Blog

  • August 31, 2022

    Islesboro Event Highlights Wild Oceans’ History

    On July 31st, I traveled to Islesboro, Maine for an opportunity to share our organization’s story with local residents.  At the invitation of Wild Oceans Co-Chairs Peter Truslow and Stephanie Choate Oppenheimer, along with fellow board member Tim Chaote, who all reside on the island in the summer, former Wild Oceans President and current board...
  • February 25, 2022

    A Respite for Mako

    February 24, 2022 A Respite for Mako ICCAT INITIATES 2-YEAR RETENTION BAN In November, after more than a decade of warning about the vulnerability and decline of North Atlantic shortfin mako shark, international managers banned the retention of all shortfin mako sharks for two years. International scientists have advised that a moratorium is the most...
  • April 15, 2020

    Kick ’em while they’re down

    Continued Fishing During Decline Results in Deeper Sardine Collapse by Theresa Labriola April 15, 2020 Pacific sardine has undergone large population fluctuations for centuries and there is consensus that environmental conditions are the main factor driving the changes. However, maintaining continuous high volume fishing on the northern subpopulation of Pacific sardine when stock productivity is in rapid…

  • September 27, 2019

    Short-Sighted

    Short Sighted – NOAA’ s Push for More Longlines Jeopardizes Long-term Conservation Gains by Theresa Labriola   In the past two years, the gatekeepers of our public trust resources have been pursuing an aggressive agenda of increased exploitation that has reached the ocean. When Wilbur Ross was appointed Commerce Department Secretary, he announced a goal…

  • 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...
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