Fish & Fisheries

"The chairman of the International Whaling Commission offered a compromise proposal Thursday that would authorize commercial hunting for the first time in a quarter-century in exchange for reducing the number of whales killed each year."

"The Obama administration is launching a significant new effort to reach out to marine recreational fishermen, an economically and politically powerful group that has previously felt shut out by the new administration."

"A new report by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has confirmed a new strain of norovirus, which has sickened dozens of people and forced the closure of several oyster harvest areas in the Louisiana area." Most of the beds have been reopened after tests proved them safe.

"The Chesapeake's blue crabs, in decline for a decade, are in the middle of an extraordinary comeback, officials in Maryland and Virginia said Wednesday. The estuary's crab population has more than doubled in two years, they said, reaching its highest level since 1997."
 

"New designs for fish farms could keep them in the ocean and help restore damaged marine environments at the same time, says a biologist working on a five-year nationwide aquaculture project."

With the Chesapeake's once-abundant oysters reduced 99 percent, Maryland Natural Resources Police go undercover to catch poachers.
 

"A study by the National Academy of Sciences declared Friday that the efforts to save endangered fish in the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta by restricting water delivery are 'scientifically justified.'"

"Delegates at a United Nations conference on endangered species in Doha, Qatar, soundly defeated American-supported proposals on Thursday to ban international trade in bluefin tuna and to protect polar bears."

"People are eating an estimated 13 million pounds of fish per year from the Ohio River -- and that doesn’t count fish caught by commercial fishers."