In September 2015, I attended the Pacific Fishery Management Council in Sacramento to celebrate the Council’s completion of their first ecosystem-based amendment, three years in the making, which will protect unmanaged and unfished forage fish from directed commercial fishing. The Council approved regulations drafted by the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS), that identify a suite…
“Scoping Reveals Emerging Forage Fisheries” By Pam Lyons Gromen At the October 7th meeting of the Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council, we heard disturbing word from the region’s fishermen that a handful of unmanaged forage species are already the target of commercial fisheries, including round herring, Spanish sardine and chub mackerel, making real the threat of…
“There are still threats to big fish that need our attention” By Ken Hinman In this summer’s edition of the Wild Oceans Horizon, I wrote about the tremendous progress we’ve made securing measures to save big fish from indiscriminate fishing and aid in the recovery of billfish, bluefin tuna and oceanic sharks. Today, large areas…
New Paper Outlines a More Natural Way to Fish in Wild Oceans To sustain life in the ocean while at the same time ensuring a healthy future for fishing at sea, we need to fish as part of the natural system, as one among many predators, argues a new white paper released today by the…
“We Need Wisdom and Time to Understand the Best Way to Improve the Magnuson Act” By Ken Hinman “Nothing fails like success, because we don’t learn from it. We learn only from failure.” – Kenneth Boulding, economist The Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act of 1976 has been a success. The number of overfished stocks…