Draft Amendment 3 to the Interstate Management Plan for Atlantic Menhaden Finally Offers a Way to Protect “The Most Important Fish in the Sea” In nature, you cannot do just one thing, as Walter Youngquist puts it, because everything is connected to everything else. That’s why you can’t fish for Atlantic menhaden without impacting the […]
On the long road to change, we encounter twists and turns, roadblocks and detours. Right now, on the way to changing the way we allocate Atlantic menhaden among fishermen and other predators in the ocean (e.g., striped bass), we are at a crossroads. For well over a decade, the ASMFC’s Menhaden Management Board has been […]
When the House passed a bill earlier this year proposing changes to the nation’s fisheries law, the Magnuson Act, the vote went straight down party lines. YEA votes were 98% Republican, with only 5 Democrats on board. That seems like business as usual for Congress these days, but it wasn’t always so. The two previous […]
This blog post appears as part of our “Focus on Forage Fish” series, which highlights the importance of managing prey species for ocean ecosystems. For those who think allocating Atlantic menhaden and other key prey species between fisheries and predators, without the use of highly-complex ecosystem models, would be “arbitrary,” think of it instead the […]
In this summer’s edition of the Wild Oceans Horizon, I wrote about the tremendous progress we’ve made securing measures to save big fish from indiscriminate fishing and aid in the recovery of billfish, bluefin tuna and oceanic sharks. Today, large areas off the east and west coasts are closed to fishing with multi-mile longlines and […]
Fish populations have limits that cannot be exceeded without causing harm at the ecosystem level. This is especially true for the forage species — including but not limited to the herrings, anchovies, menhaden, mackerel and sardine — that serve the critical role of providing food and energy for all of life above them on the […]
The Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act of 1976 has been a success. The number of overfished stocks has never been lower in the law’s 40 year history. It’s not perfect by any means, and Congress is reviewing the Act to consider changes, as it does every 10 years. In my view, there are ways […]
[On Tuesday, May 5th, a 15-state Atlantic Menhaden Management Board will decide the next steps in conserving “the most important fish in the sea,” based on the latest stock assessment; whether to continue toward an ecosystems approach that protects menhaden’s ecological role as forage, or reverse course in favor of the industry.] We have all […]
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