Fisheries

With demand for dozens of metals surging worldwide, companies are racing to develop machines capable of digging up the seabed hundreds of miles offshore.

Pacific fishers' livelihood is now on the brink of extinction after Fisheries and Oceans Canada recently closed about 60 per cent of B.C.'s commercial salmon fisheries. The closures, the government says, will last “multiple generations” of fish to save tumbling salmon populations.

Commercial salmon fishing will be closed in most of coastal B.C., the federal government announced Tuesday.

Canada must stop controlling how First Nations harvest and sell salmon, halibut, and dozens of other marine species, a B.C. court has ruled. 

When Justin Milton moved to Ottawa five years ago from the Arctic community of Pond Inlet on Baffin Island, it was difficult to find his favourite fish, Arctic char. Plentiful in Arctic waters, the salmon-like fish is less common on southern supermarket shelves. Knowing if it was caught by an Inuk fish harvester — not an industrial fishing boat — was even trickier.

On Tuesday, the government announced fishers will be allowed to freeze prawns at sea for the upcoming season, but offered no guarantees for the future. Fishers say this isn’t enough.

Bottom trawling, a common fishing practice where large nets are dragged along the sea floor, is exacerbating the climate crisis, a new study has found.

A co-ordinated global effort to preserve the oceans’ most important coastal habitats using marine protected areas (MPAs) could increase biodiversity, sequester carbon, and bolster food security, a new study has found.

The Dark Vessel Detection program uses satellite technology to locate and track ships partaking in illegal fishing whose location transmitting devices have been switched off.

Earlier this month, the federal government proposed a suite of changes to Canada’s fishing regulations that will force DFO to bring depleted commercial fish stocks back to abundant levels. It’s a move advocates say is a step in the right direction, but still might not be enough.

Fisheries appear to be taking a more prominent role in B.C. Premier John Horgan’s new cabinet.

Ottawa's decision to close fisheries off the southwest coast of Nova Scotia after North Atlantic right whales were detected in the area is necessary to protect the endangered animals, according to an aquatic species researcher.

Each year, about 196,000 tonnes of seafood — everything from salmon to scallops — is harvested off the B.C. coast. But unlike its East Coast counterparts, the province doesn’t have a fisheries minister.

Since the Mi’kmaq fishery opened last month, there have been tensions on and off the water, with traps hauled from the sea by non-Indigenous harvesters and a boat belonging to a Mi’kmaq fisherman burned at a wharf.

Governments may have to rethink how they conserve ocean ecosystems as climate change forces marine animals from their usual homes, says newly published research.