Daily Archives: January 4, 2013

Saving Menhaden spanks the Pew Shrews

smfI was surprised to see PolitiFact, a non-partisan political fact-checking website, address this issue. I’ve checked PolitiFact pretty regularly for years, and I’ve never seen them cover a topic like this before. They focused on a claim by the Pew Environment Group that “In recent years, menhaden numbers along our coast have plummeted by 90 percent.” While I admit I am not familiar with specific details of menhaden population trends,  anyone who has paid any attention at all to the ocean knows that we’re overfishing at alarming rates. yaddayadda Read more

Saving Menhaden’s analysis, and comment at Southern Fried Science here

The definitive words on mercury in fish (or, if it seems like the public is dumbing down…

that’s perhaps because it is).  I highly recommend that you invest 28 minutes in watching Fish, mercury & nutrition: the net effects. You can get to it at http://www.undeerc.org/fish/documentary.aspx.    It was done by the Energy and Environmental Research Center at the University of North Dakota with NMFS funding and put’s the mercury/omega 3 “controversy” into the proper – and understandable – national and international context.
And pass the link around. Anyone with an interest in public health in the U.S., in the mental acuity of the next generation, and in the  damage that radical environmentalists are inflicting on our society owes it to themselves to watch it.
I give it 5 stars.
Best,
Nils

F/V Osprey manages to find Ten Pound, Run Aground!

GLOUCESTER — The Osprey, a herring trawler weighing in at 171 tons and 108 feet long, ran aground Wednesday night, resulting in an oil spill. boom

The vessel, rigged for herring, was on its way out of its home pier in Gloucester around 10 p.m. Wednesday when it ran aground off the coast of Ten Pound Island, according to U.S. Coast Guard Lt. Garret Meyer. Read More

Closed Areas need fed’s OK to open

warrenThe New England Fishery Management Council has voted to recommend giving commercial groundfishermen access to parts of five areas that have been closed to them for many years. The request to open closed areas to commercial fishing came days before the NOAA Science Center issued a report on the 2011 fishing year that contained the revelation that only 41 percent of allocated fish were landed in 2011.  Read More