Pass The Menhaden, Please!

Pass The Menhaden, Please!

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 […]

Pacific Council Finishes Precautionary Plan to Protect Unmanaged Forage

Pacific Council Finishes Precautionary Plan to Protect Unmanaged Forage

This blog post appears as part of our “Focus on Forage Fish” series, which highlights the importance of managing prey species for ocean ecosystems. In September 2015, I attended the Pacific Fishery Management Council in Sacramento to celebrate the Council’s completion of their first ecosystem-based amendment, three years in the making, which will protect unmanaged […]

Baked Cod: The Path Forward in an Era of Climate Change

Baked Cod: The Path Forward in an Era of Climate Change

The recent Science paper on the impacts of rapidly increasing ocean temperatures on cod’s reduced productivity and its long-term rebuilding potential in New England was sobering. It confirmed both the theoretical predictions associated with climate change and the recent scientific federal, state, and Canadian trawl surveys that caught incredibly few cod. To be clear, the […]