October 9, 2009
The Scanner
BY: Emily Fisher
Happy Friday, all!If you’re in DC this weekend, come check out our booth at the DC Green Festival. We’ll be the ones in funny fish hats. And good luck to all participating in this weekend’s Race for the Oceans in Fort Myers, FL. In the mean time…This week in ocean news,…Oceana, the Center for Biological Diversity and the Turtle Island Restoration Network reached an agreement with the federal government in a lawsuit over violations of the Endangered Species Act. NMFS and the Fish and Wildlife Service agreed to respond to the groups’ petitions for increased protections for both leatherbacks in the waters off California and Oregon as well as North Pacific and western North Atlantic loggerheads by December 4, 2009, and February 19, 2010, respectively….Lionel the lobster met his watery end when he refused to come out of his home, an undetonated mine in the UK, even after some coaxing from Royal Navy divers, who eventually had to follow their orders….Spain became the first EU country to institute a total prohibition on the catch of hammerhead and thresher sharks, two of the most vulnerable sharks in the ocean. …Global warming will shift fish catches away from the tropics toward the poles, new research showed. The group reported that by 2055 countries like China, Chile, Indonesia and the United States (excepting Alaska and Hawaii) will see catches decline, while catches off Alaska, Greenland, Norway and Russia will rise….A dead zone the size of New Jersey off the coast of Oregon and Washington will probably appear there each summer as a result of climate change, new research showed.