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by Natasha Lasky, ODP Staff Writer A new report entitled The World’s Forgotten Fishes from the World Wildlife Fund has found that there has been a “catastrophic” decline in freshwater fish, with nearly a third of all freshwater fish species coming perilously close to extinction. The statistics paint a sobering picture: 26% of all critically […]
Continue Reading 469 wordsA new report from the Environmental Justice Foundation exposes the horrific conditions that Ghanain fishermen face on Chinese-owned industrial trawlers. This capture of the country’s fishing industry flies in the face of Ghanian laws that forbid foreign ownership or control of ships flying its flag. It also makes illegal fishing much harder to trace and regulate.
Why This Matters: It’s impossible to have sustainable fisheries when as much as half of the global catch is illegal, unreported, and unregulated (IUU).
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Fraudulent fish is a more common problem than most people realize. A lawsuit brought by the Organic Consumers Association alleges fish distributors Mowi Ducktrap and Mowi USA of deceptive marketing of smoked salmon sold under the brand Ducktrap River of Maine.
Why This Matters: Many people are trying to cut back on meat — particularly during the COVID pandemic, when meatpacking plants closed, or worse, kept operating despite widespread transmission of the disease among workers at those facilities.
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We know that rising ocean temperatures are causing fish stocks to migrate to cooler waters, and now we have new evidence as to why. A study by German scientists found that juvenile fish and fish that are ready to mate are especially sensitive to changes in water temperature, and as a result, up to 60 percent of all species may be forced to leave their traditional spawning areas as waters warm.
Why This Matters: Fish populations need functional habitat to survive and procreate.
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The removal of legacy dams, which were first constructed dozens to more than a hundred years ago, is proving to be increasingly popular to restore river flows now that they are no longer serving any purpose for generating power or driving industrial uses.
Why This Matters: There is no doubt that a free-flowing river is a healthy river. As has been much discussed recently, the need to do everything we can to restore and conserve the natural world to stave off the next wave of extinctions and to combat climate change.
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Fishers around the world are increasingly using electronic monitoring (EM) technologies such as cameras, gear sensors, and electronic reporting (ER) to improve the timeliness, quality, cost-effectiveness, and accessibility of fisheries data collection in commercial fishing operations, and the U.S. is working to keep pace. A strong coalition of industry, managers and other stakeholders called the Net Gains Alliance recently funded four projects to find solutions to overcome specific barriers to greater EM/ER adoption.
Why This Matters: Its time to bring fisheries management into the 21st century using the best available technology.
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