Herring, menhaden, anchovies, sprats, silversides, smelt, sardines. These fish play a massive role in the ocean’s ecosystem. Jim Toomey illustrates why they’re important. Produced by the Pew Trusts.
Sun Myung Moon, Korean minister and head of a global business empire which includes seafood giant True World Foods, has died in South Korea’s Cheongshim Hospital, owned by the Unification Church he founded. Reverend Moon was either 92 or 93 years old (reports differ). His secretive but vast business interests sell “cars, guns, newspapers and sushi” around the world, according to Businessweek.
“Moon has purchased and controlled a number of seafood companies around the world, including True World Foods, a wholesaler that distributes sushi and other seafood to more than 8,000 Japanese restaurants around the U.S. Moon has also claimed holdings of seafood and shipbuilding companies in Alabama and Alaska…..”
— “Sein Reich war von dieser Welt [“His kingdom was of this world”],” Patrick Zoll, Neue Zürcher Zeitung
The Illinois Department of Natural Resources plans to process tons of fish and donate it to area food banks. The fish: Asian carp, several aggressive, invasive species bent on world domination. They can weigh over 50 pounds and jump 8 feet in the air, knocking over fishermen. They also destroy underwater habitat, vacuum up plankton and algae, crowd out other fish species, and have no natural enemies.
DNR pays commercial fishermen to take Asian carp out of the Illinois River. The result: Asian carp haven’t taken over Lake Michigan yet, and the state has a heap of dead fish, 150 tons in the last year.
Last Wednesday a posse of Maryland Natural Resources police found another illegal gill net off Kent Island. It was filled with 400 pounds of rockfish. Maryland authorities say they’ve rounded up 8,425 yards of illegal net and 12 tons of rustled rockfish this month. And February is a short month.
Police are hot on the trail of the varmints, but so far have failed to corral the criminals, so they’re bringing in the bounty hunters. The reward for information leading to a rockfish rustling arrest has been raised to $30,500.
Image by Mike Licht. Download a copy here. Creative Commons license; credit Mike Licht, NotionsCapital.com
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Maryland authorities discovered 10 tons of rockfish caught in illegal sunken nets in Chesapeake Bay. The legal commercial catch limit for rockfish is 300 pounds a day. Posses are searching for the rockfish rustlers, and the Maryland State Government is offering a $7,000 reward for information leading to the arrest of the piscatorial poachers. The search for more illegal gill nets also continues.
Convicted rockfish rustlers can get up to five years in the calaboose and fines of up to $250,000 or twice the value of the catch. Corporate co-conspiritors may be fined up to $500,000 or twice the value of the catch.
A Washington, DC fish wholesaler has been found guilty of buying rockfish from a gang of rustlers. A co-owner and a fish buyer will go to the pokey, and the company has been fined $875,000. The DC bass bandits were collared last December. The rockfish (Morone saxatilis or Roccus saxatilis), also known as the striped bass, is the state fish of Maryland. It was overfished for decades, and harvesting is tightly controlled.
A posse has been roundin’ up rockfish rustlers for some time. Convictions were based on investigations by a special task force of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Maryland Natural Resources Police, and the Virginia Marine Police between 2003 through 2007.
A true daughter of Minnesota, Ella Haag was out at Round Lake with the family last Saturday, the start of Walleye season. She carefully cast her worm-baited hook into the lake’s waters with her pink Barbie rod and reel. Ella is two years old.
Ella caught a sunfish and was reeling it in when the water exploded. A muskelunge had struck her catch. Carrie Haag, Ella’s mom, grabbed the pink fishing pole before her daughter was dragged into the lake and started hauling the big fish in. Grandpa David netted and weighed it: 20 pounds, more than Ella.
The family snapped a photo and released the finny beast. “I caught a shark,” said Ella. More here.
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