by Theresa Labriola When a politician changes heart over something that millions of others have changed their mind on and owns up to it, we call them “evolved.” But when the Pacific Fishery Management Council, led by California, changes course on authorizing deep set buoy gear (DSBG) despite overwhelming public support for transitioning away from…
Voice Your Support for a Strong Ocean Plan The Draft Mid-Atlantic Regional Ocean Action Plan has been released! Anglers and all stakeholders who value our oceans have a critical opportunity to weigh in to support a plan that conserves places of high productivity and diversity, places that are essential to the resilience and function of…
The National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) just took a huge step in preparing our ocean, fisheries and coastal communities for climate change. This type of foresight and required coordination is difficult, and hasn’t happened as often as it should in the past. The Western Regional Action Plan (WRAP) lays out why and how NFMS will…
by Ken Hinman, President, Wild Oceans June 7, 2016 BYCATCH IS THE NON-POINT POLLUTION OF FISHING. That’s what I called it in an article I wrote for Salt Water Sportsman 16 years ago, to make the point that you can’t stop it simply by putting a cap on landings. It leaks from thousands of vessels…
The Spring 2016 Wild Oceans Horizon As Wild Oceans staff members were assembling stories for this edition of the Horizon, we began to refer to it as “the people issue.” As president Ken Hinman writes in the cover story, “Every story in this issue of The Horizon is about people, specifically those people who care…
by Ken Hinman, Wild Oceans President Since passage of The Billfish Conservation Act of 2012, foreign imports of marlin and other billfish, estimated at up to 30,000 fish a year pre-BCA, have come to a halt, making it one more triumph in our ongoing efforts to protect these marvelous fish. One unresolved issue remains, however,…
by Capt. John McMurray, Owner/Operator of One More Cast Charters in Oceanside, New York If you’ve spent any real time offshore, you know that some spots are more “fishy” than others. To any fishermen worth his/her salt, that’s just a given. Often, a spot’s productivity is due to hard-bottom, structure or rapid depth changes. But…
It’s that time of year, when the gray whale migration peaks as they leave their northern Pacific feeding grounds for their breeding grounds in the warm lagoons of Baja California, Mexico. In December, I visited Granite Canyon Research Center, south of Monterey, CA, where the Southwest Fisheries Science Center conducts shore-based surveys of southbound gray whales.
By Theresa Labriola The Pacific Fishery Management Council recently took steps to clean up one of our nation’s dirtiest fisheries, the California drift gillnet fishery. The fleet deploys mile-long nets at night and retrieves them at dawn to sort through the catch of ocean fish, marine mammals and turtles. More than sixty percent of what the…