Sustainable Swordfish?

A while ago I wrote about the attempt to get the Atlantic spiny dogfish fishery certified as sustainable.  It seems the MSC has come under fire for certifying another fishery that has a significant impact on sharks: the Canadian swordfish longline fishery.  Due to issues…

Tidewater ’11 Recap

After a brief blogcation due to lots of travel around Spring Break (woooo!), I’m back in action.  While I was gone I attended the 25th anniversary meeting of the AFS Tidewater Chapter, which includes the AFS subunits from North Carolina, Virginia, Maryland, and Delaware.  Like…

Highs and Lows from the ICCAT

Hope everyone had a pleasant Thanksgiving.  I’m officially back in action, though a little bit pudgier. Previously I (and several marine bloggers) have written about the sad state of the Mediterranean tuna fishery.  Since then the ICCAT has met to discuss exactly that fishery, and…

Somniosus microcephalinkus

As cold weather sets in and everyone gets ready for the holidays, I figured a cold water shark would be appropriate for today’s link pun.  Due to Thanksgiving’s rapid approach and a visit from The Hot Girlfriend, I’ll be eschewing my normal epic posts and…

Mediterranean Tuna Fisheries: a Wretched Hive of Scum and Villainy

A series of articles started over at the Center for Public Integrity are shedding light on just how chaotic and lawless the bluefin tuna fishery in the Mediterranean Sea has become.  Though nominally managed through the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas, bluefin…

Sustainable Canadian Dogfish

This week the Vancouver Sun has been running a series of articles on shark fisheries and conservation (found via Underwater Times).  There’s a lot of good stuff there, and just about all of it is actually very positive and pro-shark, which can be frustratingly rare…

Save the Herring!

Not too long ago the ol’ sister-ship blog posted about the growing Save the Krill movement, which aims to turn at least some conservation resources towards a species that occupies a more basal position in the marine food web.  This makes a lot of sense. …

Will Dogfish Actually be Sustainable?

A little while ago the story broke that the spiny dogfish fishery is petitioning the Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) for sustainability certification.  This came less than two months after NMFS declared the US Atlantic spiny dogfish stock officially recovered.  This struck me as very premature,…

Marine Rewilding?

It’s amazing what you’ll catch in the letters to the editor sometimes.  In the latest issue of Fisheries Magazine is a classic back-and-forth editorial origination from an article by researcher John. C. Briggs.  At first my interest was piqued simply by the fact that there…