Fisheries Volume 32 No. 3 - American Fisheries Society

neWS:
FISHerIeS
Countries agree to combat illegal
fishing
During the 27th meeting of United Nations
Food and Agriculture Organization's
Committee on Fisheries (COFI) in March,
the first steps were taken toward a binding
international agreement establishing control
measures in ports where fish is landed, transshipped,
or processed in order to combat
illegal fishing. Additional consultations will
be held in 2007 and 2008 to generate a
draft version of the agreement, which will
then be presented to COFI for final approval
at the body's next meeting in 2009.
The proposed agreement will be based
on a voluntary FAO model scheme which
outlines recommended "port state" control
measures. Port state controls include
measures such as running background
checks on boats prior to granting docking
privileges and undertaking inspections in
port to check documentation, cargos, and
equipment. They are widely viewed as one
of the best ways to fight illegal, unreported
or unregulated fishing (IUU). Fishing without
permission, catching protected species, using
outlawed types of gear, or disregarding catch
quotas are among the most common IUU
fishing offences. FAO's model scheme also
recommends training inspectors to increase
their effectiveness and improving international
information-sharing about vessels
with a history of IUU activity in order to help
authorities turn away repeat offenders.
Farmed salmon risk to National Forest
streams assessed
A new report from the U.S. Forest Service,
“Assessment of the Risk of Invasion of
National Forest Streams in the Pacific Northwest
by Farmed Atlantic Salmon,” evaluates
the potential impact of farmed salmon on
native fishes inhabiting streams on National
Forest System lands and discusses whether
concerns from both sides of the farmed-versus-wild
fish debate have validity, based on
an extensive literature review. The report was
written by AFS member Peter Bisson, a staff
scientist with the Forest Service Pacific Northwest
Research Station in Olympia, Washington.
The report concludes that breeding
populations of escaped farm salmon are not
known to presently exist on National Forest
System lands, but the locations of Atlantic
salmon farms and the sightings of escaped
salmon indicate that streams on four
national forests may be at risk: the Tongass
and Chugach national forests in Alaska, and
the Olympic and Mount Baker-Snoqualmie
national forests in Washington. Atlantic
salmon could transmit serious diseases or
parasites to native fishes; eventually adapt
to local conditions, leading to self-sustaining
populations; and compete with already atrisk
species, such as steelhead. The report is
available at http://www.fs.fed.us/pnw/pubs/
pnw_gtr697.pdf.
Panel recommends changes for Army
Corps of Engineers
The National Academy of Public Administration
(NAPA) was commissioned by
Congress to conduct an eight-month study
of the Army Corps of Engineers, with emphasis
on how the Corps prioritizes projects
for construction. The report is available at
www.napawash.org. The current policies
employed by the Corps rely on a priority system
that weighs the relative economic value
of a project against its actual cost. In order
for a project to be launched, its "benefitcost"
ratio has to reach a certain level. The
panel suggests that this narrow focus to the
process is inadequate and must be broadened
to incorporate public safety, environmental
consequences, and other factors in
addition to economic value. The panel also
calls for the use of dedicated budget and
planning procedures. The outcome should
be to finance projects recognized as national
priorities, such as the rebuilding of the New
Orleans levee systems, to be undertaken
without the danger of losing financial support
before completion.
"The Corps also needs to evaluate the
potential impacts that projects may have on
the surrounding environments," said AFS
member Chuck Wilson, LSU vice provost,
executive director of the Louisiana Sea Grant
College Program and an advisor to the
panel. "A particularly apt example of how
the Corps’ lack of environmental planning
can have a negative impact is the Mississippi
River Gulf Outlet canal in New Orleans,
which was perceived as a great idea on
paper and was done for the right economic
reasons at the time, but it eventually resulted
in saltwater intrusion that damaged the
adjacent wetlands."
New species may be confused with
white marlin
In a recent article in the Bulletin of Marine
Science, a team of scientists from the Guy
Harvey Research Institute at Nova Southeastern
University and NOAA Fisheries Service's
Southeast Fisheries Science Center in Miami
has confirmed the existence of an enigmatic
billfish species closely resembling the heavilyfished,
overexploited white marlin. Known
as the roundscale spearfish, the new billfish
species has been found in the northwestern
Atlantic Ocean, where its distribution overlaps
that of the white marlin.
“The existence of the roundscale spearfish
was confirmed by analyzing the shape
of its mid-body scales, which are slightly
more rounded at one end compared to the
scales of all other Atlantic billfish species,
and by analyzing its DNA which turns out
to be very different from other billfish species,"
says Mahmood Shivji, the article's lead
author.
"We don't know much about roundscale
spearfish, particularly how abundant
they are. If they are abundant and if
they have been consistently misidentified
as white marlin in the historical landings
database of the International Commission
for the Conservation of Atlantic
Tunas (ICCAT), then white marlin population
sizes may have been overestimated
in past assessments," said AFS member
Eric Prince of NOAA Fisheries Service and
a co-author of the study. "This unexpected
finding adds an unknown level
of uncertainty to our previous estimates
of white marlin population size, and
certainly suggests that the magnitude of
roundscale spearfish misidentification and
possible 'contamination' of white marlin
landings data need to be examined in
greater detail."
110 Fisheries • vol 32 no 3 • march 2007 • www.fisheries.org