EDFish

Local knowledge is key to understanding climate impacts on fisheries

By EDF Oceans / Published: May 23, 2023

Photo credit: Perry Institute for Marine Science

By Gemma Carroll, Jacob Eurich and Krista Sherman

Shervin Tate is a recreational fishing guide in The Bahamas, known locally as the Bonefish Specialist. He takes visiting anglers by boat to fish remote beaches and shallow water flats flanked by mangroves. The ultimate prize for his guests is landing and releasing a bonefish: pound for pound, one of the strongest sportfish in the world. Shervin assesses the conditions to select the perfect place to fish, then he and the angler scan the flats for where to target the next cast. Read More »

Posted in Climate Change, International / Tagged bahamas, bonefish, coastal, Fishing, mangroves | Comments are closed

SmartPass and Smartphones: An Innovative Approach to Small-Scale Fisheries Monitoring in Lampung Province, Indonesia

By EDF Oceans / Published: April 13, 2023

Photo credit: Wahyu Mulyono/EDF

By Harlisa and Dustin Colson Leaning

In Lampung province, Indonesia, a few smartphones and three well-placed cameras are revolutionizing the way that small-scale fisheries are monitored. In a previous blog post, we introduced how smartphone-based catch reporting and the SmartPass camera system could have the potential to play a fundamental role in sustaining small-scale fisheries. A few years later, these two technologies have been implemented to generate reliable estimates of total effort and total catch in Lampung’s blue swimming crab fishery – metrics often hard to come by in a small-scale fishery characterized by limited resources and many fishers. Read More »

Posted in International, Policy, Science/Research, Seafood / Tagged blue swimming crab, climate resilience, Indonesia, Lampung, small-scale fishery, SmartPass | Comments are closed

A framework for more agile and sustainable crustacean fisheries in Asia

By EDF Oceans / Published: February 28, 2023

By Ming Sun, Stony Brook University, and Adityo Setiawan, Environmental Defense Fund

From warming ocean waters to increased acidification and rising sea levels, it’s no wonder that fish are on the move to find suitable habitat! Climate change is creating dramatic shifts in species’ distributions and affecting their productivity. Fisheries managers who try to ensure sustainable fishing efforts find their jobs more difficult as fish are changing how and where they live. Now more than ever, managing mobile fish stocks is even more of a challenge. Read More »

Posted in International, Seafood / Tagged adaptive management, China, Climate change, crabs, crustacean fisheries, Fishery Management, Indonesia, Lobster, Philippines, Shrimp | Comments are closed

Prioritizing Climate Resilience in United States Fisheries

By Reggie Paros / Published: February 23, 2023

The impacts of climate change are already apparent in U. S. offshore waters, creating challenges for fisheries, fishing communities and fisheries management. Examples of climate impacts are prevalent across all regions of the coastal U.S. As ocean temperatures warm, species distributions are shifting. For instance, market squid moving up the West Coast from Baja California to Oregon spurred a harvest boom in the Pacific Northwest. Species, including blue crabs and black sea bass, are shifting northward on the Atlantic coast. Read More »

Posted in Gulf of Mexico, Mid-Atlantic, New England, Policy, Seafood / Tagged Climate change, climate-resilient fisheries, fishery solutions center, Harvest Control Rules, US fisheries | Comments are closed

Finding the lowest-hanging fruits to improve crustacean fisheries with limited data and capacity

By EDF Oceans / Published: February 21, 2023

By Nathan Willse, Stony Brook University, and Harlisa Harlisa, Environmental Defense Fund

Crustacean fisheries offer enormous opportunities as high-value and potentially resilient alternatives to over-exploited finfish stocks. However, rising global demand for crustacean products and rapid environmental change call for an increased focus on the sustainable management of crustacean stocks. While landings, the catch received from a harvester, of crustaceans are on the rise globally as traditional finfish landings are declining, effective fishery management is hampered in many geographies by limited data availability and capacity for data collection and processing.

Posted in International, Science/Research, Seafood / Tagged China, Crustacean, Crustacean Task Force, Fisheries, Indonesia, Philippines, United States | Comments are closed

Expert Q&A: What we need to know to ensure aquaculture in offshore US waters is done right

By EDF Oceans / Published: February 16, 2023

As global populations grow and fish populations shift or even shrink, one thing is clear: offshore aquaculture in the United States is a matter of when not if. But it’s also a matter of how. Because as demand for safe, delicious, low-carbon seafood grows, we must also ensure that offshore seafood farming in United States waters does not negatively impact marine ecosystems or wild capture fisheries. And according to a new report, Toward an environmentally responsible offshore aquaculture industry in the United States: Ecological risks, remedies, and knowledge gaps, building a robust regulatory framework to ensure that requires more studies and more data.

We talked to some of the report’s authors to better understand what we know, what we need to know, and where we go from here:

Posted in Seafood / Tagged Aquaculture, Blue Foods, Fisheries, gap analysis, Offshore Aquaculture, Seafood, sustainable fisheries, Sustainable Seafood, United States | Comments are closed