A study proposing a ban on spear guns and gill nets in the Great Barrier Reef is now being criticised by Australian scientists saying its results – which were obtained from Kenya and Papua New Guinea – aren’t relevant to the Great Barrier Reef.

The study, carried out by an international team of scientists led by Dr Josh Cinner from the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies, proposed a ban on fishing gear such as spear guns, fish traps, beach seine nets, and gill nets to aid damaged reefs in their recovery. According to data obtained from the waters of Kenya and Papua New Guinea, certain types of fishing gear are more damaging to corals and to certain species of fish needed to help reefs recover from bleaching or storm damage.

“They [corals and certain types of reef fish] are already on the edge because of the overfishing and the additional impact caused by a bleaching even can push them over,” said Dr Cinner, who is based at James Cook University.

According to Dr Josh, spear guns are the most damaging of all fishing gear, particularly to fish that help maintaining the reef by removing seaweeds and sea urchins.

“Spear guns target a high proportion of species that help maintain the resilience of coral reefs, but also can result in a surprising amount of damage to the corals themselves,” Dr Cinner said. “When a fish is shot with a spear gun, it often hides in the reef, so some fishermen break the corals in their attempts to get it.”

Not applicable to the Great Barrier Reef, says other scientists Fellow JCU fisheries scientist Dr Andrew Tobin do not agree with the fishing gear ban recommendation, saying that the results from the study aren’t applicable to Australia’s Great Barrier Reef.

“Some of those findings are probably very reasonable for those areas they’ve studied, but to make any link to Great Barrier Reef waters is probably drawing a very long sword,” Dr Tobin said.

According to Townsville marine biologist Dr Walter Starck, who provides advice to Sunfish North  Queensland, herbivore fish aren’t being overfished in the Great Barrier Reef area.

“Here in Australia, it is completely irrelevant,” he said.

Florida will soon have the strictest conservation law for the harvest of imperilled freshwater turtles in the U.S. The new legislation pertains to all freshwater turtles on Florida’s imperilled species list plus species that look similar to the imperilled species, which include common snapping turtles and cooters.

• Commercial harvesting of these freshwater turtles will be prohibited.
• Individuals will still be allowed to take these freshwater turtles for non-commercial use, but no more than one turtle per day per person.
• Transporting more than one of these turtles per day will be prohibited.
• Collecting freshwater turtle eggs will be prohibited.

Turtle farms that depend on turtles collected from the wild will still be allowed to collect turtles, but only if adhering to a strict set of rules and only in order to establish reproduction in captivity to make the farm self-sustaining.

“I believe this industry should be moved to aquaculture, said Rodney Barreto, chairman of the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission (FWC). “That’s the logical place for it to be.”

The closed season for the take of softshell turtles, May 1 to July 31, will not change under the new rule.

Indonesia is getting ready to sink foreign boats carrying out illegal fishing in Indonesian waters.

“We are glad the House`s Commission IV supports us in this,” Marine Resources and Fisheries Minister Freddy Numbery said at a meeting with the House commission this week.

Numbery says firm action is needed to deter foreign boats from continuing to poach, and that his office and the parliament were currently revising the law on marine resources with regard to dealing with crimes in the seas.

Elviana, a member of Commission IV, agreed with the minister and said that firm actions needed to be implemented immediately to deter foreign parties intending to steal fish from Indonesian waters.

“Tuna fish sells well so that many foreign fishermen are venturing into the country’s waters“, she said. “This must not be allowed to continue.”

Earlier, Indonesian authorities have seized illegal fishing boats and auctioned them out, but this system seems to have been ineffective.

“It is believed auctions have been arranged to ensure that the boats can be sold to their owners who are also the suspects,” Elviana said, adding that illegal boats such as from Thailand still continued operating in a great number.

The European River Otter (Lutra lutra) which was once almost eradicated from British waters is beginning to make a come-back thanks to improved environmental care and the reintroduction of captive-bred specimens.

Now, anglers and fishing clubs are calling for more research, governmentally funded fences, and – in some cases – even the right to cull otters. Some fishing clubs have already closed down after having their stocks devoured by otters, while others have been forced to lower their fees since they have less fish to offer than before. Clubs are also spending thousands of pounds on restocking their ponds.

Until the 1970s, otters were hunted in the kingdom using special otter hounds, and the population also suffered greatly from the consequences of habitat destruction and pollution. The use of pesticides proved especially fatal and in the 1970s the population was almost completely gone. Thanks to pollution control, habitat restoration, and a ban on otter hunting, the UK has however once again became a favourable country for this aquatic predator and the reintroduction of captive-bred have proven highly successful. Otters are now living even in urban rivers.

Dr Tony Mitchell-Jones, a mammal specialist from Natural England, said that otters had been released into the wild at the rate of more than seven a year between 1983 and 1999, but that no captive-bred otters had been released since then.

When the last large-scale survey was carried out in 2003, the European river otter was found in more than five times as many areas as in 1979.

On June 9, a meeting will take place in Hemel Hempstead were representatives of the Angling Trust, the Environment Agency, Natural England, and the Countryside Council for Wales will discuss the issue of otters competing with anglers for fish. The Angling Trust has announced that they will exact government support for special otter fences in an effort to quieten calls for a cull.

Mark Lloyd, the chief executive, said: “What we need is public funding for fencing because fisheries are important economic units that provide people with their livelihoods. What has to be stressed is that anglers are not anti-otter. If I see one when I’m fishing on a river it makes my day.”

Nick Pottle, secretary of the Lakeside angling club, near Lowestoft, said: “Our lake is now all but empty of fish, we have two families of otters that have cleared the fish out. The Environment Agency say we must put up a fence to stop the otters at our expense as we would not qualify for a grant. That is the end of our club.”

The Angling Times, a journal for sport fishers, are calling for more research into otter predation. Richard Lee, its editor, said: “The slaughter of these animals has been driven underground. It is already going on. If you watch £20,000 worth of stock disappear in just a few days – what are the owners going to do? We are desperate for research so the issue is fully understood. We don’t want random culling. But we want to stop fisheries’ owners taking the law into their own hands. We need some proper research with all the options on the table.”

One of the reasons behind the belligerent situation may be another man-made environmental problem: the disappearance of the eels. During recent years, the number of eels has fallen dramatically in British waters. Eels are the otter’s staple diet and as long as there are plenty of eels the risk of otters attacking trout, salmon, pike, and similar species is low. However, as the eel population wanes the otters are forced to look elsewhere for food – causing confrontations between them and fishermen who do not like to see vast amounts of highly prized fish species ending up in the belly of an otter.

Many anglers refuse to publicly discuss otter hunting, fearing that public opinion will turn against them if they openly call for culling. On of few anglers openly arguing in favour of culling is Ian Chillcott, one of the country’s leading coarse anglers and a fishing writer. “Fisheries are being absolutely destroyed by these cuddly, little murdering blighters”, Chillcott said. “Livelihoods are being ruined but everyone is afraid to use the word ‘culling’. No one wants widespread mass slaughter, but there is a need for very targeted culling. It has to be done in a controlled way and not indiscriminate. No one wants to get rid of them, just for them to be better managed.”

Mitchell-Jones does not think that licensed killing of otters will take place anytime soon.

“Things are looking much better for the otter but it is not yet back everywhere it should be. Control of otter populations is likely to be discussed at the meeting tomorrow. I’m not going to prejudge the situation but there is a presumption against the licensing of killing of protected species unless there are extremely good reasons for doing so. For culling, you would have to show that the control would contribute to the solution of a problem.”

In the mean time, there are indications of some landowners and fishermen taking the law into their own hands. Under the Wildlife and Countryside Act it is an offence to kill an otter, punishable by a £5,000 fine or six months in prison. Otters can only be hunted with a special licence and not a single one of these licenses has been issued. Despite this, some anglers have told reporters of otter hunting taking place in the British countryside.

Two years after destroying part of the Belize barrier reef, an U.S. skipper has been ordered by a Belize court to pay BZ$3.4 million, roughly equivalent of US$1.7 million, for the damage.

On May 2, 2007, the skipper was trying to reach harbour in his double hull catamaran when it ran aground in the Lighthouse Reef Atoll, causing damage to a piece of the reef measuring 125 feet by 75 feet.

Belizean magistrate Ed Usher ruled that the skipper did not exercise due diligence in navigating the atoll. Since the catamaran was so large, 37 feet x 21 feet, the person in charge should have hired a pilot and sufficient crew to navigate the reef safely. By neglecting to do so, the skipper recklessly caused a disaster that resulted in a loss to the environment.

The skipper must pay BZ$50,000 (US$25,000) within two months, but have been given a five year respite for the remainder of the fine. His catamaran, estimated to be worth around US$300,000, will however be held by Belizean authorities until he comes up with the money.

Eleven suspected abalone poachers have been arrested in northern California, officials said Friday.

Since the tide was unusually low in Mendocino County, California Department of Fish & Game wardens were aware of the increased risk of poaching activity and kept their eyes on the coast line, including the coral reefs that had become exposed as the water disappeared.

At about 6.15 a.m. on Wednesday wardens noticed suspicious divers exiting waters near Caspar, south of Fort Bragg. Fish & Game Lt. Kathy Ponting, who runs the special operations unit, said her team drove to a spot near the suspicious divers and began surveillance.

Unaware of the wardens’ presence, the divers collected abalone from the reef and placed them in tall grass near the beach.

“Then a large van pulled up near the dive area and we watched them load up a bunch of abalone in plastic bags into the van,” Ponting said. The divers went back to the sea, while wardens decided to follow the van. After pulling it over, they discovered 50 abalones inside.

Abalones can sell for up to $100 dollars, but collection is strictly regulated since these molluscs need many years to develop. It can take 12 years for a specimen to reach the legal size. With a California fishing license and an abalone stamp card you are allowed to fetch 24 specimens per year, but no more than three per day. It is also illegal to collect them for sale, and anyone caught with a dozen or more will be considered possessing them with the intention of selling them.

Red Abalone. The only type that can be harvested.

When the van did not return to the divers, the alleged poachers loaded a pickup truck. The wardens followed the car to a nearby hotel and found coolers filled with abalone inside the divers’ hotel room. Most of the abalones were smaller than the legal size.

The wardens found a total of 166 abalones with the group, Ponting said. The suspects were booked on charges of felony conspiracy to harvest abalone for commercial purposes, which carries a fine of up to $40,000, said Game Warden Patrick Foy. Two vehicles also were

seized along with $6,000 in cash.

The black market for abalone is large and poaching is widespread, despite official efforts to eradicate the practise.

“We always only catch the tip of the iceberg, there is so much

abalone poaching going on because of the black market,” Ponting

explained. “We can pick almost any group and watch them poaching

abalone. It’s really unsettling.”

What is an abalone?

The abalone is a medium sized to very large edible sea snail prized for its exquisite flavour. There is roughly 100 known species world wide, all of them being gastropod molluscs belonging to the genus Haliotis. You may stumble upon a species marketed as “Chilean abalone” in the food trade, but this is not a real abalone; its name is Concholepas concholepas and it belongs to an entirely different family.

Since abalones are found in so many different parts of the world, they are known under many different names, such as abulón in Spanish, ormer in Jersey and Guernsey, pāua in

New Zealand, muttonfish or muttonshells in Australia, perlemoen in South Africa, and Venus’s-ears, ear-shells, and sea-ears in British and American English.

Abalones reach sexual maturity when they are comparatively small, but they won’t produce any significant amount of offspring until they grow bigger. A small abalone may release around 10,000 eggs at a time, which may sound like a big number but is dwarfed compared to the 11 million eggs released at a time by really large abalones. As a result of this, the removal of abalones from the sea before they have a chance to grow large is highly detrimental to the survival of the species.

Abalone has been farmed since the 1950s in Japan and China, and during the 1990s the practise spread to other parts of the world in response to dwindling wild populations. Today, it is possible to purchase farmed abalone and refrain from removing specimens from the wild. China and Japan are still major producers of abalone, but has been joined by Korea, Thailand, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Namibia, Iceland, Ireland, Canada, USA, Mexico, and Chile.

Catching abalone in California

As mentioned above, it is legal to fetch a certain amount of abalone per day and year in Californian waters if you have a California fishing license and an abalone stamp card. The abalone stamp card has 24 tags and captured abalones must be tagged immediately. The legal size is (a minimum of) seven inches (178 mm) measured across the shell. A person may be in possession of no more than three abalones at any given time. Other regulations to keep in mind are listed below. Always check with the California Department of Fish & Game before you go abalone hunting in California to find out if there have been any regulatory changes.

· Scuba diving for abalone is always prohibited; you may only pick them from the shore or use breath-hold techniques.

· Abalone may only be taken from April to November, not including July.

· You may only take Red abalones; no Black, White, Pink, or Flat abalones.

· You may not take any abalones south of the mouth of the San Francisco Bay.

· You may not sell any part of the abalone, including the shell.

· Only abalones still attached to the shell can be legally transported.

American fishing captain Linda Greenlaw, best known for her depiction in the book “The Perfect Storm” and the film on which it was based, has been convicted of illegally entering and fishing in Canadian waters.

Greenlaw and her boat the Sea Hawk was spotted by a Canadian fisheries patrol plane last September, with fishing lines running five miles (roughly eight kilometres) into Canadian waters.

According to Greenlaw, she had mistakenly entered Canadian waters without realising it while searching for swordfish.

“This line, which is drawn on a piece of paper, you can’t see it when you’re fishing and working on deck,” Greenlaw said outside the provincial court of St. John’s. “There’s no fence. There’s no blinking lights.”

Judge Joe Woodrow said he believed that Greenlaw had made an honest mistake, but that it was a mistake a reasonable skipper would not have made, because she should have checked her GPS equipment. Greenlaw was therefore convicted on counts of illegally entering Canadian waters and illegally fishing there.

The Crown wants Greenlaw to be fined $50,000, while her lawyer is recommending half of that amount.

Greenlaw provided key information about a fatal 1991 storm in the Atlantic for the book “The Perfect Storm” by journalist Sebastian Junger. When the book was turned into a movie starring George Cloney and Mark Wahlberg, Greenlaw was portrayed by actor Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio.

After acknowledging the failure of current fishery policies within the union, EU officials are now considering banning the practice of discarding fish at sea.

“What’s the point of setting a quota if fishermen aren’t accountable for the fish they actually catch?” says Mogens Schou, a Danish fishery official.

The EU’s quotas limit the size of the annual catch that countries and their fleets can sell on their return to harbour, but instead of protecting remaining fishing populations from depletion, the system is making fishermen dump lower-value fish at sea to maximize profit. According to officials in the European Commission’s fisheries office, most of these fishes do not survive.

“To stay under their quotas, and make more money, fishermen discard half of what they catch,” says Schou, “They ‘high-grade’ – in other words, only keep the most profitable fish.”

Last month, an EU report was released highlighting the failure of current EU fishing regulations by showing that 88% of fish species in EU waters are being fished out faster than they can reproduce. In response to the report, fishery ministers from the 27 EU nations are currently discussing how to protect the remaining fish stocks from complete eradication.

As a part of these talks, Denmark has proposed an amended quota system where fishermen and their countries are held accountable for the amount of fish caught rather than the amount returned to port. To make it harder for fishing fleets to cheat, Denmark is also proposing that fishermen voluntarily equip their boats with on-board cameras. In exchange, the fishermen would get bigger quotas.

Denmark has already designed a surveillance kit consisting of four cameras, a GPS (Global Positioning System) device, and sensors that notice when fish is being hauled or dumped. The Danish kits are currently being used on six fishing boats with Danish officials monitoring the footage.

Danish fisherman Per Nielsen installed the kit on his trawler Kingfisher in September and believes it to be a good investment. The kit cost roughly 10,000 USD, but Nielsen was compensated by being allowed to catch several extra tens of thousands of dollars worth of cod.

As of now, EU fishermen throw overboard an estimated 50% of the fish they catch and did for instance dump 38% of the 24,000 tons of cod they caught last year, according to the International Council for the Exploration of the Sea.

As reported earlier this week, Danish television presenter Lisbeth Koelster was put on trial after deliberately pouring diluted anti-dandruff shampoo into a fish tank housing 12 guppies. The aim of the “experiment” was to demonstrate the level of toxic material in the shampoo. After being subjected to the shampoo, all but one of the fishes died and a Danish veterinarian who watched the show decided to press charges.

Koelster had pleaded not guilty, but the Glostrup court found her guilty of violating animal protection laws. Judge Thomas Lohse said Koelster had “deliberately committed an act of cruelty to animals” and violated animal protection laws. She was however not found to have violated any laws regarding experimentation on animals.

Koelster will not have to pay any fine since the event took place in 2004; four and a half year from now. The judge found this amount of time unreasonable and therefore decided not to fine her.

To demonstrate the level of toxic material in a brand of anti-dandruff shampoo, a Danish television presenter poured diluted shampoo into a fish tank on a 2004 episode of the consumer affairs show she fronted.

Lisbeth Kloester, a television presenter on the Danish public channel DV1, is now on trial for causing unnecessary suffering to animals.

After being subjected to the shampoo, all but one of 12 guppy fish housed in the aquarium died within four days and a veterinary practitioner watching the show decided to press charges. Under Danish law, causing unnecessary suffering to animals is an offence and Kloester could face a fine if convicted.

Kloester has pleaded not guilty and her lawyer Tuge Tried said he expected his client to be acquitted at the trial on Tuesday.

“The allegations are this experiment caused the fish’s fear and suffering…but expert witnesses told the court on May 12 that this was not the case,” he said. “Fish are killed by suffocation in industrial fisheries and we throw live lobsters into boiling water, but we don’t press charges against fisherman or restaurant owners.”