In policy preview, Democrats target oceans for climate action

PhysOrg — House Democrats on Tuesday unveiled broad ocean-themed climate legislation, touting the world's oceans as underappreciated tools to combat rising temperatures. "Until today, ocean climate solutions have been mostly out of sight and out of mind in the U.S.," said Jane Lubchenco, who led the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration during the Obama administration. Lubchenco, Read More…

Green groups sue over study of Deepwater Horizon impacts on…

The Hill — Conservation groups sued the Trump administration Wednesday, arguing it failed to fully consider the effects on endangered species when reviewing the environmental damage caused by the Deepwater Horizon oil spill.  The 2010 spill in the Gulf of Mexico spurred a new evaluation of how species were faring after the spill. That new biological opinion took a decade to complete, with Read More…

Management of exploited transboundary fish stocks requires…

EurekAlert! — Marine fish species are migratory in nature and not respectful of human-made territorial boundaries, which represents a challenge for fisheries management as policies tend to focus at the national level. With an average catch of 48 million tonnes per year, and USD $77 billion in annual fishing revenue, these species support critical fisheries, and require international Read More…

Declining Marine Health Threatens Traditional Subsistence Fishing For…

South Seattle Emerald — Melissa Watkinson recalls a time in the past when she could go crabbing at the end of the dock in the Puget Sound and catch a great deal of crab. She can’t do that anymore. These days, she has to go on a boat into deeper waters to catch any. “My nieces won’t know what it’s like to be able to throw a pot at the end of a dock and catch some crab,” Watkinson Read More…

Captive-bred salmon in wild may do more harm than good

PhysOrg — Releasing captive-bred Atlantic salmon into the ocean, a long-standing practice to boost stocks for commercial fishing, reduces the rate at which wild populations reproduce and may ultimately do more harm than good, researchers cautioned Wednesday. On average, salmon born in hatcheries in Ireland's Burrishoole catchment only produced a third as many offspring in the North Read More…

Study: Most Of The Plastic Found In Seabirds’ Stomachs Was…

WBUR — The great shearwater is a seabird commonly seen off the New England coast. It's not particularly striking — to the untrained eye, it looks like a brown seagull with long wings. It eats by diving underwater, grabbing prey and then returning to the surface to swallow it down. The birds aren't rare or endangered, but they can live for decades, and this makes them especially interesting Read More…

Why floating closed containment aquaculture could be dead in the water

The Fish Site — The dream of operating floating closed containment aquaculture systems at sea is at risk of becoming “a dead case” in Norway, due to regulatory constraints. This was the core message provided by Harald Sveier, from Lerøy Seafood Group, at the Smolt production in the future conference, which is taking place virtually today. Sveier used the occasion to explain how Read More…

Amid Drought and Flooding, Cambodian Fish Catches, Exports Fall…

The Diplomat — For two decades, scientists and environmentalists have warned that fish stocks in the Lower Mekong River were at risk from a cluster of factors including overfishing and use of illegal nets, massive dam construction in Laos and China, and the effects of climate change. And now the numbers appear to support those warnings, with Cambodian fish exports for the first nine Read More…

China commits to share year-round water data with Mekong River…

Reuters — China on Thursday signed an agreement with the Mekong River Commission (MRC) to share year-round data on the flow of its portion of the vital waterway amid concern that Chinese dams may be causing drought downstream in Southeast Asia. A push for more data from China’s portion of the Mekong River - which Beijing calls the Lancang River - intensified this year after U.S. Read More…

California’s Mega Fires Have Arrived 30 Years Early

Scientific American — Scientists predicted climate change would fuel the kind of devastating wildfires that California has seen this year. Except it wasn’t expected to happen for decades. A major analysis by state researchers projected that the amount of area burned by wildfire could jump 77% by the end of the century. Another study by UCLA warned that by 2050 fire on average would Read More…