The Secretive Fishery Management Agency that Regulates Your Fish
On an unseasonably warm evening in September 2011, in Danvers, Massachusetts, a fishery regulator and two biologists were taking comments from the public about the decline of an important forage fish...
View ArticleSmall Fish, Big Break: California Votes to Protect Ocean’s Tiny Residents
Small fish have just gotten a big break. A California state policy adopted this week will limit fishing of “forage fish”—small, schooling fish that make up an important part of the diets of marine...
View ArticleScience for Hire: What Industry’s Deep Pockets Are Doing to Our Fisheries
[Editor's note: This article was cross-posted on Alternet under the title "Science for Hire: Why Industry's Deep Pockets May Be Depleting the Last of Our Fisheries."] It’s sunset in Woods Hole,...
View ArticleOmega Protein Hiring Hundreds of Foreign Workers While Boasting of Jobs in...
The little menhaden is creating quite a ripple. An Atlantic coast fisheries commission is expected by week’s end to set a coast wide catch limit for Atlantic menhaden for the first time in history,...
View ArticleUnprotected: a Timeline of Inaction on the Most Important Fish in the Sea
Unprotected: a Menhaden Timeline Menhaden has been called “the most important fish in the sea,” because it forms the base of the Atlantic food web, providing breakfast, lunch, and dinner for important...
View ArticleMaking Waves: Delegate Cites PTP Investigation in Op-Ed
In an op-ed published on SoMdNews.com, Maryland delegate Peter F. Murphy (District 28), highlighted a Public Trust Project investigation that found that Omega Protein had hired hundreds of foreign...
View ArticleIt Once Swam with Dinosaurs, but is This 800-Pound Fish Now Doomed?
Washingtonians might not realize it, but a 150-million-year-old species is slipping into oblivion right under their noses. Atlantic sturgeon, the pointy-snouted giant that can reach lengths of 14 feet...
View ArticlePirate Fishermen Running Wild on the High Seas
Modern-day pirates might not look like Captain Jack Sparrow from Disney’s Pirates of the Caribbean, but they do charter ships across the world’s oceans, stealing and plundering a valuable resource that...
View ArticleOmega Protein Makes Good on Threat to Cut Jobs, but it Doesn’t Have To
Omega Protein employs 250 people in Reedville, VA, mostly factory workers and fishermen who net Atlantic menhaden, taking whole schools of the small, oily fish from the ocean and grinding them into...
View ArticleHas the Atlantic Fisheries Commission Industry-Proofed its Scientific...
Scientists in charge of determining how many menhaden are in the Atlantic Ocean will convene this week under a fresh set of public participation guidelines. The new rules outline clear procedures for...
View ArticleThe Fish at the Heart of the Food System
By Alison Fairbrother and David Schleifer You have never seen a menhaden, but you have eaten one. Although no one sits down to a plate of these silvery, bug-eyed, foot-long fish at a seafood...
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