Steve Bittenbender works as a freelance journalist based in Louisville, Kentucky. Besides working for SeafoodSource.com as a contributing editor, Steve also works as an editor for Government Security News and as the Kentucky correspondent for the Reuters News Service. He also works as a sports writer for The (Louisville) Courier-Journal and The Associated Press. He has received awards from the Kentucky Press Association and the Louisville Chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists for his on-going and enterprise reporting work.
Author Archive
Fishermen from the U.S. state of New Jersey who oppose a federal regulation requiring them to pay for monitors to oversee their trips have asked the U.S. Supreme Court to take up their case.
The New Jersey herring fishermen say a federal law gives NOAA the ability to make them pay up to USD 700 (EUR 680) per day to cover the costs of the monitors – which they claim is often more than what captains and crew members can earn on their
… Read More
NOAA Fisheries will hold a virtual meeting on Wednesday 16 November to take comments on its plan to take a commercial fishing ban within the Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument area and incorporate that into Atlantic fishery management plans.
President Obama first declared the nearly 5,000-square-mile region off the coast of Cape Cod a national monument in September 2016, making the Northeast Canyons and Seamounts
… Read More
Data released by NOAA Fisheries Southeast Fisheries Science Center in early November shows shrimp landings in the Gulf of Mexico through the first seven months of 2022 are the best they’ve been in nearly a decade.
Through July, shrimpers in Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Florida’s Gulf Coast reported catching 50.1 million pounds of shrimp. That total is about 1 million pounds under the 20-year average calculated by the
… Read More
NOAA has released its first-ever strategic plan for expanding “a resilient aquaculture industry” in the U.S. over the next five years.
The plan was co-authored by representatives of NOAA Fisheries, the National Sea Grant College Program, and the National Centers for Coastal Ocean Science. The 20-page report states that domestic seafood is a vital resource for the United States, and that aquaculture can be effective in fighting
… Read More
U.S. President Joe Biden on Friday, 1 July, 2022, announced a plan for leasing offshore oil and gas drilling sites over the next five years, which was immediately met with criticism from both supporters of expanding domestic production and environmental groups.
The plan calls for leasing up to 11 sites for drilling between 2023 and 2028. All but one of the sites would be in the Gulf of Mexico, with the other proposed site in Alaska’s
… Read More
The United States is on course to set a six-year high on rejections of shrimp imports due to banned antibiotics, according to the Southern Shrimp Alliance, which tracks data from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration …
Photo courtesy of the
… Read More
The Southern Shrimp Alliance has called on the U.S. government to continue a 25 percent tariff on Chinese seafood imports, saying the additional levy has helped domestic producers “compete on a more-level playing field.”
The trade organization made its stance known in a Thursday, 30 June letter to U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai. Four years ago, former U.S. President Donald Trump implemented Section 301 tariffs on an
… Read More
Southern Shrimp Alliance Executive Director John Williams is calling on U.S. President Joe Biden to address a deteriorating economic situation impacting shrimp fishers in the Gulf of Mexico …
Photo courtesy of The White
… Read More
U.S. President Joe Biden on Monday, 27 June, 2022, issued a broad memorandum calling illegal, unreported, and unregulated (IUU) fishing a threat to American economic competitiveness and national security, the global fishing industry, and to the fight against climate change.
The announcement, though, left some advocates wanting more from the administration, particularly in terms of policies that still allow some fish harvested and processed by
… Read More
Officials in the U.S. state of Illinois have unveiled a new name for Asian carp, an invasive species that is threatening to enter the Great Lakes in an effort to make it more appealing to consumers.
Announced on 22 June, the new name is “copi,” which is short for copious – a suitable word for the fish brought to U.S. fish farms in the 1970s to help control algae blooms. The fish – bighead carp, silver carp, and grass carp
… Read More