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Bocas Research Station’s research assistant Arcadio Castillo ran into these curious looking fish babies while working close to the dock. After some investigation, we found […]

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A female Guam kingfisher, a brightly colored bird and one of the most endangered bird species on the planet, hatched at the Smithsonian Conservation Biology […]

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Caribbean coral reefs have become biologically and economically degraded habitats. The relative weight of the big factors in this ecological catastrophe–pollution, overfishing, warming and ocean […]

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Although individual anglers – people who fish recreationally – generally take small numbers of fish, collectively, a large number of them can have a substantial impact on the overall stock.

Opah fish are hauled onto a dock for sale last week in San Diego. Fishermen coming home to California after weeks at sea are finding strict anti-coronavirus measures, and nowhere to sell their catch.; Credit: Gregory Bull/AP

Commercial fishermen in the U.S. who have already faced challenges in recent years to make it in an increasingly globalized and regulated industry, are now struggling to find customers during the coronavirus crisis.

"This is totally unprecedented. This is the biggest crisis to hit the fishing industry ever, no question about that," Noah Oppenheim, executive director of The Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen's Associations told NPR in a phone interview. The federation is a trade association representing commercial fishermen along the West Coast.

On Tuesday, seafood industry leaders, processors and fishermen sent a letter to House and Senate leaders requesting $4 billion in aid for the industry.

The closings of restaurants due to the coronavirus pandemic has hit commercial fishermen particularly hard.

An estimated 50% to 60% of wild seafood caught in the U.S. is exported, says Oppenheim. Those international markets have dried up. He says, of the seafood that's not exported, around 80% of that is sold to restaurants.

"Both of those sectors of the seafood economy are largely nonfunctional at the moment, so we're going to have to make up for approximately 90% of our markets ... through either new supply pipelines or new sets of customers."

Jerid Rold, a fishermen in Moss Landing, Calif., tells NPR, he's been out of work for a month, since South Korea stopped taking imports of hagfish. Further damaging profits, Dungeness crab prices on the West Coast have fallen from up to $7 dollars a pound to $2, says Oppenheim.

In Eureka, Calif., "there are no buyers purchasing products at the harbor there. You can't move the Dungeness crab out of the Humboldt bay," Oppenheim said. "It's actually extraordinary how similar these impacts are playing out across the country. They are palpable, they are profound and they are severe."

On the North Atlantic coast, Sam Rosen, a 30-year-old lobsterman based in Vinalhaven, Maine, said he and others are "selling lobster for amounts they shouldn't be sold for."

That's been close to $2.50 a pound, compared to a usual $10 a pound this time of year, Rosen said.

"It's definitely a shock to the system," Rosen said. "This is uncharted territory right now. I don't think anyone thought it was going to be as bad as it's getting."

If aid isn't provided to fishermen soon, "I think we could see hundreds to thousands of fishermen leave the industry nationwide," Oppenheim said.

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

New research has shed light on the factors needed to successfully implement pilot projects designed to reduce the dumping of unwanted fish by fishermen. The analysis of 15 European projects highlights the importance of involving the fishing industry in developing and implementing pilot projects.

Commercial sea fishing has been taking place for centuries. The first analysis of historic data from the UK has indicated that, over the past 118 years, the commercial productivity of UK fisheries has decreased by 94 per cent.

Selective fishing aims to prevent the overexploitation of target fish species and to protect by-catch species, but recent research has indicated that it could be having the opposite effect by damaging biodiversity and sustainability. An alternative approach called 'balanced exploitation' works at the level of the ecosystem instead of selectively removing specific components from the ecosystem.

The importance of coral reefs in supporting diverse fish communities has been highlighted in a recent study. However, the effects of damaging fishing techniques were also observed in video footage of the reefs studied, located off the coast of Ireland.

Seabed fishing grounds in the UK are made up of intensively fished core areas surrounded by more rarely used marginal areas, new research shows. Excluding these margins, which contain only 10% of the total fishing activity, approximately halves the total area of fishing grounds. Thus reducing the fishing footprint by closing the marginal areas will disproportionately reduce the seabed impact of fishing activity.

Bycatch (species caught unintentionally in fisheries) in some commercial marine fisheries is the main cause of death in some populations of seabirds, sea turtles, marine mammals, sharks and fish. New research has revealed that bycatch from tuna fishing can be reduced by using better equipment, without compromising industry profits. However, significant policy efforts are needed to monitor bycatch and enforce more sustainable fishing practices.

A recent study suggests that a single integrative assessment of marine fisheries can be used to monitor progress against several different marine environmental policies. It used a relative ecological risk model to demonstrate how closing marine protected sites to trawlers and reducing trawling to maximum sustainable yield (MSY) levels would allow fisheries to meet the ecological objectives of both the Marine Strategy Framework Directive and the Habitats Directive.

New research has found evidence that a small Marine Protected Area (MPA) in the Mediterranean has the potential to deliver larvae of some fish species to surrounding, non-protected areas. This is one of few studies to investigate this desired role of MPAs and its design could be used to evaluate current and future MPAs elsewhere.

Stricter management of fisheries is needed to prevent overexploitation and decline of tuna and their mackerel relatives, according to an international study. The researchers say fisheries managers have wrongly treated upper limits for catches as target levels for fishing, contributing to global declines and the threatened status of some species.

A new study reports that fishing depths in the EU have increased, with more deep-sea fish species being harvested. Deep-sea fish populations are often more vulnerable to effects of fishing, and the ecological impact of overfishing may therefore be greater than for shallow-water species.

Researchers have found that ocean acidification leads to changes in the ways that clownfish normally respond to sound. As many species rely on hearing for orientation, habitat selection, avoiding predators and communication, ocean acidification could compromise auditory behaviour crucial for survival.

Using data gathered by satellites, scientists have monitored changes in fishing activity around Italy in the Mediterranean Sea for the period 2007-2010. From this, they developed new ecological indicators that gave a more detailed pattern of fishing activity in the Italian seas. In addition, the new indicators suggest that fish stocks on the seabed around Italy are continuing to decline.

The number of overexploited or collapsed fish stocks in the Mediterranean Sea has been increasing at a rate of approximately 38 every 10 years between 1970 and 2010, a new study has shown. In the Black Sea, the equivalent figure is 13 stocks per decade, the researchers found. The study’s authors augmented traditional methods of stock assessments with a variety of other data sources on multiple fish species to give a more accurate overview of these marine ecosystems. These results should be used to improve conservation and management, they recommend.

Sharks aggregate in ‘hotspots’ in the North Atlantic Ocean and are at risk from overfishing by longliner vessels that target the same areas for fishing, a recent study has concluded. Researchers found that the shark and fishing-fleet ranges overlapped by 80% in the North Atlantic and call for international regulation of shark catches to protect at-risk shark populations.

Fish farming in the Mediterranean has increasingly shifted from producing fish such as grey mullet, which are herbivores near the bottom of the food chain, to species such as sea bass, which are predators. This ‘farming up’ the food chain requires wild fish to be caught to provide feed. A return to farming fish lower in the food chain would use marine resources more efficiently, a new study says.

Fish farms, and other forms of aquaculture, are seen as a potential solution to meeting increasing global demand for seafood. However, according to recent research, they must reduce their reliance on wild fish for animal feed if current production levels from both aquaculture and wild fisheries are to be maintained.

Misreported fishing catches in the Baltic Sea have probably led to incorrect fishing quotas, new research suggests. The study found that total catches between 1996 and 2009 have been underestimated for a significant period, skewing quota calculations.

The growing influence of non-governmental organisations (NGOs) in the seafood industry means that they now play a central role in setting standards for sustainable fisheries. In a new study, researchers used the Dutch Good Fish Guide to illustrate how NGOs can efficiently engage consumers, industry, fishermen and government.

A new tool for mapping the sensitivity of seafloor habitats to fishing activities has been developed. Researchers combined data on the resistance of habitats to damage from fishing practices, and how quickly they are able to recover, to produce a widely applicable tool that can be easily understood by stakeholders and used for different locations.

An early warning system to predict the overfishing of individual species, far in advance of severe population decline, has been developed by researchers. The ‘eventual threat index’ was applied by the researchers to historical data on tuna and billfish populations, and accurately predicted their current declines as early as the 1950s.

A pan-European survey has revealed the public’s awareness, concerns and priorities about human impacts on the oceans. The results show high levels of concern about marine pollution in particular, and that, generally, respondents were most concerned about the issues they felt most informed about. The study could help policymakers develop marine strategies that are more responsive to public preferences, its authors say.

Sediments collected from coastal Louisiana over a year after the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico have been found to cause health defects in the Gulf killifish. Nearly all adult fish studied had signs of significantly altered gene function and embryos exposed to polluted sediment were less likely to hatch

An international team of scientists has described a rare fossil site that is believed to be among the earliest evidence of different fish species using a common nursery -- much like ones utilized by some fish today.

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For people in the UK to eat the recommended 280 grams of fish per week, the country would have to rely on aquaculture and increasingly on imports of both wild and farmed fish from poorer countries, a recent study has revealed. This can have social and environmental implications and the researchers urge governments, particularly in developed countries, to consider nutritional advice in a global context, to minimise the impact of fish exports from poorer countries.

Researchers have found that ocean acidification leads to changes in the ways that clownfish normally respond to sound. As many species rely on hearing for orientation, habitat selection, avoiding predators and communication, ocean acidification could compromise auditory behaviour crucial for survival.

Warming of coastal areas due to climate change is already having an important impact on fishing catches in the North Atlantic, according to a new study. The study also suggests that rising levels of nitrogen pollution, due to run-off from farming and sewage disposal, will pose a serious threat to fisheries in the near future if left unchecked.

Deep-water fish living along the Irish-UK continental slope remove more than a million tonnes of CO2 from the atmosphere each year, according to a recent study. Continental slope ecosystems play an important role in carbon sequestration, which should be considered before exploiting deep-water resources, say the researchers.

Fishing in most of Norway’s counties is at ‘moderate’ to ‘high’ risk from ocean acidification, concludes a new study. The researchers reached this conclusion with the use of an integrated risk-assessment method that accounts for environmental, economic and social factors within the 19 counties. They call for immediate action to protect the fishing industry against the effects of ocean acidification.

New barriers have been developed to prevent invasive American signal crayfish from moving upstream and colonising important European crayfish habitat. The barriers, designed to stop crayfish but allow fish to pass, have been found to be effective where water flow rates are sufficiently high.

Every year many marine animals including seabirds, sea turtles and sharks are unintentionally caught as bycatch in commercial fishing gear. Recent research has demonstrated that illuminating fishing nets with ultraviolet (UV) lights can reduce sea turtle bycatch without significantly affecting the number of fish caught or their market value.

In economic terms, overfishing can be regarded as borrowing natural capital at a high rate of interest, according to a new study. Combining economic and biological principles, the study develops a concept that expresses overfishing in terms of the ‘interest’ that the fishing industry have to repay in future years as a result of lost income from depleted fish stocks.

Seagrass meadows are worth around €78 million every year to commercial fishing in the Mediterranean, a new study estimates. Their annual value to recreational fishing is even bigger, at an estimated €112 million. The researchers say that marine policies should consider the socioeconomic effects of the loss of seagrass, which provides habitat for many fishery species.

Ocean acidification threatens marine ecosystems worldwide, but economic assessments of its impact are lacking. A recent study has predicted the future cost of ocean acidification on mollusc production in Europe and showed that the highest economic impacts would be in France, Italy and Spain. For Europe overall, the annual damage could be in the region of €0.9 billion by 2100.

Researchers have found that ocean acidification leads to changes in the ways that clownfish normally respond to sound. As many species rely on hearing for orientation, habitat selection, avoiding predators and communication, ocean acidification could compromise auditory behaviour crucial for survival.

Cooperative management can deliver successful and sustainable fisheries, according to a recent global study. The role of strong leadership was essential to this success. Other necessary conditions included the allocation of individual or community fishing quotas, strong community cohesion and having community-based protected areas.

The announcement of a new no-take fishing zone in the Pacific led to a 130% increase in fishing activity ahead of its implementation, satellite data reveal. Although fishing activity dropped to zero once the marine protected area (MPA) came into effect just over a year later, the study warns that the pre-emptive short-term surge in fishing could have caused long-term ecological damage.

Shellfish harvesting areas in the UK are cleaner, thanks to sewerage improvement schemes over the last decade which have lowered average levels of Escherichia coli in oysters, mussels and other commercially-important species and boosted the shellfish industry’s economic value. Addressing the additional pollution risks from agriculture could further reduce contamination and human health risks.

Hypoxia – low levels of dissolved oxygen – can cause genetically female fish to develop into males, new research has found. Hypoxia in aquatic environments is often the result of eutrophication, which is caused by pollution from human activities. The findings suggest that hypoxia could cause fish populations to collapse, with consequences for entire ecosystems.

Plastic pollution in the ocean is a growing problem. This study, which is the first to investigate the presence of plastic debris in large pelagic fish in the central Mediterranean Sea, found that over 18% of fish had ingested plastics.

Worldwide, programmes have been implemented to protect water quality from human pressures, often using ecological indicators as a method of evaluation. An eight-year study of a Portuguese estuary has found that indicators based on multiple measures of fish communities, such as the number and relative abundance of resident and migrant species, reflect human pressures on these transitional waters and could improve the implementation of water protection programmes.

Low oxygen levels (‘hypoxia’) are a pressing concern for marine and freshwater ecosystems worldwide, and this may deteriorate as ocean temperatures rise. Hypoxia causes stress in organisms, which can cause reproductive impairments that persist across generations — even the offspring that have never been exposed to hypoxia. Previous studies discovered that hypoxia can disrupt sex hormones, resulting in birth defects and affecting reproduction of male fish over several generations. This study shows how hypoxia can also affect female marine medaka (Oryzias melastigma) over multiple generations — and thus may pose a significant threat to the sustainability of natural fish populations worldwide.

New EU-supported research in the Mediterranean Sea has assessed the impact of fish-farming on seafloor ecosystems. Results indicate that impacts are only apparent in habitats with no vegetation, but the researchers suggest that habitats with vegetation seagrass could be masking the effects.