The European Union is taking on fishing reform. Its parliament voted 502-137 in February on a package that protects endangered stocks and ends the practice of throwing unwanted, dead fish overboard, the BBC reports. Such discards are believed to account for a quarter of all catch. The changes could become law next year. A spokeswoman for the Green Party members of the governing body called the vote “historic,” and said it would “finally put the EU’s fisheries policy on a sustainable footing.”
One of the largest longline vessels ever built was launched in Tacoma, Wash. in January. The Northern Leader cost $25 million to build, according to National Fisherman magazine. The 184-foot by 42-foot ship can hold 1.9 million pounds of frozen fish product. The Northern Leader will operate in the Bering Sea, and is owned by Alaskan Leader Fisheries.
The damage to mid-Atlantic fisheries from Hurricane Sandy continues to be felt. New Jersey regulators have closed shellfish beds because wastewater treatment plants have repeatedly discharged unclean water. The storm badly damaged the system’s pump stations, National Fisherman reports.
And though Delaware Bay did not suffer the worst of the storm, Sandy is influencing policy there. Damage to beaches have caused steep ledges, inhibiting the ability of horseshoe crabs to climb ashore and mate and lay eggs. New Jersey lawmakers proposed lifting the moratorium on harvesting horseshoe crabs for bait, but environmental groups are fighting that plan.
A trial began last month in New Orleans over the 2010 BP oil-rig spill. According to Reuters, Assistant U.S. Attorney Mike Underhill asserted that “Not only was it within BP’s power to prevent the tragedy, it was its responsibility.” The trial is being held before a judge at federal court. BP must persuade the judge it is not guilty of gross negligence. The company already has spent or committed $37 billion on cleanup, restoration, payouts, settlements and fines.
According to the Portland Press-Herald, Iceland’s largest steamship line and New England’s largest railroad are partnering to make Portland a hub for freight cross the North Atlantic. Container ships from Eimskip will connect Portland “with cities as far north as Murmansk, Russia, 125 miles above the Arctic Circle, and as far south as Rotterdam, Netherlands, Europe’s largest port,” the newspaper reports.
The Gloucester, Mass., city council was closing in on a decision on an application for a four-story hotel in the city’s Fort Square area, the Gloucester Times reports. A study commissioned by opponents, found a wide variety of problems with the hotel proposal, concluding it would cause “the rapid, total loss of the beach and irreparable damage to the critical eelgrass beds.”
KFDM, a CBS-TV affiliate in Port Arthur, Texas, reports that a federal judge blamed the state’s environmental officials for the deaths of 23 rare whooping cranes in a water dispute. U.S. District Judge Janis Graham Jack in Corpus Christi ruled the state must develop a conservation plan to protect the migrating, endangered birds. The judge also determined the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality was responsible for the winter 2008-2009 bird deaths because its management of rivers feeding bays caused their salt levels to rise.
In Oregon, the port of Portland last month began granting larger rebates it hopes will keep ships calling at the port during a labor dispute. The port’s commissioners authorized as much as $3.7 million in rent rebates to ICTSI Oregon Inc., which operates the international container terminal, The Oregonian reporter. The union dispute broke out in June, and a slowdown caused ships to bypass Portland.
Some 174 manatees are dead so far this year off Florida’s southwest Gulf of Mexico coast, the result of a red tide algae bloom. Reuters reports that the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission said it was the highest number of red-tide-related manatee deaths in any single calendar year. The previous record was set in 1996 when red tide killed at least 149 manatees, mostly in March and April.
Nearly $1 billion would be devoted to improving water quality in Long Island Sound if the Connecticut state budget is approved. The Hartford Business Journal reports that $997 million will be spent “separating city sewers into sewage and stormwater systems, increasing capacity at wastewater treatment plants, improving wastewater technology to remove more nitrogen and phosphorous, and protecting plants against sea level.”