Ray Hilborn is a professor of aquatic and fishery sciences at the University of Washington.Note - this commentary was used with permission from the author. It previously appeared in The New York Times.
Mantis Shrimp Facts
In this True Facts animal segment we take a look at amazing Mantis Shrimp Facts as we discover and learn about this unique sea creature. I had no idea that the Mantis Shrimp is a prehistoric fossil of the living clown but it makes perfect sense once it’s explained. I also wasn’t aware how deadly and ferocious a Mantis Shrimp can be when it comes to protecting it’s underwater turf and surviving in the ocean.http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=F5FEj9U-CJMView original post here.
'Dancing Squid' Phenomenon: How Soy Sauce Brings A Dead Creature Back To 'Life'
Soy sauce may be able to revive a dull dish, but it hardly has the ability bring dead things back to life. Yet, that's exactly what the condiment appears to do in a GIF recently posted on Reddit.Borrowed from a 2010 Youtube video, the GIF shows a cuttlefish seemingly coming back to life when soy sauce is poured atop it. The cephalopod's body lifts up and writhes in the bowl, prompting viewers to ask: Is it really dead?Indeed, the cuttlefish in the video -- part of a seafood dish named odori-don -- is no longer living. The cuisine, sometimes prepared with squid and known as the "dancing squid rice bowl," rose to prominence after Japanese sushi restaurant Ikkatei Tabiji began preparing the plate in this particular fashion, according to CBS News.So how does the squid "come back to life?"Read full story here.http://youtu.be/iqphVlp2VJI
"It's All About Jobs" Will be the Message of Thousands of Fishermen in Washington on March 21
With just three days to go until the Keep Fishermen Fishing Rally near the U.S. Capitol on March 21, organizers expect thousands of recreational and commercial fishermen - and their families - to be in Washington this week in support of coastal fishing-related jobs.Coastal fishermen last assembled in organized protest in February of 2010 to show their dissatisfaction with federal fisheries management, though organizers say that Congress has been slow to react to their concerns.
Despite previous congressional mandates, there has been no improvement in the science underlying federal fisheries management and no adherence by the federal agency to the statutory requirements that federal fisheries data collection be improved. Instead, NOAA Fisheries enforcement is in a shambles, as are the assurances of transparency and rebuilt relationships that Dr. Jane Lubchenco promised Congress when she took over at NOAA in 2009.
According to the thousands of fishermen set to peacefully assemble at Upper Senate Park on March 21st, changes implemented under the reauthorized 2006 Magnuson Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act have improved the health of U.S. coastal fish stocks primarily by kicking fishermen off the water and putting thousands of Americans out of work. Recreational and commercial fishermen alike, supported by a core group of bipartisan coastal legislators, believe that proper balance of commerce and conservation is possible through simple amendments to the federal fisheries law.
"We aren't going to Washington because we object to effective fisheries management; we are going because we object to overly restrictive management measures," said Nils Stolpe, one of the rally organizers and a representative of the commercial fishing industry. "We are going because we object to a federal law that puts all of the emphasis on protecting the fish and none whatsoever on protecting the jobs of those that sustainably harvest those fish."
Read more about the event on MarketWatch or visit www.keepfishermanfishing.com
Sacramento Bee: Fishery legislation is redundant, wasteful - and harmful
By D.B. PleschnerAs an ocean scientist, actor Ted Danson needs to go back to school.In his recent commentary he distorts the health of California fisheries and the precautionary management that already protects marine resources, including his "little fish" known as forage species.California has done an excellent job managing forage species. Besides strict fishing quotas and other restrictions, the state implemented no-take reserves, including many adjacent to bird rookeries and haul-out sites, to protect forage. Danson does not tell readers this.To propose legislation like Assembly Bill 1299, as if no regulation exists, is redundant, fiscally wasteful and disrespectful of California's management history.Read more at:http://www.sacbee.com/2011/07/17/3773246/fishery-legislation-is-redundant.html
Open Season on California Market Squid
By Danna StaafLast year, the market squid off California were so abundant that the fishery actuallyreached its quota for the first time in history. Normally, squid fishing season is April 1st to March 31st--yep, that's all year. But when they hit the quota back in December 2010, the fishery closed.However, when April 1st, 2011, rolled around and government officials opened the fishery again, no squid boats sallied out into Monterey Bay. According to the Monterey Weekly,
When the squid season began April 1, local fishermen held back in hopes of pressuring processors to bump the price of calamari from $500 to $600 per ton, according to David Haworth, vice president of the California Wetfish Producers Association.
Read the rest at Squid A Day.
Squid with roasted tomatoes and black olives
By Skye GyngellThe combination of sweet tomatoes and salty black olives is a favourite of mine, and is a lovely match with squid.
20 small, ripe tomatoes6 sprigs of oregano, leaves onlytbsp good-quality red-wine vinegarA little olive oil for drizzling800g/1 lb of the freshest squidSea salt and freshly ground black pepper1 tbsp extra-virgin olive oilI handful of wild garlic, well rinsedA handful of black olives, preferably niçoise,Get the rest of the recipe here.
Let Us Eat Fish
By RAY HILBORN
THIS Lent, many ecologically conscious Americans might feel a twinge of guilt as they dig into the fish on their Friday dinner plates. They shouldn’t.Over the last decade the public has been bombarded by apocalyptic predictions about the future of fish stocks — in 2006, for instance, an article in the journal Science projected that all fish stocks could be gone by 2048.Subsequent research, including a paper I co-wrote in Science in 2009 with Boris Worm, the lead author of the 2006 paper, has shown that such warnings were exaggerated. Much of the earlier research pointed to declines in catches and concluded that therefore fish stocks must be in trouble. But there is little correlation between how many fish are caught and how many actually exist; over the past decade, for example, fish catches in the United States have dropped because regulators have lowered the allowable catch. On average, fish stocks worldwide appear to be stable, and in the United States they are rebuilding, in many cases at a rapid rate.The overall record of American fisheries management since the mid-1990s is one of improvement, not of decline. Perhaps the most spectacular recovery is that of bottom fish in New England, especially haddock and redfish; their abundance has grown sixfold from 1994 to 2007. Few if any fish species in the United States are now being harvested at too high a rate, and only 24 percent remain below their desired abundance.Much of the success is a result of the Magnuson Fishery Conservation and Management Act, which was signed into law 35 years ago this week. It banned foreign fishing within 200 miles of the United States shoreline and established a system of management councils to regulate federal fisheries. In the past 15 years, those councils, along with federal and state agencies, nonprofit organizations and commercial and sport fishing groups, have helped assure the sustainability of the nation’s fishing stocks.Some experts, like Daniel Pauly of the University of British Columbia Fisheries Center, who warns of “the end of fish,” fault the systems used to regulate fisheries worldwide. But that condemnation is too sweeping, and his prescription — closing much of the world’s oceans to fishing — would leave people hungry unnecessarily.Many of the species that are fished too much worldwide fall into two categories: highly migratory species that are subject to international fishing pressures, and bottom fish — like cod, haddock, flounder and sole — that are caught in “mixed fisheries,” where it is impossible to catch one species but not another. We also know little about the sustainability of fish caught in much of Asia and Africa.The Atlantic bluefin tuna is emblematic of the endangered migratory species; its numbers are well below the target set by the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas, and the catches in the Eastern Atlantic are too high. Many species of sharks also fall into this category. Because these stocks are fished by international fleets, reducing the catch requires global cooperation and American leadership. But not all highly migratory fish are in danger; the albacore, skipjack and yellowfin tuna and swordfish on American menus are not threatened.Managing the mixed fisheries in American waters requires different tactics. On the West Coast, fish stocks have been strongly revived over the past decade through conservative management: fleet size reductions, highly restrictive catch limits and the closing of large areas to certain kinds of nets, hooks and traps. Rebuilding, however, has come at a cost: to prevent overharvesting and protect weak species, about 30 percent of the potential sustainable harvest from productive species (those that can be harvested at higher rates) goes untapped.A similar tradeoff is going on in New England, where the management council, made up of federal and state representatives, restricts the harvesting of bottom fish like cod and yellowtail flounder in both the Gulf of Maine and Georges Bank, off Cape Cod. In trying to rebuild the cod, regulators have had to limit the catch of the much more abundant haddock, which are caught in the same nets.The Magnuson Act regulating federal fisheries has been successful, but it needs to be revised. The last time it was reauthorized, in 2006, it required the rebuilding of overfished stocks within 10 years. That rule is too inflexible and hurts fishing communities from New England to California. A better option is to give the management councils greater discretion in setting targets and deadlines for rebuilding fish stocks.We are caught between the desire for oceans as pristine ecosystems and the desire for sustainable seafood. Are we willing to accept some depleted species to increase long-term sustainable food production in return? After all, if fish are off the menu, we will likely eat more beef, chicken and pork. And the environmental costs of producing more livestock are much higher than accepting fewer fish in the ocean: lost habitat, the need for ever more water, pesticides, fertilizer and antibiotics, chemical runoff and “dead zones” in the world’s seas.Suddenly, that tasty, healthful and environmentally friendly fish on the plate looks a lot more appetizing.
Sardine fishery booming
Friday, April 8, 2011 By Natalia RealThe sardine catch around British Columbia’s (BC) Vancouver Island has been soaring in recent years. Fishers in Ucluelet, Zeballos, Port Hardy and other resource-dependent communities caught 22,000 tonnes of sardines in 2010 – just a tiny fraction of the schools some describe as hundreds of m long."I've seen them on the west coast of Vancouver Island thick enough to walk on," said Barron Carswell, senior manager of marine fisheries and seafood policy for the provincial Agriculture Ministry."It's incredible. They are all over the place. You can go into little bays and the surface of the water is all sardines," he marvelled, reports Vancouver Sun. The sardine harvest in 2009 exceeded 15,000 tonnes -- 10 times the amount compared to when sardines received commercial fishery status two years before, and grew to CAD 29 million (USD 30.2 million) from CAD 1.4 million (USD 1.46 million) in 2007. The harvest gives work to fishing vessels and processing facilities in rural resource-dependent communities on Vancouver Island.
In Ucluelet, Zeballos and Port Hardy, more than 14,000 tonnes of sardines have been processed through partnerships between commercial companies and First Nations.
Read the rest of the story on FIS.