Jay Odell is the mid-Atlantic marine program director for the Nature Conservancy. His areas of expertise and interest include marine ecology, fisheries policy, ecological restoration, and the human dimensions of natural resource management. In his spare time, Jay likes to talk about fish — and also to catch, cook, eat and sing about them. He worked in Panama, Puget Sound and New Hampshire before his return to the Chesapeake Bay region, where he works to advance marine biodiversity conservation at local and large scales.
New harvest limits for menhaden has fish fans around the country smiling. But first — what the heck are menhaden, what’s the problem and why do we care? More
Now it's a cliché used to mock the environmental movement, but recent events show it's importance. Jay Odell offers a tweak that could make "Save the Whales" relevant again. More
Jay Odell has five reasons new ocean research and policy could have a major impact on your life. Of course, it's only true if you like to breathe. More
Many of us out here in Fishlandia (that’s the world of people who research. conserve and care about fish and fish habitat) were more than a bit surprised and very delighted to hear of new collaborative work undertaken by 21 of the world’s top marine fish scientists over the last two years and published last [...] More
On December 21, 2008, President Obama said, “Science holds the key to our survival as a planet.” And then he backed that up by appointing Jane Lubchenco to head up NOAA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Dr. Lubchenco is one of the most distinguished marine ecologists of this century, and I’m thrilled to see her take [...] More
Rising to meet the United States’ urgent ocean conservation challenges requires coordinated actions at regional scales. Around the nation, groups of states and federal partners have recognized that ecosystems aren’t aligned with political boundaries — in other words, fish don’t know or care which state of the union they are in, but they do need clean [...] More
The International Marine Conservation Congress was held late last month at the Smithsonian Institution’s Natural History Museum in Washington D.C. — about 1,000 ocean scientists, advocates and educators from all corners of Planet Ocean gathering to share research and new ideas on improving ocean conservation and management. And the big news out of the congress? [...] More
I’ve been creating (and embellishing) fish stories ever since my grandfather took me to the North Carolina mountains to teach me the alchemy that transformed the grasshoppers we caught together into rainbows of flipping shining scales in a five-year-old boy’s hands. Subsequent initiations by father and great-grandfather led to a life of piscatorial pursuits, more [...] More
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