Category: Councils
Policy Underway for Unmanaged Mid-Atlantic Forage Fisheries
Wild Oceans has for the last six years been engaged in ensuring strong implementation of the Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council's (Council) Unmanaged Forage Omnibus Amendment (UFOA). We did not have to wait long for a challenge to this crucial safeguard for Atlantic coast forage species: in 2021, fisheries managers received ...
Diverse Coalition Supports Keeping Longlines Out of California
24 local and national recreational leaders tell the Pacific Fishery Management Council to keep longlines out of west coast ports Next Tuesday, November 19, the Pacific Fishery Management Council is meeting in Costa Mesa, CA to revisit a plan to permit a California based longline fishery. While we all support ...
NOAA Fisheries Cuts Safety Net for Pacific Whales and Sea Turtles
by Theresa Labriola For more than forty years, California fishermen have used mile-long drift gillnets to catch thresher shark and swordfish, a period during which most of the world banned drift netting, including off the east coast of the United States. That’s because driftnets indiscriminately entangle any large animal they encounter, ...
Pacific Council Corrects Course on Buoy Gear
by Theresa Labriola In September, the Pacific Fishery Management Council reversed an earlier decision to postpone permitting buoy gear in the swordfish fishery in favor of more research. Changing its mind, the Council has now decided to pursue authorization because five years of research already tells us that this new, ...
Pacific Council “Flip-Flops” on Greener Gear
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 ...
“Ocean Planning” Offers Anglers An Opportunity We Should Take
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 ...
Watching for Gray Whales Also Means Keeping an Eye on Ocean Health
By Theresa Labriola – 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 ...
Pacific Council Finishes Precautionary Plan to Protect Unmanaged Forage
By Theresa Labriola – In September 2015, I attended the Pacific Fishery Management Council in Sacramento to celebrate the Council’s completion of their first ecosystem-based amendment, three years in the making, which will protect unmanaged and unfished forage fish from directed commercial fishing. The Council approved regulations drafted by the National Marine ...
Mid-Atlantic Moves to Safeguard Unprotected Forage Base
“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, ...
Pacific Council Finishes Precautionary Plan to Protect Unmanaged Forage
In September 2015, I attended the Pacific Fishery Management Council in Sacramento to celebrate the Council’s completion of their first ecosystem-based amendment, three years in the making, which will protect unmanaged and unfished forage fish from directed commercial fishing. The Council approved regulations drafted by the National Marine Fisheries Service ...
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