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The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday agreed to decide whether the government can require commercial fishermen to help fund a program monitoring herring catches off New England's coast in a case that could undercut the regulatory power of federal agencies.

A video (seen below) of a confrontation on the water that happened March 18, 2023 near Camden, Alabama between a homeowner and anglers fishing in the Fisher’s of Men bass fishing tournament on Millers Ferry went viral. And on Monday April 10, the homeowner Ronald Morgan, 66, was charged with interfering with hunting or fishing per section 9-11-270 as well as menacing. Morgan pulled a gun on the anglers and told them to “go somewhere else” when he didn’t like them being near his dock on the public waters in a separate boat. Alabama Section 9-11-270 states the following:No person...

One of the oldest copper fishhooks in the world was discovered during excavations in Ashkelon, southern Israel, the Israel Antiquity Authority (IAA) announced on Wednesday.The 6,000-year-old discovery was made in 2018 when the IAA carried out excavations prior to the construction of the Agamim neighborhood in Ashkelon. However, the find is only being presented to the public now; it will be exhibited for the first time at the 48th Archeological Congress on April 3, the IAA press release said."This unique find is 6.5 cm (2.5 inches) long and 4 cm (1.5 inches) wide, its large dimensions making it suitable for...

While every coastal state has contributed to the decline of fish stocks to some degree, none surpass China’s impact. The 2019 IUU Fishing Index, which ranks coastal countries worldwide based on their vulnerability to, practice of, and response to harmful fishing practices, listed China as the top global offender, scoring 40 percent worse than the worldwide average. Furthermore, the United Nations found China’s distant-water fleet to have been underreporting their global catch size by a factor of 12. Countries in the Indo-Pacific region have lost patience with these illegal practices and have begun to push back.Many Chinese-flagged fishing vessels and...

SANTA ROSA -- Even with so much recent rain, California's drought is still having a devastating impact on the salmon fishing industry. So few fish have been found that the state has now issued a ban on salmon fishing along the entire coast.

Ocean ecosystems keep our planet in balance by producing nearly half of the earth's oxygen and absorbing much of its carbon dioxide - but they are under threat from pollution, exploitation and global warming. ... WHAT IS IN THE HIGH SEAS TREATY AND WHY IS IT NEEDED? The treaty, in a nutshell, will provide a legal framework for establishing vast marine protected areas (MPAs). This means that all activities that go on in the high seas will be subject to environmental impact assessments, with member states held accountable for their actions. The treaty itself focuses on four main areas, according...

Mark Knittle of Captain Cook was fishing with a friend four miles off the coast of Hōnaunau on the Big Island when he hooked the ahi just before 5 a.m., according to the Hawaii Police Department. “The fish is huge,” Knittle reportedly said just before he was dragged overboard. After witnessing Knittle plunge into the water, the friend tried to grab the line but missed. The friend saw Knittle on the surface for a brief moment but disappeared “within seconds,” police said, adding that the friend attempted to jump in but couldn’t spot Knittle in the water. Hawaii police did...

About 100 people fishing on a frozen lake in Minnesota were rescued after a large chunk of the ice broke off, leaving them stranded. Emergency dispatchers received a 911 call just after 11:30 a.m. Monday from people who were fishing on Upper Red Lake in northern Beltrami County... ...Due to the urgent nature of getting people off the ice and the likelihood that several groups were unaware of the separation, the first responders sent out a wireless emergency alert...

This summer, as China fired missiles into the sea off Taiwan to protest House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to the island, a much different kind of geopolitical standoff was taking shape in another corner of the Pacific Ocean. Thousands of miles away, a heavily-armed U.S. Coast Guard cutter sailed up to a fleet of a few hundred Chinese squid-fishing boats not far from Ecuador’s Galapagos Islands. Its mission: inspect the vessels for any signs of illegal, unreported or unregulated fishing. Boarding ships on the high seas is a perfectly legal if little-used tool available to any sea power as part...

Apparently, when a fish is hungry, it doesn't take long to get a bite. It only took 15 seconds for the crew aboard the Special K to get the mammoth Warsaw grouper to take the bait, which eventually landed them on the leaderboard of the 74th annual Destin Fishing Rodeo. Garrett Thornton of Blackshear, Georgia, hauled in a 333.8-pound Warsaw while fishing with Capt. Kyle Lowe on the Special K on Oct. 9. The fish weighed 349 pounds before it was gutted. All fish entries in the rodeo are gutted weights. Another new record set: 'Oh, this is a big...

Two anglers accused of stuffing fish with lead weights and fillets in an attempt to win thousands of dollars in an Ohio fishing tournament were indicted on Wednesday on charges of attempted grand theft and other counts. Jacob Runyan, 42, of Broadview Heights, Ohio, and Chase Cominsky, 35, of Hermitage, Pennsylvania, were indicted in Cleveland on felony charges of cheating, attempted grand theft, possessing criminal tools and misdemeanor charges of unlawfully owning wild animals. The pair are due to be arraigned October 26.

The walleye that swim in the cold, murky depths of Lake Erie are the waters’ apex predator, sleek torpedoes of teeth that dine on shad, minnow and any other fish smaller than themselves. They do not, as far as marine science has determined, dine on lead pellets the size of golf balls or precisely-trimmed fillets of other walleye. So when Jason Fischer, director of the Lake Erie Walleye Trail tournament series, pulled handfuls of lead sinkers and fillets from the bellies of some prize-winning fish, he knew he had a hell of a problem in his hands. There’s nibble-around-the-edges, cut-the-corners...

A pair of fishermen were stripped of their $5,000 tournament win after judges in Ohio discovered that they had put lead weights inside their catch also faced the wrath of a furious crowd on Friday, according to a video of the scene. Chase Cominsky from Pennsylvania and Jake Runyon from Ohio initially won the Lake Erie Walleye Trail Championship in Cleveland, Ohio’s Gordon Park on Sept. 30. They were awarded a $5,000 prize for their big win. The duo’s catch weighed in at 33 pounds, nearly double what their nearest competitor had caught, according to the Daily Mail. But the...

Professional fishermen are in hot water following accusations of cheating in a recent fishing tournament in Ohio. Competitors at the Lake Erie Walleye Trail Tournament Series (LEWT) believed something was fishy when the catch of two anglers' was suspiciously heavy. Competitors claimed that fellow fishermen were guilty of stuffing the freshwater fish with weights. It appeared that Chase Cominsky and Jake Runyon had reeled in a victory in the 2022 Lake Erie Walleye Trail Championship event on Friday. However, a cheating accusation sank the high-stakes professional fishing event.

My mother always said to give people “the benefit of the doubt.” She felt that “judge not, lest ye be judged” from the Sermon on the Mount was a valuable core principle that she lived by. Assume the best in people, until you learn otherwise. Well, in today's world, it gets tougher and tougher to follow that pledge. You trust, and sometimes you get burned. Late Friday, the walleye fishing world was sent reeling after a cheating scandal was exposed in front of God, country, and a mob of justifiably furious walleye fishermen. Two guys – we can no longer...

MIAMI BEACH, Fla. – A fight over fishing led to shots being fired at the Haulover Beach marina. The victims of the shooting weren’t physically injured but they say they are now emotionally scarred. “He was walking on the grass, he ordered two of my friends on the boat and he just started firing off rounds,” said one of the victims, who asked not to be identified. “This is insane, it’s a crazy world we live in.” Evidence of bullet after bullet at the scene tells the story. It all happened Sunday evening. You don’t hear about a story like...

PORTLAND, Maine (AP) — The federal government has approved a proposal to increase at-sea monitoring of some commercial fishing trips to 100%. The government approved the new, higher percentage of trip cover on Tuesday, said Michael Pentony, a regional administrator with the National Marine Fisheries Service. The rules apply to valuable species that are harvested in the Northeast such as cod, haddock and flounder. Pentony said the new rules will replace the old process of calculating a target for the level of monitoring coverage every year. The coverage target will instead be 100% for four years as long as federal...

The Environmental Justice Foundation (EJF), a London-based non-governmental organization, this week published a report on the destructive, largely unregulated, and often illegal operations of China’s immense deep-water fishing fleet. An especially disturbing chapter of the report dealt with the harmful impact of Chinese fishing on West African nations, where entire coastal communities tremble on the verge of economic collapse thanks to China’s rapacious practices.The report, titled The Ever-Widening Net: Mapping the Scale, Nature, and Corporate Structures of Illegal, Unreported, and Unregulated Fishing by the Chinese Distant-Water Fleet, accused China of creating a huge fleet to fish outside China’s own depleted...

A question must seriously be asked whether Jared Polis is interested in governing all of Colorado, or just the narrow strip that contains the vast majority of the state’s population. Polis has repeatedly angered the small band of hardy farmers and ranchers that make up Colorado’s second-largest industry by his insensitive slights and tone-deaf insults. It’s as if the governor pays lip service to agriculture one day and then slaps it in the face the next. Case in point: In February Polis ignored the recommendations of his own Department of Agriculture and appointed yet another animal welfare extremist to a...

It is a story of one man’s heroic struggle against the elements and often viewed as a metaphor for life itself. But Ernest Hemingway’s classic novel The Old Man And The Sea is the latest victim of today’s woke standards, with students warned that it contains ‘graphic fishing scenes’. Successive TV and film adaptations of the 1952 classic have been awarded U and PG certificates, suitable for children, but a content warning has been issued to History and Literature students at the University of the Highlands and Islands in Scotland, an area renowned for its fishing industry. Mary Dearborn, the...