A Real Fish Story

Here is an unusual fish story. And a positive one.

On Thursday, Gary Locke, the secretary of commerce, approved a plan that would prohibit commercial fishing in a huge swath of American waters in the Arctic that have never been actively fished and that nobody is much interested in fishing now.

That sounds odd, but it’s a smart move based on the assumption that the rapid melting of Arctic sea ice caused by climate change will someday make the area more accessible and commercially more attractive.

This was also the first time the United States shut down a fishery because of climate change rather than overfishing. Mr. Locke’s objective is to buy time to get a fix on the area’s resources and develop a sustainable fishing plan that would assure lasting protection for a fragile and poorly understood ecosystem.

The plan was developed jointly by environmentalists and the Marine Conservation Alliance, a consortium of Alaskan harvesters and processors. Conservationists and industry do not, as a rule, agree on how quickly fish should be taken from the sea. Here they agreed not to take any at all — until it seems safe to do so.

Read more . . .

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• U.S. Bans Commercial Fishing in Warming Arctic (scientificamerican.com)
• World oceans day: All the fish in the sea (guardian.co.uk)
• Call for 20-year fishing ban in a third of oceans (guardian.co.uk)

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Tags: arctic sea ice, climate change, commercial fishing, conservationists, environmentalists, fish in the sea, fish story, fishery, gary locke, Innovation, marine conservation, scientificamerican, world oceans day

This entry was posted on Monday, August 24th, 2009 at 9:56 am and is filed under Innovation, NY Times, The Food Challenge, environment, food. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.