LibrosA ring seal entangled in fishing equipment — aka bycatch.
For every pound of sashimi, barbecued shrimp, or grilled sea bass that you stuff into your mouth, you’re basically spitting four ounces of marine life onto the floor.
The nonprofit Oceana published a detailed report on Thursday cataloguing the egregious problem of bycatch in U.S. fisheries. Bycatch is a word that refers to the sharks, turtles, whales, non-edible fish, and other critters that are inadvertently hauled into fishing boats or caught up in the gear of fishing fleets that are pursuing more palatable and lucrative species.
Such gratuitous killing wreaks havoc with marine food chains that are needed to support sustainable fisheries. From Oceana’s new report:
Bycatch is one of the biggest threats to the oceans and has contributed to overfishing and the dramatic decline of fish populations around the world. Commercial fisheries bring in approximately 160 billion pounds of marine catch around the world each year, which means almost 400 million pounds are caught every day. Recent estimates indicate as much as 40 percent of global catch is discarded overboard.
Based in part on U.S. government studies, Oceana estimates that 17 to 22 percent of animal life captured by the American fishing industry is discarded back into the sea — “likely already dead or dying.” If that’s accurate, some 2 billion pounds of marine wildlife is inadvertently being maimed or killed by the U.S. fishing sector every year.
The problem is not well measured globally or in the U.S.:
OceanaClick to embiggen.
Of those American fisheries where bycatch is measured, nine fisheries cause a lionfish’s share of the problem — they’re responsible for half of the country’s reported bycatch but they bring in just 7 percent of its landings.
OceanaClick to embiggen.
Oceana is calling for new regulations, the closing of loopholes in existing regulations, vigorous enforcement of rules already on the books, and better monitoring of bycatch. “Bycatch is not inevitable,” the report states. “There are ways to minimize unintended injury and waste by using cleaner gear, avoiding areas where vulnerable species are known to be present and enforcing bycatch limits each season.”
Source
Wasted Catch: Unsolved Problems in U.S. Fisheries, Oceana
John Upton is a science fan and green news boffin who tweets, posts articles to Facebook, and blogs about ecology. He welcomes reader questions, tips, and incoherent rants: johnupton@gmail.com.
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Billions of pounds of sea life die every year to feed our seafood appetite
Pity the poor right-wing schemers at the American Legislative Exchange Council. Things are just not going their way.
ALEC is a corporate- and Koch-funded group that pushes conservative bills in state legislatures around the country. Among many others, it’s promoted bills to roll back renewable energy standards (unsuccessfully so far), and now it’s trying to undermine net-metering rules that benefit solar-panel owners. In the first seven months of this year, ALEC helped get at least 77 anti-environmental bills introduced into 34 statehouses, according to the Center for Media and Democracy.
But it was ALEC’s advocacy for so-called “stand your ground” laws, made famous in the wake of the Trayvon Martin shooting, that started scaring off corporate donors.
Now, as The Guardian reports, ALEC has a big budget hole. And as a trove of internal ALEC documents reveals, the group is also facing declining membership among state legislators and potential concerns that it could be targeted for improper lobbying.
The Guardian has learned that the American Legislative Exchange Council (Alec), which shapes and promotes legislation at state level across the US, has identified more than 40 lapsed corporate members it wants to attract back into the fold under a scheme referred to in its documents as the “Prodigal Son Project”.
The target firms include commercial giants such as Amazon, Coca-Cola, General Electric, Kraft, McDonald’s and Walmart, all of which cut ties with the group following the furore over the killing of the unarmed black teenager Trayvon Martin in Florida in February 2012. …
The Guardian has learned that by Alec’s own reckoning the network has lost almost 400 state legislators from its membership over the past two years, as well as more than 60 corporations that form the core of its funding. In the first six months of this year it suffered a hole in its budget of more than a third of its projected income.
The news broke just before ALEC’s big national meeting this week. Despite the group’s troubles, it’s still got big-name speakers on the agenda: Texas Tea Party Sen. Ted Cruz and former Romney running mate Paul Ryan.
And it’s got dirty energy on the agenda too, as DeSmogBlog notes:
These findings by The Guardian come just one day before ALEC’s forthcoming States and Nation Policy Summit in Washington, DC, in which pro-fracking and anti-regulatory model bills and presentations will be the centerpiece of the Energy, Environment and Agriculture Task Force’s convening. Shale gas industry lobbying powerhouse America’s Natural Gas Alliance will be named as a corporate member at the meeting.
A little “stand your ground” advocacy isn’t enough to scare off the companies that want to poison your ground.
Source
ALEC facing funding crisis from donor exodus in wake of Trayvon Martin row, The Guardian
Leaked Documents Reveal IRS Concerns, Funding Crisis At Corporate Lobbying Group ALEC, DeSmogBlog
Lisa Hymas is senior editor at Grist. You can follow her on Twitter and Google+.
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