Blog

  • November 30, 2018

    2. Losing Confidence

    Read Pt. 1 November 30, 2018 I started following and attending Atlantic menhaden stock assessments on a regular basis in 1999.  That same year, as a member of the National Ecosystem Principles Advisory Panel, I’d helped write the panel’s Report to Congress, Ecosystem-Based Fishery Management, in which we’d recommended that a first important step toward...
  • November 05, 2018

    1. When Everything Changed

    November 1, 2018 Confirmation bias is a tendency to search for or interpret information in a way that confirms one’s preconceptions. – Science Daily Up until about eight years ago, the science was considered sound enough to declare Atlantic menhaden “not overfished” and thereby reject repeated calls by anglers and environmentalists to regulate the catch...
  • October 26, 2018

    Fighting Pollution for a Pristine Ocean

    Scuba diving is perhaps the greatest adventure in the world. Where else can you come face to face with creatures from your most fanciful dreams? As divers, we fly through the water like majestic birds, riding the ocean currents that bring life and beauty to the entire world. One of my favorite parts of scuba...
  • October 18, 2018

    A Sea of Plastic

    The following story was originally published in the Wild Oceans Horizon newsletter in spring of 2017. (Issue No. 152) A Sea of Plastic About 30 years ago, while I was researching an article for Marlin magazine, “Plastics Plague Ocean Life,” an angler fishing a Texas tournament landed a marlin with a plastic ring from a...
  • October 18, 2018

    Time to Move Forward – FORAGE FIRST

    Below is Ken Hinman’s introduction to the 2004 report, Taking the Bait: Are America’s Fisheries Out-competing Predators for their Prey?  Since publication of that report, researched and written by Executive Director Pam Lyons Gromen, Wild Oceans (then NCMC) has helped put forage fish conservation at the center of today’s national ocean agenda.  We’ve made significant…

  • October 01, 2018

    Victory for Atlantic Herring

    Fed upon by a long list of ocean wildlife from whales to seabirds to tuna, Atlantic herring is the linchpin holding together the food web in New England waters.  On September 25th at its meeting in Plymouth, Massachusetts, the New England Fishery Management Council took groundbreaking action to better manage Atlantic sea herring and to...
  • September 28, 2018

    Press Release: California Modernizes Swordfish Fishery

    For Immediate Release: California Modernizes Swordfish Fishery California to move U.S. swordfish fishery towards more sustainable gear, aided by public-private partnerships Waterford, VA – September 27, 2018 – Today, Governor Brown signed a Bill (SB1017) to end commercial drift gillnet fishing and encourage a transition to innovative, more sustainable fishing gear. His action aligns the California…

  • September 17, 2018

    President Signs Billfish Conservation Act II

    August 2, 2018.  President Donald Trump today signed into law HR 4528, bipartisan legislation to amend the Billfish Conservation Act to clarify that Pacific billfish exempted from the 2012 law’s federal no-sale provision must be sold locally in Hawaii and Pacific island territories (Guam, Samoa, etc.).  In effect, it achieves the original BCA’s intent to outlaw…

  • September 04, 2018

    Press Release: Lawmakers Send Governor Brown Bill to End Drift Gillnets

    For Immediate Release: Lawmakers Send Governor Brown Bill to End Drift Gillnets New legislation will improve marine biodiversity and promote innovative new fishing gear Theresa Labriola, Pacific Program Director 541.490.2411 www.wildoceans.org Waterford, VA – August 31, 2018 – The California legislature voted overwhelmingly in favor of a Bill to end commercial drift gillnet fishing and…

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