Photo: Striped bass w/menhaden, by John McMurray. Fisheries management is based on a single-species approach. Stock assessments are done, annual catch limits (ACLs) are applied, and we know how many fish can be taken from the resource, leaving enough to produce a stable population for years to come. The single-species approach is effective in many […]
Steve Brustein of Portland, ME with a 23″ summer flounder (fluke) caught last month north of the Jamestown Bridge in Narragansett Bay, RI. It’s nine months into a 48-month presidency, and the fish are losing their voice. With all that is going on in our country it seems odd to talk about the plight of […]
Photo: Waterfront in Eureka, California, By JP Smith via Wikipedia Commercial fishermen have been a part of communities and economies since humans learned how to catch fish. This has not changed throughout time: the men and women who produce seafood are members of a community (perhaps even yours!) and contribute to the local and global […]
Top Photo by John McMurray. The Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act (Magnuson-Stevens) has been a success. Even its critics admit that. In 2000, 72 fish stocks were subject to overfishing; today, that number is down to 30. During the same period, the number of overfished stocks was reduced from 92 to 38. Since 2000, […]
Starting next week, ASMFC is holding Menhaden Amendment 3 hearings… and we need to be there. I’m not going to wax this time about how recent aggregations of menhaden have created extraordinary conditions for fishermen targeting striped bass, sharks etc., or all the other life the massive pods have drawn, most notably the whales. It’s […]
Photo: Mates Katie Viducic, Claire Hodson & Lauren Benoit of Snappa Charters. Early on a Saturday morning Capt. Charlie Donilon of Snappa Charters and mate Lauren Benoit picked up nine passengers in Newport. It was a foggy morning, with big rollers from an ocean storm pushing the boat forward through the East Passage in front […]
Photo: Bluefin Tuna, by Captain John McMurray As we get into the thick of tuna season right now, and plenty of “large-medium” and “giant” class bluefin tuna are being caught by anglers around Cape Cod, and “small mediums” as well as good-sized yellowfin in the New York Bite, I thought it more than appropriate to […]
Photo: Bob Rees gets an albie You’ve certainly heard me talk long and hard about the Magnuson-Stevens Act (MSA) over the months, but it has been getting some much needed attention at the national level lately. U.S. Sen. Dan Sullivan (R-Alaska), chairman of the Subcommittee on Oceans, Atmosphere, Fisheries, and Coast Guard, convened a hearing […]
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