MAINTAINING OUR STANDARDS
The Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act, which governs all fishing in federal waters, is an extremely long and complex statute. However, no part of the law is more important than...
View ArticleWHAT DO WE MEAN BY "SUSTAINABLE SEAFOOD"?
Recently, a couple of local, fish-related news items caught my eye.The first was an announcement that June 22-28 marks “Sustainable Seafood Week” in New York City.That sounded good, but the first...
View ArticleMERE BIOMASS ISN'T ENOUGH
By any conventional measure, the Atlantic Herring stock is in good shape. Not only is the stock neither overfished nor experiencing overfishing, but fishing mortality is well below the threshold and...
View ArticleCATCH DOESN'T COUNT UNLESS IT'S COUNTED
The ocean—even that 197 mile-wide strip that defines the federal waters of the United States—is a pretty big place, and it’s impossible to watch it all.That’s a problem for fisheries managers, who need...
View ArticleRETHINKING REALLOCATION
No matter how healthy a fish stock may be, it is still a limited resource, and harvest must be controlled. In most cases, such harvest controls include both a overall Annual Catch Limit, and an...
View ArticleTHERE WILL ALWAYS BE A (NEW) ENGLAND
I grew up in New England, and even if my home was out on the fringes, down on the southeastern edge of the region where the old values were watered down a little too much by the corrupting influences...
View ArticleIMAGINARY MEN
When I was a boy, I’d often get involved in pickup baseball games.They were pretty casual affairs, and it was just about unheard-of to have two nine-person teams. More often, there’d be maybe four of...
View ArticleLITTLE VICTORIES
Fisheries advocacy can get depressing sometimes. Part of that comes from all of the problems that are still unaddressed. Part comes from the fact that, when you get something fixed, there are folks...
View ArticleSUMMER FLOUNDER SHOW THAT MAGNUSON ACT IS ALREADY "FLEXIBLE"
Last week, the Mid-Atlantic Fisheries Management Council released a staff memo suggesting that summer flounder landings in 2016 may be cut by 43%.That’s not good news.Ever since the court decision in...
View ArticleWRONG LESSONS LEARNED
Recently, Representative Garrett Graves, Republican ofLouisiana, introduced legislation that would change the way red snapper aremanaged. He calls the bill the Gulf States Red Snapper Management...
View ArticleTHE "R" WORD
A while ago, I was browsing the message board on a popular Internet site when I came across a discussion on keeping striped bass. There was the predictable gamut of comments, with some folks saying...
View ArticleTHE NUMBERS' STORY
It’s one of the truisms of fisheries management.Any time that managers make a decision that someone doesn’t like, before the ink is dry on the press release, someone will pop up to cry “The numbers are...
View ArticleRETHINKING BLUEFISH MANAGEMENT
A new benchmark stock assessment for bluefish has just been completed. The assessment is so new that the entire document is not yet available, although a summary has been posted onthe Northeast...
View ArticleA FOOLISH INCONSISTENCY
About 175 years ago, in an essay entitled “Self-Reliance”, Ralph Waldo Emerson noted that“A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and...
View ArticleSCOURGE OF THE SEAS
The northern scup—here on Long Island, we just call them “porgies”—isn’t a big fish. The International Game Fish Association, which keeps track of the biggest fish caught by anglers, recognizes a...
View ArticleUNREASONABLE ACCESS
People who attempt to push controversial measures through Congress aren’t fans of straight talk.They rarely set out their goals in plain black-and-white language, preferring words likely to appeal to...
View ArticleA WHOLE DIFFERENT ATTITUDE
I recently came across a news article stating that Minnesota just shut down fishing for walleye on Lake Mille Lacs, one of the most popular walleye fisheries in that state.For freshwater anglers in the...
View ArticleSOMETHING IN THE WATER
There are a lot of refineries and chemical plants near the New Jersey coast, and it wasn’t too long ago that the Delaware River, which runs along the western border of that state, was so polluted that...
View ArticleBLOOD FROM A STONE
I was doing some research for another blog when I came across a comment in the transcript of a meeting of the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission’s American Lobster Management Board.The...
View ArticleCAN WE REDUCE STRIPED BASS BYCATCH?
It’s almost that time of year again. Nights are getting longer, and the extra hours of darkness are allowing the waters to begin to cool.Up north, striped bass are getting restless. In just a few...
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