Saving Seafood

These are the top-earning green group bosses

March 20, 2026 — The bosses of the Environmental Defense Fund, World Wildlife Fund and National Audubon Society are the top-earning executives among major environmental and conservation groups, according to the most recent tax filings.

Carter Roberts and Fred Krupp, the leaders of WWF and EDF, respectively, both earned more than $1 million in total compensation, according to the latest publicly available tax records, ranking them among the best-paid leaders in the environmental movement.

Nonprofits are required to release their tax documents publicly, although their disclosure often lags by several years. The nonprofits’ most recent publicly available documents detail senior employees’ pay for calendar or tax years in 2023 or 2024.

Audubon CEO Elizabeth Gray and The Nature Conservancy’s CEO Jennifer Morris weren’t far behind, each earning compensation topping $900,000 in the most recent filings.

Other top earners in the latest records include former Greenpeace leader Ebony Twilley Martin — who left her position with a settlement payment — and Jamie Rappaport Clark, who received a bonus the year she left her job as head of Defenders of Wildlife.

POLITICO’s E&E News analyzed 27 environmental and conservation groups’ most recent tax filings, many of which were compiled by ProPublica. Here’s how much their bosses made in base pay and total compensation, which can include bonuses, retirement pay and other benefits:

1. Fred Krupp, president, Environmental Defense Fund

EDF’s leader since 1984, Krupp’s total compensation in the 2023 filing was $1,302,005, the tax records show.

2. Carter Roberts, president and CEO, World Wildlife Fund

Roberts has led the international conservation group since 2005. His reported compensation in 2023 was $1,290,569.

3. Elizabeth Gray, CEO, National Audubon Society

Gray has been the group’s permanent CEO since 2021. Her total compensation in 2023 was $951,881. That included a bonus of $256,250 “for her exceptional performance during her tenure at Audubon,” according to the filing.

Read the full article at E&E News

US lawmakers want NOAA Fisheries to consider climate impacts and shifting stocks in setting fishing quotas

February 5, 2026 — A trio of U.S. senators have introduced legislation that would require NOAA Fisheries to consider the impact of climate change on fish distribution in setting commercial fishing quotas.

“This legislation addresses outdated fishing requirements and ensures that climate change conditions like rising water temperatures that shift fish stocks are prioritized in fishery management plans. Our changing climate has seriously altered our oceans, forcing fishermen to travel far distances to earn a living or throw back valuable fish,” U.S. Senator Richard Blumenthal (D-Connecticut) said in a release.

Read the full article at SeafoodSource

Global Ghost Gear Initiative report provides recommendations for government action

August 11, 2021 — A new report has foundthe best way to reduce the impact of lost fishing gear is to enforce existing rules.

The report, “Ghost Gear Legislation Analysis,” was jointly written bythe World Wildlife Fund (WWF), Ocean Outcomes, and Ocean Conservancy’s Global Ghost Gear Initiative (GGGI). It assesses existing government legislation and policies addressing ghost gear and provides recommendations to governments to strengthen existing efforts and other actions to address lost, abandoned, or discarded fishing gear.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

US Representative Jared Huffman files bill to reauthorize Magnuson-Stevens Act

July 26, 2021 — U.S. Rep. Jared Huffman (D-California) announced on Monday 26 July, 2021, that he introduced a reauthorization bill for the Magnuson-Stevens Act, the federal law that oversees fishery management in the United States.

In a statement, Huffman said it’s time for a new reauthorization of the landmark legislation because of changes within the industry and the challenges it faces.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

Wildlife group: Gulf oil spill still affecting wildlife

April 8, 2020 — A decade after the nation’s worst offshore oil spill, dolphins, turtles and other wildlife in the Gulf of Mexico are still seriously at risk, according to a report released Tuesday.

The fact that the Gulf hasn’t fully recovered is “hardly surprising given the enormity of the disaster,” said David Muth, director of the Gulf of Mexico Restoration Program for the National Wildlife Federation, which authored the report.

The April 20, 2010, explosion on the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig killed 11 workers and spewed what the nonprofit environmental organization Ocean Conservancy estimated to be 210 million gallons (795 million liters) of oil before it was capped 87 days later.

What followed, Muth said, was the largest restoration attempt ever in the world, with billions invested or committed to projects to help restore the Gulf and its ecosystem, and another $12 billion to be spent through the year 2032.

Read the full story at The Washington Post

Lessons from the front line — Florida’s fight with sea level rise

March 26, 2020 — In the midst of the COVID-19 crisis, many people are dreaming of Florida as a retreat from long days of self-isolation. Hundreds of miles of beautiful beaches, azure skies, shimmering oceans, teeming wilderness including barrier reefs and the Everglades, and strands of picturesque keys and islets. But this paradise is staring down a menace of its own — a rising sea level — and it’s time for a paradigm shift to help us save the Sunshine State. How that battle plays out will have huge implications for other coastal regions across the rest of the United States.

Floridians are experiencing the undeniable impacts of sea level rise firsthand on a daily basis. For Florida’s environment, the signs of danger and damage are everywhere. Saltwater is inundating the Florida Bay, exacerbating an already hyper saline ecosystem and negatively impacting fish stocks and sea grass.

Mangroves, which are estuarine trees that thrive in salty habitats, are creeping northward into the Everglades and taking over critical freshwater habitat that serves as important rookeries for birds and as nurseries for freshwater fish and reptiles such as alligators. In South Florida, rising seas stand to upset the balance between the fresh water and salt water environments, possibly reshaping the bays, wetlands and waterways of the greater Everglades ecosystem.

Read the full story at The Hill

Nearly $226M to restore open Gulf after 2010 BP oil spill

December 16, 2019 — Federal agencies have approved nearly $226 million for 18 projects to restore open ocean and marine habitats that were decimated in the Gulf of Mexico by the 2010 BP oil spill.

The projects range from $52.6 million to study deep-sea habitats to $290,000 to find ways to keep sea turtles from swallowing or getting snagged on hooks or tangled in lines set out for miles along reefs.

They are described in a 490-page report released Tuesday.

The nonprofit Ocean Conservancy said it’s “the world’s first plan to restore the open ocean and deep-sea environment from a major oil disaster.”

“Ocean Conservancy welcomes this major conservation milestone for the Gulf of Mexico,” CEO Janis Searles Jones said in a news release.

The explosion April 20, 2010, on the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig killed 11 workers. There are varying estimates on how much oil was released. According to Ocean Conservancy, the well spewed 210 million gallons (795 million liters) of oil before it was capped 87 days later.

Read the full story from the Associated Press

During Capitol Hill Ocean Week, The U.S. House Passed Four Bills To Study Changing Ocean Chemistry

June 12, 2019 — Since the end of the 19th century, several billions of tons of carbon have been pumped into our planet’s atmosphere, causing sea surface temperatures and sea levels to rise. Additionally, as the oceans have absorbed some of this carbon, their overall acidity has increased by 30 percent.  Changes in acidity and overall ocean chemistry – termed “ocean acidification” – can negatively affect an animal’s sense of smell (which helps them avoid predators, find food, and identify good habitats) and ability to grow its shell.

“We first felt its effects in the mid-2000’s when more acidified water caused Pacific Northwest oyster farmers to suffer drastic losses and go nearly bankrupt,” says Dr. Sarah Cooley, Director of Ocean Conservancy’s Ocean Acidification Program, “Scientists later identified the threat acidification poses to other industries and the people who rely on them, including the $1 billion-dollar lobster industry in the northeast and the coral reef tourism industry of Florida.”

Last week, nearly 90 percent of the U.S. House of Representatives passed four bills to combat the ocean’s changing chemistry. The Ocean Acidification Innovation Act (H.R.1921) (which I previously reported on here), COAST Research Act of 2019 (H.R. 1237), Coastal Communities Ocean Acidification Act of 2019 (H.R.1716), and NEAR Act of 2019(H.R.988).  Together, these bills, if passed by the U.S. Senate, would provide resources to monitor changes in ocean chemistry in both coastal and offshore environments, understand the effects of acidification on coastal communities, and elicit a National Academies of Science study that examines changing chemistry in estuaries – the bodies of water between freshwater rivers and the oceans. The passage of these bills coincided with the National Marine Sanctuary Foundation’s annual Capitol Hill Ocean Week (CHOW).

Read the full story at Forbes

Massive boom will corral Pacific Ocean’s plastic trash

September 10, 2018 — Engineers will deploy a trash collection device to corral plastic litter floating between California and Hawaii in an attempt to clean up the world’s largest garbage patch in the heart of the Pacific Ocean.

The 2,000-foot long floating boom will be towed Saturday from San Francisco to the Great Pacific Garbage Patch — an island of trash twice the size of Texas.

The system was created by The Ocean Cleanup, an organization founded by Boyan Slat, a 24-year-old innovator from the Netherlands who first became passionate about cleaning the oceans when he went scuba diving at age 16 in the Mediterranean Sea and saw more plastic bags than fish.

“The plastic is really persistent and it doesn’t go away by itself and the time to act is now,” Slat said, adding that researchers with his organization found plastic going back to the 1960s and 1970s bobbing in the patch.

The buoyant, a U-shaped barrier made of plastic and with a tapered 10-foot deep screen, is intended to act like a coastline, trapping some of the 1.8 trillion pieces of plastic that scientists estimate are swirling in that gyre but allowing marine life to safely swim beneath it.

Fitted with solar power lights, cameras, sensors and satellite antennas, the cleanup system will communicate its position at all times, allowing a support vessel to fish out the collected plastic every few months and transport it to dry land where it will be recycled, said Slat.

Read the full story from the Associated Press at the New Bedford Standard Times

Red Snapper’s Overfishing Threat Triggers Records Suit

January 25, 2018 — BALTIMORE — Worried about regulatory changes that will exacerbate overfishing of red snapper, conservationists claim in a federal complaint that the Trump administration is stonewalling their records request.

Represented by Earthjustice, the nonprofit group Ocean Conservancy says it invoked the Freedom of Information Act on June 19, 2017 — the same day that the red snapper fishing season was expanded for private anglers in the Gulf of Mexico to 42 days, up from just three.

The National Marine Fisheries Service and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration “admitted that the action would cause the private recreational fishing sector to substantially exceed the annual catch limit set for that sector and delay rebuilding for the overfished population of red snapper, in violation of a number of statutes,” the complaint states.

Ocean Conservancy says it wants access to the agencies’ records about the rule change so that it can understand why the rule was adopted and inform the public.

“The government has an obligation to the citizens of this country to manage our shared public resources in a transparent way, and it is unacceptable for them to withhold that information from us,” Meredith Moore, director of fish conservation at Ocean Conservancy, said in a statement on the group’s website. “By all indications, the red snapper decision was a politically motivated action that ignored science, contrary to the law. Their decision will cause long-term damage to the fishermen and communities that depend on this economically and ecologically important fishery.

Neither the NOAA nor NMFS has responded to a request for comment on the lawsuit.

Read the full story at Courthouse News