Fish & Fisheries

"Allegations of possible payments to help secure votes. Claims of abuse of agency funds by top diplomats. A possible job offer to entice a candidate to withdraw from a race. These are not the shenanigans of a corrupt election in an unstable country. Rather, they are efforts in the seemingly genteel parlors of a United Nations-affiliated agency, meant to sway decisions related to the start of seabed mining of the metals used in electric vehicles."

"Flowing down the Mississippi River, the excess fertilizer that washes off vast swaths of farmland fuels a persistent “dead zone” in the Gulf of Mexico and threatens drinking water supplies upstream. Yet despite more than a quarter-century of federal effort and billions spent on potential solutions, experts say the watershed is “not even close” to its targets for fixing the problem."

"Dozens of countries have voiced their support for concluding in the next few weeks World Trade Organization negotiations on cutting harmful fishing subsidies that contribute to overfishing, two documents showed on Friday."

"Last year, the Supreme Court sharply restricted the federal government’s ability to limit pollution in small streams that sit dry for much of the year and fill up only after rainfall or snowmelt. Now, a new study finds that those bodies, so-called ephemeral streams, are significantly more important to the nation’s waterways than often appreciated."

"Canada said on Wednesday it would allow some commercial fishing of cod to restart off its northeastern Atlantic coast, more than 30 years after it was shut down to protect plummeting stocks."

"The Biden administration said officials historically gave “little, if any, consideration” to impacts on tribal fishing. But some sought deliberately to upend the harvest, according to documents obtained by ProPublica and Oregon Public Broadcasting."

"Off the northern coast of Honduras, thick stands of endangered elkhorn coral have mysteriously defied warming oceans fueled by climate change to blanket the reef with healthy, cocoa-brown colonies branching toward the water’s surface like antlers."

"Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel’s lawsuit seeking to shut down part of a petroleum pipeline that runs beneath the Straits of Mackinac belongs in state court, a federal appellate panel ruled Monday."

"The strong El Nino weather condition that added a bit of extra heat to already record warm global temperatures is gone. It’s cool flip side, La Nina, is likely to breeze in just in time for peak Atlantic hurricane season, federal meteorologists said."