Articles by Andrew Sharpless

A notorious illegal fishing ship meets its end

Here's one for the dustbin of history: This week, Australian authorities confirmed that one of the world's most infamous pirate fishing vessels was scrapped in a shipyard in India in December.

The Viarsa 1 was first spied illegally catching Patagonian toothfish (better known in restaurants as Chilean sea bass) in Australian waters in 2003. The resulting pursuit (scroll down for daily updates) by patrol vessels lasted 21 days and crossed 3900 nautical miles, inspiring Wall Street Journal reporter G. Bruce Knecht's acclaimed book, "Hooked: Pirates, Poaching and the Perfect Fish."

Many ships that participate in illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing in the Southern Ocean are owned by Spanish companies, including Viarsa 1, and fly under flags of convenience. The owner of Viarsa 1, Vidal Armadores S.A., still owns several pirate ships. Just last summer, a ship associated with the company, Magnus, was apprehended while using illegal fishing gear in South Africa. The ship was sailing under the name Ina Maka with a North Korean flag.

It may go without saying that Vidal Armadores S.A. has received support in the form of subsidies from the Spanish government.

There is at least one way to clamp down on IUU fishing: stop allowing ships to fly flags of convenience. In addition, ships that have been caught pirating should not be allowed to obtain special fishing permits. Currently, the European Union is considering such a measure.

Bar codes for salmon and shark-free moisturizer

Scientists found that up to 6,000 metric tons of sunscreen washes off swimmers annually, and that the sunscreen contains chemicals that lead to bleaching corals. They estimated that up to 10 percent of corals were threatened by sunscreen-related bleaching ...

... the Central Valley, Calif., chinook salmon run, which had historically been one of the West Coast's strongest, fell to record lows this year, prompting concerns about collapse ...

... researchers in North Carolina studied how to raise fish for consumption in tanks ...

... a seafood consumer center in Oregon prepped for a program that would attach bar codes to salmon, allowing consumers to learn who caught the fish, where it was caught, and how it traveled to market ...

Scared-straight birds and kite-powered cargo ships

New protections that required longline tuna fishing fleets to use bird-scaring lines, or tori lines, went into effect. In addition, international measures asked longliners to fish at night, when few birds are active, and to sink baited hooks out of reach ...

... an open fish farm that cultivates kahala, also known as Hawaiian yellowtail or amberjack, planned to double its capacity ...

... a 14-man British and Irish rowing crew crossed the Atlantic in 33 days, seven hours and 30 minutes, a full two days faster than the previous record ...

... a female leatherback turtle crossed the Pacific while tagged, resulting in the longest recorded migration journey in the ocean. She covered 12,744 miles before the signal was lost after 647 days ...

... scientists recorded, for the first time, a giant internal ocean wave breaking underwater near Hawaii. The researchers used instruments strung along 900 miles to capture the data ...

The mercury problem isn’t contained to New York City’s sushi restaurants and markets

In case you needed another reason not to consume the dangerously overfished bluefin tuna: This week, The New York Times had a story about a study of mercury contamination, conducted by the newspaper, of leading sushi restaurants in New York. Guess which species showed the highest level of mercury? In the study, the Times collected samples of tuna sushi from leading restaurants like Blue Ribbon Sushi and Nobu Next Door. The results "found so much mercury in tuna sushi from 20 Manhattan stores and restaurants that at most of them, a regular diet of six pieces a week would exceed the levels considered acceptable by the Environmental Protection Agency."

In addition, the Times noted that "sushi from 5 of the 20 places had mercury levels so high that the Food and Drug Administration could take legal action to remove the fish from the market." In a sidebar about the health risks related to mercury, the Times noted that "several studies have concluded that elevated mercury levels may be associated not only with neurological problems but with cardiovascular disease among adults as well."