How Italy Ate Up All Its Sharks

As dramatically imperfect as U.S. fisheries management can be, I still stand by my stance that we have the best-managed fisheries in the world.  Fishermen gripe about it being too restrictive and quick to change, conservationists complain about it being too lenient and slow to…

Enjoying Seafood While Knowing Too Much

I freely admit that I enjoy seafood.  I grew up in New England, where the American seafood industry was practically invented, and now live in North Carolina, where the confluence of cold and warm water at Cape Hatteras makes for some of the richest fishing…

NOAA/NMFS Plans to Reduce “Problem Species” Populations

The National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) is often painted by fishermen as a rabidly pro-conservation agency hell-bent on putting them out of a job by protecting every species they used to fish.  However, leaked internal memos show that the agency is taking a turn back…

Spiny Dogfish Quotas Go Up for 2012

Just a quick dogfish fishery news post for your Friday afternoon.  NMFS has released the spiny dogfish quota for the 2012 fishing season, and as expected the quota has gone up.  This year (starting May 1st) the dogfish quota will be set at 35.694 million…

The Tidewater Recap

Last weekend I attended the 26th Annual Meeting of the Tidewater Chapter of the American Fisheries Society, better known as AFS Tidewater or just plain Tidewater.  To recap, this conference encompasses fisheries academics, students, and managers from the so-called “tidewater region,” which is made up…

Sustainability for Atlantic Spiny Dogfish?

This week the U.S. Atlantic spiny dogfish fishery took another step towards becoming the second shark or ray fishery ever to earn a sustainability certification from the Marine Stewardship Council (MSC).  The first was the Pacific spiny dogfish fishery, which turned out to be a…

Atlantic Spiny Dogfish Fishery Closed

Chalk this up as yet another example of me missing the boat on something I should really be posting.  Earlier, I posted on the recent dramatic increase in the spiny dogfish quota, then the closure of the fishery in North Carolina a mere three months…

Three Fisheries Management Stories

Usually I leave short commentary and links to interesting news on Twitter, but three recent stories piqued my interest and warrant more discussion here.  And no, none of them are about whale trading, which has been covered far better by others in the blue blogosphere. …

Ageing Spiny Dogfish: Are We Doing it Wrong?

Welcome to the first post in 2012.  It’s probably good to start the new year off with a doozy, and in keeping with the theme of this blog, it involves that scrappy little shark everyone loves to hate.  Spiny dogfish are possibly the most well-studied…

Who’s Eating Atlantic Salmon?

Atlantic salmon (Salmo salar) just can’t catch a break.  Like their Pacific counterparts, Atlantic salmon are anadromous, meaning they live in the ocean as adults, but swim upriver to spawn.  Despite having the evolutionary advantage of being able to spawn more than once in their…