Fisheries

New management schemes needed to maintain stocks in fisheries worldwide -- A new paper by an international team of researchers argues that decision-makers and fishing organizations must recognize the growing role of recreational fishing and the potential pressures it places on fish stocks.

For environmental conflict and political drama, it’s hard to beat fishing. Almost all the fish consumed by developed countries comes from industrial fisheries, which generate not just a lot of revenue, but controversy over their impact, such as accidentally harming seabirds or scraping the sea floor. Meanwhile, recreational fishing usually escapes notice. Although it also has a large impact, both environmental and economic, amateur fishing is often ignored by regulators or swept under the same kind of rules as commercial fishing.

There are roughly five times as many recreational fishers as commercial fishers throughout the world. And yet, the needs and peculiarities of these recreational fishers have largely been ignored in international fisheries and conservation policy.

Three members of the state’s Congressional delegation — U.S. Rep. Joe Courtney, D-2nd District, and Sens. Richard Blumenthal and Chris Murphy — have announced that the Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council will be recommending changes to the management plan for summer flounder that will dramatically increase the quota for the state’s commercial fishermen.

The ocean off the West Coast is shifting from several years of unusually warm conditions, toward a cooler and more productive regime that may boost salmon returns and populations of other ocean predators, according to a new NOAA Fisheries report.

When the herring finally disappear, we’ll have only ourselves to blame.

PORTLAND, Maine (AP) — Maine’s cod fishery, once one of the most lucrative in the Northeast, has declined to the point that it had its least valuable year in more than a half-century in 2018.

The Pacific Fishery Management Council adopted three alternative season structures for 2019 ocean salmon fisheries off of Washington, Oregon and California today, Tuesday, March 12, 2019 for public review. The Council will make a final decision on salmon seasons at its meeting in Rohnert Park, California, on April 11-15.

SEATTLE—The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) is taking a fresh look at whether new fishing restrictions are needed to help prevent the extinction of endangered southern resident killer whales that frequent Puget Sound.

A Florida commercial and charter fisherman has pleaded guilty to animal cruelty charges and faces 10 days in jail over a video that shows him dragging a shark behind his boat at a high speed. The video went viral in the summer of 2017.

For the first time, famed music and culture festival South by Southwest (SXSW) in Austin, Texas, featured a panel on aquaculture dubbed “The Future of Food: Aquaculture” on 11 March.

Lobstermen’s Association president says fish devour young lobsters, calls for quota boost.

Developers of the fast-growing genetically engineered salmon first started the approval process with the United States (US) Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in 1995. In 2019, we are a bit closer to having the option of buying this fish for ourselves, as the FDA clears the final regulatory hurdle to allow sale of AquAdvantage salmon.

Ocean conditions are improving for salmon entering the ocean this year, several years after The Blob, an unusually warm water event that began forming in 2014, scientists announced Friday.

One out of five seafood samples taken from across the country, including Kansas, Missouri and Colorado, are mislabeled. That’s according to a study by Oceana, a nonprofit organization that promotes marine conservation.

Project builds on research that developed soy-based feeds for tuna aquaculture.

R.I. Fishery Advisory Board chairman doesn’t like settlement.

With the majority of American lobsters caught in Maine, the state's lobster fishermen could bear the brunt of changes in federal fishery regulations to save the endangered right whale.

Matagorda County Commissioners approve a proclamation in support of legislation to enable oyster mariculture in the Texas coastal waters.

MONROE, La. (The News-Star) - (3/3/19) According to our partners at The News-Star, the oyster dressing is safe this year. Since the Deepwater Horizon spill in 2010, 4 billion to 8.3 billion subtidal oysters were estimated to be lost across the Gulf coast. Many states are struggling.

MENDOCINO COUNTY, Calif. – Scientists and conservationists are reporting the return of spawning coho salmon to the upper reaches of a tributary of Big River, thanks to a four-year habitat restoration project led by Mendocino Land Trust in partnership with California Department of Fish and Wildlife and Jackson Demonstration State Forest.

Texas has one of the largest coastlines in the nation, but it is the only coastal state that does not have an organized commercial oyster farming industry.

If any doubt existed that Alabama has the best artificial reef program in the world, Chris Blankenship made an emphatic declaration last week that Alabama’s artificial reefs are unparalleled anywhere on the planet.