled the engine to a new Twin Disc gear with a 6.416:1 ratio. The engine was supplied through Cummins Cal-Pacific with the aide of one of the State of California’s environmental programs that funds the cost of IMO compliant replacement engines. "We run the engine between 1400 and 1600 RPM when we are travelling," he says, "Because with this much power the boat has pretty good speed. We chose the Cummins engine over the competition because we had a lot of different equipment like water and hydraulic pumps and we wanted reliability and a fully mechanical engine."

After nine months of continuous use, Ferrigno says of the engine, "The engine’s dimensions made for a beautiful fit in the engine room. It looks like it is going to be just fine for our needs over the long term."

For further information contact:

Ciro Ferrigno
1841 W 26th St
San Pedro,
CA 90732-4611
Phone: (310) 548-1989
Mobile: 310 962 7531
e-mail: tferrigno@earthlink.com

Mike Hoffman
Sales Manager
Cummins Cal_Pacific
1939 Deere Ave.,
Irvine, CA, 92606
Phone: 949 253 6036

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