Blog

  • October 15, 2019

    Help Herring Over the Final Hurdle

    Let NMFS Know that You Support Measures to Protect Atlantic Herring’s Role as Forage DEADLINE: October 21 Last fall, the New England Fishery Management Council adopted groundbreaking measures to conserve Atlantic herring and safeguard its role as prey.  Humpback whales, porpoises, seals, puffins, terns, tuna, striped bass, cod, pollock and haddock are just a few…

  • September 30, 2019

    Ocean View: The Summing Up

    I don’t much like the word “retire.”  It brings to mind turning out the lights and going to sleep.  I’m not, far from it.  But after more than 41 years with Wild Oceans (nee NCMC), the time is right to pass on the leadership of the organization to someone new. I’ve been thinking of those…

  • September 27, 2019

    “I am Wild Oceans” – Ken Hinman

    Ken Hinman. Wild Oceans President.

    Our history – Wild Oceans’ and my own – is the history of marine fish conservation in America.  We grew up together – quite literally.  It’s been a 40 year journey, filled with challenges and opportunities, and I’d like to think that together we’ve changed the way we think about and treat the ocean and all its wild creatures.

  • July 22, 2019

    Ocean View

    Is the menhaden fishery certifiably “sustainable”?  Not yet it isn’t.

  • July 22, 2019

    3. Meeting Resistance

    In the first two parts of this series I described how the 2010 Atlantic menhaden stock assessment was scrapped after it triggered the first-ever catch restrictions on the menhaden fishery and replaced with one that allowed catches to increase.  Now we begin to look at why. In a paper presented to the American Fisheries Society...
  • April 22, 2019

    Mid-Atlantic Council Takes on Management of Emerging Chub Mackerel Fishery

    Mid-Atlantic Council Takes on Management of Emerging Fishery On March 7th, The Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council voted to bring chub mackerel into the existing fishery management plan (FMP) for Atlantic mackerel, longfin squid, shortfin squid and butterfish.  Wild Oceans supported the Council’s decision, emphasizing that chub mackerel, like the other species in the FMP, are...
  • November 30, 2018

    2. Losing Confidence

    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 EBFM would be considering predator-prey relationships...
  • November 05, 2018

    1. When Everything Changed

    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 of what many...
  • October 26, 2018

    Fighting Pollution for a Pristine Ocean

    Special to Wild Oceans, November 2018 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...
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