I was driving through town the other day when I spotted a truck with a bumper sticker trashing the National Fisheries Service. They’re getting rarer, these days, because we don’t have much of a fishery left anymore. There was a time when Fort Bragg brought in a lot of fish and fishing was an important […]
Tag: fisheries
Needs In Conflict: Fisheries, Birds, and So Much More
A recent study explored the balance between fisheries and seabird populations. What the scientists found was that surprisingly minimal drops in the fishery could be catastrophic for the birds, limiting the ability to reproduce and thrive and raising the risk that populations could plummet. The study highlighted the need for better fisheries management overall to […]
To Everything There is a Season, and That Includes Fish
Every year, there’s considerable excitement and anxiety in this corner of the world about the opening of salmon and crab seasons. These two seasonal events are economically important, critical for fishing crews waiting for work, and they are also cultural markers, an indicator of the passage of time and seasons for people looking forward to […]
Eating Invasive Species to Save the Environment
There’s a new(ish) trend in environmental circles which is sort of a best of all worlds blend of policy, incentive, and community involvement. Struggling with growing numbers of invasive species in many regions, whether they’re introduced for a particular reason or accidentally added to the environment, environmentalists recommend a new tactic: eat them. This is, […]
Urchins and Indicators
Fun fact: Fort Bragg used to be a major sea urchin fishery. These prickly (and delicious) creatures made a lot of people rather wealthy in the 1980s, and the urchin fishery was a large part of Fort Bragg’s commercial fishery. Then, a strange thing started happening. Urchins became much less plentiful. Fishermen insisted they weren’t […]