Daily Archives: September 24, 2012
The Shocking News About Cod NYTimes.com
The ideal fish for human consumption would mature quickly and reproduce in staggering numbers. This does not describe the Atlantic cod. Cod mature late — at 4 to 6 years old — and they can live as long as 25 years. Female cod do, in fact, produce astonishing numbers of eggs. But older cod lay two or three times as many eggs as younger cod. This means that a healthy cod population must include relatively large numbers of older fish.
Shad Resurgence Marks a Cleaner Delaware River
American shad were once so common that East Coast rivers were described as being “black” and “boiling” as tens of millions of fish migrated upstream each spring to spawn. Today, approximately 98 percent of the fish that formed a staple of the Colonial diet have been depleted. In rivers once teeming with shad, a daily catch is sometimes counted in the single digits………Shad — the name comes from the Latin, Alosa sapidissima, meaning “most delicious, or savory, herring” — are just one part of this larger effort, but a critical part. The fish is considered a marker for the overall health of the rivers and tribu……..Protecting the Fisheries…….Historical Comparisons…..Midwater Trawling…….Hydraulic Fracturing……..Removing Dams…….Rescuing the Raritan River…….A Holistic Approach……..Climbing the Ladder….. http://www.wnyc.org/articles/new-jersey-news/2012/sep/24/shad-resurgence-marks-cleaner-delaware-river/
editorial – Fishing ports should use disaster funds for new jobs. The Wind Shills are taking advantage, the NSC is planning, and some fishermen are ready to roll!
Battered by new federal limits on the amount of fish they can catch, Northeastern cod fishermen need help both to maintain their boats and equipment in tough times, and to transition into other marine-related jobs. Luckily, they can count on strong political support from Massachusetts senators Scott Brown and John Kerry and from governors and members of Congress throughout much of New England. Those backers have now persuaded the Obama administration to declare the collapsing groundfish industry an economic disaster in Maine, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, and New York. The move won’t necessarily alter the catch limits — nor should it — but it opens the door to financial disaster relief.
Hard-hit fishing communities should spend the money wisely. That means, among other things, helping to establish new marine industries. New England senators and representatives are seeking $100 million in disaster aid. If Congress goes along, it will be a one-time injection of economic-development funds that fishing communities must not squander.
Fishing communities should not expect the industry to return to normal any time soon. The number of fishermen in Gloucester, for instance, has dwindled from well over 3,000 in the mid-1800s to the low-hundreds today. The challenge will be to keep an appropriate number of boats and fishermen economically afloat, without merely subsidizing a dying industry. Determining the proper size of the fishing fleet will require better assessments of the fishing stock by federal regulators and more cooperation between fishermen and researchers. As a gesture of goodwill, the federal government should continue a program that pairs fishermen with regulators and pays them an average of $630 per day at sea.
But the harder task will be shifting fishing families into marine jobs that don’t involve fishing. In Gloucester, Mayor Carolyn Kirk is already working with colleges and entrepreneurs to create more marine research and industrial jobs. Meanwhile, Representative Ed Markey has suggested that some of the marine skills involved in fishing might be useful for offshore jobs implanting wind turbines for energy. The Northeast Seafood Coalition, a lobbying group, should advise local officials on how best to spend the federal aid.
“With this funding, we can move forward,” said Nicolas Brancaleone, communications manager for the coalition. The best way to move forward is to realize that this disaster declaration is a unique opportunity for economic transition. If it is handled properly, the iconic culture of fishing can be maintained, while a new marine culture takes root on the New England coast.
Climate change will shift marine predators’ habitat, study says – By Juliet Eilperin, Washington Post
More doom and gloom from a member of the Society of Environmental Journalists (SEJ)
The top ocean predators in the North Pacific could lose as much as 35 percent of their habitat by the end of the century as a result of climate change, according to a study published Sunday in the journal Nature Climate Change.
The analysis, conducted by a team of 11 American and Canadian researchers, took data compiled from tracking 4,300 open-ocean animals over a decade and looked at how predicted temperature changes would alter the areas they depend on for food and shelter. Some habitats could shift by as much as 600 miles while others will remain largely unchanged, the scientists found, and these changes could affect species in different ways.
Editorial: Ex-AG’s ‘probe’ of fishing fund hardly independent – Gloucester Daily Times
The Gloucester Fishing Community Preservation Fund’s naming of former state Attorney General Scott Harshbarger to carry out an investigation into its own “governance, policies and operations” might seem like a good move 
— one that could clear up the clouds raised last winter by fishermen who voiced conflict-of-interest and concerns to Gloucester’s two state lawmakers.
Harshbarger, after all, has extensive experience both as attorney general and private attorney dealing with regulatory and fiscal issues involving nonprofit organizations. And that fits the fishing preservation fund, which largely serves as a commercial fishing permit bank handling the $12 million in mitigation money granted to fishermen as compensation for having a liquified natural gas terminal plunked down in the middle of some of the regional’s most lucrative fishings grounds five years ago.
But it doesn’t take much looking beneath the surface to find all sorts of red flags and questions marks regarding a purported “investigation” that is not at all as it seems.
