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…
WILL THE ASMFC SNATCH DEFEAT FROM THE JAWS OF VICTORY?” By Ken Hinman On Tuesday, May 5, a 15-state ASMFC Menhaden Management Board will decide the next steps in conserving “the most important fish in the sea,” based on the latest stock assessment; that is, whether to continue toward an ecosystems approach that protects menhaden’s…
New Menhaden Stock Assessment Highlights, Yet Again, the Need for Ecosystem Goals By Ken Hinman “We have all been here before.” – David Crosby, Déjà Vu The just-published 2015 Atlantic menhaden stock assessment says the species is not overfished and overfishing is not occurring. Okay, we’ve heard that before. But what does it mean, really? Well,…
by Pam Lyons Gromen In the Summer 2014 issue of the Wild Oceans Horizon, we reported on recent discoveries of coral communities in the cold, dark waters of the Atlantic’s offshore canyons, and the efforts of the Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council to protect these unique and important habitats. Packaged as Amendment 16 to the…