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.
“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…
“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…