Give Thanks for Our Oceans - by Oceana/Jon Frank

Thanksgiving and November have come and gone, but for those of you who love the oceans, you’ll be glad to read about a few of the things Oceana is most thankful for this season.

The State of Florida

The state already provides beautiful beaches, wonderful diving and excellent fishing, so what more could we be thankful for?  How about a new rule prohibiting the commercial harvest, possession and landing of tiger and hammerhead sharks in state waters!  Recreational fisherman who dare to dream of hooking a tiger or hammerhead species will still have the chance to practice “catch and release” and will maybe even have an increased likelihood of a catch since both tigers and hammerheads have been severely depleted in the Atlantic in recent decades.

The European Commission

For those of you outside the international policy sphere, it may be difficult to think of many reasons to thank amorphous bureaucratic entities, but last month this executive arm of the European Union proposed a complete ban on shark finning.  Considering that 73 million sharks are killed each year for their fins and the EU includes some of the world’s major shark fishing nations, like Spain, France, Portugal, and the UK, this is very welcome news.

The New England Fisheries Management Council

As one of eight regional councils established to manage the living marine resources within its area (which includes Maine, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, New Hampshire, and Connecticut), the NEFMC did sea turtles a solid by requiring its scallop fisheries to use a Turtle Deflector Dredge (TDD) rather than a traditional dredge.  What’s the difference?  While traditional dredges can catch or crush sea turtles, the TDD pushes a sea turtle out of the way and is expected to reduce sea turtle mortality by at least 56 percent.

The International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas

Better known to those of us at Oceana as ICCAT, this inter-governmental treaty organization is charged with doing more than just saving tunas – it’s also on the hook for protecting sharks and other “tuna-like” species in the Atlantic Ocean and surrounding seas.  It did just that last month when it established new protections for silky sharks, which are one of the shark species most vulnerable to overfishing by Atlantic longline fisheries.

Tweet @Oceana to let us know if any of your Thanksgiving “thank you’s” were ocean-inspired.