The European Commission (EC) made headlines recently for moving to protect an area half the size of Belgium in the North Atlantic from the destructive fishing practice of bottom trawling.…
This is the second article in a two-part series. Read the first installment here. PANTURA, Indonesia — Not so long ago, Lestari Priyanto needed only sail for a week from…
This is the first article in a two-part series. Read the second installment here. PANTURA, Indonesia — More than 10,000 brightly painted trawlers regularly come and go from the rowdy…
JAKARTA — The Indonesian government is drafting an updated five-year national strategy to protect an endemic reef fish species that’s popular in the global aquarium trade. Indonesia’s fisheries ministry said…
A spate of North Atlantic right whale deaths that began in 2017 shook the scientists who study the critically endangered species. That year, 17 whales died, and the losses prompted…
BRUSSELS — On Sept. 15, the European Commission made a historic announcement: it will prohibit bottom fishing across 16,000 square kilometers, or 6,200 square miles — an area about half…
Chiang Mai, THAILAND — Piya Thedyam was born into a fisherman's family and first went to sea with his father at age 12. “I didn't like it and almost ran…
In the Davis Strait between Greenland and Canada’s Baffin Island, where only the faintest rays of sunlight penetrate, swim strange-looking flat fish with both eyes on the right side of…
On April 10, 2019, a fishing vessel known as Da Wang left Taiwan to sail out into distant waters in search of tuna. Two months into the voyage, a disturbance…
In 2021, faced with an economy battered by the COVID-19 pandemic, the island nation of Maldives considered lifting a ban on shark fishing that had been in place since 2010.…
PALAWAN, Philippines — In the middle of the brackish water of Malampaya Sound in the Philippines’ Palawan province, Panchito Calamare stands on an outrigger fishing boat one drizzling May morning,…
JAKARTA — Indonesia plans to expand protection of its seas to cover an area nearly the size of Germany by 2030 — and then tripling it by 2045. The country…
MEDAN, Indonesia — On a recent morning in Kampung Nelayan, a village on the northeastern coast of the island of Sumatra, fisherman Heri Gunawan returned home frustrated and dissatisfied. Heri…
DJERBA, Tunisia, and SICILY, Italy — On the deck of the Ghanem, which in Arabic means “winner,” sit eight boxes crawling with life. Blue legs and claws teem with each…
Ultra-strong fibers, multi-legged robots, pain relievers — all are human innovations inspired by spiders. Now, conservationists in Indonesia are rehabilitating coral reefs using what’s known as the coral spider technique.…
For decades, the nomadic Bajo people have crisscrossed the seas of Malaysia, the Philippines and Indonesia. But due to pollution, climate change, overfishing and other harmful practices, their way of…
Nearly one in four people across the planet don’t have access to a nutritious diet. But the latest “State of World Fisheries and Aquaculture” (SOFIA) report by the U.N.’s Food…
A new report alleges poor animal welfare conditions on fish farms in Indonesia, one of the world’s leading producers of fish products. Produced by Act for Farmed Animals (AFFA), a…
JAKARTA — Small-scale fishers in Indonesia will be exempt from an end to “harmful” subsidies agreed by governments at the World Trade Organization. Indonesian negotiators citing existing fishing quotas that…
International wildlife trade regulator CITES recently decided to allow an aquaculture company in Mexico to export captive-raised totoabas, a large fish categorized as being in danger of extinction under Mexican…
PUNTA UVA, Costa Rica — Every morning, just after dawn, small-scale fishers Ettel Lattouche and Rafael Hernández head to the beach with their fishing gear to eke out a living.…
Talks aimed at curbing harmful subsidies for fisheries concluded in Geneva in the first multilateral trade agreement the World Trade Organization (WTO) has struck in almost a decade. The body’s…
After years of scallop dredging and fish farming, Loch Craignish, a coastal inlet near Argyll, Scotland, was in disrepair. The dredging had destroyed parts of the seafloor, effluent had polluted…
JAKARTA — Researchers have confirmed that a lagoon in Indonesia’s Raja Ampat archipelago, a popular dive site, is a nursery for newborn and juvenile manta rays, cementing the area’s status…
In the introduction to his new book, conservation biologist David Shiffman quotes Senegalese forestry engineer and conservationist Baba Dioum: “In the end we will conserve only what we love; we…
FREETOWN, Sierra Leone — As dawn breaks, the fishing wharf at Tamba Kula in Freetown buzzes with the movement of early-morning commerce. Fishers just back from days spent far out…
Tangled up too often in fishing nets, manta rays have been plunging toward extinction as fishing pressure and other stressors take a toll on their populations. But the species has…
Lower incomes and loss of employment were among the most urgent issues faced by fishing and seafood-processing workers in Asia and the Pacific during the COVID-19 pandemic, according to an…
In April, Indonesia’s fisheries minister, Sakti Wahyu Trenggono, announced there would be no funding from the 2022 national budget to develop the National Fish Bank in Maluku province, or a…
ANTANANARIVO — During the current shrimping season, 39 trawlers will catch just over 4,000 metric tons of shrimp in Madagascar's waters. But one company, with a five-year exploitation right, didn’t…
