On May 18, a federal judge relaxed protections for salmon in California. What will that mean for fishermen who are already facing a token season this year?
Feinstein’s Water Bomb: California senator takes aim at Delta fish protections
After denouncing a Republican rider to waive Endangered Species Act protection for salmon and other fish in California’s Bay Delta, Sen. Dianne Feinstein wants to introduce an amendment that would essentially do the same thing. Read more here.
“Another propaganda victory by radical environmentalists”
A shout-out from Congressman Devin Nunes, R-Calif., one of the stars of my recent piece about California’s water meltdown.
The Most Cooked-Up Catch
In the Bering Sea today, the race for crab is now over. But the fishery there is just one ripple in the tide of a revolution that has swept the fishing world over the past 20 years. Today, fisheries for everything from fish-stick staples like whiting and pollock to high-end delicacies like halibut and sablefish operate under “catch share” programs.
Read more…
The Source: An Alaska Gold Mine Could Spell the End of the World’s Biggest Sockeye Salmon Run
Carol Ann Woody is hip deep in an Alaska stream, and beeping. She and biologist Daniel Chythlook, a Native Yup’ik, work their way up a tangle of creeks so small that the two of them can barely fit in the water together. For the better part of a week, Woody’s team of six biologists has been helicoptering in and out of the headwaters of the Nushagak and Kvichak (kwee-jack) rivers in search of juvenile salmon.
As Woody thrashes through a thicket of willows, the strobe light on a boxy contraption strapped to her back flashes red, and the unit beeps like a backhoe moving in reverse. The device is an electroshocker, which mildly stuns fish so that Chythlook, following close behind with a net at the ready, can scoop them up for measurement.
Woody nudges the shocker’s business end — an elongated wand that looks like a clunky World War II land-mine detector — under an overhang on the stream’s edge. Then she cackles like the Wicked Witch of the West: “Come out, come out, wherever you are.”
Suddenly she begins yelling like a maniac.