Free Republic

October 5, 2009 - Alexandria, Va. – A sweeping oceans and Great Lakes management policy document proposed by the Obama Administration will have a significant impact on the sportfishing industry, America’s saltwater anglers and the nation’s coastal communities. The draft policy, the Interim Report of the Interagency Ocean Policy Task Force, issued on September 17, will govern federal Pacific and Atlantic Ocean waters and Great Lakes resource conservation and management and will coordinate these efforts among federal, state and local agencies. This past June, President Obama created the Interagency Ocean Policy Task Force, led by the Chair of the Council...

Obama White House to 60,000,000 Anglers: We Don't Need You Obama White House takes on 60,000,000 American anglers. (Hawaii Leisure) A recently released White House document could result in the closures of sport fishing in salt and freshwater areas.Shimano reported: Feds to 60 Million American Anglers: We don't need you A recently published administration document outlines a structure that could result in closures of sport fishing in salt and freshwater areas across America. The White House created an Interagency Oceans Policy Task Force in June and gave them only 90 days to develop a comprehensive federal policy for all U.S....

PORTLAND, Maine — A new Coast Guard rule has closed down fishing grounds around a remote Maine island following the discovery of unexploded bombs on the ocean bottom from when the Navy used the rocky outcropping as an aerial bombing range. The Coast Guard put the rule into effect last week. It establishes a safety zone banning mariners from the shallow lobster-rich waters around Seal Island.

(McDonald’s buys millions of pounds of hoki each year for Filet-O-Fish sandwiches. Now, conservationists say the New Zealand fish is being depleted.) Ever wonder what kind of fish end up in a Filet-O-Fish sandwich? The answer is usually hoki, a bug-eyed sea creature found deep in the Pacific waters of New Zealand. But it turns out that exporting millions of pounds of the fish each year -- McDonald’s alone at one time used 15 million pounds annually -- is depleting the hoki supply and pitting conservationists against commercial interests. “We have major concerns,” said Peter Trott, the fisheries program manager...

Entire populations of North American fish already are being affected by several emerging diseases, a problem that threatens to increase in the future with climate change and other stresses on aquatic ecosystems, according to a noted U.S. Geological Survey researcher giving an invited talk on this subject today at the Wildlife Disease Association conference in Blaine, Wash. “A generation ago, we couldn’t have imaged the explosive growth in disease issues facing many of our wild fish populations,” said Dr. Jim Winton, a fish disease specialist at the USGS Western Fisheries Research Center. “Most fish health research at that time was...

Lobster is a New England tradition often associated with luxury. These days, more people are able to tie up their bibs and melt down the butter because lobster prices have sunk to a new low. While this is great news for consumers, fishermen are forced to find new ways to make money. THE FISHERMAN Bernie Feeney is the president of the Massachusetts Lobstermen's Assocation. He's been fishing for 31 years and he still loves his job. "I love fishing, but I'm not crazy about the business at this point," he said. Since October, lobstermen have been trapped by the economic...

ANCHORAGE, Alaska — Yukon River smokehouses should be filled this summer with oil-rich strips of king salmon — long used by Alaska Natives as a high-energy food to get through the long Alaska winters. But they're mostly empty. The kings failed to show up, and not just in the Yukon. One Alaska river after another has been closed to king fishing this summer because significant numbers of fish failed to return to spawn. The dismally weak return follows weak runs last summer and poor runs in 2007, which also resulted in emergency fishing closures. "It is going to be a...

Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries biologists are preparing to eliminate a cluster of invasive fish known as tilapia that have been found in waters off Plaquemines Parish. Tilapia is a popular imported and farmed fish served in restaurants across the U.S. Native to Africa, the fish could devastate native species important to recreational and commercial fisheries, scientists fear. The Wildlife and Fisheries Commission declared an emergency Thursday, which will allow agents to kill tilapia in an isolated part of Plaquemines Parish. The process of poisoning the fish with heavy applications of a substance called rotenone will take about two...

UNITED NATIONS — Thirteen years after the world rallied to curb overfishing, most nations are failing to abide by the U.N.'s code of conduct for managing fisheries, scientists found. The U.S., Canada, Australia, Norway, Iceland and Namibia were the only nations that scored above a 60 percent compliance rate, the equivalent of a barely passing "D" grade, according to the marine scientists' research. The survey published online Wednesday and in the journal Nature on Thursday raises troubling questions about how the world's marine fisheries can continue to supply the main source of protein for many on the planet. "The overall...

Fish farming has had a bad rap, but will continue to grow quickly, may be the only way to meet rising demand for seafood and isn't necessarily an environmental problem, a U.S. scientist says. The catch from traditional fishing fisheries has remained about constant for 20 years, but production from aquaculture has risen 8.8 per cent per year since 1985, James S. Diana of the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor said in an assessment published Friday.

....and environmental leaders from northwest California went to Omaha to ask Buffett to tear down......buffett gives Billions to the Gates foundation.....

Six federally protected sea lions were apparently shot to death on the Columbia River as they lay in open traps put out to ensnare the animals, which eat endangered salmon. State and federal authorities are investigating. The discovery came one day after three elephant seals were found shot to death at a breeding ground in central California. Trapping will be suspended during the investigation, said Rick Hargrave, a spokesman for the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife who was at the scene Sunday.

State and federal authorities said they are investigating the deaths of six sea lions found dead at the Columbia River traps. They appeared to have been shot. The bodies of four California sea lions and two Steller sea lions were found at the traps early Sunday afternoon. There were two California sea lions and one Steller sea lion at each of two traps just below the Bonneville Dam. The Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife and federal investigators are treating the area as a crime scene. Both species of sea lion are federally protected but Oregon and Washington state are...

I 'm with Joyce Kilmer -- "I think that I shall never see/ A poem lovely as a tree." I'm even with city Commissioner Dan Saltzman, who recently waxed poetical before the Portland City Council on the "incredible" "show-stopping" trees growing in Portland. But before I could recall the last lines of Kilmer's poem -- "Poems are made by fools like me, / But only God can make a tree!" -- Saltzman went on to say something that's creepy and chilling: "It sometimes pains me to think that we have no ability to control their destiny -- that a private...

HORSETHIEF LAKE, Wash. -- Fidelia Andy was a 6-year-old happily running coffee to tribal fishermen at Celilo Falls when the federal government signed a deal with the tribes that flooded the falls and her family's home in the rising waters behind The Dalles Dam. On Friday, more than 50 years later, Andy and other leaders of four Northwest tribes finalized a new $900 million agreement with the federal government that they hope will begin to reverse the damage done by Columbia River system dams. "We Indians gave up so much in the past," Andy, a Yakama tribal leader and chairwoman...

Salmon fishing was banned along the West Coast for the first time in 160 years Thursday, a decision that is expected to have a devastating economic impact on fishermen, dozens of businesses, tourism and boating. Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez immediately declared a commercial fishery disaster, opening the door for Congress to appropriate money for anyone who will be economically harmed. The closure of commercial and recreational fishing for chinook salmon in the ocean off California and most of Oregon was announced by the National Marine Fishery Service. It followed the recommendation last month of the Pacific Fishery Management Council after...

The Humane Society of the United States has filed a request for an emergency injunction asking a federal appeals court to block the government from killing protected sea lions at Bonneville Dam. U.S. District Judge Michael Mosman rejected a request for a preliminary injunction on Wednesday even though he said the Humane Society might prevail in court with a lawsuit against the National Marine Fisheries Service and the states of Oregon and Washington. The ruling left open the possibility the states could begin killing the sea lions today. But the government and the Humane Society said they did not expect...

The future food security of millions of people is at risk because over-fishing, climate change and pollution are inflicting massive damage on the world's oceans, marine scientists warned this week. The two-thirds of the planet covered by seas provide one fifth of the world's protein -- but 75 percent of fish stocks are now fully exploited or depleted, a Hanoi conference that ended Friday was told. Warming seas are bleaching corals, feeding algal blooms and changing ocean currents that impact the weather, and rising sea levels could in future threaten coastal areas from Bangladesh to New York, experts said. "People...

Any hopes salmon fishermen had for even token chinook fishing in Oregon faded Thursday when federal fisheries managers adopted the most restrictive limits on West Coast salmon fisheries in history.The recommendation by the Pacific Fishery Management Council allows fishing for 9,000 hatchery coho salmon off Central Oregon. No other salmon fishing will be allowed south of Cape Falcon, a point between Seaside and Tillamook.That eliminates a fishery that has typically been one of the richest on the West Coast, averaging catches of more than 800,000 chinook annually from 2000 to 2005.Salmon fishing north of Cape Falcon and in Washington...

PORTLAND -- The Humane Society of the United States, Wild Fish Conservancy and two citizens have filed suit in U.S. District Court to halt the authorized killing of sea lions at the base of Bonneville Dam in the Columbia River. The lawsuit, filed Monday, had been filed in federal court in Washington, D.C., last week but it was withdrawn when the fish conservancy group asked to join it. The National Marine Fisheries Service has granted a request by Oregon and Washington to kill up to 85 animals a year over five years to protect endangered or threatened salmon runs. The...

The agreement announced Tuesday on the future of the Klamath River offers reason for cautious hope that the troubled waterway can recover from years of human intervention and abuse while meeting the conflicting needs of fish and farms. The agreement � forged by the farmers, fishermen, American Indians, government agencies and conservation groups whose views on the Klamath’s future long have clashed � achieves the seemingly impossible: a broadly supported plan to allocate the free-flowing waters of the river without dams. Therein lies the hope. And therein lies the caution. That these longtime adversaries, who for years battled over a...

PORTLAND, ORE. -- A federal agency recommends killing about 30 sea lions a year at Bonneville Dam on the Columbia River to keep them from eating salmon and steelhead. It was among four proposals listed by NOAA Fisheries Service after meetings of a task force last year and requests in 2006 by Oregon, Washington and Idaho to allow removal of some of the animals, which are protected under the 1972 Marine Mammal Protection Act. At least three upper Columbia River spring salmon runs that pass through the dam are listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act. Sea lions, while...

Actress Hayden Panettiere has been involved in a violent confrontation with Japanese fishermen as she tried to disrupt their annual dolphin slaughter.

The growth in human population and rising consumption have exceeded the planet's ability to support us, argues John Feeney. In this week's Green Room, he says it is time to ring the alarm bells and take radical action in order to avert unspeakable consequences. We humans face two problems of desperate importance. The first is our global ecological plight. The second is our difficulty acknowledging the first. Despite increasing climate change coverage, environmental writers remain reluctant to discuss the full scope and severity of the global dilemma we've created. Many fear sounding alarmist, but there is an alarm to sound...

For Immediate ReleaseOffice of the Press SecretaryOctober 19, 2007 President's Radio Address   President's Radio Address  Audio       In Focus: Environment THE PRESIDENT: Good morning. This weekend, I will join millions of Americans in one of our favorite national pastimes: fishing. I'm going to be on the Chesapeake Bay. For those who love fishing, the most important thing is not the size of your catch but the enjoyment of the great outdoors. Every year, millions of Americans grab their tackle boxes and head out to their favorite fishing holes. No matter where they drop their lines, they build memories that last...

From time to time, Tom Brokaw, former anchor of NBC’s “Nightly News,” is going to stop by and bring us a story that captures his attention. This time, he has a fish tale that will likely hit you right where your taste buds are, and might have you looking twice at the menu. For his report for “Today,” Tom talks to G. Bruce Knecht author of “Hooked: A True Story of Pirates, Poaching, and the Perfect Fish,” about how this popular fish has been so overfished that it is now disappearing from the world’s oceans.

Close window Published online: 2 November 2006; | doi:10.1038/news061030-10 Sayonara, sushi...Time could be running out for seafood.Heidi Ledford Salmon, like all seafood: predicted to collapse by 2048.Alamy What's your favourite seafood dish? Seared scallops? Salmon sashimi? Grilled shrimp? Enjoy it while you can, because by 2048 it could all be gone. A recent survey of global fisheries data says that seafood stocks around the world will collapse within 50 years — if we don't change the way we treat the world's oceans1. "That's the end of the line," says Boris Worm, a marine conservation biologist at Dalhousie University in...

WASHINGTON, DC, August 7, 2006 (ENS) – The federal government is failing to respond to alarming evidence that the oceans are in crisis, ocean experts told a Senate panel last week. Two years after a federal commission called on the Bush administration and Congress to aggressively overhaul the nation's ocean policy, key recommendations have not been implemented and critical ocean research efforts face deep funding cuts. The state of the oceans is not good and "is getting worse," said Leon Panetta, a former California Congressman and cochair of the Joint Ocean Commission Initiative. Pollution, overfishing and coastal runoff are damaging...

MILLINGTON, Md. - American eels are crafty fish, able to slither up rocks and around branches in just a tiny bit of water. But it turns out they're not the strongest swimmers — and dams throughout the Chesapeake Bay watershed may be blocking their natural migration patterns and contributing to a sharp population decline. Maryland biologists are hoping to boost the fortunes of the American eel, which is found across the Atlantic coast but is most abundant in the Chesapeake and its tributaries. Even in the Chesapeake, though, eels aren't doing so great. Scientists believe they're being stymied in part...

Agency Delays Salmon Disaster Declaration WASHINGTON (AP) - West Coast salmon fishermen waiting for up to $80 million in disaster relief from a sharply curtailed fishing season are caught in a dispute between a regional fisheries office and the national headquarters. A disaster recommendation from a regional office of the National Marine Fisheries - which cleared the way for the fishermen to receive aid - was overruled by officials at the agency's suburban Washington headquarters. A final decision is not expected until February, well past the end of the fishing season, said Rep. Mike Thompson, D-Calif., who is furious over...

Federal regulators have voted to impose severe restrictions on salmon fishing off the coasts of Oregon and Northern California to protect dwindling populations in the Klamath River. The Pacific Fishery Management Council decided to close about 700 miles of coastline to commercial salmon fishing for most of June and July. Those are generally the most productive months of the season.

For education and discussion only. Not for commercial use. PORTLAND, Ore. - Conceding that using hatcheries to supplement dwindling salmon populations is harming wild salmon species in some cases, the Bush administration plans to move away from the practice in favor of a more direct solution: Catch fewer fish. James Connaughton, chairman of the White House Council on Environmental Quality, announced the new policy Wednesday at a meeting of salmon scientists, many of whom have concluded that wild Pacific salmon will become extinct this century without big changes in how the harvest is managed. "Our goal is to minimize and,...

Japan's annual slaughter of thousands of dolphins began Oct. 8 in the traditional whaling town of Taiji on the Kii Peninsula of Honshu's Wakayama Prefecture. These "drive fisheries" triggered demonstrations, held under the "Japan Dolphin Day" banner, in 28 countries. The protests went almost entirely unreported in Japan, where only very few people are aware of what goes on. The culling, spanning a period of six months, is officially condoned as part of traditional culture, and is described as "pest control" by practitioners. However, it is the inhumane way in which the mammals are killed, by stabbing and spearing them,...

Beluga ban boosts domestic caviar farming By Laura Zuckerman Thu Nov 17, 2005 8:25 AM ET HAGERMAN, Idaho (Reuters) - After more than a decade growing in the spring waters of a commercial fish farm in southern Idaho, five dozen white sturgeon are ready to give eggs that will be marketed to U.S. caviar connoisseurs. The timing could hardly be better. A recent U.S. ban on beluga caviar from the Caspian and Black seas has sparked a boom for U.S. fish farms, which are stepping in to provide gourmet stores and high-end restaurants the much-loved salted eggs, or roe, from...

SANTA BARBARA, Calif. - Greg Sanders' otter-catching days are over. It's been years since he last snatched the animals from Southern California waters and shipped them north under an ambitious federal program to preserve an endangered species while protecting shellfish divers from natural competition. Now, in an admission that the slick-furred creatures refuse to respect boundaries imposed by man, the federal government wants officially to abandon an otter-relocation policy it effectively dumped more than a decade ago. If the government's battle of wits is at its end, the otters have won. "This concept of taking animals and putting them in...

The recent passage of the National Highway Bill advances the Trans-Texas highway project, which may significantly impact Texas’ recreational inshore fishery. Interstate 69 Texas, a key component of the project, will cut a quarter-mile-wide swath of asphalt, rails and utility lines across the grasslands of the western coastal plain. When completed, it will represent the southern terminus of 1,600 miles of transportation infrastructure designed to bolster North American trade from Mexico to Canada. As a result, an unprecedented amount of industrial traffic and secondary development will impact this fragile ecosystem along a route which crosses every major river system in...

VALDEZ, Alaska (AP) - This is a busy commercial and sportfishing town, and it normally smells a little ripe in late summer as unharvested pink salmon spawn and then die. But this year, residents and tourists have been holding their noses a little tighter. Millions more pink salmon than expected, most of them born at the local Solomon Gulch hatchery, migrated in from the ocean this season, overwhelming commercial seiners and processing plants.

BAYOU LA BATRE, Ala. (ABP)—In Forrest Gump, the hero scores an economic coup when his boat is the only one in the Bayou La Batre, Ala., shrimping fleet to survive a hurricane. Sadly, for the real-life Bayou La Batre, Forrest Gump was fiction. This blue-collar hamlet south of Mobile, where Mobile Bay meets the Gulf of Mexico, may be the place in Alabama hit hardest by Hurricane Katrina, at least economically. The destruction is not nearly as dramatic as in New Orleans and along the Mississippi coast. But it may have crippled the entire town’s way of life, which is...

Halifax — Scientists will begin probing waters off Nova Scotia in search of a slimy creature they believe is slithering north and could be blanketing some of Canada's richest fishing grounds.Researchers from the U.S. Geological Survey plan to head out Monday to a vast area over the Canadian portion of Georges Bank to look for a colony of sea squirts nicknamed the Blob for its icky texture and habit of covering most everything in its path. “It's something new. It covers up the bottom and it forms a barrier between fish and what fish feed on, so logically you'd think...

HALIFAX – Scientists will begin probing waters off Nova Scotia in search of a slimy creature they believe is slithering north and could be blanketing some of Canada’s richest fishing grounds. Researchers from the U.S. Geological Survey plan to head out today to a vast area over the Canadian portion of Georges Bank to look for a colony of sea squirts nicknamed the Blob for its icky texture and habit of covering almost everything in its path. ‘Covers the bottom’ “It’s something new. It covers up the bottom and it forms a barrier between fish and what fish feed on,...

New research by a Canadian university has brought previously unknown parts of the world's oceans into focus and is raising new concerns about the global decline of big species. The study, released yesterday by the journal Science, found that the ocean contains a small number of "hot spots" where marine life concentrates and where stocks are declining dramatically. But the finding has also opened a new window of hope because it points to a few key areas, in a vast, featureless ocean, where conservation efforts could be targeted for maximum effect. By looking at 50 years of international fishing data...

WELLFLEET — If it’s determined that the decline of the eastern oyster on the Maryland and Virginia coastline represents a “significant portion” of the subspecies, the oyster could be added to the federal endangered species list, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Fisheries Service spokesperson Marta Nammack said Monday. A ban on oystering would significantly affect this town, where shellfish — oysters, in particular — are its biggest industry. Wellfleet oysters are a world-famous delicacy that accounted for more than $2.5 million of the town’s aquaculture, or shellfish farming, industry in 2002. About 100 families in town rely primarily on oysters...

Red tide may be the least of Cape shellfishermen's worries this summer. In May, the National Marine Fisheries Service decided that the Eastern, or American, oyster is a candidate for endangered species status based on a petition they received in January. The agency has until Jan. 11, 2006, to decide. Fisheries service spokeswoman Teri Frady said yesterday her agency was in the process of putting together a panel of experts to study the issue. Eastern oysters are harvested in New England and on the Cape, accounting for more than $1.2 million in revenue for the Cape and islands aquaculture industry...

GRANTS PASS, Ore. - A federal court ruling that rejects the Bush administration's latest effort to balance Columbia Basin salmon recovery against hydroelectric dams has fish conservationists pressing anew for breaching four dams on the lower Snake River. "What the law requires is an honest analysis of how we configure the hydro system so we can get salmon back in our rivers," said Jan Hasselman, attorney for the National Wildlife Federation. "What all the scientists tell us is such an honest analysis would call for breaching the lower four Snake River dams." But with President Bush and the Republican-led Congress...

The Marine Fisheries Advisory Commission (MFAC) has approved Massachusetts' MarineFisheries' proposals for new rules affecting recreational fishing for summer flounder (fluke), black sea bass, and scup. Rule changes were also approved for commercial fishing for striped bass, spiny dogfish and coastal sharks, scup, and groundfish. New prohibitions on the retention of certain coastal shark species include basking sharks, dusky sharks, sand tiger sharks and white sharks. Any of these shark species caught incidental to fisheries directed toward other species must be released to ensure maximum probability of survival.

BONNEVILLE DAM, Ore. -- Sea lions are feasting on fish at the Bonneville Dam, and engineers are looking for ways to drive away the protected animals. About 30 sea lions surround the dam's spillways, gorging on any fish that come by. But that reportedly has minor impact on the fish runs. The problem is that at least two have figured out how to enter the fish ladders. "It's pretty amazing that they've managed to get all the way into the locks," fisherman Tom Wood told KOIN News 6. "They can take out some research equipment that they have in there....

NEW ORLEANS - Thousands of oil and natural gas platforms in the Gulf of Mexico could be converted into deep-sea fish farms raising red snapper, mahi-mahi, yellowfin tuna and flounder, under a plan backed by the Bush administration.For years, marine biologists and oil companies have experimented using the giant platforms as bases for mariculture, but commercial use of the platforms as fish farms never got off the ground because of the federal government's reluctance to open up the oceans to farming.Yet in December, President Bush proposed making it easier to launch fish farms off the nation's coasts. That could be...

A Canadian seafood company helped buy geoduck kingpin Doug Tobin's fishing boat and finance his $1.5 million Puget Sound clam-poaching ring — all in exchange for exclusive rights to resell the stolen shellfish, according to a lawsuit filed by the Washington state Attorney General's Office. A year after Tobin was sentenced to 14 years in prison for making off with nearly 100 tons of shellfish in the region's oddest and most sophisticated wildlife-poaching ring, the Attorney General's Office accused a Richmond, B.C.-based company of fronting him much of the cash to get started. The state is seeking millions of dollars...

Chinese coast guards' killing of innocent Vietnamese fishermen violates international law The recent killing of innocent Vietnamese fishermen by Chinese coast guards was a serious violation of international law, Foreign Ministry spokesman Le Dung said in Hanoi on January 20. The action also violated the Agreement on the Demarcation of the Tonkin Gulf, the Vietnam-China Agreement on Fishing Co-operation in the Tonkin Gulf, and other agreements reached by Vietnamese and Chinese leaders, and hurt the friendly sentiment between the two peoples, the spokesman stressed. He made the remarks while replying to the Vietnam News Agency's query on Vietnam's reaction to...

Fishing rules under scrutiny as search for fishermen ends By JAY LINDSAY BOSTON — The Coast Guard on Wednesday called off its search for five fishermen lost at sea when their scallop boat capsized in turbulent waters off Nantucket. [snip] The deaths sparked anger among boat owners and fishermen, who said federal rules which cut fishing days and penalize fishermen who leave fishing grounds early force captains to fish in dangerous weather to take advantage of limited opportunities. "You´re taking the skipper out of the wheelhouse and putting lobbyists and congressmen in the seat, making decisions for you," said Kevin...