"The House adopted legislation Tuesday aimed at protecting sharks off U.S. coasts, though an exemption in the bill has raised concerns among federal fishery officials."

"The state of Iowa is failing to warn people to cut back on eating locally caught fish contaminated with mercury and other pollutants at levels the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency finds too risky, a study by The Iowa Center for Public Affairs Journalism has found."

"A federal judge yesterday threw out a federal scientific study that forms the basis for protecting the delta smelt in California's sprawling Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta."

"In an unprecedented move, the environmental agencies of New Jersey and New York have begun forcing scores of their largest water users to either retrofit their plants with modern cooling systems which won't kill billions of fish annually or cease operating."

"They call it the 'Jaws' effect. Inspired by the 1975 movie about a great white shark that terrorized a tourist town, waves of fishermen piled into boats and killed thousands of the ocean predators in shark fishing tournaments."

"To protect the declining population of the western Steller sea lion, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration will restrict commercial fishing for Atka mackerel and Pacific cod, the animal’s main source of food, off parts of the Alaska’s western Aleutian Islands."

"The world's fishing industry is fast running out of new ocean fishing grounds to exploit as it depletes existing areas through unsustainable harvesting practices, according to a study published Thursday."

Many workers in Louisiana's seafood industry have returned to work months after the BP Gulf oil spill -- but oystermen whose families have been in the business for generations are still unable to harvest oysters.

"A federal judge [Dec. 2] rejected the request of five Great Lakes states for a preliminary injuction that would force the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District of Greater Chicago to keep invasive Asian carp out of the Great Lakes."

"Japan's whaling fleet has been scaled back and today departed late for the Southern Ocean aiming to catch hundreds of minke whales and 50 fin whales." They will be met and harassed by a three-ship flotilla from the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, which includes a new high-speed trimaran interceptor and video crews from Animal Planet.

"PARIS -- Government delegates from 48 fishing nations today failed to protect the spawning grounds of the vanishing Atlantic bluefin tuna, either in the Gulf of Mexico or the Mediterranean, although they did approve some protections for whitetip and hammerhead sharks."

"The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said Wednesday it had closed 4,200 square miles/10,880 square kms of federal waters in the Gulf of Mexico to royal red shrimping after a commercial shrimper discovered tar balls in his net."

"This week an Illinois fish processor is sending 44,000 pounds of Asian carp back to Asia as food. A small startup in Pearl, Ill., the Big River Fish Company is just one group that sees Asian carp not as a voracious, invasive species, but as a business opportunity."

"France, Spain and other Mediterranean nations forced the European Union to retreat Thursday from an ambitious plan to save the threatened and prized bluefin tuna."

"Along the Mediterranean coast of France, in the city of Montpellier, prosecutors are quietly putting on trial an ancient French tradition — the fishing and trading of the majestic Eastern Atlantic bluefin tuna, a sushi delicacy sold in restaurants from New York to Tokyo."