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Archive for the 'Fisheries Conservation Talk' Category

Aug 04 2010

New Website for the Menhaden Coalition

Atlantic Menhaden Decline Menhaden CoalitionThe Menhaden Coalition, a group of over 34 organizations, how has a new website. Check it out: Save Menhaden Website
The Menhaden Coalition asks that:

1) If/when you see the Omega menhaden fleet, please report the sightings on the site. There is a link at the top of the page to post the reports. If you have pictures you should be able to post them, if not email them through the site and they will get the pictures up.

2) At the top right you can sign up to be notified via email when new posts or updates are made.

3) Link to the website from any website you have or are a member of. The Menhaden Coalition needs to drive as much awareness about the situation as possible to let the ASMFC and VIrginia legislature know that we as sportsmen/women are serious about having proper management of menhaden to assure we have forage fish for all the other fish species in the Chesapeake bay and Altantic Ocean. The link to link to is http://www.SaveMenhaden.org

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Jan 23 2010

Trouble with Fish Oil

Good article in Time Magazine about Omega Fish Oil. Check it out here

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Jan 21 2010

Menhaden Need your Help Today!

Tangier Island Omega Protein Fishing Boats Saltwater Fishing for Menhaden in the Chesapeake Bay Save the MenhadenThe most important fish in the sea needs your help Atlantic Menhaden – Ecologically Critical
The alarming decline of the menhaden population threatens the entire Chesapeake Bay ecosystem. Since 1979, the coastal population has declined 72%. Predators like rockfish, bluefish, weakfish, osprey, seabirds, etc. are being deprived of their major food source, while industrial purse seiners are allowed to remove up to 240,000,000 pounds per year.

Legislation has just been introduced in the 2010 General Assembly to transfer the management of Menhaden from the legislature to the Virginia Marine Resources Commission (VMRC), where this ecologically critical Bay species will finally be subject to science-based management. CCA Virginia wholeheartedly supports this legislation.

You Can Make History. Take Action Now. Contact your state senator and delegate, and ask them to support SB185 and HB294. Identify your delegate and senator by going to: http://conview.state.va.us/whosmy.nsf/main?openform
E-mail, fax, write, or call. Just let them know that you want them to support the “Menhaden Transfer Bills.” SB185 and HB294.

After contacting your own two legislators, start e-mailing and calling the legislators who sit on the committees that will decide whether these two bills go forward. They are shown on the opposite side of this sheet. E-mails work fine, and cost you little time and zero money.

For more info on Menhaden, go to:
chesbay.org or savethefish.org/position_statements.htm#menhade

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2010 Va. House: Agriculture, Chesapeake, and Natural Resources
Morgan, Harvey (Ch) Gloucester, (804) 698-1098 DelHMorgan@house.virginia.gov
Ware, R. Lee (VCh) Powhatan, (804) 698-1065 DelLWare@house.virginia.gov
Cox, M. Kirkland Cox Chesterfield, (804) 698-1066 DelKCox@house.virginia.gov
Sherwood, Beverly J. Winchester, (804) 698-1029 DelBSherwood@house.virginia.gov Continue Reading »

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Jan 02 2010

Atom Striper Swiper Plug Founder Bob Pond Passes at Age 92

If you have not heard, there has been some sad news in the striped bass world, Bob Pond of Attleboro, MA, the creator of the Atom Striper Swiper fishing plug (made by Bob’s company Atom Manufacturing) recently passed away at age 92. The first fishing lures made by Bob at Atom Manufacturing were introduced in 1945 and were revolutionary in design. In the 1940′s almost every striped bass angler was fishing with bait on the bottom; when bass were feeding on the surface, fishermen figured the stripers couldn’t be caught. On one such day, Pond was fishing the Cape Cod Canal. ” I’m sitting under the Sagamore Bridge,” he remembers, ” and there was a fisherman there, but I couldn’t see him. All of sudden I saw a striped bass rolling on the surface… and then it started coming toward shore. That’s when I realized there must be an angler down there. Well, I was entranced because outdoors writers in Boston were writing about (catching fish on the surface). I waited until he got the fish to shore, and went down to have a look. ” This guy had the fish on the bank, but it was totally covered with a Turkish towel. He had his hands on his hips, and he looked at me and shook his head… I realized I wasn’t going to get any answers from him so I just left.” “Two or three weeks later I was standing on a pile of rocks fishing. I looked down and there was this thing floating around my legs with some color on its back. I picked it up. It was a Creek Chub plug and it must have been (the other fisherman’s), because nobody else had been fishing there, and nobody was fishing plugs. “It was all scarred-up. The hooks were broken, the paint was all off, it was a mess, I put it on and went down to the breakwater, and caught fish one after another.” Pond brought the lure back to his shop and made two similar plugs from curtain rods. His lures were larger and heavier so they would cast farther. “It was the fourteenth of October, and I went down to the Cape Cod Canal… I caught 14 fish with that new plug. The next morning, I caught another pile of fish.” Atom Lures were born. Pond bought a lathe and all the other tools he would need, and that winter, he turned out 400 plugs. They were on the market the following spring and have endured in their effectiveness for striped bass fishermen all along the east coast and through out the country over the last 50 years.

In 1965, Pond founded Stripers Unlimited . The group’s first purpose was to be a clearing house of information about striped bass fishing in New England. Anglers from New Jersey and other Mid-Atlantic states would visit the the Northeast during the summer to go fishing; a membership in Stripers Unlimited would provide them with a yearbook containing information about fishing spots, tackle shops, and other members they could contact. Soon, Pond turned Stripers Unlimited into a combination clearing house for biological information on striped bass and an activist organization for conservation measures to protect the fish. In the 1970 yearbook, he wrote of the need for more research on hatchery-raised stripers. Then he sank his own money into the research and did the work himself, as he would for the next 28 years. Though he maintained close working relationships with scientists in the academic communtiy, Pond often was at odds with biologists employed by government agencies. Government biologists, he said, were more interested in computer modeling than in hands on field work. They could learn more about bass, he said , by examining the reproductive organs of bass in a fish-processing plant than by sitting before a computer screen. (In one of his campaigns, Pond asked anglers to save the gonads of the fish they caught so he could exmaine the organs). In public hearings, Pond sometimes would catch government biologists mis-stating accepted scientific fact. Those catches did not endear him to fishing regulators. Nonetheless, he says, “reluctantly,” the Massachusetts Marine Fisheries Comminission recently awarded him the Dr. David L Belding award for Marine Conservation, a prize given to the person ” who has done the most to promote conservation and sustainable use of the Commonwealth’s marine resources.” Although he’s retiring from the tackle business, Pond says he will continue the work of Stripers Unlimited .” There is so much to do , ” he says, “so much to do” In many ways  the now Stripers Forever is a continuation of Stripers Unlimited ; as many as half of the Stripers Forever Board members served at Stripers Unlimited.  Dick Russell, author of Striper Wars, was an old friend of Bob’s and consulted him while he wrote that book.  Dick sent the following words about Bob Pond to to share with the Stripers Forever membership.

“The passing of Bob Pond at 92 is a great loss, for he was the true pioneer of striped bass conservation.  Without Bob’s sounding the alarm about the striper population in the mid-1960s, long before anyone else thought there was a problem, this magnificent fish would likely have disappeared from Atlantic coastal waters.  After creating the legendary Atom plug used with success by so many anglers, Bob devoted his life to preserving striped bass for future generations.  It is our job now to carry his legacy forward.  Thank you, Bob Pond, and may you rest in peace.   - Dick Russell.”

We share those sentiments and will remember Bob each time we throw an Atom Popper towards the rock or out in the surf in search of that feeding striped bass.

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Dec 08 2009

Environmental Groups Ask Federal Agency to Oversee Clean Water Act in Maryland

waterkeeper_logoWaterkeepers Chesapeake of Maryland and Waterkeeper Alliance (collectively “Waterkeepers”) today filed a detailed, 58 page petition seeking major changes in the way Maryland operates and enforces the Clean Water Act in order to better protect the Chesapeake Bay.

The petition asks the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to withdraw Maryland’s delegated authority to administer the Clean Water Act’s (CWA) pollution permitting program for dischargers in the state. Under the CWA, EPA retains ultimate authority to monitor and control point source discharges of pollutants across the nation through its National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) program; the Agency typically delegates this authority to the states for implementation. In the petition, filed on behalf of the Waterkeepers by the University of Maryland Environmental Law Clinic, Waterkeepers request that the EPA evaluate the systematic failure of Maryland’s Department of the Environment to properly and effectively administer and enforce the CWA’s NPDES permitting program.

Organizations represented in the petition include: Anacostia Riverkeeper, Assateague Coastkeeper, Baltimore Harbor Waterkeeper, Chester Riverkeeper, Choptank Riverkeeper, Lower Susquehanna Riverkeeper, Patuxent Riverkeeper, Potomac Riverkeeper, Sassafras Riverkeeper, Severn Riverkeeper, South Riverkeeper, West/Rhode Riverkeeper, and Waterkeeper Alliance.

“If you want to see proof of the failure of Maryland to enforce the CWA within its borders, look no further than the spiraling health of the Chesapeake Bay,” said Michele Merkel, Waterkeepers Chesapeake regional Coordinator “Over the last twelve years, MDE has failed to properly administer the CWA in Continue Reading »

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Dec 01 2009

A World with out Fish – New Fishing Conservation Video to Check Out

I just got a note from Ken over at the National Coalition of Marine Conservation about a new video they just released that talks about their organization and what they do. Pretty sweet video to check out
A World Without Fish? Save Ocean Predators, Save Their Prey

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Nov 11 2009

More on World Tuna Stocks in Trouble

tuna_fishingSome information from a recent Time Magazine piece on Tuna stocks worldwide (picture from article in Time): In 1950, about 600,000 tons of tuna were caught worldwide. Last year, that figure hit nearly 6 million tons. At current fishing rates, the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) estimates that Atlantic bluefin that spawn in the Mediterranean could disappear from those waters as early as 2012. Scientists believe stocks of southern bluefin around Australia have likely fallen over 90% since the 1950s and could continue to drop. Of the world’s 19 non-bluefin commercial tuna stocks, half are now overfished or at risk of going that direction, according to the International Seafood Sustainability Foundation (ISSF), a partnership of canning companies, scientists and the WWF. Tuna has been eaten for thousands of years. The Greeks sliced, salted and pickled it, and Mediterranean bluefin was a staple of the Roman soldier’s lunch box. But modern Japan’s taste for the fish, coupled with rising demand in the U.S., Europe and China, has driven the Atlantic bluefin to become “the poster child of overfishing worldwide,” says Monterey’s Sutton. The number of breeding tuna in the eastern Atlantic has plunged over 74% since the late 1950s, with the steepest drop occurring in the past 10 years, while the western population dropped over 82% between 1970 and 2007. The Pacific bluefin, whose habitat spans from the West Coast of the U.S. to Japan, is officially in better shape, but one Tsukiji auctioneer estimates the number of tuna coming in these days is down 60% to 70% from what it used to be….read more here.

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Nov 10 2009

Researchers Get Dirty To Clean Up Chesapeake

chesapeake_bay_epa_clean_upA good article on what the EPA is doing to determine where we need to clean up in the Chesapeake Bay first, i.e. where are the most polluted areas. Check this link for audio and the article.

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