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Seaweed For Thought
Kelp off Laguna Beach If you’ve walked along a beach or explored a rocky shore, you’ve likely seen lots of seaweed. It grows naturally along our coasts, most visible at low tide. You might even see a...
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The Changing Face of Sportfishing
Bob Rees with a large wild coho, taken about 18 miles offshore of Newport, Oregon on September 22, 2023 When I first started my guide business over 27 years ago, I knew switching professions from a...
View ArticleA View from the Hill: November 2023
The 118th Congress has been an eventful one so far, that’s for sure. We’ve seen some movement on fisheries and oceans issues this year, and expect more to come. But we can’t overlook the unprecedented...
View ArticleWorking Waterfront Preservation Act Would Provide Needed Funding to Coastal...
Earlier this month, U.S. Senator Susan Collins of Maine introduced S. 3180, the “Working Waterfront Preservation Act,” which would establish a grant program to help preserve waterfronts in coastal...
View ArticleExcused Absence
Top photo: Malheur National Forest Recently, I made a much-anticipated return to Malheur National Forest to hunt for elk. Maybe I was forecasting my own fate, but I prefaced my excitement internally...
View ArticleWhither the Striped Bass
I was still in school the last time the striped bass stock collapsed. The crash began slowly, while I was still in college and had a summer job in a local tackle shop that let me be on the water just...
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The Myth of “Mid-Water” in the Alaska Pollock Fishery
The following is a summarized version of a scientific paper written by Marissa Wilson, executive director, and Michelle Stratton, fisheries scientist, of the Alaska Marine Conservation Council. For a...
View ArticleReintroduced: The Keep America’s Waterfronts Working Act
U.S. Representatives Chellie Pingree (D-Maine) and Rob Wittman (R-Va.) have reintroduced the bipartisan Keep America’s Waterfronts Working Act, H.R. 6641. The legislation establishes a Working...
View ArticleMid-Atlantic ‘Harvest Control Rule’: One Year Later
At its June 2022 meeting, the Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council (MAFMC) adopted the so-called “Percent Change Approach” (PCA) for managing the recreational summer flounder, scup, and black sea...
View ArticleFrom High Seas to Hill Pleas
I recently got back from Washington, DC. I’ve gone there on many occasions, lobbying for change such as the Salmon Solutions Planning Act, addressing the depletion of Snake River salmon and how to...
View ArticleJoin Our January Waterside Chat with Melanie Brown; Watch our December Chat...
Join us on January 23rd for the Marine Fish Conservation Network’s next online Waterside Chat, featuring Alaska’s Melanie Brown, outreach director at SalmonState. Besides her work with Salmon State,...
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Real World Striped Bass: Part I
On and Off the Water Observations of 2023’s Fishing Season There aren’t many anglers around who wouldn’t agree that the striped bass run in the New York Bight this fall was downright EPIC. And the...
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Real World Striped Bass: Part II
Read Part I of this series. Top photo: striped bass with a catch-and-release scar On and Off the Water Observations of 2023’s Fishing Season Last go around, we detailed some relevant...
View ArticleThe Striped Bass and the Flounder
In 1984, New York’s recreational fishermen took home about 14.5 million winter flounder, a harvest that totaled about 13.9 million pounds and dwarfed the 1.35 million pounds of flounder that was...
View ArticleSalmon, Subsistence, Pebble Mine & More: Watch the Waterside Chat with...
SalmonState’s Melanie Brown joined the Marine Fish Conservation Network for an online Waterside Chat on January 23rd, 2024. Melanie fishes commercially in Bristol Bay in Alaska, the fourth generation...
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The Science is the Science
Is the Science Perfect? No, But Without It, We Got Noth’n’ Hey, man… I’m gonna admit here that sometimes I have a real hard time understanding the science behind fisheries management decisions. What I...
View ArticleStriped Bass: Lessons from the Last Stock Collapse Could Help Prevent the...
When the Chesapeake Bay striped bass stock collapsed in the late 1970s, people tried to figure out why. Recreational fishermen were quick to point fingers at the commercial sector, which was not yet...
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Marine Sanctuary Proposed for Hawai’i’s Globally Significant Marine Monument
One of the things I talked with Joel R. Johnson, president and CEO of the National Marine Sanctuary Foundation, during our recent Waterside Chat was the potential for a national marine sanctuary in...
View ArticleASMFC Management Authority Challenged by Maryland Lawsuit
After the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission’s (ASMFC’s) Atlantic Striped Bass Management Board adopted Addendum II to Amendment 7 to the Interstate Fishery Management Plan for Atlantic...
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Safeguarding Forage: New Action Underway in New England to Protect Critical...
This article is reprinted with permission from the latest edition of the Wild Oceans Horizon newsletter. For the past year, Wild Oceans and a core group of partners built a coalition of more than...
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