Fishermen off of Oregon's coast could go broke sitting, or could go broke working, which is why they're trading in their salmon fishing gear and began outfitting their boats for prawns. This is a classic case of overfishing (as well as other factors that play into the salmon shortage, such as climate change and habitat degradation) and fishing down marine food webs--and the Oregon fleet is trying to diversify under the new regime. Read more on the conversion of a fishing fleet and hard times at the New York Times.
Steve Wilson refits his salmon boat to fish for prawns destined (hopefully) to high-end restaurants. Photo by Leah Nash for the NYTimes.
- Log in to post comments
More like this
Industrial fishing operations take most of the blame for collateral impacts to sea-turtle populations, but new research shows that small-scale fisheries--operated by hand from little open boats --can kill as many critically endangered loggerhead sea turtles as industrial scale fisheries. A…
Last month, five fishermen died when their boat, the Alaska Ranger, went down off Unalaska Island. They joined the more than 400 killed since 1999, when a Coast Guard panel warned Congress that weak regulations allow unseaworthy boats to continue fishing. Congress has failed to solve the problem, …
Having established the link between overeating and overfishing, it is also worth noting the trend of Fishing Down Marine Food Webs, another phenomenon uncovered by Daniel Pauly and team in 1998. 'Fishing down marine food webs' describes the fishing industry's elimination of top predators in the…
tags: salmon, wild Pacific salmon, commercial salmon fishing
Approximately 200 chefs from restaurants in 33 states have signed a letter that was delivered to legislators in Washington DC today, asking Congress to pass laws that will restore healthy habitats for the decimated wild salmon species…
I think it's less about fishing down the food chain than about taking advantage of new space. California has a small, highly restricted prawn trap fishery that's considered fairly "clean". Prawns are sold live for big money and the fishermen are territorial about their sites. They haven't had to compete with trawlers as much as the Oregon folks have (even the MSC-certified Oregon pink shrimp fishery is a trawl fishery). Traps and trawls can't co-exist spatially, but as the west coast groundfish trawl fleet has been further restricted more area for trapping opened up. Not that we shouldn't be worried about the import of the salmon decline, but this could be an opportunity to "eat like a pig," as you like to say, and shift away from 90-year-old rockfish to fast-growing crustaceans. Providing they put some limits in place.