Photo: Bob Rees with Chris Sessions on the Wilson River near Tillamook, OR. (Photo by Buzz Ramsey) It isn’t every day that you get a call from the legendary Buzz Ramsey to go fishing one of “his” two rivers, in which he made a name for himself. There aren’t many anglers in the Pacific Northwest […]
Category Archives: Stories
Young Fishermen Bring Their Unique Perspective to Capitol Hill
The second stop on the Young Fishermen’s Educational Tour after Boston was in our nation’s Capitol. The goal of the D.C. visit was for young fishermen to learn more about federal fisheries policy, including the Magnuson Stevens Act (our nation’s primary federal fisheries law that is up for reauthorization), and also to gain experience in […]
Population Correction on the Horizon: Sardines, Salmon and Sea Lions
Photo: A young Bob Rees holding a couple of ocean-caught salmon out of Westport, Washington. We’ve all been privy to the recent conversations about “market correction,” or “housing correction.” Well, it appears it’s even a more global conversation. The question one might ask is, how high up the food chain will the correction go? Some […]
Slow Fish Rises to the Challenge
The sun shines on Day 4 of Slow Fish New Orleans at Docville Farm in Violet, La, where attendees were treated to tasty seafood (at left) and a boucherie with slow cooked, fire pit pork and lamb (at right) from the local Slow Meat chapter. It’s a surreal, if a bit funny experience to eat […]
Winter Flounder: The Bill Has Come Due
Here on Long Island, St. Patrick’s Day—March 17—was always the unofficial start of the winter flounder season. That date wasn’t imposed by law. For many years, there was no closed season, and an angler who knew what to do could catch at least a few flounder at any time that the bays weren’t sheathed in […]
Boston Grows Camaraderie, Provides Insight into the Global Seafood Market for Young Fishermen
If you were traveling with eleven young fishermen from more than eight different communities of Alaska, and each had diverse backgrounds in fishing and family, what would you expect to get from a trip like this? We’re young, many of us already a generational fisherman, choosing to live just like our mothers and fathers and […]
Marine Ecosystem Management Requires Intelligent Tinkering
Cownose Rays, photo courtesy of the Chesapeake Bay Foundation For too many years, biologists tried to manage fish in a vacuum. They focused on the impacts that harvest had on each species; they paid little heed to how the same harvest affected the greater marine ecosystem. That is slowly beginning to change. The Pacific Fishery […]
Busted in New England
Undercover Sting Shows Us Why We Need Better Monitoring of the Fleet Generally, I try my best to avoid writing about New England. Mostly because it’s a train wreck. It’s really the perfect example of what happens when for decades you avoid imposing hard quotas on managed fisheries. Gulf of Maine Cod, the iconic New […]