Seafood reached a tipping point in 2009 when, for the first time, more than 50 percent of fish used for human consumption came from farms. That might sound like good news for oceans, but farmed fish largely subsist on a steady diet of smaller fish, which are caught from fragile fisheries. It’s not a sustainable equation. Aaron Watson, a researcher at University of Maryland’s Center for Environmental Science, says there is clear evidence that we are “fishing down the food chain, catching smaller and smaller fish to bring to the table and to bring to market, depleting wild ... Read More
Quake Rescues Reserve, Shakes Baja Fishing Town
February 1, 2012 • By • Leave a Comment
The villages of the Colorado River delta in Mexico normally would be bubbling with excitement now about the coming high tides that produce a bounty of fish each spring. This is when a sea-going species, the gulf corvina, gathers in the upper Gulf of California off the mouth of the Colorado River, then rushes like clockwork during the high tides of March and April to spawn in the safer fresh water up the channel. At a place called El Zanjon, an indigenous tribe, the Cucapá, and poor delta residents have long netted the corvina spawn. On isolated salt flats along the river channel, ... Read More
The Making of the Ocean Health Index
July 12, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment
If all goes well, when a scientific paper is published and the media pick up on the story, a lot of effort gets boiled down into a soundbite. New cure for cancer discovered. Water found on Mars. Fish stocks disappearing from the world's oceans. This focus can be a good thing for communicating science to the public, but it masks a lot of what was necessary to produce that result. Often, the story of how, and why, science gets done is as interesting and important as the actual result. Indeed, the decisions about what does not belong in the soundbite are as critical as the decisions about what ... Read More
Fishing, Overs and Unders
October 18, 2010 • By • Leave a Comment
How is fishing changing our oceans? On the surface, the ocean can seem timeless and unchanging. But appearances can be deceiving because scientists have noticed massive drops in the number of fish in the ocean. Larry Crowder, a professor of marine biology at Duke University, talks about the dramatic effect of overfishing. For example, archeological evidence shows that Native Americans a thousand years ago regularly caught cod that were more than 3 feet long. These days, commercial fishing boats are lucky to catch cod at all and the ones they do catch have shrunk to 7 inches or less. ... Read More
Punta Cabras and a Shipwreck
May 27, 2010 • By • 3 Comments
El Hippo continues it's journey south, finding an overturned fishing boat that comes to symbolize the plight of the world's suffering fisheries. Location: On a sandy bluff next to a fisherman's house in Punta Cabras, a few hours south of Ensenada. Conditions: Hot and dry. The swell is smaller than yesterday, when the panga capsized. Discussion: The open fields were golden in the afternoon light, when we arrived in Punta Cabras. Further from the coast, the earth seemed to warp into hills and mountains, like a wrinkled carpet that a little boy pushed together as a landscape for his ... Read More
Can This Fishery Be Saved? Yes!
July 30, 2009 • By • Leave a Comment
There is reason to have hope in the long-term sustainability of the world's fisheries, which a few years ago were predicted to collapse in the next four decades. According to a brand-new analysis of the most comprehensive fisheries database to date suggests a balance between fishing and conservation is possible even in extremely overfished regions — when the right combination of management techniques are employed. And to the joy of sushi eaters, there is evidence these strategies already are helping fish populations rebound in some parts of the world. The analysis is described in ... Read More
Fishery Conservation & Smaller Fish Size
March 2, 2009 • By • 1 Comment
The recreational fishing docks of Key West, Fla., have seen many changes over the past 50 years. Boats change, captains change, and the clothes and hairstyles definitely change, but one thing remains same: People brag about what they catch and they take pictures to prove it really happened. Today, these historical photographs of excited charter-boat passengers and their trophy fish — originally destined for vacation slideshows, family scrapbooks or office desk frames — are allowing Loren McClenachan to confirm scientifically what fathers and grandfathers have been preaching for years: ... Read More
