Ahab's Journal

A Fish Oil Story

Nearly every fish a fish eater likes to eat eats menhaden. Bluefin tuna, striped bass, redfish and bluefish are just a few of the diners at the menhaden buffet. All of these fish are high in omega-3 fatty acids but are unable themselves to synthesize them. The omega-3s they have come from menhaden.

But menhaden are entering the final losing phases of a century-and-a-half fight for survival that began when humans started turning huge schools into fertilizer and lamp oil. Once petroleum-based oils replaced menhaden oil in lamps, trillions of menhaden were ground into feed for hogs, chickens and pets. Today, hundreds of billions of pounds of them are converted into lipstick, salmon feed, paint, “buttery spread,” salad dressing and, yes, some of those omega-3 supplements you have been forcing on your children. All of these products can be made with more environmentally benign substitutes, but menhaden are still used in great (though declining) numbers because they can be caught and processed cheaply.

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For salmon fishing port, the future is as murky as its waters

Just yards from the murky waters of Noyo Harbor, the boats sit tilted sideways on scraggly grass, their hulls rusted, their white paint peeling.

Bruce Abernathy has collected them for years on the cheap, hoping to make a killing selling the fishing rights that go with them when the salmon return and Noyo Harbor regains its rightful berth as one of the biggest salmon fishing ports in California.

Instead, his dilapidated fleet has only grown bigger, as frustrated fishermen walk away from their boats. Because of low fish counts, commercial salmon fishing has been prohibited off the California coast for the last two years.

The annual catch, valued at an average of $30 million a year in the 1980s, was worth just $8 million in 2007, the last year salmon fishing was allowed off the coast.

Locals fear that if authorities continue the ban next year, more vessels will be headed to Abernathy's boat graveyard, known here as Death Row.

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Fishermen brace for new ban on ocean salmon

  "SANTA ROSA -- The bad news about fishing was couched in numbers and graphs, study results and scientific jargon, but there was no mistaking the message: Californians won't be eating much local salmon this year.

That was the gist of a day-long meeting in Santa Rosa Tuesday at which state Department of Fish and Game biologists told fishermen, conservationists and others that surveys and studies show the state's salmon fishery in near-complete ruin."

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Protection is sought for Georgia's redfish

"The petition drive is aimed at winning gamefish status for Georgia's redfish, which would limit commercial harvesting and sales.

"Over time recreational fishing has grown in importance, and commercial fishing has somewhat diminished," Spud Woodward, Georgia's assistant director for marine fisheries, said. "The designation of species targeted by recreational fishermen just makes sense."

Georgia, he added, is the only state in the southeast besides Mississippi that hasn't take the step to designate redfish as gamefish. North Carolina, he added, does have a small commercial quota but regulated reds as gamefish."

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N.C. looks for herring in effort to restore species

 

State field technicians Cynthia Kros-wek and Jenny Lippincott dragged a seine net to shore, flopped the catch onto the sand and carefully began picking through mats of aquatic grasses and hundreds of tiny bait fish.

It was quickly evident that there were no young herring last week when the two were doing their work.

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Anglers' group seeks ban on commercial bass fishing

Should striped bass be available to all types of fishermen, commercial and recreational? Or should it be enjoyed by one exclusive group?

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Saxton Menhaden Bill gets a hearing

Saxton’s bill would establish a moratorium on the commercial reduction fishery for Atlantic menhaden in Atlantic coastal waters until a scientifically-determined catch level can be established that also considers the role of menhaden in the ecosystem.

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