Italy and Portugal were among six nations that the US Government has reported to Congress for illegal fishing. The report from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the federal agency whose responsibilities include fisheries, opens a process leading to direct consultations between the US Government and the six identified nations that have been reported … Continued
With Gordon Ramsay confronting heavily armed Costa Rican gangsters/shark finners as a possible high point, Britain’s Channel 4 has enlisted a long line of the nation’s – and Europe’s – most famous celebrity chefs in a campaign to include sustainably fished fish only on menus. With television presenter/food writer Hugh Fearnley Whittingstall – who is … Continued
For the first time in a century there is no more overfishing in US waters, one of the nation’s top scientists claims. Steve Murawski, who recently retired as the chief scientist of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) Fisheries Service, refers to statistics and assessments that go back to 1900, adding that “as far … Continued
Major British retailers sell many fish products under misleading “eco-friendly” labels, a study by an influential NGO shows. ClientEarth, an organisation of lawyers specialising in environmental law based in London, Brussels and Warsaw, had been looking at products such as tinned tuna, haddock and cod, as well as farmed fish. Their report Environmental claims on supermarket … Continued
Confirming the theories of 2009 Nobel Price winner Elinor Ostrom, a global study finds that community-based co-management between local fishermen and authorities is the most efficient management of the common resource. The study, headed by Nicolas Gutierrez of the University of Washington and published in Nature, found that the traditional top-down approach with central authorities … Continued
Differing views on which treaty to follow for fishing in the Norwegian zone of the Skagerrak may lead to Swedish fishermen being taken to court in Norway. Norway says it will require Swedish fishermen in those waters to follow Norwegian rules, including a discard ban and 120 millimetre minimum mesh size, while Sweden says that … Continued
Fish response to threats is of two kinds and not much unlike the ways humans handle a scary situation, a Swedish professor says: they fight or hide or flee, or they just lie down and hope the unpleasantness will go away. Professor Svante Winberg, a professor of fish physiology at Uppsala University, explained in a … Continued
A recent study has proven that creating Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) can have a positive effect on spawning, though drifting larvae, for stocks more than 150 kilometres away. “We already know that marine reserves will grow larger fish and some of them will leave that specific area, what we call spillover – now we’ve clearly … Continued
Sweden’s 50 trawlers with license to catch cod in the Baltic will have their quotas allotted for a whole year, the Board of Fisheries has proposed. After gradually stepping up the given period from what used to be a week to a quarter-year in 2010, the Board now hopes that rations for a full year … Continued
Reaching a turning point in a historic era of expansion, the world’s fishing industry ten years ago basically ran out of new places to fish, a new study shows. So far, fishing vessels have been able to solve the problem by continually moving to less depleted waters, the researchers say, but warn that we are … Continued