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…
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…
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,…
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 (NMFS), that identify a suite…