15th CERP Anniversary Sees Another Everglades Estuary Dying Twenty-plus years ago, while guiding on Florida Bay in Everglades National Park, I volunteered to take water samples for The Nature Conservancy. Guides like me were desperate to help any way we could. The Bay was in the midst of a fish-killing algae bloom that was fueled […]
I know it’s a bit clichéd… actually, it’s really clichéd, but of course that’s what we’re supposed to write about during this season of thankfulness. It can’t all be all bad news all the time, right? Only after reading about the decay of pteropods in the Pacific and the mass strandings of whales off of […]
Take your life savings and put all of it into a boat and permits and gear and faith. If you’re like some you’ll put the gear in the right spot, have three bonzer seasons in a row have the boat paid for, a new truck, and big down payment on a bigger house. That’s the […]
Fisheries managers are finally paying attention to forage fish, the myriad species of small fish, squid and crustaceans that the predators need to survive. At the federal level, the Pacific Fishery Management Council got the ball rolling with its Comprehensive Ecosystem-Based Amendment 1: Protecting Unfished and Unmanaged Forage Fish Species. That Amendment would prevent the […]
Well, it’s official, what I had suspected might happen in the future, is actually already underway: the strong possibility of a collapse of the very base of the food chain. Reading this article in the Seattle Times made me realize I’m already behind the curve. Now being a former full-time (now part-time) fishing guide and […]
Some good indications that things may be on an upswing, but it certainly isn’t time to loosen the reins I hesitate to say it’s over, because for a lot of us along the striper coast, to say such a thing would be blasphemy! Yeah, “it ain’t over till it’s over,” but for sure, most of […]
On Georges Bank and in the Gulf of Maine, cod stocks have collapsed. A stock assessment update released in October 2015 found that the Gulf of Maine stock was experiencing a fishing mortality rate five times the sustainable level, while abundance had fallen to just 5% of the biomass target. The Georges Bank stock is […]
This blog post appears as part of our “Focus on Forage Fish” series, which highlights the importance of managing prey species for ocean ecosystems. For those who think allocating Atlantic menhaden and other key prey species between fisheries and predators, without the use of highly-complex ecosystem models, would be “arbitrary,” think of it instead the […]
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