Commercial, recreational and for hire fishermen say a bill in Congress that would allow Gulf states to regulate fishing in federal waters is not good for the fish. Louisiana Congressman Garret Graves is the primary sponsor of H.R. 3094, which is a bill that would strip the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) of its authority […]
Photo: Lingcod from a deep-reef bottomfishing trip out of Garibaldi, Oregon 10-12-16 (photo courtesy Garibaldi Charters) I’m the new kid on the block. Not necessarily on fish policy, but more on water management and what it means for developing fish policy that is, in fact, fish-friendly. I’m a Governor’s appointee on the legislatively driven task […]
Photo: Summer Flounder Summer flounder, more commonly known as “fluke” at the northern end of their range, were at the center of fisheries debates throughout the first eight or ten years of this century. It was the Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council’s (MAFMC) failure to take the conservation and rebuilding provisions of the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation […]
Photo: Canary Rockfish, courtesy of NOAA. My August blog post focused on the great progress the Magnuson-Stevens Act (MSA) has made in rebuilding important species in the Gulf of Mexico. A similar story can be told of the Pacific Northwest. In fact, the productivity of fish and shellfish in this region, thanks to the MSA, […]
Photo: 68 crab joined this 10 fish limit (eight coho, two Chinook) from the waters adjacent to Tillamook Bay on September 14, 2016. This is the time of year when I get to write a little bit about how lucky I am to live on the West Coast, let alone Oregon. It’s the time of […]
Next week the Mid-Atlantic Council has a big decision — you can help them do the right thing There’s no reason to wax here about the extraordinary decline of river herring and shad. If you’ve got some fishing history (particularly striper fishing) under your belt, I’m pretty sure you get it. Bluebacks and alewives (aka […]
Learn more about red snapper and what you can do to oppose H.R. 3094. H.R. 3094 is the latest attempt to disrupt a fisheries management process that puts science and stakeholders first. We should be striving to improve the solid procedural foundation established by the Magnuson-Stevens Act, rather than undermining it with piecemeal exemptions. — […]
Summer Flounder, photo via NOAA Of all the issues that face fisheries managers, probably none are as controversial as reallocating harvest. It’s a no-win issue for regulators. The need to establish annual catch limits makes fisheries management a zero-sum game. The only way to increase the landings of one group of fishermen is to decrease […]
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