bycatch

It's taken nearly a year of constant pressure, but we've finally convinced Dr. Susan Lark to sell cosmetic products containing squalene derived from olives rather than deep sea sharks. More than 15,000 of you contacted Lark, telling her it was unconscionable to sacrifice already at-risk shark populations for the sake of beauty.

First she claimed her product was okay because the sharks used were bycatch of the orange roughy fishery. When we pointed out the error in this logic, she then claimed the source was "sustainably fished" sharks from the Mediterranean. When it became clear that we weren't buying her excuses, or her beauty products, she finally agreed to change her product line. We are happy to report that the first new product is currently in development.

President Bush deserves congratulations for his announcement yesterday of protections for an area of the American Pacific equal in size to Spain. Setting this area off limits to fishing and to oil and mineral exploitation is a vivid example of how a country can use its national laws to ensure the long-term abundance of huge areas of the sea. We also congratulate the conservation organizations that worked hard for this result, especially The Pew Environment Group (which also helped found Oceana).

This burst of ocean news follows a terrific in-depth report in this week’s issue of The Economist. We thought you would be interested in reading it. At sixteen pages, Troubled Waters delivers plenty of information on the unfolding collapse of marine environments: fishery mismanagement, ocean acidification, dead zones, and poorly managed aquaculture.

As we reported back in October, bottom longlines in the Gulf reef fish fishery caught nearly 1,000 threatened loggerhead sea turtles in just 18 months -- that's eight times the federally authorized capture level for the entire fishery.

This longline fishery operates by putting out miles of fishing line with baited hooks that sink to the ocean floor where they catch snapper and grouper, along with sea turtles.

Last week, the Gulf of Mexico Fishery Management Council held a meeting in Florida to solicit public input about developing regulations to reduce the bycatch and mortality of sea turtles in this fishery.

As President-elect Obama enters office in January, he faces oceans in crisis from overfishing, dirty fishing, climate change, mercury contamination, and more. Help us get the ball rolling with our new leader by asking him to be a champion for ocean conservation.

We entreat President-elect Obama to be an ocean leader and to act swiftly on the following threats to the oceans:

OVERFISHING - 90% of predator fish such as tuna and swordfish are gone. If current trends continue, scientists estimate that humans could fish out all commercial species by 2048. The new Administration should fully implement the Magnuson-Stevens Act to improve fishery management.

BYCATCH - Each year, U.S. commercial fishing operations discard more than one million metric tons of fish and catch thousands of marine mammals, sea turtles and other ocean wildlife. The new Administration should set limits on the bycatch of fish and wildlife.

The release of the first ever IUCN Red List of Threatened Species assessment of northeast Atlantic sharks, rays and chimaeras reveals that 26 percent are threatened with extinction and another 20 percent are in the Near Threatened category.

And the figures may be an underestimate as there is insufficient data to assess more than a quarter of species.

It's no surprise that the report attributes the sharks' demise to -- guess what? -- overfishing, bycatch, and shark finning, all of which Oceana works to stop.

Since 2006, researchers from Oceana Europe have visited harbors in Europe, Africa and South America, where they talked to fishermen, scientists, processors and trade companies about the current state of European shark fisheries.

Their travels resulted in several reports and many photographs documenting the plight of sharks, a sampling of which you see here.

If you haven't seen whale trackers, it's a very cool documentary series about whales, dolphins and porpoises and the international scientists researching them.

One of the current series follows scientists in the northern gulf of California (the Sea of Cortez) this month as they follow the rare vaquita marina, or desert porpoise.

The vaquita, dubbed the desert porpoise because their strip of ocean is wedged between the deserts of Northwestern Mexico and Baja California, is the most critically endangered of all cetaceans, and what few are left (an estimated 150 individuals) are caught as bycatch by local fishermen's nets, particularly gillnets.

You can read more about the expedition and watch the vaquita video -- check it out.

And while you're at it, you can watch another episode, "Fishy Business," about illegal driftnet fishing in the Meditteranean. The episode features the work of the Oceana Ranger in Europe and an interview with Oceana's Xavier Pastor.

On Friday afternoon, I took a field trip, as I'd hoped, to the new exhibit at the National Geographic museum, Whales | Tohorā. I thought it was exceptional; it engaged all the senses (except taste) with interactive features both scientific and and cultural.

The centerpiece of the exhibit -- the first thing I noticed -- was an impressive 58-foot long male sperm whale skeleton that was found beached in 2003. Next I checked out the series of ancient whale skeletons. The world's first whale, pakicetus attocki, looked an awful lot to me like an R.O.U.S....

It was neat to watch as each successive skeleton's limbs grew smaller and smaller, until they started to look like the whales we know and love -- 'twas quite a visual lesson in evolution.

Earlier this month, the Norwegian coastguard captured dramatic footage of a ship called the Prolific discarding up to 80% of its catch of endangered fish in British waters by exploiting a loophole in EU law, which sets quotas for fish landed at ports, not what is actually caught at sea.

As the Guardian environment blogger observed, "The wasteful consequences of Europe's fisheries policies, though well-known, are rather abstract to most people - it all happens a long way out at sea. And that's the power of the video."

Couldn't have said it better myself -- this video is what our dirty fishing campaign is all about.

Just in time for Discovery Channel's Shark Week, July 27 to Aug. 2, today we released a report revealing that as shark populations decline, the oceans suffer unpredictable and devastating consequences.