Conservation & Environment

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has awarded over $7.7 million in federal stimulus funds for two Atlantic salmon restoration projects along the Penobscot and Machias rivers in Maine.

The Penobscot River Restoration Trust has received $6.1 million for the removal of the Great Works Dam. This is the initial phase for opening over 1,000 miles of fish habitat on the Penobscot River watershed, according to Congressman Mike Michaud’s office. Project SHARE (Salmon Habitat and River Enhancement) was also awarded over $1.6 million to remove fish passage barriers on over 66 miles of the Machias River watershed. Both of these projects are intended to open up river habitats for migrating fish, including the Atlantic salmon, which was recently listed as endangered by NOAA and the US Fish & Wildlife Service .

“While I objected to the recent decision to list Maine’s Atlantic salmon as endangered, these grant awards for habitat restoration are important first steps by NOAA to provide the funding needed to support the Atlantic salmon recovery efforts,” said Michaud. “I will continue to work with the federal agencies to insure they have sufficient resources for the permitting requirements, mitigation work, and restoration projects necessary to reduce the economic impacts on Maine communities and businesses.”

Read the complete story at The Exception Magazine.

In a column first published in Commercial Fisheries News, the executive director of the East Coast Tuna Association and the Blue Water Fishermen’s association criticizes the assumptions in Charles Clover’s The End of the Line, and urges the use of programs like NOAA’s Fish Watch, which he says has "scientific competency and objectivity to verify the facts on the status of a fishery stock."

"The media has been flooded with doom and gloom stories of fish stock wipeouts since last fall when Robert Redford’s Sundance Film Festival previewed the controversial “End of the Line” movie. The negative coverage has intensified tremendously with the premier of the film in England coinciding with World Oceans Day on June 8.

The movie is based on a book by Charles Clover, who largely based his book on a paper prepared in 2003 by Ransom Myers and Boris Worm. The paper, which was published by Nature magazine, claimed there had been a 90% reduction in the biomass of large pelagic fishes in the oceans of the world. Following publication, Nature was hit by a wave of criticism for allowing such poor science and environmental advocacy disguised as science to see the light of day."

Read the complete column from Commercial Fisheries News.

The Pew Environment Group on Wednesday called for stronger shark conservation measures worldwide as a new report by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) classifies 35 out of 64 known pelagic shark and related ray species around the world as threatened or near threatened with extinction.

The IUCN report was released just days before a joint meeting of the world’s fishery managers in San Sebastian, Spain. The regional fisheries management organizations (RFMOs), which mostly focus on managing tuna fisheries, agreed at their first joint meeting two years ago that the problem of declining shark populations urgently needed to be addressed. To date, however, none have set limits on the number of sharks that can be caught in their jurisdictions.

"Up to 70 million sharks are killed around the world every year for the shark fin market, virtually all of which are caught in areas where there is no management regime in place to ensure their sustainability," said Joshua Reichert, managing director of the Pew Environment Group. "This is a staggering number. Unless this situation is soon reversed, large numbers of shark species will disappear altogether."

Read the complete story at The Pew Charitable Trusts.