The problem of abandoned fishing gear and its effects on marine life deserve greater attention. (Editorial)

Original Source

Judgement of the National Green Tribunal (Southern Zone, Chennai) in the matter of M/s. Pannaiyoor Regional Citizens Welfare Trust Rep. by its Secretary, Kannyakumari District Vs.The Ministry of Environment and Forest Union of India Rep. by its Secretary, New Delhi dated 29/09/2015 regarding appeal for setting aside the Coastal Regulation Zone (CRZ) Clearance dated 18.07.2011 granted for construction of Rajakkamangalam Fishing Harbour at Needakarai B Village, Agastheewaran Taluk, Kanyakumari District, Tamil Nadu.

Populations of fish critical to human food security are in serious decline worldwide with some at risk of collapse according to the emergency edition of a WWF report released. WWF’s Living Blue Planet Report finds that much of the activity threatening the ocean is avoidable and solutions do exist to turn the tide.

Traditional fish workers and trawl operators in Kerala, long at loggerheads, have framed a code of responsible fishing practices. The article argues that this landmark agreement between two hitherto irreconcilable groups was borne out of a crisis in pelagic fish resources. It also argues that the agreement holds important lessons for multi-stakeholder governance in the fisheries sector.

The deep sea is the world’s largest ecosystem, with high levels of biodiversity and many species that exhibit life-history characteristics that make them vulnerable to high levels of exploitation. Many fisheries in the deep sea have a track record of being unsustainable. In the northeast Atlantic, there has been a decline in the abundance of commercial fish species since deep-sea fishing commenced in the 1970s.

Odisha state cabinet approved ‘Fisheries Policy, 2015’, with an objective to increase the productivity and production of fish from island, marine and brackishwater resources.

Heavy metals are found naturally in micro quantities in all aquatic systems. In fact, some of them are essential micronutrients for living organisms. However, they became highly toxic to the organisms when present in higher concentrations. These metal concentrations have been altered in the ecosystem by indiscriminate anthropogenic activities and dispersed into the water as well as sediment column . The metal contaminants in aquatic systems usually remain either in soluble or suspension form and are taken up by the organisms living in them.

Climate change that is linked to the build up of greenhouse gases and aerosols in the atmosphere has led to increases in the earth's surface temperatures over the last 50 years.

Some animals have the remarkable capacity to acclimate across generations to projected future climate change however, the underlying molecular processes are unknown. We sequenced and assembled de novo transcriptomes of adult tropical reef fish exposed developmentally or transgenerationally to projected future ocean temperatures and correlated the resulting expression profiles with acclimated metabolic traits from the same fish. We identified 69 contigs representing 53 key genes involved in thermal acclimation of aerobic capacity.

Ocean acidification negatively affects many marine species and is predicted to cause widespread changes to marine ecosystems. Similarly, freshwater ecosystems may potentially be affected by climate-change-related acidification; however, this has received far less attention. Freshwater fish represent 40% of all fishes, and salmon, which rear and spawn in freshwater, are of immense ecosystem, economical and cultural importance. In this study, we investigate the impacts of CO2-induced acidification during the development of pink salmon, in freshwater and following early seawater entry.

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