Free Republic

...A large number of young hatchery-raised salmon that were released into the Klamath River recently were killed when they passed through a tunnel near the base of the Iron Gate Dam on the river...

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...

Before the salmon season, harbors like this one in Dillingham were filled with boats and crews anticipating another large season. (Brian Venua/KMXT)Kodiak fisherman Mike Friccero has fished for salmon for over four decades. He said he was expecting a low price for Bristol Bay salmon this summer, but didn’t think rumors were true about how low it would drop. “Our processor gave us a letter, a narrative before the season started, saying that pricing conditions weren’t great but that they were going to go after it with all the resources that they utilized last year as far as tendering and...

Those hoping to snag a Dungeness crab for their Thanksgiving table may find them in short supply this year, after the commercial crabbing season was delayed again in parts of California over concerns for the endangered humpback whales that share their waters... ...“We’ve gone from a seven-month-long crab season to one that is going to be three months, at best,” Ben Platt, the president of the California Coast Crab Association told the New York Times. Meanwhile, environmental advocates have called for stronger regulations to be enforced statewide and urged the crabbing industry to transition to ropeless gear....

WASHINGTON (AP) — A tuna fishing boat based in the Pacific island nation of Fiji that has been accused of essentially enslaving its crew was blocked Wednesday from importing seafood into the United States, part of an increasing effort to keep goods produced with forced labor from entering the country. U.S. Customs and Border Protection issued an order to stop any shipments in American ports from the Hangton No. 112, a longliner operated by a Chinese national, after the agency determined there was credible evidence that the crew was subjected to conditions defined as forced labor under international standards. It’s...

ATLANTA (Reuters) - The U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday sided with Georgia in ending its eight-year battle with Florida over water that runs through Atlanta’s thirsty metro region and downstream past cotton and peanut fields to Apalachicola Bay and its depleted oyster fisheries. ...In a unanimous 9-0 decision, the court ruled that Florida did not prove that its proposed water diversion caps on Georgia were warranted, given the balance between the needs of Georgia’s population and agricultural needs versus the needs of Florida. Nor did the court accept that water depletion was the cause of the Florida’s declining oyster beds....

For decades, scientists say something alarming has been happening in the streams and rivers where coho salmon return from the Pacific Ocean to spawn along the West Coast. After heavy rain events each fall, the fish have been turning up dead in huge numbers before they spawn, a mysterious phenomenon that has been the subject of intense research for years. Now, scientists think they have found a key piece to this morbid puzzle...tires...

Stretching for miles across the horizon, a vast armada of Chinese fishing boats trawl the pristine waters close to the Galapagos Islands. Ostensibly fishing squid, the real target for the 265-strong fleet are sharks to serve the appetite for expensive fin soup, costing up to £350 a bowl, sold in markets across China and Hong Kong. Night and day, the vessels – many the size of a football pitch – ransack the seabed, scooping up not only whale and hammerhead sharks but other species including turtles and birds.

French tuna ship sank in the Atlantic Erofey Schkvarkin News October 29, 2019 1:56 pm French tuna fishing vessel AVEL VOR sank early morning Oct 29 in the Atlantic, some 170 nm off Liberia coast, West Africa. The ship was under way sailing to fishing grounds, when in the evening Oct 27 she struck unidentified underwater object. Hull was breached, water flooded engine room. Ship’s pumps weren’t capable of controlling water ingress, Captain ordered 22 crew to abandon AVEL VOR. They were picked up by another fishing vessel of the same owner, all reported safe and sound. AVEL VOR was...

——Why We Wrote This—— How to counter invasive species, a common, and often intractable, problem? One entrepreneur’s clever approach offers lessons in finding solutions in the unlikeliest of places. If you can’t beat them, eat them. That is the common wisdom of many scientists, conservationists, and fishermen who dream of ridding the western Atlantic of invasive lionfish, a stunning aquarium fish that, when introduced in the wild, dominates and destroys reef ecosystems. However, catching lionfish has never been simple; they are not easily targeted by line or net fishing. Now, a surprising new invention may bring lionfish hunting to the...

Three fishermen have died after their crab boat capsized in the the treacherous Oregon waters featured on the TV show Deadliest Catch: Dungeon Cove. The US Coast Guard say the vessel was crossing the dangerous Yaquina Bay bar in 14 foot waves on Tuesday night when the tragedy unfolded.

The dam straddles Oregon and Washington, and the sea lions' voracious eating there affects fish populations in both states, as well as in Idaho and elsewhere. Biologists have tried transporting the sea lions to other locations, but they just keep coming back. Other strategies, such as constructing barriers, shooting the animals with rubber buckshot and scaring them with firecrackers, have had little effect. States currently are allowed to lethally remove 93 animals each year, but fisheries managers, tribal officials and others argue that's not enough. Now, a bill that would give states the latitude to kill several hundred more sea...

The Trump administration is preparing to unveil as soon as this week expansive offshore oil plan that would open the door to selling new drilling rights in Atlantic waters, according to people familiar with the plan… President Donald Trump his Interior Department to write the new blueprint with the aim of auctioning oil and gas drilling rights off the U.S. East Coast -- territory that his predecessor, former President Barack Obama, had had had had ruled out..” Don’t get me wrong! Cheaper energy and greater energy independence for our nation are nothing to sneeze at! But many of us familiar...

The anti-whaling organisation Sea Shepherd will not contest the Southern Ocean against Japanese whalers this season, Captain Paul Watson has announced, accusing “hostile governments” in the US, Australia and New Zealand of acting “in league with Japan” against the protest vessel. Sea Shepherd has been obstructing Japanese whaling vessels in the Southern Ocean each year since 2005, but Watson said the cost of sending vessels south, Japan’s increased use of military technology to track them, and new anti-terrorism laws passed specifically to thwart Sea Shepherd’s activities made physically tracking the ships impossible.

CHICAGO – U.S. Senator Dick Durbin (D-IL) released the following statement after the discovery of an adult Silver Carp near the T.J. O’Brien Lock and Dam in the Calumet River:“I’m deeply concerned by today’s announcement that an adult Silver Carp was discovered a mere nine miles from Lake Michigan.  If this invasive species reaches the Great Lakes, it could cause significant economic losses and irreversible damage to the ecosystem, and threaten the drinking water of 30 million Americans.  Now more than ever, we must redouble our efforts to prevent their spread by ensuring strong federal funding for the Great Lakes...

A coalition of commercial fishing groups filed a lawsuit on Tuesday to challenge the creation of a national monument off the coast of New England. President Barack Obama created the monument in September using executive authority under the Antiquities Act. The monument is called the Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument, and it is made up of nearly 5,000 square miles of underwater canyons and mountains. The creation of the monument closed the area to most commercial fishing and has been opposed by fishing groups for months. A coalition of the groups filed their lawsuit Tuesday in federal court....

Anyone here ever work in the Alaskan Fisheries in one capacity or another?My 20 year old son, in his 2nd year of College, has been happy working as an Asst. Produce Mgr. in a local grocery store during school summer breaks, but it doesn't pay much for a poor college student.I've had old friends over the years work in these fisheries for 2-3 months during the late Spring/Summer and bring home a slew of money.They'd work 12-14 hours a day, 6-7 days a week gutting and cleaning salmon on the "slime lines". Room and board is provided so you don't...

TOKYO -- The glass eel trade is coming under international scrutiny. Already, cultured eels account for more than 99% of the world's supplies. But the farming of these eels is totally reliant on elvers born in the wild. Although techniques to create artificial breeders to allow for the full cultivation of eels have been established, commercial production, as in the case of tuna, remains impossible. A big problem is that much of the glass eel trade essentially takes place in the dark. In Japan, the Fisheries Agency calculates the volume of the country's eel catches by subtracting the amount of...

Humans are eating more fish than ever. And since 2014, most of what we eat has come not from the wild, but from fish farms operated by the fast-growing aquaculture industry. But what do these farmed fish eat? The answer is just as unappetizing as it sounds — and just as worrisome to advocates of sustainable seafood. The typical fish-farm diet (“aquafeed,” in industry parlance) contains fish — specifically fish meal and fish oil, made largely from wild-caught “forage” fish. And because stocks of wild fish are declining, that poses a serious long-term problem for the world food supply. Wild...

The one common element in recent weather has been oddness. The West Coast has been warm and parched; the East Coast has been cold and snowed under. Fish are swimming into new waters, and hungry seals are washing up on California beaches. A long-lived patch of warm water off the West Coast, about 1 to 4 degrees Celsius (2 to 7 degrees Fahrenheit) above normal, is part of what’s wreaking much of this mayhem, according to two University of Washington papers to appear in Geophysical Research Letters, a journal of the American Geophysical Union. “In the fall of 2013 and...