Capitol Hill has been abuzz with its annual spending deliberations as the appropriations season has started full tilt over the last several weeks. The House Appropriations Committee alone has held nearly 50 subcommittee budget hearings, including one with Dr. Neil Jacobs, acting administrator of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, discussing and defending the NOAA […]
No man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other, or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and Mammon. Matthew 6:24 The Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission (ASMFC) has been maddeningly ineffective when it comes to rebuilding fish stocks […]
Each Florida legislative session, the Florida Ocean Alliance, a coalition of research institutions, coastal and marine business interests, and conservation groups, organizes “Oceans Day” in the state capitol building in Tallahassee, Florida. If you happen to be in Tallahassee next week, the event will take place on April 2nd. Oceans Day has always been an […]
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 […]
