Fish & Fisheries

On Washington's Olympic Peninsula, the nation's largest dam-removal project to day is poised to restore ancient salmon runs.

"As Miami prepares to dredge its port to accommodate supersize freighters, environmentalists are making a last-ditch effort to protect threatened coral reefs and acres of sea grass that they say would be destroyed by the expansion."

"BOSTON — In the world of environmental regulation, where the hope is to write rules that both industry and science can live with, few areas are as contentious as fishing. Especially on the East Coast, fishermen attack scientists as mired in bottomless ignorance about how fish are actually caught. Scientists sometimes describe fishermen as racing to catch the last fish, regardless of the harm to vanishing species."

For the last several years, Pacific coast oyster populations, farmed and wild, have suffered massive, mysterious die-offs. It turns out the culprit is probably ocean acidification -- a consequence of human emissions of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.

Eric Scigliano reports for onearth August 17, 2011.

"Warming temperatures could cut in half suitable trout habitat in the West over the next 70 years."

"BILOXI -- NOAA Fisheries has data that shows Gulf shrimpers are now using their turtle-protection devices. Partly because of this, the agency has decided not to impose emergency measures on the shrimping industry in order to stop the unusually high number of sea-turtle deaths in the northern Gulf since the BP oil spill in 2010."

"As mussel numbers explode and fish vanish from Lake Michigan, the last in a long line of Milwaukee commercial fishermen sets course for Alaska."

Dan Egan reports for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel August 13, 2011.

"PORTLAND, Maine -- One of New England's last open-access commercial fisheries could be closed to new participants as regulators look at new ways to manage the region's shrimp fishery, a restriction that some fishermen fear will harm their ability to make ends meet in the winter."

A big die-off of lobsters in Long Island Sound has put local lobstermen on their last legs. Likely causes of the decline include global warming, pesticides, a hurricane, and bacteria.

"As long as American Indians have lived in the Pacific Northwest, they have looked to a jawless, eel-like fish for food."