Some words bring very clear pictures to mind. In a fisheries context, the word ‘bycatch’ evokes images of industrial-scale commercial fisheries, where miles-long pelagic longlines take an unintended toll of sharks, billfish, and even marine mammals, while factory trawlers sweep the ocean floor with vast nets that scoop up anything that happens to lie, crawl, […]
Category Archives: Bycatch
Building Boom: Congress Funds Regional Ecosystem Based Fisheries Management Projects
This article is reprinted with permission from the Wild Oceans Horizon Newsletter Spring 2024. Top photo: river herring The use of ecosystem based fisheries management (EBFM) is widely accepted as the strongest framework for achieving sustainability in fisheries, both in terms of ecological and human well-being. More than a decade ago, the regional fishery management […]
Salmon, Subsistence, Pebble Mine & More: Watch the Waterside Chat with SalmonState’s Melanie Brown
SalmonState’s Melanie Brown joined the Marine Fish Conservation Network for an online Waterside Chat on January 23rd, 2024. Melanie fishes commercially in Bristol Bay in Alaska, the fourth generation of her family to make a living on the water. In her role as outreach director at SalmonState, Melanie builds spheres of influence to address marine […]
The Myth of “Mid-Water” in the Alaska Pollock Fishery
The following is a summarized version of a scientific paper written by Marissa Wilson, executive director, and Michelle Stratton, fisheries scientist, of the Alaska Marine Conservation Council. For a deeper dive into the impacts of pelagic trawl gear in the pollock fishery, read AMCC’s more in-depth scientific paper on the issue. Fisheries management in Alaska […]
Restoring Resilience: Anglers Must Lead on Climate Change
This article first appeared in Moldy Chum and is reprinted with permission. Top photo: Fly fishing on the South Fork of the Boise River, Idaho At the end of February, the United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released another massive report — this one pulled together by researchers from 67 countries — describing […]
Watch the Network’s Inaugural Waterside Chat with Linda Behnken
The Network’s new Waterside Chat online discussion series connects people who depend on healthy oceans and fisheries with the issues that directly affect them and their communities. In each edition, Network Deputy Director Tom Sadler talks with guests about current ocean policy and fisheries management topics and what policy decisions mean for people’s livelihoods, communities, […]
Christmas Came Early For Shortfin Makos
Perhaps no one ever captured the essence of the shortfin mako as well as Ernest Hemingway: He was a very big Mako shark, built to swim as fast as the fastest fish in the sea and everything about him was beautiful except his jaws. His back was as blue as a swordfish’s and his belly […]
Because It’s Always Easier to Conserve Someone Else’s Fish
Top photo by by Mark Conlin, SWFSC Large Pelagics Program In September 2021, at a meeting of the Northwest Atlantic Fisheries Organization (NAFO), the United States, supported by the European Union and other nations, proposed that NAFO ban the retention of Greenland sharks accidentally caught in the Arctic and western Atlantic waters that fall under […]