josephtaylor

Oregon’s salmon politics have taken a curious turn. In late September several sportfishing groups publicly disavowed Measure 81, a voter initiative they had earlier sponsored to ban gillnets on the Columbia River. The reversal followed an announcement by Oregon governor John Kitzhaber that gillnets were his latest cause du mois and he wants them gone […]

Consumers and scholars alike find themselves adrift in a sea of contested claims about the state of oceans, fisheries, and fish.  It is a symptom of an era in which we are overwhelmed by the pace and scope of change.  We are utterly reliant on complex systems to supply both the commodities that sustain our […]

This may seem a “Shaggy Dog” story, and for that I apologize, but there’s no way to make my scholarly point without digressing into my past. The proximate reason is an announcement this week by the British Columbia Supreme Court requiring an investigative committee to release all information on sea lice infestations and disease outbreaks […]

Bruce Barcott’s essay last week in the online magazine Yale e360 reveals an interesting environmental paradox, one in which Pacific salmon might be both endangered and, simultaneously, too populous.  As Barcott writes, “How can numerous Pacific salmon runs be on the verge of extinction while total salmon numbers are straining the limits of the ocean’s […]

Pull up to any fish buying station in the Salish Sea and you will likely spy many stupid grins.  The reason, as Mary Ellen Walling crowed last week, is that “The Sockeye are back!”  The news is as good as it gets in this long suffering fishery.  In the last few decades sockeye runs have […]