Tag archives for fishing
Posted by Several months ago, I wrote about a study showing that Atlantic bluefin tuna were being caught at a rate much higher than scientists recommended and regulations allowed. Furthermore, fishermen were not reporting their catches to the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas (ICCAT), the body that manages tuna in the Atlantic Ocean. This underreporting undermines measures designed…
Posted by A North Pacific Bluefin tuna fetched 56.49m yen/$736,000 at Tsukiji fish market’s first tuna auction of the year. Bluefin stocks in the Atlantic and South Pacific are depleted to fractions of their original size thanks to overfishing driven primarily by the Japanese sushi market. Many of us, who may love sushi as much as the…
African Penguin Colony at the Edge of Extinction
Posted by Leon Marshall of Environmental Journalist, News Watch South African Contributor on November 28, 2011 
A colony of African penguins living and breeding on a small island off the southern tip of Africa is fighting an increasingly desperate battle for survival.
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A tiny fish in Lake Victoria is under a huge threat from overfishing and invasive species. NG Young Explorer Diana Sharpe describes her work to understand and protect the “mukene.”
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I’ve always loved fresh fish. As a chef, there’s nothing like cooking a striped bass or bluefish straight from the Chesapeake — watching as the skin darkens, caramelizes, and releases just a hint of the unmistakably sweet, yet salty, fragrance of the Bay. But as a sustainability advocate, I’ve also grown concerned about the health of a key food source for these and many other species along the Eastern seaboard — a small fish known as menhaden.
Posted by To truly convey what’s at stake in these unique deep-sea ecosystems, the Pew Environment Group recently put together a short video featuring many visually-stunning images of deep-sea life, as well as the barren aftermath left by high-seas bottom trawlers that have dragged their heavy nets and weights across the ocean floor. Scientists attest that this fishing method is the single most destructive fishing activity currently occurring on the high seas.
The Marshall Islands is now home to the world’s largest shark sanctuary, an area of the central Pacific Ocean four times the size of California, The Pew Environment Group confirmed in a news announcement today. (Read the full announcement.) The Washington-based conservation arm of The Pew Charitable Trusts, a nonprofit that works globally to establish…
Read the full “Overfishing 101″ series here. Atlantic bluefin tuna are one of the most popular fish in the world. Anglers fight for them, and love to tell tales of their epic battles. Scientists are enthralled by them, making this species one of the most studied in the ocean. And sushi lovers crave bluefin for…
Salmon in all their varieties are a great resource for humanity. But for the Peoples of the North Pacific the iconic fish also represent a critical heritage that goes back thousands of years. Plagued by overfishing, industrial pollution, and contamination of rivers, salmon are in trouble across their ancient habitat.
Read the full “Overfishing 101″ series here. Almost everyone has a friend or a relative who loves to tell the tale of the “big one” that got away. And more often than not, that fish grows larger and larger with every telling of the story. I have to admit, as an avid angler, I may…
In this video interview at the Seventh International Congress of Arctic Social Sciences (ICASS VII), held recently in Iceland, Sven Haakanson, executive director of the Alutiiq Museum, talks about how 7,500 years of history, language, and arts are being “repatriated” to Kodiak’s indigenous people.
NOTE: This is a guest post from Lee Crockett, Director of Federal Fisheries Policy at the Pew Environment Group This post is the seventh in a series, “Overfishing 101.” The entire series can be viewed here. I touched on fisheries science in my last post, but here I would like to take a more detailed look at the use…
NOTE: This is a guest post from Lee Crockett, Director of Federal Fisheries Policy at the Pew Environment Group This post is the sixth in a series, “Overfishing 101.” The entire series can be viewed here. As a lifelong angler, I’m the first to admit that fishing can inspire passionate arguments about where, when and how to fish.…
NOTE: This is a guest post from Lee Crockett, Director of Federal Fisheries Policy at the Pew Environment Group This post is the fifth in a series, “Overfishing 101.” The entire series can be viewed here. America’s ocean fish are an incredibly valuable resource. According to the most recent economic data from the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS),…
Note: This is the fourth post in a series, “Overfishing 101.” Read the previous posts here. Overfishing—taking fish from our oceans faster than they can reproduce—has plagued fisheries for decades. South Atlantic red snapper, for example, have been subject to overfishing since the 1960s. Congress first attempted to deal with this problem in 1976 when it passed…
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‘If the EU were only to consume fish from its own waters, it would run-out of fish on July 8th, making it wholly dependent on fish from elsewhere from July 9th’, says a new study by the New Economics Foundation. It’s time to start worrying about where we’ll get our fish in the not-so-distant future – and to do something about it.
Forget about the spurious benefits of eating shark fin soup, a traditional Chinese delicacy that is said to be responsible for the needless destruction of some 73 million sharks a year. In Palau, the first country in the world to proclaim a shark sanctuary, the sharks that frequent the Pacific island country’s reefs generate enormous financial benefits. Each reef shark may contribute benefits worth U.S.$2 million over its lifetime.
Note: This is the third post in a series, “Overfishing 101.” Read the previous posts here. My interest in the ocean began when I joined the Coast Guard at age 18. This was the start of a passion that led me to study marine science, work at the National Marine Fisheries Service and help promote…
NG Explorer’s Letter to The New York Times
Posted by Andrew Howley of NG Staff on April 25, 2011 By Enric Sala, NG Ocean Fellow The following post was originally published as a letter to the editor in The New York Times, April 20, 2011. In “Let Us Eat Fish” (Op-Ed, April 15), Ray Hilborn writes that studies showing a worldwide decline in fish stocks are exaggerated and that most fish stocks are stable.…
Skin Diver Tells His Full Story, 40 Years Later
Posted by Andrew Howley of NG Staff on April 18, 2011 By Clare Fieseler, NGS Young Explorer Grantee His back muscles are taut. Poised, and with perfect buoyancy, Villamar Godfrey is pictured yanking a 30-pound jewfish from a spectacular colony of elkhorn coral. Godfrey, now 77, stares at a grainy scanned image of page 127 from National Geographic’s January 1972 issue. “His name was Mike Long.…
In the second post of a special series to mark the 35th anniversary of the U.S. Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act, a law that is helping to rebuild America’s depleted ocean fish populations and ensure their long-term sustainability, Lee Crockett looks at some of the basics of why all Americans should care about how our fish are managed.
Three thousand square miles of Alaska’s Cook Inlet have been designated as critical habitat for the endangered Cook Inlet beluga whale, NOAA’s Marine Fisheries Service announced today. “Scientists estimate there are less than 350 Cook Inlet beluga whales left in the wild. This distinct population segment was listed as endangered in October 2008,” the Fisheries…
By Amanda Nickson and Julie Arner The whale shark is the largest fish in the ocean. A favorite of many nature lovers, a mature adult is roughly the size of a school bus – weighing more than 20 tons on average and measuring up to ten yards in length. This massive stature and the fact that…
Environmental activists were angry and dismayed at the decision by international fishing regulators today to essentially maintain the commercial harvesting of Atlantic bluefin tuna at current levels, which many scientists and conservationists consider unsustainable for the survival of the fish. Although the 48 member governments of the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas (ICCAT), meeting for ten…
Who will restore the ocean?
Posted by Ford Cochran on September 17, 2010 National Geographic Fellow Enric Sala explains why a healthy reef is a landscape of fear, how our perception of what’s “natural” in marine ecosystems has evolved, and what we can do to restore balance to the seas. By Ford Cochran National Geographic hosted a live recording of National Public Radio’s Talk of the Nation at…
