News Articles

  • December 26, 2022

    CONGRESS FINALIZES THE END OF DRIFT GILLNETS IN U.S. OCEANS

    December 26, 2022 In the final days of 2022, Congress sunsetted the last remaining large mesh drift gillnet fishery in the United States.  At a time when few issues find consensus, the Driftnet Modernization and Bycatch Reduction Act found support from a diverse coalition of sport fishermen, recreational fishing businesses, ocean conservationists and wildlife advocates....
  • December 06, 2022

    Congress Has One More Chance to End Drift Gillnets

    December 5, 2022 In November, Wild Oceans joined 20 other sportfishing organization in asking Congress prioritize and approve the Driftnet Modernization and Bycatch Reduction Act (H.R. 404 and S. 273), again, as it did in the 116th Congress. This bipartisan legislation will finalize the transition of the California drift gillnet swordfish fishery, the last fishery...
  • February 25, 2022

    A Respite for Mako

    February 24, 2022 A Respite for Mako ICCAT INITIATES 2-YEAR RETENTION BAN In November, after more than a decade of warning about the vulnerability and decline of North Atlantic shortfin mako shark, international managers banned the retention of all shortfin mako sharks for two years. International scientists have advised that a moratorium is the most...
  • April 15, 2020

    Kick ’em while they’re down

    Continued Fishing During Decline Results in Deeper Sardine Collapse by Theresa Labriola April 15, 2020 Pacific sardine has undergone large population fluctuations for centuries and there is consensus that environmental conditions are the main factor driving the changes. However, maintaining continuous high volume fishing on the northern subpopulation of Pacific sardine when stock productivity is in rapid…

  • September 27, 2019

    Short-Sighted

    Short Sighted – NOAA’ s Push for More Longlines Jeopardizes Long-term Conservation Gains by Theresa Labriola   In the past two years, the gatekeepers of our public trust resources have been pursuing an aggressive agenda of increased exploitation that has reached the ocean. When Wilbur Ross was appointed Commerce Department Secretary, he announced a goal…

  • August 27, 2019

    A Change In Leadership At Wild Oceans

    Long-time Leader Hinman Retires, Kramer Steps In Waterford, VA – August 27, 2019 – After 41 years at the helm, Wild Oceans President Ken Hinman will be stepping down on September 30, 2019.  Replacing him in the position, Wild Oceans Board of Directors has recruited veteran nonprofit leader Rob Kramer, former President of the International Game Fish…

  • April 21, 2016

    Big Victory for Little Fish

    Feds Finalize Ban on New West Coast Forage Fisheries By Theresa Labriola –  For more than a decade Wild Oceans has been a champion for a broader ecosystem approach to managing marine fisheries beginning with protections of predator-prey relationships. On April 4, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) issued the Final Rule protecting dozens of prey, or…

  • April 21, 2016

    The Spring 2016 Wild Oceans Horizon is Here!

    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…

  • February 16, 2016

    “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 or rapid depth changes. But…