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Fish Talk in the News – Thursday, July 14

• Posted on July 14, 2011 by Talking Fish
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Lots of other news sources have been “talking fish” over the past week. Here’s a quick look at some of those stories:

• This week’s New York Magazine featured an article explaining how strict regulations implemented in an attempt to prevent overfishingThe act of removing fish from a population faster than they can reproduce, which will thus deplete the population, or stock. Note that both healthy and depleted (i.e., overfished) populations can be subjected to overfishing (see definition of overfished). have also led to large amounts of bycatchSea life unintentionally caught while fishing for another species. This sea life is either brought to shore and sold, or discarded at sea, with much of the discarded sea life ultimately dying. , which fishermen must then throw (dead or dying) overboard in order to avoid fines for catching off-season, undersized, or simply too many fish. As the author describes it, this is “a waste of time, effort, fuel, and fish.” The article also briefly touches on the success of New England’s sector system at reducing bycatch with a quote from Lee Benaka, national coordinator of the NOAANational Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. A government agency responsible for the regulation and protection of the atmosphere and marine resources. This federal agency is based in Washington, D.C. and falls under the Secretary of Commerce. Fisheries Services Bycatch Reduction Engineering Program, who explains that with additional flexibility under sectorsVoluntary, fishermen-run, community-based cooperatives that are allocated a share of the annual catch limit in a fishery. Members of a sector are responsible for how they use the group’s share of the catch. Sectors run under approved operations plans that detail catch monitoring and other key protocols. Starting in May 2010, the groundfishBottom-dwelling, or demersal, fish species such as Atlantic cod, haddock, flounders, hake and pollock. These species often share the same habitat and are managed together as a stock complex. Though groundfish spend much of their lives near the bottom, the eggs and larval fish live near the water surface and even adults move up into the water column at various times, such as when pursuing their food. fishery in New England is managed under a voluntary sector system., fishermen are able to be more careful about what they catch.

• TIME Magazine also focused on fish this week with a detailed discussion of aquaculture, presenting it as the unavoidable future of our fish supply. Author Bryan Walsh also explains the reasons why are some are hesitant about the growth of aquaculture and how we can build aquacultural systems that place the least amount of stress on the environment. Although he notes that something will undoubtedly be lost in the transition from fish as “the last true wild food” to fish as domesticated creatures, he concludes that “if we’re all going to survive and thrive in a crowded world, we’ll need to cultivate the seas just as we do the land.”

• Interesting news is coming from across the Atlantic as well. The European Union is working on revamping its fishing policy to protect depleted stocks and reduce bycatch, as this BBC article explains. Among the proposals for the new policy, intended to take effect in 2013, are a catch share system and a phasing out of discards. Instead of dumping bycatch overboard, fishermen would be expected to land all the fish caught, and the whole catch would count against quotas.
  
  

• Posted in: In the News
• Tagged: aquaculture, BBC, bycatch, catch shares, European Union fisheries policy, New York Magazine, news, News roundup, TIME Magazine