Marine Conservation Archives

US bill would direct EPA to study removing microplastics from the environment

November 9, 2026 — U.S. Representative Nancy Mace (R-South Carolina) has introduced the Plastics Understanding and Removal through Government Evaluation (PURGE) Act that, if passed, would require the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to study and test solutions for removing microplastics.

“Microplastics are present everywhere in the environment, including our rivers, oceans, and seafood,” Mace’s office said in a release. “The PURGE Act demands answers. What works. What it costs. And whether it can be put to use at water treatment and environmental facilities.”

Read the full article at SeafoodSource

CALIFORNIA: Marine Protected Area Proposals Advance as California Commission Takes Up Fishing Rules

November 6, 2026 — Proposed changes to California’s network of marine protected areas are moving into the next stage of consideration following an October vote by the California Fish and Game Commission, with several of the actions carrying potential implications for Southern California boaters and anglers.

The Commission granted seven marine protected area petition actions for consideration through future rulemaking. Among them are two tribally led proposals that would create new MPAs at Point Sal and Carpinteria Reef, both along the Santa Barbara County coast.

The Carpinteria Reef proposal places part of the continuing statewide MPA review directly along the Southern California coast and could eventually affect how portions of those waters are managed. For local sportfishing operators, however, the potential effects extend beyond the boundaries of another protected area.

Jaime Diamond, owner of Stardust Sportfishing in Santa Barbara, said the Point Sal proposal is outside the geographic range of the company’s operations, but the Carpinteria proposal is a different matter.

“The closure off of Carpinteria will virtually eliminate our most affordable and accessible trip, the 1/2 day,” Diamond told The Log. “This will also eliminate our ability to offer introductory fishing trips for first timers, families, the elderly, or safe trips close to harbor for special needs children and severely disabled veterans.”

Diamond said the area also provides access to longstanding fishing grounds for species including calico bass, sand bass, white seabass, barracuda and halibut. In her view, losing access to those grounds would be particularly significant because other areas traditionally used for those fisheries are already within MPAs.

Her concerns extend beyond the sportfishing fleet. Diamond described the Carpinteria area as an important entry point for people learning to fish, dive and participate in other forms of ocean recreation.

“The addition of an MPA off of Carpinteria will be the end of the local learning fishing grounds,” Diamond said. “Carp Reef, Horseshoe Rock, Horseshoe Kelp and the surrounding sandy bottom are located just off of Santa Claus Beach, where Carpinteria and Goleta-Ventura kids learn to fish, dive and hunt on or in the water.”

Read the full article at the Log

Shark Finning Bans Aren’t Stopping Shark Mortality. Here’s Why.

November 5, 2026 — For decades, in some fisheries, the most valuable part of that animal was not its body… but its fins. A fisher would remove the fins, keep them and throw the rest of the shark back overboard in a practice known as “shark finning,” which is both wasteful and devastatingly painful for the animal on the receiving end of the blade. It did make economic sense in a grimly practical way, as fins took up far less space than whole sharks, leaving valuable room onboard for other species. But in a bid to end the cruel practice, global countries introduced regulations requiring sharks to be landed whole, with their fins naturally attached, attached to the carcass with ropes or wires, or landed according to prescribed fin-to-carcass ratios. On paper, this seems like a straightforward conservation solution. Stop finning, and you remove the incentive to kill sharks for their fins.

But what happens next? A new global analysis suggests the answer is not nearly as simple as we might hope.

Researchers examined shark trade across 188 countries between 2007 and 2020 using the Aquatic Resource Trade in Species, or ARTIS, database. Rather than looking only at whether countries had regulations, they asked if introducing shark-finning regulations actually changed how much shark product countries exported, imported or consumed. They then used a statistical approach called difference-in-differences, allowing them to compare countries before and after they introduced regulations with countries that had not yet introduced them. It is a useful way of getting closer to the question of causation rather than simply observing that two things happened at the same time. The headlining result is surprisingly undramatic: on average, finning regulations did not produce statistically significant changes in shark exports, imports or domestic consumption. Countries with regulations eventually exported about 351 metric tonnes less shark product per year than they might otherwise have been expected to export, while imports were about 142 tonnes higher. Domestic consumption was estimated to be lower by about 1,672 tonnes per year, but this effect was also not statistically significant.

Read the full article at Yahoo! News

Six Fish These Small Sound-Emitting Tags Are Helping Save

November 5, 2026 — An app tells beachgoers in Massachusetts and Maine if a shark has entered the area. Fishermen in Delaware check their phones to avoid accidentally catching endangered Atlantic sturgeon. Dwindling American shad, once cut off from their spawning grounds by dams, are returning in droves.

Each of these stories became possible in part because of tiny “acoustic telemetry” tags and a vast network of researchers deploying them along the East Coast of the U.S. With acoustic telemetry technology, each tag emits a unique, ultrasonic “ping.” Along the Eastern seaboard, thousands of electronic receivers are listening for those pings, ready to detect any tagged animal that swims within about half a kilometer.

Researchers in the Atlantic Cooperative Telemetry Network, or “ACT” for short, have been tagging animals for over two decades. Now managed by the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center, the network unites scientists from over 120 organizations from Maine to North Carolina. Together, they’ve tagged more than 17,000 animals and 92 species. By sharing data from all of their receivers, they’re making discoveries about animal movement no single team could have made on their own.

“Many fish migrate long distances,” says Matt Ogburn, a senior scientist at the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center (SERC). “The ACT Network supports researchers by making it easy and efficient to exchange data across projects as the fish they tagged move along the coast or even across oceans.”

This fall the network published a new paper, its first to highlight how acoustic telemetry is shaping real-world conservation. From sturgeon to sharks (a lot of sharks), here are six fish the ACT scientists and their tags are helping preserve.

Read the full article at Smithsonian Magazine

UN considering proposal to phase out trawling on seamounts

November 2, 2026 — The United Nations is meeting until 6 November and is considering a proposal to phase out bottom trawling on high-seas seamounts.

The U.N. regularly considers different fisheries resolutions and annually considers and adopts its “Oceans and the law of the sea” resolution in December. Armenia, as well as Monaco, have proposed a phase-out of bottom trawling at high-seas seamounts, drawing praise from nonprofits like the Deep Sea Conservation Coalition (DSCC) and the Marine Conservation Institute.

Read the full article at SeafoodSource

Feds now question their own approval of New England Wind

October 29, 2026 — New England Wind is the latest offshore wind project in the federal government’s crosshairs.

In response to a lawsuit spearheaded by Nantucket-based nonprofit ACK for Whales, federal officials are asking a judge to allow them to reconsider their approval of the project about 24 miles southwest of Nantucket.

In an Oct. 20 court filing responding to the plaintiffs’ motion for summary judgment, the Department of the Interior agreed with ACK for Whales saying that its previous approval did not adequately explain how the project would comply with requirements protecting the environment, fishing and navigation.

“This filing by DOI is significant in our efforts to protect the environment around Nantucket from the damaging impacts of large scale offshore wind development,” ACK for Whales member Veronica Bonnet said.

The government is asking the court to send the project’s construction and operations plan back for further review under the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act.

Read the full article at The Inquirer and Mirror

The Permitting Bill Fishermen Can’t Afford to Ignore

October 29, 2026 — On November 9, the Senate is scheduled to take up the Bipartisan American Affordability and Jobs Act of 2026, known as BAAJA (S. 5653). This legislation is not about Mexican sheep; instead, the dense 400-page bill rewrites how the federal government approves energy, mining, and infrastructure projects. Its sponsors, Senators Shelley Moore Capito (R-WV), Mike Lee (R-UT), Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), and Martin Heinrich (D-NM), call it a historic compromise. I call it a historic risk for fishing communities.

The coalition behind BAAJA is unusual. The American Petroleum Institute (oil and gas), the American Clean Power Association (wind and other renewables), and major organized labor groups support it. Tribal nations, historic preservation groups, and ocean conservation organizations oppose it.

Commercial fishermen have been mostly absent from this fight, and that needs to change. BAAJA rewrites the rules for offshore wind farms, export cables, offshore oil and gas, and seabed mining. It changes how those projects are approved, how long the approvals last, and how hard they are to challenge. Nearly every change reduces the leverage fishermen have used to protect fishing grounds historically, and that’s not a coincidence.

The Senate outcome is close to being settled. The House is a different story, and that is where fishermen still have a real opening. But we must make our voices heard, and soon.

What this issue is about

Fishermen have spent more than a decade fighting for a real voice in offshore wind decisions. Lease areas have been granted on productive fishing grounds over industry objections, and project layouts have been set with little regard for how fleets actually fish or what they need for safe transit. Too often, fishermen’s concerns have been treated as a box to check rather than a reason to change course.

BAAJA would shrink what voice fishermen have left in the regulatory process for energy permitting. Its supporters pitch it as protection for clean energy, pointing to the 2025 federal stop-work orders that halted offshore wind projects already holding permits. The bill delivers that protection by making permits nearly impossible to revisit once they are issued, and much harder to challenge before then during the planning process.

The bill doesn’t stop at wind. Its “protections” for energy projects from public scrutiny and challenge cover any federally permitted project with a private sector sponsor, including offshore oil and gas wells and mines. The same rules that would wall off a wind farm from fishermen’s objections would wall off an offshore drilling lease or a seabed mining permit.

OREGON: Oregon looking at new rules for 3-mile-wide ribbon of ocean along the coast

October 28, 2026 — Oregon is taking a look at the three-nautical-mile-wide ribbon of ocean that runs along the length of the coast.

This offshore ribbon is managed under Oregon’s Territorial Sea Plan and covers issues as varied as undersea cables, fishing and renewable energies. But the plan is more than 30 years old and doesn’t consider emerging issues like climate change and ocean acidification.

“It’s high time to take a look at the foundational chapters of the Territorial Sea Plan and update them,” said Joe Liebezeit, the chair of the Ocean Policy Advisory Council.

So the Oregon Department of State Lands has asked the Ocean Policy Advisory Council to review the sea plan in an effort to strengthen protections for Oregon’s marine ecosystem and ensure Oregonians get fair compensation for the use of the seafloor.

Read the full article at OPB

Third deep sea mining lawsuit filed as Trump administration seeks Samoa lease sale

October 26, 2026 — The Trump administration last week published its notice finalizing the first deep-sea mining lease sale of over 31 million acres of seabed off of American Samoa on Nov. 19.

Nonprofit environmental law firm Earthjustice filed a lawsuit that same afternoon seeking to block it, representing Faleula o le Manu‘atele, a council of Samoan leaders, and Fa‘asao Amerika Samoa and Conservation Council for Hawai‘i.

Samoa’s lease sale will proceed about a month before the Dec. 16 mineral lease auction that the Trump administration wants to do for about 67 million acres of seafloor surrounding the Marianas.

Read the full article at Pacific Daily News

Marine debris team completes latest Papahanaumokuakea cleanup mission

September 1, 2026 — A marine debris cleanup crew has returned to Honolulu after another mission to protect the fragile ecosystems of Papahanaumokuakea.

The Papahanaumokuakea Marine Debris Project completed its second mission of 2026 on Friday after a 21-day expedition to the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands.

The team removed 48,680 pounds of ghost nets and other plastic marine debris from Lalo, Kamokuokamohoaliʻi, Kamole and Kapou.

The mission was temporarily paused Aug. 19 as Hurricane Lala moved through the region.

Read the full article at Hawaii News Now