fisheries

In Gazi Bay, Kenya, a carbon-credit program is saving mangrove forests by encouraging fishermen to cash in instead of cutting down trees. As part of the Mikoko Pamoja (Mangroves Together) program, “[l]ocal people who are protecting and replanting mangroves are now selling 3,000 tonnes of carbon credits a year to international buyers, for about $5-$6 a tonne," says Reuters.

Many fishermen rely on an inefficient paper-based systems to record their catches, meaning the data are often inaccurate or purposefully corrupted, said a panel on seafood traceability at the Monterey Bay Aquarium’s Sustainable Food Institute in Monterey, Calif.

The effects of ocean warming are already being felt on crop yields and fishing stocks, according to the most comprehensive report yet on the topic, released by the International Union for Conservation of Nature at the IUCN World Conservation Congress in Hawaii.

Dungeness crab is one of the most valuable commercial fisheries on the U.S. West Coast, worth nearly $170 million in Washington, Oregon, and California in 2014, a short film on Yale Environment 360 says, but the fishery is also threatened. As acidifying waters alter the chemistry of the world’s oceans, scientists and fishermen are just beginning to understand how this economically, culturally, and ecologically important species will be impacted.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said it has issued a final rule that would hold nations exporting fish and fish products to the United States to the same bycatch standards as U.S. commercial fishing operations.

Federal officials are crafting an agreement to divide the steelhead and salmon catch in the Columbia River watershed between tribal, sport and commercial fishermen, says The Seattle Times. The plan would cover fishing rights in Oregon, Idaho, and Washington State, probably for the next 10 years if the length of previous agreements is any indicator.

With lucrative species like clams and lobsters moving northward to find cooler waters, climate change could be the final blow for East Coast fishermen, says The Associated Press. The industry has already been battered by overfishing, pollution, regulations, and foreign competition, but climate change is another level of challenge altogether.

The Columbia River sockeye run is off to a record-setting start, says The Seattle Times, despite the fact that earlier in the season fishery managers forecasted a low salmon return due to high water temperatures. As of Monday, “June 13, a total of 33,496 sockeye [had] been counted at Bonneville Dam, the highest count through that date since at least 1938 — the previous record was 24,728 sockeye last year,” reports the Times.

Expanding U.S. fish farming could boost consumption of essential fatty acids, as Americans eat just half the American Heart Association’s recommended 3.5 ounce bi-weekly fish servings, panelists at the Capitol Hill Ocean Week conference said.

Baby fish prefer plastic particles to the zooplankton that makes up their natural diet, according to a study published in the journal Science. The researchers from Uppsala University in Sweden "found that the larval fish that were exposed to microplastic particles displayed a shift in behavior and stunted growth," reports The Christian Science Monitor in an article on the study.

Twenty-nine countries from Iceland to Sudan established the world’s first fisheries pact designed to stamp out pirate fishing, the UN FAO said. The Agreement on Port State Measures to Prevent, Deter and Eliminate Illegal, Unreported and Unregulated Fisheries (PSMA) took effect on June 5.

Over-fished for years, red snapper populations in the Gulf of Mexico have rebounded under federal regulation of the commercial catch that took effect in 2007. But this fisheries management success story has also spewed a bitter brawl between commercial boats and recreational anglers over who gets to fish and who should regulate the fishery. "How do we fairly divide the products of a finite sea while also respecting the constraints of biology?" writes Barry Yeoman in a story for FERN produced in partnership with Texas Monthly magazine.

A prominent fisheries scientist at the University of Washington, Ray Hillborn, is accused by Greenpeace of failing to disclose funding from the fishing industry in several scientific papers dating back to 2006, says the NPR blog The Salt. The environmental group calls Hillborn a "denier of over-fishing."

The governors of California and Oregon are scheduled to join Interior Secretary Sally Jewell in signing an agreement today to remove four hydroelectric dams on the Klamath River by 2020, said the North Coast Journal, based in Eureka, CA.

A new federal rule bans fishermen from catching eight kinds of forage fish in a 200-mile zone off the coasts of Oregon, Washington State and California, reports The Seattle Times.