Learn More About the Challenges Facing These Fish

Black Grouper

Let the grouper spawn. What happens in the Gulf should stay in the Gulf.

Yee hah! Cast your vote for me, black grouper, and help make sure the great grouper hoedown goes on! Because a grouper sandwich is about the best chow around!

I'll let you in on a little secret.  You ain't gonna believe this, but all of us black groupers begin life as…females! That's right, females. Somewhere along the line, the largest in the group changes to a male, and takes charge of the rest of the females. You know, to make sure we have plenty of young ‘uns coming along.

Unfortunately, when large numbers of us get together for this spawning extravaganza, we make it darned easy for fishermen to round us up. Besides that, the biggest groupers (that folks want for their trophy weight) are easier to catch because we're aggressive and we chase bait like a duck on a junebug. What we need is protection for the areas where we spawn, so we can gather together in safety.

Vote for me, black grouper, and keep our square-dance goin'.

Shrimp

Vote shrimp and save sea turtles and other fish from needless death in shrimp nets.

I hate to brag, but (ahem) I think you should know up front that shrimp are on center stage as the number-one seafood item consumed in the US!

Shrimp: What an excellent and tasteful choice. There are plenty of us in American Waters, so you don't have to worry a bit about overfishing when buying shrimp. Allow me to mention a delicate subject of possible interest: we enhance our family numbers greatly during our short life span, spawning between 215,000 and a million eggs every three days.

Of course, there is a drawback to the trawls used to catch shrimp. You see, trawls are huge nets dragged through the water that catch everything in their path, including sea turtles, rays, sharks, and other fish like young red snapper. That's known as bycatch, catch that's caught by-the-way, and discarded by fishermen because those animals are not what they are after.

Our friends the fishermen would rather catch more shrimp and less other stuff. Shrimpers have done a good job of protecting sea turtles by using Turtle Excluder Devices (TEDs) so the turtles can escape the nets unharmed. But shrimp trawls still catch up to four pounds of marine life as bycatch for every pound of shrimp they take in. Bycatch gets thrown back in the water, but by then most of it has died. To reduce this terrible waste, federal law requires that shrimp trawl nets use Bycatch Reduction Devices (BRDs). New, improved models are available, but I need your vote to help make sure they are used correctly and effectively!

Vote for shrimp you'll be helping all the other marine life that swims with me.

Tuna

Can’t we all just get along? A vote for tuna is a vote for international cooperation on fishing.

Make love, not war…on tuna! A vote for me would be groovy, because it would mean that Ocean Conservancy will work to turn around the terrible situation for tuna—we've been practically wiped out! Our popularity is killing us. Bummer, man.

Here's the thing: So many people want tuna, fishing pressure has ratcheted up in the Pacific Ocean and all over the world for every species of tuna.  Not only are fishermen catching way too many, but the gear they use to catch us also catches what they don't want:   tuna too small for market, other fish species, sea turtles, sea birds, sharks, and marine mammals. All those dudes, known as bycatch, have to die for nothing. How uncool is that? Way, I say.

So, I may look like a flower child, but I'm here to tell you tuna are worldly dudes. We cross entire oceans, so we need the whole world to give peace a chance, you dig? Come on people now, smile on your brother, everybody get together, try to love brother tuna right now. Peace out, man.

I gotta bail, but before I go, I want to tell you to  vote for TUNA! Ocean Conservancy is really boss, and I'm stoked about the help I'm going to get from them thanks to you!

Cod

A cod in every kettle! Stop overfishing and bring back New England’s favorite fish.

You might think of me as just a fish stick, but I'm the pride of New England. Heck, Cape Cod was named for me! And I need your vote! Human history has not been kind, and overfishing means cod are dangerously close to becoming a mere memory. Your vote can help bring us back!

Early explorers reported schools of cod so thick you could practically walk on them. As recently as the 1960s, New England's waters offered many cod weighing up to 60 or 80 pounds. But nowadays, the average size of my brethren is a paltry ten pounds.

We cod get caught before we can get any bigger.  And caught before we mature enough to create the millions of baby fish scientists know we were meant to produce. That's what's known as overfishing. Something's got to be done about it!

We need laws to make sure fishery managers follow a strict plan, with limits on how many cod can be caught. And consequences for fishermen who break the rules. Leave enough of us in the ocean, and eventually we'll be in the record books and on the dinner table again.

But to put a cod back on every plate,  I need your vote—so vote cod!

Salmon

You don’t give a dam? A vote for salmon undoes a century of dammed rivers, habitat destruction, and overfishing.

You may think I'm just another pretty fish, but I'm a fish in danger, and I need your vote! Sure, its nice to get attention  but with so many people scarfing up salmon steaks, I'm practically a disappearing act!

It's not enough that I and my kind have to flee the fishermen who catch too many of us. I also have to put up with the destruction of the habitats I need to thrive. And when I try to travel up rivers to spawn all those dams, dams, dams are jamming the way. What's a fish to do?

That's why I'm asking for your vote. Because overfishing and habitat loss and dams will be the death of me if people don't change the way they do things. Just look at one plank in my platform: Habitat loss. If we can protect the places where I live, like the rivers of the Northwest, I'll be around for a long, long time.

Vote for me, and Ocean Conservancy will work to restore the American salmon industries!

Red Snapper

Overfishing got you seeing red? Vote red snapper and bring’em back alive.

The name's Snapper. Red Snapper. I'm the signature species in the Gulf of Mexico; everyone loves me, and you will, too.  Perhaps you've seen some of my films, like "The Trawl Who Loved Me," "For Your Plate Only," and "Snappers are Forever."

I'm a tough guy, but I must say, the topic of bycatch makes me blue in the gills. That's when fishermen who are after one species happen to land others they don't want. Although they throw them back into the water, they are usually dead. Until recently, millions young red snappers — the little whipper-snappers — died each year as bycatch in shrimpers' nets.

What's more, snapper has been so wildly popular that fishermen have been catching far more of us than scientists recommend as the authorities looked the other way. In fact, overfishing reduced our numbers to just three percent of natural levels.  Shocking, positively shocking.

Vote for me and vote for romance. Fishery managers have a plan to help us increase our numbers. Eventually, if we're allowed to do what we do best, fishermen will be able to catch three times what they can catch today.