In Gothenburg, it was a week of fish and fisheries. For three days everything from capture fisheries and control to cooking for kids was covered. It concluded with the Swedish Seafood Award presented, at the Gothenburg Opera, to ex-commissioner Joe Borg and the Namibian Fisheries Minister. This year, the Swedish Seafood Award – Kungsfenan – … Continued
The European Parliament has voted in favour of adopting a resolution in support of a ban on the trading blue fin tuna. Support from the European institutions of a ban will likely further pressure the inclusion CITES, the largest global wildlife conservation agreement. Support for the bluefin tuna ban comes with a few conditions, most … Continued
Ministers should not be the ones to set quotas, says a Swedish bestseller-writer-turned-member of the EP Fisheries Committee. Interviewed by the IPS news service, Isabella Lövin added that she supported long-term management plans to replace “the kind of circus, where everyone tries to grab the biggest bit of the cake every December”. Ms. Lövin, the … Continued
The fish that may have inspired the Old-Mariner myth of the Sea Serpent has been caught on film for probably the first time, swimming, literally, back and forth. The oarfish, with a potential of becoming more than 17 metres long, was filmed on a depth of more than 1,500 metres below an oil rig in … Continued
A turtle that was intentionally blinded by Greek fishermen has been flown to start a new life in England. His name is Homer. The much-travelled loggerhead turtle of 56 kilos was admitted to an Athens rescue centre with one eye missing and one eye poked out in 2007. According to the rescue centre, Greek fishermen … Continued
The next EU Common Fisheries Policy (CFP) should focus on ecological objectives over social and economic, the Polish government says in its official response to the Commission’s Green Paper on the future CFP. In order to address the deep rooted problem of capacity, the Polish response acclaims the positives of the ITQ system. Providing healthy … Continued
Protesting a Government plan to revoke an old ”tax rebate”, most trawlers in the Westman Islands region of Iceland have been returning to port prematurely lately. The Westman Islands is one of the largest fishing regions in that fisheries-dependent nation. The tax rebate, currently around €5.5 a day spent at sea, is the only similar … Continued
The U.S. Supreme court decision to reject a proposal to cut off the Illinois river from Lake Michigan, a move to prevent a fugitive carp species from invading and shifting the eco-balance in the world’s largest freshwater lake system, has triggered initiatives to both introduce the issue in the US Congress and gather a White … Continued
A dispute between Canada and Denmark over just a symbolic shrimp catch may be a sign of what to expect as warming waters and receding icecaps loom in the future for the northern Atlantic and Arctic. The area just outside the Canadian economic zone off Newfoundland, in international waters, is managed under a Northwest Atlantic … Continued
The EU and Norway have finally struck a deal on 2010 TACs after lengthy negotiations, with Scotland, seeing itself as hardest-pressed EU member, expressing mixed reactions. The major dividing point when those annual negotiations collapsed last December was the interpretation of a 1994 mackerel agreement, where the EU had stopped Norwegian vessels from catching that … Continued