The 116th Congress began on January 3, 2019 with much anticipation that lawmakers would focus on fisheries. The 115th Congress worked on multiple bills – Magnuson-Stevens Act (MSA) reauthorization bills, red snapper management bills, and the Modern Fish Act (MFA) in both chambers, for example. And the 115th was closed out by the passage of […]
Photo: Fishing in the Gulf of Mexico, via NOAA Authors who contribute to this blog — including myself — are fond of stating that because of the Magnuson-Stevens Act, the United States has the best fisheries management system in the world. It’s hard to argue with the results. 45 stocks have been rebuilt and the […]
Photo: Fly-fishing in Bristol Bay, via World Wildlife Fund Here we go again. The Trump administration has decided that the voices of thousands of native Alaskans, fisherman, outdoor recreationists and others need to be raised up one more time in opposition to mining in Bristol Bay. On Feb. 20, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers […]
Advocates in the fisheries world often lament how complicated the policies are and how hard it is to explain the nuances to the general public. Well, fisheries management is extremely esoteric and opaque when you get into the scientific nitty-gritty. But at a fundamental level, the crafting and execution of fisheries policy is the most […]
Top photo: Solomon Moore (age four) of Brunswick, Maine with a scup he caught last year. Scup, a warm water fish, are now so plentiful in the region that they provide a great fishing opportunity for youth. Much of the heat generated by global warming, heat that would normally raise our air temperatures around the […]
Ever since the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission (ASMFC) successfully rebuilt the collapsed Atlantic striped bass population in 1995, some segments of the recreational fishing community have used striped bass as an example of how recreational fisheries ought to be managed. Praise for ASMFC’s approach to striped bass management reached a crescendo in the run-up […]
Photo: California salmon fisherman Mike Hudson wrestles a Sacramento River Chinook salmon on his boat, the F/V Cash Flo II Jerry Brown did many good things for the state of California during his multiple tenures as governor, but water management was not among them. He was a good showman, but it has been rightly pointed […]
The Nightmare that Should Teach Us Several Lessons about Water Quality & Fisheries Management 2018 proved a good time — if there is such a thing — for this angler to have both hips replaced. Though surgery meant six months off and out of the water, the recovery took me out of the fishing game […]
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