Science is not static. Instead, it is a continuing act of discovery, in which even long-established truths may be questioned, modified and sometimes abandoned altogether as new knowledge comes to light. Yet, in order to assure that research is revealing new truths, and not providing false and misleading information, each purported new discovery must be […]
Many fisheries conservation advocates were dismayed when, in October 2016, the Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council (MAFMC) decided that it would not develop a management plan for shad and river herring, fish that some thought should be included as stocks in the Atlantic mackerel, squid and butterfish fisheries. Although I would have preferred to see the […]
I was attending the November meeting of New York’s Marine Resources Advisory Council when the topic of lobsters came up. The southern New England stock of American lobster has collapsed, and a state biologist was doing her best to explain just how far abundance had fallen and what the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission (ASMFC) […]
Over the past half-dozen years, the summer flounder stock has been having some problems, although most anglers probably didn’t notice until the last season or two. Annual trawl surveys conducted by the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) revealed that summer flounder spawning success had been below average in every year between 2010 and 2015, the […]
The Marine Fish Conservation Network is a nonpartisan organization. The thoughts and opinions of this author are his own and do not necessarily reflect those of the Network. This election year is one of the big ones, when races for the President, the House of Representatives and one-third of the Senate happen at the same […]
Photo: Summer Flounder Summer flounder, more commonly known as “fluke” at the northern end of their range, were at the center of fisheries debates throughout the first eight or ten years of this century. It was the Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council’s (MAFMC) failure to take the conservation and rebuilding provisions of the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation […]
Summer Flounder, photo via NOAA Of all the issues that face fisheries managers, probably none are as controversial as reallocating harvest. It’s a no-win issue for regulators. The need to establish annual catch limits makes fisheries management a zero-sum game. The only way to increase the landings of one group of fishermen is to decrease […]
As part of the ongoing red snapper debate, various “anglers’ rights” organizations frequently tout the superiority of state fisheries managers, when compared to their counterparts at the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS). One such organization, the Coastal Conservation Association (CCA), has frequently expressed its support for H.R. 3094, legislation that would strip NMFS of all […]
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