“Look out there, the blue one…. that is a European Union fishing vessel that is threatening our livelihood,” says Lallmamode Mohamedally, a Mauritian fisherman, as he points to a boat offloading its catch at the Les Salines port, close to the country’s capital Port Louis.
Coastal fisheries in Papua New Guinea, used primarily by local subsistence fisher folk, will face increasing pressure from climate change, compounding the twin problems of population growth and overfishing.
It takes a village to protect a reef and sustain a local fishery, more than two decades of experience now shows.
This past Tuesday, May 22, marked World Biodiversity Day, but it came and went without too much public interest.
Eli Fuller is a third-generation Antiguan who, for the past two decades, has been exploring the Antigua and Barbuda coastline. But he laments the fact that he can no longer see the coral that he recalls were somewhat of an underwater jungle when he was a young boy, akin to what you'd see in the Amazon rain forest.
Forest officials of the Gulf of Mannar Marine Biosphere Reserve abutting the Palk Straits between India and Sri Lanka have reported a decline in marine wildlife, as smugglers exploiting lax conservation laws in the region tank up on protected species used in traditional Chinese medicines and fine dining.
The arrest and release of a Dutch activist in Japan has put in bad light this country’s refusal to heed international calls to limit traditional dolphin and whale hunting practices in favour of conservation.
The arrest and release of a Dutch activist in Japan has put in bad light this country’s refusal to heed international calls to limit traditional dolphin and whale hunting practices in favour of conservation.
For the last ten years, environmentalists and marine biologists have repeatedly warned that the world’s tuna populations, and particularly bluefin tuna, are being overfished to the verge of extinction.
Just six years after the completion of a dike that raised the level of the northern part of the Aral Sea by two metres and slashed its salt content by two-thirds, this remote Central Asian lake once synonymous with ecological catastrophe has become a model of environmental recovery.
U.S. President Barack Obama has decided to impose diplomatic rather than trade sanctions on Iceland because of the country’s whale-hunting activities.
"It wasn't easy to convince people that growing fish in the desert makes sense," reminisces marine biologist Samuel Appelbaum, peering through the opaque water where thousands of barramundi are being harvested.
Ali Mohsen knows how to tell a good fish story. The wiry, white-haired Egyptian mariner weaves a yarn about his childhood days when the sea was so full of fish that one could simply dangle a hand net over the side of the boat and pull up a seafood dinner. This morning, his crew spent hours out at sea with only four kilos of small fish to show for it.
In the 1970s, French oyster breeders introduced the Pacific oyster (Crassostrea gigas) to the Bay of Biscay to diversify the area’s species and develop the commercial oyster industry.
Thousands of small-scale fishers in Central America are fighting for survival in the face of free trade deals, transnational corporations, mega tourism projects and pollution that is harming marine life.
After years of stiff resistance, the Japanese government has announced a temporary halt to its controversial research whaling programme in the Antarctic Ocean, a decision that will finally stir the debate to promote sustainable fishing, say conservationists here.
A growing number of endangered olive ridley sea turtles have been getting killed in Eastern India’s coastal state Orissa by mechanized vessels defying a fishing ban on one of the world’s largest turtle sanctuaries, Gahirmatha.
Increasing energy prices have caused anxiety for many small-scale Malawian traders, especially those in rural areas and peri-urban areas who rely on paraffin for lighting their business premises.
Several species of fish unique only to the waters of Kashmir are in danger of extinction due to high levels of pollution, environmentalists say.
Senegalese fishers participating in the 2011 World Social Forum (WSF) warned governments to "wake up to the ethical and transparent regulation of access to fisheries" to halt the overexploitation of this increasingly scarce resource.
For the third time in 10 years, small-scale fishers in El Salvador are trying to get Congress to modify the country's fishing law, to create a five-mile exclusion zone along the coast where the industrial fleet would be banned from fishing.