With mackerel being one of the topics on the agenda for discussion at today's (13 May) European Fish Council meeting in Brussels, Scottish fishermen are urging the European Commission to use the occasion to finally impose sanctions against Iceland and the Faroes for their continuing and significant over-fishing of the north-east Atlantic mackerel stock.

ATLANTIC groundfish quotas for the New England region of the United States have just been announced - and they include much reduced catch rates for cod and other stocks.

As the organisation opens its annual meeting in Croatia, WWF has called on the General Fisheries Commission for the Mediterranean (GFCM) to urgently adopt a first set of comprehensive management plans, in particular in the Adriatic, to guarantee the sustainable exploitation of key Mediterranean fish stocks.

Klif har innleidd eit samarbeid med makedonske myndigheiter om innføring av eit nasjonalt system for klimakvotar i landet. Miljøvernminister Abdilaqim Ademi i Makedonia og fungerande Klif-direktør Marit Kjeldby underteikna samarbeidsavtalen i Oslo måndag.

1. september 2013 blir dagens biociddirektiv erstattet av en ny biocidforordning. Det europeiske kjemikaliebyrået ECHA arrangerer derfor en gratis konferanse, en såkalt stakeholder's day, for å informere om det nye regelverket 25. juni i Helsinki i Finland. Konferansen vil også strømmes på nett.

Two Hector's dolphins have been captured by set nets during an electronic monitoring programme of the set net industry in Timaru.

On a recent trip to Maine, I had the opportunity to visit two exhibits at Bowdoin College's Ross-McMillan Arctic museum. One was called Spirits of Land, Air, and Water:  Antler Carvings from the Robert and Judith Toll Collection, and the other was called Animal Allies:  Inuit Views of the Northern World. At this time of year, it was particularly fitting to be reacquainted with Sedna, the mother of all marine creatures in Inuit mythology.

(Virginia Institute of Marine Science) A new study shows that healthy oyster reefs would help to buffer the increasing acidity of coastal waters.

(Cell Press) Coral reefs are in decline, but their collapse can still be avoided with local and global action. That's according to findings reported in the Cell Press journal Current Biology on May 9 based on an analysis that combines the latest science on reef dynamics with the latest climate models.

Marine Harvest, one of the world's largest fish-farming companies, is under investigation after its salmon farms polluted a Scottish loch with toxic pesticide residues hundreds of times above environmental limits.