Alligator Snapping Turtle

A fisherman, Steve Bellion aged 23, was out at Earlswood Resevoir angling for carp when he caught a little more than he bargained for. He managed to reel in a 57 lb (27 kg) reptile!

He dragged it to shore where it was easily identified as an 80 year old alligator snapping turtle. This is a rare catch indeed, as these turtles are generally only found in the eastern corners of the United States.

This has solved a rather puzzling mystery for the local fishermen. There has been many a tale told for a decade, of a giant creature biting through lines and roughing up ducks.

Alligator snapping turtle

The ancient Alligator Snapping Turtle, identified as being female, was transferred to the West Midland Safari Park, where it is going to be held in quarantine for the customary 30 days and checked over by the veterinary team there.

Alligator Snapping Turtles can live to be 160 years old, making it one of the longest living creatures to be hauled to shore in the area.

Once it has finished being checked over, it will be transferred to a vivarium with a male of the species.

“They have been known to attack small domestic pets or children, but I don’t think this one would have drifted to far from the water.” stated the director of wildlife at the safari park, Bob Lawrence. At first glance it seems that the turtle is in perfect health, as it should be after gorging itself on the local wildlife.

He went on to add that this really brings to light the danger of introducing foreign species into Britain’s waterways, much the same way that American signal crayfish have created quite a dip in the UK’s national crayfish population.

BOSTON – The fishery police underwent an audit recently to see how they were using the federal fines they collected. It has been discovered that the fines collected from fisherman were spent on things such as cars for managers, and a week long training seminars in Norway.

The audit were released to the public on Thursday, and was commissioned by the U.S. Department of Commerce’s inspector general, when it discovered incongruities in the management of fines by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s law enforcement office.

Inspector General Todd Zinser started the audio after the slew of complaints fisherman were filing every year about the arbitrary enforcement of the fishery laws, they claimed that the fines were being collected solely for the personal use of the NOAA.

Richard Burgess, a fisherman from Gloucester who is fighting $85,000 in fines, has said that the NOAA should cough up the money, and return it to its rightful owners.
“We’ve all known that they’re criminals,” Burgess stated in front of the law enforcement office. “Every one of them has got to go.”

Some surprising things were found out about the fund where the fines and penalties collected were deposited. The funds went to the Asset Forfeiture fund, and is managed by the accounting firm KPMG. Zinser has stated that the fund is so poorly managed, that it isn’t even listed in the NOAA’s annual budget documents. It is not known if this oversight was an accident or perfectly planned.

In a memo Zinser wrote to the NOAA chief Jane Lubchenco he stated “NOAA has administered the [fund] in a manner that is neither transparent nor conducive to accountability, thus rendering it susceptible to both error and abuse,”

The audit also revealed the fact that between January 2005 and June 2009, $96 Million was deposited into the fund, expenditure for the same time is supposed to be $49 Million. This is suggesting that the balance of the fund should contain a lot more than the NOAA’s estimate of $8.4 Million.

Scott Smullen, NOAA spokesman, has said that the fund had an $8.8 Million balance as of June 14th. He stated “There may have been a misinterpretation by KPMG when it estimated how much money came into the fund in recent years.” Smullen divulged that the NOAA gave KPMG in the neighborhood of 5 million electronic records, at its request, including receipts for the entire agency, of which only a small amount actually involved the fund.

The above fact is what may have led to the confusion of the fund balance. Smullen added that the agency is hoping to clear up any misunderstandings and discrepancies by making sure that both KPMG and the Commerce Department receive the correct information.

The NOAA has released a statement saying that it has already taken steps to make sure something like that does not happen again in the future, including shifting the management of the fund to NOAA’s conptroller and requiring the conptroller to give authorization of any spending which is over $1,000.

The world record for a shark being landed by a fishing rod, has just been broken by two Danish fisherman. Per Jensen and Henrik Hansen successfully landed themselves an 880 kilo, 4 meter and 10 cm Eqalussuaq (also known as a Greenland Shark, or Somniosus microcephalus) in Norway’s Bokna Fjord. The Bokna Ford is in Rogaland County, between Stavanger and Haugesund.

The previous record for such a rod caught shark was said to be in the neighborhood of 775 kilos.

When asked about the adventure, and overall catch, Henrik Jensen responded, “It all went very well”.

The two Danish fisherman had made their way to the Bokna Ford, as they had recently heard that rather big Greenland sharks were prowling the waters. As to the bait? They simply used an empty potato sack full of plaice.

The Greenland shark is not generally considered edible as its flesh is toxic and contains timethylene oxide, which when ingested causes the same symptoms as being drunk as a skunk.

It is interesting to note that if the Greenland shark is prepared in a rather difficult process, it can be eaten, and is even considered a delicacy in Iceland (even more so in Greenland) where the fish, which is not normally a danger to humans in general, is closely tied into the Inuit folklore.

Concerns are wildly mounting over the presence of Asian carp near Lake Michigan, United States Senator Dick Durbin has bequeathed Obama to elect a Carp Czar, to oversee the efforts to help keep these Asian invaders out of the Great Lakes.

During a news conference at the Shedd Aquarium, Durbin implored.. “We need to have one person who coordinates the efforts of the federal, state and local agencies that are doing everything they can to keep the Asian carp out of Lake Michigan, We believe it’s absolutely essential.”

This was Durbin’s response relating to the amazing discovery of a bighead carp, which is predominantly found in Asia, during the routine sweeps this week at Lake Calumet. The reason this discovery was so alarming is that Lake Calumet is only a stone’s throw away from Lake Michigan.

Durbin is sticking to his guns, lobbying with environmental advocates who have proposed closing Chicago area locks as a way to prevent this carp from getting itself into Lake Michigan. Durbin has called the occurrence “game changing” and has been quoted as saying “we have to take it very seriously.”

Durbin has said that scientists will attempt to find out just exactly where these Asiatic invaders have come from, whether they were dumped into the system, or if it swam its way up the Chicago water system. This will be critical in determining just how many of these Asian carp are making there home in the waters depths.

Due to the massive Deepwater Horizon oil spill, also known as the BP Oil Spill, parts of the Gulf of Mexico is closed for both commercial and recreational fishing.

The latest update from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the United States agency responsible for handling the closure, arrived on June 7 and became effective 6 p.m. eastern time on the same day. According to this update, the prohibited area now measures 78,264 sq mi (202,703 sq km), or about 32% of the Gulf of Mexico exclusive economic zone.

Map:

As stated above, all commercial and recreational fishing is banned in the area, including catch and release. It is however still legal to transit through the area.

Since it is impossible to know the exact extent of the oil spill at any given time, NOAA has advised fishermen to refrain from fishing if they notice any oil or oil sheen, even if it is outside the prohibited zone.

For those who wish to receive information as soon as the prohibited zone is modified, there are several channels to utilize:

– Get bullentins to your inbox by sending an e-mail to SERO.Communications.Comments@noaa.gov

– Get SMS notifications. Sign up by texting fishing@gulf to 84469.

– Follow NOAA on Twitter: usnoaagov

– Visit http://sero.nmfs.noaa.gov/deepwater_horizon_oil_spill.htm

– Listen to NOAA weather radio

Florida anglers are being sharply criticized after a video of them free-gaffing a Mako shark off South Florida this week was made public on the Internet.

In the video, which was uploaded to Youtube and also displayed on the website of a Florida TV station (can be seen below), the anglers can be seen trying to gaff a free-swimming shark. The shark ventured close to the boat after being attracted to a swordfish that the anglers had alongside their vessel.

Since no rods or reels appear to have been used by the anglers as they captured the 748-pound Mako shark, they may have acted in violation of state and federal law. “I’d hazard that I’m not the first to pick up on these fine points of the law but if the video does indeed tell the full tale then these laws need to be enforced,” said Luke Tipple, a marine biologist and director of the Shark-Free Marina Initiative. “If however the fishermen can provide video evidence of them using PRIMARY tackle (i.e. hook and line) to initialize the capture then they would be within their rights to have landed the shark. If this turns out to be the case then I will instead turn this report into a cautionary tale of how the media should be more responsible in reporting on shark harvests, particularly when dealing with species considered by some to be globally threatened.”

According to Australian Southern Bluefin Tuna Association chief executive Brian Jeffriess, industry experts expect the tuna stocks to have recovered by 2013.

The statement was made during a Korean tuna meeting involving industry representatives from Australia, Japan and New Zeeland.

To make sure that over-catching does not restart, Jeffriess said the Commission for the Conservation of Southern Bluefin Tuna has focussed heavily on new enforcement measures.

“For example, from January 2010, every fish has to be tagged at harvest with each fish having its own individual number,” he said. “This tag would also be backed up by documents for each fish showing the date of harvest, weight and length.”

Federal stimulus money will be used to pay about 40 diving fishermen to recover lost fishing nets from the Puget Sound.

Due to the worldwide economic crises, many of the Puget Sound fishermen who normally make a living out of exporting cucumbers and sea urchins to Asia are currently out of work and the Northwest Marine Conservation Initiative has therefore received $4.6 million in stimulus funds to recover most of the nets that litter Puget Sound.

Thousands of large nets clutter the waters of Puget Sound where they continue to “ghost fish” for as long as their strong and durable synthetic fibres last. According to the Northwest Marine Conservation Initiative, the nets are responsible for killing tens of thousands of marine life, mammals and birds every year. The nets are also a hazard for maritime humans since they can tangle boat propellers and ensnare scuba divers. Modern fishing nets used by commercial fishermen tend to be very large and some of the nets lost in Puget Sound extend larger than a football field.

The only reason the nets have remained underwater for so long, said Ginny Broadhurst, director of the Northwest Marine Conservation Initiative, is because the damage they are doing to the environment is invisible from the surface.

“If you had nets strung along the streets that are catching bunny rabbits and squirrels, we wouldn’t be discussing whether we should be removing them. We would be pulling them. It would be immediate,” said Broadhurst. “When those threats are underwater it’s so much harder to know what impacts they are having.”

Over the next 18 months the group expects to pull some 3,000 nets from Puget Sound.

The Netherlands now join Norway in the effort to save the European eel Anguilla anguilla from extinction.

Yesterday, the Dutch government announced a two-month long ban on eel fishing that will commence on October 1 this year, followed from 2010 with a yearly three-month prohibition from September. In 2012, the new regulation will be reviewed and its effectiveness assessed.

“I realise this is a very big sacrifice for eel fishers, but ultimately it is also in the interests of the industry that eel numbers are allowed to recover,” Agriculture and Environment Minister Gerda Verburg said in a statement.

Before the regulation can be put into action it will however require the approval of the European Commission. The commission has already rejected a Dutch proposal to enlist the aid of eel fishermen to help boost the eel population by releasing 157 tons of mature, caught eel close to the species spawning waters in the Sargasso Sea.

“The (initial) plan would have offered guarantees for the recovery of the eel population,” the professional fishers’ federation Combinatie van Beroepsvissers said in a statement, describing the new measure as “incomprehensible, unreasonable and unacceptable”.

Eel is a delicacy in the Netherlands and roughly one thousand tons of eel are caught in Dutch waters every year. The Dutch government have designated 700,000 Euros (989,800 USD) to aid the estimated 240 small fishing businesses affected by the eel ban.

As of August 12, 2009 the harvesting of krill in the in the Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) off the coasts of California, Oregon, and Washington will be prohibited by federal law.

Yesterday, the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) published a final rule in the Federal Register prohibiting the harvesting of krill in these three regions. All types of krill harvesting will be illegal, regardless of fishery and gear type.

“Krill are the foundation for a healthy marine ecosystem,” said Mark Helvey, NOAA’s Fisheries Service Southwest Assistant Regional Administrator for Sustainable Fisheries. “Protecting this vital food resource will help protect and maintain marine resources and put federal regulations in line with West-Coast states.”

Harvesting krill within three miles of the coastline of California, Oregon, and Washington has already been prohibited by state law, but the zone situated between three and 200 miles off the coast have lacked krill protection until now.

“This is a great success for protecting the entire California Current ecosystem“, said William Douros, West Coast Regional Director for NOAA’s Office of National Marine Sanctuaries. “This decision reflects strong teamwork within NOAA and a commitment to addressing the issues raised by the Pacific Fishery Management Council and Sanctuary Advisory Councils.”

The krill protection rule was adopted as Amendment 12 to the Coastal Pelagic Species Fishery Management Plan (FMP), which was developed by the Pacific Fishery Management Council (PFMC) under the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act. Amendment 12 adds all species of krill under a new category: ‘prohibited harvest species’.