Tag Archives: Wild Oceans

  • 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…

  • December 06, 2019

    Press Release: Sportfishing Community Successfully Halts Expanding Longlines On The West Coast

    For Immediate Release: Sportfishing Community Successfully Halts Expanding Longlines On The West Coast November 22, 2019 – This week, in a win for the sportfishing community, the Pacific Fisheries Management Council voted to not proceed with consideration of an amendment that would authorize shallow-set longline gear in West Coast highly migratory species. “As leaders in…

  • 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…

  • July 22, 2019

    3. Meeting Resistance

    In the first two parts of this series I described how the 2010 Atlantic menhaden stock assessment was scrapped after it triggered the first-ever catch restrictions on the menhaden fishery and replaced with one that allowed catches to increase.  Now we begin to look at why. In a paper presented to the American Fisheries Society...
  • November 30, 2018

    2. Losing Confidence

    I started following and attending Atlantic menhaden stock assessments on a regular basis in 1999.  That same year, as a member of the National Ecosystem Principles Advisory Panel, I’d helped write the panel’s Report to Congress, Ecosystem-Based Fishery Management, in which we’d recommended that a first important step toward EBFM would be considering predator-prey relationships...
  • November 05, 2018

    1. When Everything Changed

    Confirmation bias is a tendency to search for or interpret information in a way that confirms one’s preconceptions. – Science Daily Up until about eight years ago, the science was considered sound enough to declare Atlantic menhaden “not overfished” and thereby reject repeated calls by anglers and environmentalists to regulate the catch of what many...
  • September 28, 2018

    Press Release: California Modernizes Swordfish Fishery

    For Immediate Release: California Modernizes Swordfish Fishery California to move U.S. swordfish fishery towards more sustainable gear, aided by public-private partnerships Waterford, VA – September 27, 2018 – Today, Governor Brown signed a Bill (SB1017) to end commercial drift gillnet fishing and encourage a transition to innovative, more sustainable fishing gear. His action aligns the California…

  • September 17, 2018

    President Signs Billfish Conservation Act II

    August 2, 2018.  President Donald Trump today signed into law HR 4528, bipartisan legislation to amend the Billfish Conservation Act to clarify that Pacific billfish exempted from the 2012 law’s federal no-sale provision must be sold locally in Hawaii and Pacific island territories (Guam, Samoa, etc.).  In effect, it achieves the original BCA’s intent to outlaw…

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