In his 1977 book, The Unsettling of America, Wendell Berry identified two poles running through America’s engagement with its natural resources. These two poles he calls exploitation and nurture. “The exploiter is a specialist,” says Berry, “the nurturer is not. The standard of the exploiter is efficiency; the standard of the nurturer is care. The […]
In 2017, at the behest of some federal legislators and angling-related organizations, the Department of Commerce (Commerce) reopened the private-boat recreational red snapper season in the Gulf of Mexico, even though agency officials knew that such action would lead to significant overfishing and delay the recovery of the red snapper stock. Representatives of the recreational […]
A thought that saturates my consciousness with respect to conservation in general is what I have come to think of as the psychological problem of urbanization. Since the high middle ages, in the West, people have been increasingly, gradually, aggregating in cities. And this aggregation is speeding up. A threshold was crossed in the American […]
Fisheries policy has a responsibility to be sustainable to ensure that future generations will have access to the same resources we’ve always had the luxury of taking for granted. Fisheries policy also has a responsibility to the people who make a living from the fisheries, whether directly at sea or indirectly at market. Policy needs […]
The start of a new year is a chance to reflect on the work the Marine Fish Conservation Network has done and start thinking about the year ahead. The end of 2017 marked the completion of my first year at the Network. To say it is all I expected is to understate it by a […]
Steve Brustein and Michael Weaver with summer flounder, scup and black sea bass (warm water fish) they caught in Narragansett Bay this summer. Cold water fish like winter flounder have moved out. As a fisherman, I was excited when I first got my eyes on the State of Narragansett Bay and Its Watershed Report that […]
A recent report in Undercurrent News revealed that both the US seafood industry and conservation groups are opposed to HR 3588, or the RED SNAPPER Act. The bill, introduced by Louisiana’s Garret Graves, would transfer management of the red snapper recreational fishery in the Gulf of Mexico from a federal fisheries management council to several […]
MSA Bill Moving in Congress Doesn’t Conserve Our Fisheries Top photo by John McMurray If you are the same age as me, you’ll probably recall an educational series that ran during commercial breaks in Saturday morning cartoons called “Schoolhouse Rock.” One of my favorites was called “I’m Just a Bill,” and it explained how laws […]
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