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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...

July 25, 2018

No Going Back

The National Marine Fisheries Service is questioning whether long-standing measures to minimize longline bycatch, such as time-area closures, are still needed.  The answer is most emphatically yes. No Going Back by Ken Hinman July 2018 The first meaningful action taken to reduce bycatch in the U.S. pelagic longline fisheries occurred in the year 2000 –...

July 24, 2018

The Year Looked Good on Paper

The following editorial appears in the Winter 2018 edition of The Wild Oceans Horizon.  Become a member to receive our newsletter on a regular basis. The Year Looked Good on Paper by Ken Hinman We did everything we could to get where we wanted to be.  But it turned out not to be enough. Three…

May 01, 2018

Congress Steps-Up To Bring California Swordfish Fishing Into the 21st Century

New legislation will improve marine resource conservation and promote innovative new fishing gear by Theresa Labriola Last Tuesday, Senators Feinstein (D-Calif.), Capito (R-W.Va.) and Harris (D-Calif.) introduced the Driftnet Modernization and Bycatch Reduction Act to phase out the use of mile-long drift gillnets in the eastern Pacific by 2020 and bring California swordfish fishing in-line with…

November 17, 2017

ECO-FAIL

Ecological Reference Points for Menhaden are Ready, But Menhaden Managers Are Not by Ken Hinman, November 17, 2017 Earlier this week, the ASMFC’s Menhaden Management Board, meeting in Baltimore to finalize Amendment 3 to its Atlantic Menhaden Management Plan, voted to wait at least another two years before adopting catch limits that account for the…

September 19, 2017

For Menhaden, Time to Act is Here and Now

Draft Amendment 3 to the Interstate Management Plan for Atlantic Menhaden Finally Offers a Way to Protect “The Most Important Fish in the Sea” by Ken Hinman In nature, you cannot do just one thing, as Walter Youngquist puts it, because everything is connected to everything else.  That’s why you can’t fish for Atlantic menhaden…

August 26, 2017

The Pacific Bluefin: Down But Not Out – Yet

With ESA Listing Denied, Attention Shifts Back to International Management Bodies by Ken Hinman The U.S. government earlier this month denied a petition to list Pacific bluefin tuna under the Endangered Species Act, citing recent international actions that may have stabilized the population and could, if continued, put bluefin on “a positive trajectory.” NOAA Fisheries,…