Tag archives for overfishing
Posted by Note: This is a special post coauthored by Peter Baker and Lee Crockett As an editorial in the Boston Globe observed, things did not look good for the coming fishing season. Fishermen were “returning from three or four days’ hauling on Georges Bank with near-empty holds.” And while other regions of the country were successfully…
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I was honored to be asked to speak at the Caribbean Challenge Initiative’s Summit of Political and Business Leaders, which took place in the British Virgin Islands May 17th and 18th. (See AP story for an overview of the event.) I spoke from the heart, and here is what I said: At the risk of…
“The fish just aren’t there.” This simple observation from Cape Cod fisheries manager Tom Dempsey to the Associated Press sums up the challenge of decreasing cod populations. Recent scientific studies estimate that cod populations are at or near record lows. But this serious problem has not stopped the New England Fishery Management Council from proposing…
Posted by Yes, I am lucky. I have been able to sail the waters of Eastern Indonesia over nearly 20 years, and I have dipped underwater, swimming around some incredible lagoons, reefs, and seamounts. When people ask me where to see some remote coasts I say, go anywhere east. Staring at a coastline from a boat anywhere…
Hi. My name is Ayana. I’m a marine biologist, and I’m thrilled to join National Geographic’s stellar group of ocean bloggers. Big shoes to fill. My plan is to use this space to share stories of what I have begun to call my “adventures in ocean conservation.” As Director of Science and Solutions at the Waitt…
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Recently, the owner of several sushi restaurants in Japan paid nearly $1.8 million U.S. dollars for a single bluefin tuna. Last year this same individual paid what was then a record price—about $ 740,000. With this year’s fish the man outdid—not to say outbid—himself. But presumably other bidders were pushing the price into orbit before…
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Over the past 20 years, scientists have been assembling compelling data that show the world’s oceans are in deep trouble. Once-abundant species are disappearing, habitats are being destroyed, and fisheries are collapsing across the globe (Jackson et al. 2001, Lotze et al. 2006). For example, studies estimate that biomass of tunas and billfish have decreased…
Species Missing in Action: Rare or Already Extinct?
Posted by Frederic Briand of The Mediterranean Science Commission (CIESM) in Ocean Views on October 22, 2012 
If we think for a minute about species driven to extinction during the course of human history, chances are most of us will come up with names of large, terrestrial species like the dodo, the mammoth or the Aurochs. And there are good reasons for that: in the past 500 years alone hundreds…
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Nobody likes bad news, and this is enough to make an ocean lover cry. A new study found that overfishing is worse than previous studies have suggested. What changed to reveal this sad conclusion? New methods allowed scientists to estimate the status of fisheries that were previously “status unknown.” Since these unknown fisheries make up…
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The following piece was originally published by the Center for American Progress. Earlier this week the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration released its annual report on the state of U.S. fisheries and overall, the news was fairly positive. U.S. fishermen caught 10.1 billion pounds of fish in 2011, up nearly 20 percent from 2010. They…
Today We Have a Lovely Sharkfin Soup to Go With Your MSC-Certified Lobster
Posted by Miguel Jorge of National Geographic's Ocean Initiative in Ocean Views on September 10, 2012 
Where do you go to foster dialogue and partnerships leading to an environmentally, socially sustainable seafood marketplace? Why, Hong Kong of course – the epicenter of demand-driven ocean destruction! A strange location for the 10th International Seafood Summit? No, actually it’s a brilliant and timely move on the part of SeaWeb, the conference organizers.…
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A few years ago a scientific survey was released that mapped out where fisheries were being depleted around the world. This was about the same time that pirates from Somalia achieved a large degree of prominence by seizing a cargo ship full of tanks, with news reports bemoaning how global shipping lanes brought cargo…
The race for the moral high ground in sustainable fishing is heating up here in the US. Things started getting hot back in April when supermarket chain Whole Foods announced it would stop selling seafood not certified as sustainable by the Marine Stewardship Council or red-listed by either the Monterey Bay Aquarium’s Seafood Watch Program…
Last week, the New York Times published a blog and an editorial recognizing the progress made in the management of U.S. ocean fisheries. Overall, more than 100 newspapers across the country have covered a promising new report from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) that I discussed in my most recent blog post. I want to follow up to make an…
This year’s purse-seine fishing for bluefin tuna in the Mediterranean Sea kicked off this week, but don’t blink or you might miss it. On Tuesday, May 15, large commercial purse-seine vessels with massive nets set out to catch literally tons of tuna by encircling entire schools of breeding bluefin. The season officially ends June 15,…
The newest reality TV stars aren’t college kids thrown together in a group house, or a couple who race around the world to win a million dollars. They are the men, and occasionally the women, who do the jobs that many of us didn’t even know existed: the axmen from the Pacific Northwest, the ice-road…
Within the next few weeks, alewife and blueback herring, collectively known as river herring, will begin their annual migration from coastal waters to their native rivers. The platinum-colored fish spend most of the year in the ocean, migrating to rivers to spawn each spring before returning to sea. River herring were once plentiful in Northeast…
Sometimes, an idea comes forward in Washington that actually brings together people who normally disagree. The Fisheries Investment and Regulatory Relief Act (FIRRA) of 2012 does that and more. This bipartisan bill would provide financial support to fishermen and improve management of our oceans. Restoring our depleted fish populations would create jobs, protect existing ones,…
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Centuries of overexploitation of fish and other marine resources — as well as invasion of fish from the Red Sea — have turned some formerly healthy ecosystems of the Mediterranean Sea into barren places, the National Geographic Society said in a news release.
Jud Crawford, science and policy manager of the Pew Environment Group’s Northeast Fisheries Program, is my guest author today. He is going to provide some important perspectives about the recent scientific assessment of Gulf of Maine cod. Many in New England were recently stunned by the news that the region’s prized codfish are in much deeper trouble than…
It’s hard to get politicians to agree on anything these days. But five years ago this month, President George W. Bush, flanked by Republican and Democratic members of Congress, signed the reauthorization of the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act (MSA). This moment of bipartisanship was good news for our nation’s marine species and those…
Note: This post is the first in a new blog series: The Bottom Line. Thanks for following along with my “Overfishing 101” series. As I mentioned in my last post, I’m kicking off 2012 with a new series, “The Bottom Line.” I’ll be covering more ground and broader fisheries-related topics and hope you’ll enjoy my…
Read the full “Overfishing 101″ series here. In October, I spent two days fishing off Montauk, N.Y. In fact, I was quite sore by the end of the second day after reeling in dozens of false albacore, bluefish, and striped bass. The success of the trip was due in part to the skill of my…
Global Fishing Communities Putting the Heat on Climate Change Talks
Posted by Wildlife Conservation Society on December 7, 2011 Political disagreements on how to address climate change continue, while in the real world, shifting weather patterns, increasing temperatures, and more acidic oceans indicate that climate change is having significant impacts on people around the world.
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Peter Benchley, author of the 1970s runaway bestseller that spawned the movie ‘Jaws’, famously regretted his portrayal of sharks in his fiction. With the hype around the book and movie, a whole generation learned when it comes to sharks, you “Don’t Go in the Water”. But who could blame them? You’ve seen images of sharks’…
