The ASMFC Faces Tough Challenges In 2025

The ASMFC Faces Tough Challenges In 2025

Just over 43 years ago, in October 1981, the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission (ASMFC) released a document designated Fisheries Management Report No. 1 of the ATLANTIC STATES MARINE FISHERIES COMMISSION. It was 329 pages long and extremely well researched. Its title page declared it to be the “Interstate Fisheries Management Plan for the Striped […]

U.S. Looks Beyond Scapegoats to Secure Striped Marlin Conservation

U.S. Looks Beyond Scapegoats to Secure Striped Marlin Conservation

This article is reprinted with permission from the Fall 2024 Wild Oceans Horizon Newsletter. Top photo by Jackiemora01 via Wikipedia The Western and Central Pacific Fisheries Commission (WCPFC), the international body responsible for ensuring the long-term conservation and sustainable use of highly migratory fish stocks in the western and central Pacific, met in Suva, Fiji […]

What’s Really Going On With Striped Bass?

What’s Really Going On With Striped Bass?

Let’s Get a Few Things Straight Full disclosure before I write one word… While there’s been a LOT going on with striped bass the last couple of years, I haven’t really been involved. I no longer have a seat at the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission table, and I’m no longer associated with any particular […]

Kate Masury of Eating with the Ecosystem: Watch the Waterside Chat

Kate Masury of Eating with the Ecosystem: Watch the Waterside Chat

Kate Masury, executive director of Eating with the Ecosystem, joined the Marine Fish Conservation Network for a Waterside Chat on October 16, 2024. Among many topics, Kate and host Tom Sadler discussed: Eating with the Ecosystem, the work they do, and how they are a nonprofit that started as a food gathering Their place-based approach […]

Does Anyone Want To Manage Black Sea Bass?

Does Anyone Want To Manage Black Sea Bass?

The black sea bass is the enigma of mid-Atlantic fisheries. Since 2007, when the spawning stock biomass (SSB) was barely above the threshold that denotes overfishing, the stock has staged a remarkable comeback, with SSB reaching a high of 24,680 metric tons (mt), approximately 220 percent of the biomass target, in 2022. The SSB has […]

The ASMFC Moves Forward — Slowly — To Conserve Striped Bass

The ASMFC Moves Forward — Slowly — To Conserve Striped Bass

By any objective measure, the coastal migratory population of Atlantic striped bass has fallen on hard times. In Maryland, the juvenile abundance index (JAI), which has gauged the success of each year’s spawn since 1957, was 2.0 in 2024, far below its long-term average of 11.0. It was the sixth consecutive year of spawning failure […]

River Herring Continuing to Disappear in 2024

River Herring Continuing to Disappear in 2024

This article was originally published in the Wild Oceans Horizon Summer 2024 newsletter and is reprinted with permission. In the Winter 2008 edition of our newsletter, then called the NCMC Marine Bulletin, we published a story titled “River Herring Disappearing”. In this article, we suggested that at-sea bycatch was the likely culprit for the disappearance […]

A Fishmonger’s Celebration of National Seafood Month

A Fishmonger’s Celebration of National Seafood Month

National Seafood Month has arrived, and we have much to celebrate across America, especially here in the Pacific Northwest. Our region is blessed with an abundance of seafood, from the salmon, halibut, and spot prawns harvested wild in Alaska to sustainably farmed manila clams, oysters and geoduck from Washington. The varieties are endless and the […]