oceans

Responding to pressure from the environmental group Greenpeace, the world’s largest tuna supplier, Thai Union, has announced a series of initiatives designed to improve its fishing practices and protect workers from abuses. Thai Union owns the popular brands Chicken of the Sea and Sealect.

The United Nations’ UNESCO committee has voted to not add the Great Barrier Reef to its “in danger” list, despite the biggest die-off of coral ever at the World Heritage Site. "We're taking every action possible to ensure this great wonder of the world stays viable and healthy for future generations to come,” Australia's Energy Minister Josh Frydenberg told Australian Broadcasting Corporation Radio.

The Trump administration is canceling a proposed rule that would have shut down any gill net fishery that killed or seriously injured sensitive species like sea turtles, whales and dolphins in West Coast fishing nets. The rule — proposed in 2015 by the “14-member Pacific Fishery Management Council, which manages fisheries in California, Oregon and Washington”— was deemed unnecessary and a cost burden to fishermen by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Sport fishermen, angry over strict limits to the recreational red-snapper catch, are organizing protests along the Gulf of Mexico for June 4. The anglers say the three-day recreational snapper season set by the federal government is cripplingly short and the source of lost business for local marinas and tackle shops.

Salmon fishermen are among many groups in Alaska upset by the EPA’s announcement that the Pebble Limited Partnership can now file for a mining permit in Bristol Bay, in the southwestern part of the state.

U.S. commercial fishing profits and jobs were down in 2015, due mostly to environmental issues, says the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association in its Fisheries Economics of the United States report. Earnings for 2016 have not yet been released.

Writer Paul Greenberg set out to eat three meals a day of fish for a year. Now he’s revealing what happened to his health and his views on sustainable fisheries on a special edition of PBS’ Frontline. “Almost half the fish and shellfish consumed in the world is now farmed — is that helpful or harmful?” asks Greenberg, who is currently a Pew Fellow in Marine Conservation and has written for FERN, including a piece called the “Fisherman’s Dilemma,” about a radical effort to protect California's fisheries.

Back-to-back coral bleachings in 2016 and 2017 have left only the southern third of the Great Barrier Reef untouched, and experts are predicting the death of the entire ecosystem.

The White House wants to cut funding 17 percent at the National Oceanic and Atmosphere Administration (NOAA), one of the government’s chief resources for climate science, according to a budget memo from the Office of Management and Budget obtained by The Washington Post.

Six ocean “hotspots” of marine diversity are getting walloped by climate change and industrial fishing, says a study in the journal Science Advances.

The Mariana trench in the northern Pacific is one of the most remote places on earth, but scientists say that the organisms that live there are heavily contaminated with industrial pollutants.

Eight of the biggest seafood companies in the world pledged to report and reduce illegal catches and root out endangered species from their supply chain, says Reuters. The firms also promised to end slave labor and reduce antibiotics in aquaculture.

A new program called the Global Fishing Watch lets anyone track the world's 35,000 largest fishing vessels using a free online map, says Vox. The program, which relies on Google software, was created by Oceana and the nonprofit SkyTruth in the hopes of curbing overfishing and illegal harvests.

With less than 1 percent of North American oceans under protection, the continent is falling far behind international targets to conserve ocean ecosystems, says a report out by NGOs in Canada, the U.S. and Mexico.