overfishing

“In Teacapán, a small fishing village on the coast of Sinaloa, Mexico, Belen Delgado made a discovery that would change his life and the lives of everyone he knew,” reports Esther Honig in FERN’s latest story, in partnership with the podcast Snap Judgment.

FERN’s latest story, in collaboration with National Geographic, takes readers inside the world of the illegal sea-cucumber trade, showing how demand for the delicacy in China is driving a global market that threatens to wipe out many species of the marine animal.(No paywall) 

Despite a last-ditch effort by a group of radical conservationists, the vaquita — a small porpoise found only in Mexico’s Gulf of California — is going extinct, and will likely disappear this year, reports Ben Goldfarb in FERN’s latest story, published with Pacific Standard. No paywall

More than one-third of Australian waters are are protected by law, and Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull is asking Parliament to allow fishing in 80 percent of those waters, up from the current 64 percent, reports the New York Times. If approved, "it will be the first time a nation has scaled back its regulations in protected maritime areas."

A Commerce Department agency has authorized up to 20 permits for deep-water aquaculture in the Gulf of Mexico that eventually could double the finfish output of the gulf. Fish farming in the ocean would help satisfy the growing world appetite for seafood, but it also is a formidable challenge, writes Virginia Gewin. The story, produced in partnership with FERN, was published in Ensia.

Fishermen in Maine are experimenting with a new kind of trawl net that catches ample flatfish like flounder and sole, but leaves the plummeting cod population alone, says NPR. New Englanders once claimed they could walk across the water on the backs of cod, because they were so plentiful. But the fish is now struggling after decades of overfishing and rising water temperatures. Fishermen who catch them accidentally as bycatch are dinged by a quota manager.

The fish on the menu may be mislabeled, but there's a good chance it's less endangered than the real things, says Grist. About 30 percent of fish is misnamed, whether because of fraud or human error. But when University of Washington researchers collected data from 43 studies that DNA-tested fish for mislabeling, they found that on average the actual fish on the plate were 3 percent cheaper and nearly 10 percent better in terms of conservation status, according to extinction risk data from the International Union for Conservation of Nature.

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.

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."

A new study by researchers from the University of California Santa Barbara, the Environmental Defense Fund, and the University of Washington demonstrates that adopting “rights-based fishery management” (RBFM) would not only help fish populations recover, but would mean more money for fishermen, reports The Christian Science Monitor.

Yellow perch recovered from overfishing in Lake Michigan much more rapidly - by hundreds of years - than scientists thought possible, says Purdue U.

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 large Chinese fishing company declared in a draft document "that it intended to circumvent international conservation limits on tuna – by simply ignoring them" with little fear of discipline for it, says the Guardian.