Saving Seafood

LOUISIANA: Scientists: Saving the coast does not necessarily mean destroying fisheries

August 26, 2016 โ€” George Ricks represents one of the great ironies in the debate over how to restore and protect parts of Louisianaโ€™s rapidly-vanishing coast.

Like many of those who depend most on Louisianaโ€™s estuaries, the charter boat captain is deeply skeptical of the stateโ€™s plans to build massive structures and deliver Mississippi River sediment into the marsh with the aim of building land.

โ€œTheyโ€™re going to turn both of the estuaries, Barataria and Breton, totally fresh from February to July,โ€ said Ricks, โ€œwhich is going to wipe out our spawning seasons.โ€

A group of scientists and community experts came together to examine not whether to building diversions, but how they would be operated.

โ€œWhen people come to New Orleans, they want to eat oysters, they want to eat seafood. they want to eat shrimp,โ€ said Dr. Earl Melancon, Ph.D., a Nicholls State University expert on shellfish.

Melancon was one of a dozen experts who, in essence, tackled the question of whether it is possible to partially free the Mississippi River from its straight jacket of levees without ruining an entire way of life.

Read the full story at Fox 8 New Orleans

Judge: Sanctioned slaughter of fish-eating birds broke law

March 31, 2016 โ€” WASHINGTON โ€” The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service acted improperly when it allowed tens of thousands of migratory aquatic birds to be shot each year to protect farmed and sport fish populations, a federal judge has ruled.

The agency said it lacked resources for a โ€œhard lookโ€ at either the long-range environmental effects of or possible alternatives to its decisions about double-crested cormorants, and that just isnโ€™t a good reason, U.S. District Judge John D. Bates wrote.

Letting that stand could gut the National Environmental Protection Act, โ€œsince many an agency would frequently so argue,โ€ wrote Bates, a federal judge in Washington.

He ruled Tuesday on a pair of orders that opponents say let people kill up to 160,000 double-crested cormorants each year to protect sport fish in 24 states east of the Mississippi River and farmed fish in 13 of those states.

Read the full story from the Associated Press at WFTV