Articles by Andrew Sharpless

Satellite images reveal scale of destruction

To you, this picture may look like ants marching in a desert, but among ocean experts, it has gone as viral as Britney's shaved head. What you're seeing is an image of shrimp trawlers off the coast of China, taken from space. Those teeny tiny specs are responsible for destroying huge swaths of seafloor, and thanks to these images, which appeared in the prestigious journal Nature yesterday, scientists now have irrefutable visual evidence to prove what they could only conceptualize before.

Limits set on high seas bottom trawling

More than 20 nations recently met in Chile to set up a regulatory body to watch over a huge swath of ocean. The meeting, which was targeted by the Deep Sea Conservation Coalition, supported by the Pew Charitable Trusts, and included staff from Oceana's South American office, also netted (no pun intended) a landmark agreement that reels in high seas bottom trawling fleets. New regulations set to take effect next September will severely limit the destructive fishing method in waters from Australia to South America and from the Equator to the Antarctica.

Destructive trawls and dredges used for commercial fishing have bulldozed entire seafloor environments. Today's decision is a major leap in the right direction toward protecting our oceans.

Senators call for a worldwide end to fishing subsidies

The only thing worse than overfishing our oceans and driving species to the brink of extinction is the government paying to do it. That's been the case for far too long, as upwards of $30 billion (that's billion, with a "b") worth of subsidies are handed over to the fishing industry every year. A whopping $20 billion of that is used for things like boat repairs, fishing equipment, and fuel -- expenses that allow for increased and intensified fishing practices.

Bull sharks abound in Golden Coast canals

It's no wonder so many people flock to Queensland, Australia. The fastest growing region on the southeast side of the continent down under offers a subtropical climate with an outdoorsy lifestyle -- and an abundance of bull sharks?

These feisty elasmobranches are so abundant in fact that residents are catching them off apartment balconies with rigs no more complicated than a pork chop tied to a string.