Sharks are villainized and feared, but they suffer terribly at the hands of humans. Humans killaround 100 to 273 million sharks every year, while sharks killless than 10 people per year. People often argue for shark culling because they want surfers to feel safer in the ocean, but the ocean is the shark’s habitat and […]
Tag: fishing
Feed a fishery, starve a seabird
Competition for fish stocks with fisheries to feed humans could be forcing seabirds to go hungry, according to new research. The study, published Dec. 6 in the journal Current Biology, reveals that seabirds’ share of fish has dropped by nearly 20 percent over a span of 40 years. Expanding large-scale fisheries, meanwhile, have increased their […]
POLL: Should there be an immediate reduction of the Chinook harvest to save the Orca?
Days before the start of the summer fishing season, when guides and outfitters on Canada’s west coast gamble their financial prospects for the year, fishing lodge owner Ryan Chamberland received devastating news. The coastal waters of Vancouver Island, which he and four generations of his family had fished for salmon, would be out of bounds. […]
POLL: Should Peru’s killing of dolphins for use as bait be banned?
Given how universally revered dolphins are, and the fact that humans rarely eat their meat, you’d be forgiven for assuming that dolphins are largely spared by the fishing industry. Alas, that’s not the case. As a new report finds, fishers hunt and butcher over 100,000 cetaceans (a classification that includes dolphins, porpoises and tinier whales) […]
Amazing Discovery: Yucatan Bird’s IQ – Superior to Humans’
We have all heard or used the expression “Bird-Brain.” Birds have comparatively small brains, and because of that we humans place them at a very low level of intelligence. Yes, we recognize that we can train birds of certain species to react to a limited assortment of commands, but animal science has, until now, been […]
POLL: Should Norway be sanctioned for boosting its whaling quota?
Norway has announced a 28% increase of its annual whaling quota to 1,278 whales in a bid to revive the declining hunt amid international controversy. Whalers have for several years failed to meet the quotas set by Oslo and the number of whaling boats has plunged. “I hope the quota and the merging of fishing […]
POLL: Should “destructive” electric pulse fishing be banned?
Groups representing small-scale fishing fleets across Europe have called on the European Union to reinstate a ban on fishing using electrical pulses, which they say is a destructive method. However, others have called for the technique to continue, saying it causes less disturbance than methods such as trawling the bottom of the seabed. Electric pulses are […]
POLL: Should fishing with cyanide be banned?
Sodium cyanide is a highly toxic chemical compound that many fish collectors in the Philippines, Sri Lanka, and Indonesia (the largest exporters of tropical fish) crush and dissolve in squirt bottles to spray on the fish—and the reef and all the other marine life in the vicinity. Stunned, the target fish can then easily be […]
