Fish & Fisheries

Mining of a newly discovered rare earth element near the remote Alaskan town of Hydaburg jeopardizes the fishery which is its economic mainstay.

"It's that time of year when native Mainers and summer tourists alike don plastic bibs and get crackin' on succulent Maine lobsters. Last year lobstermen landed about $340 million worth of these coveted crustaceans, generating $1 billion worth of economic activity to the state's economy. But there's a largely hidden threat to all that bounty, according some scientists."

"Bad news for American gourmets: the commercial oyster industry in the Pacific Northwest has been failing for several years, and may go on failing as increasingly acid oceans put the larvae of the bivalve Crassostrea gigas seriously at risk."

"Dismantling of the silt-filled San Clemente, to start next month, is being called California's largest-ever dam removal."

"If things were this bad in the late 1770s, George Washington’s starving Continental Army might never have made it out of Valley Forge."

"Fishing vessels that deploy gill nets snare and drown at least 400,000 seabirds every year, and the actual figure could be considerably higher, according to research published in the June edition of an academic journal devoted to conservation."

"GRANTS PASS, Ore. -- Tens of thousands of acres in Oregon's drought-stricken Klamath Basin will have to go without irrigation water this summer after the Klamath Tribes and the federal government exercised newly confirmed powers that put the tribes in the driver's seat over water use — a move ranchers fear will be economically disastrous."

"Climate change threatens most of California's native freshwater fish -- many of which don't exist anywhere else in the world -- with extinction, a new study says."

A war over water among Georgia, Alabama, and Florida has put Florida -- and Apalachicola Bay's oyster industry -- into ecological crisis.

"Dozens of crabs, three small sharks and scores of fish thump on the slippery deck of the fishing boat True Prosperity as captain Shohei Yaoita lands his latest haul, another catch headed not for the dinner table but for radioactive testing."