Fish & Fisheries

"The Obama administration on Monday announced plans to further crack down on illegal fishing, a global problem that can hurt both fishing communities in impoverished nations and the seafood industry in the United States."

"The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service on Tuesday unveiled measures to help the threatened bull trout, a native fish whose cold-water streams in Western states could be warming due to climate change, but conservationists said the plan was too timid."

"The world’s tallest building stands in Dubai. The largest city is in Japan. Brazil’s Amazon is the largest rain forest. ... But the world’s largest man-made oyster reef is in Maryland. It was finished just days ago, and rests at the watery bottom of Harris Creek on the Eastern Shore, spread across more acres than the national Mall."

"California fishermen on Tuesday decried plans by U.S. fisheries managers to limit the number of endangered whales and turtles that can be inadvertently captured in drift gillnets used to catch swordfish in waters off San Diego and Los Angeles."

"In the Chesapeake Bay, cownose rays are becoming a bit of a nuisance. They migrate to the bay once a year and are gobbling up oysters. Tournaments have cropped up to eliminate some of the cownose rays and environmentalists are upset."

"Over the weekend, boats, helicopters and airplanes searched up and down the southern California coast, hoping to rescue an 80ft blue whale spotted entangled in a 200ft fishing line. Exact numbers are unknown, but the National Marine Fisheries Service reported an average of 11 entangled large whales per year from 2000 to 2012 along the US west coast."

"Federal scientists may have found a link between the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill and a decline of herring and pink salmon populations in Prince William Sound."

"A Taiwanese longline vessel caught with 75kg of shark fins near Papua New Guinea was only the ‘tip of the iceberg’ of operations driving a decline in tuna".