NOAA

Accurate data on the number of fish hauled aboard fishing ships is vital for management of fish stocks, writes former U.S. senator Slade Gorton, in criticizing the approach now used by the government - putting observers on a limited number of boats.

One of the strongest El Nino weather patterns ever forecast is expected to peak in late fall or early winter but it's too early to say if it will ease the four-year-old drought in Californa.

The "dead zone" in the Gulf of Mexico is the largest since 2002 and more than three times bigger than the target set by the so-called Hypoxia Task Force.

"A massive toxic algae bloom has closed shellfish fisheries along the West Coast," says the Portland Oregonian. Beaches were closed to clamming and oyster harvesting along the Oregon and Washington State coastlines.

The U.S. Pacific sardine population is plunging - down 90 percent since 2007, says Yale e360. A moratorium on fishing takes effect on July 1 to allow the tiny forage fish to recover.

A presidential task force released its plan to combat illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing and seafood fraud, including a risk-based traceability system to track seafood from harvest to entry into U.S. commerce, said a Commerce Department announcement.

Groups representing soybean, corn and hog farmers in Iowa formed an alliance to encourage farmers in the Hawkeye state to voluntarily reduce nutrient runoff, said DTN.

The government could save more than $2 billion a year if it replaced the public-private partnership of the crop insurance program with simpler and more tightly targeted disaster programs, said two agricultural economists. In an analysis for the American Enterprise Institute, Eric Belasco and Vincent Smith said a template for the less expensive program was the Pasture, Rangeland and Forage (PRF) insurance product offered by USDA.