Fishermen sail a boat on the Aral Sea outside the village of Karateren, south-western Kazakhstan, April 15, 2017. [Photo/Agencies] SINDHUDURG, India - The fishermen were dubious when ocean experts suggested they could save their dwindling marine stocks just by switching to new nets. It took years for the UN Development Program to convince the fishing communities along India's tropical western coast that the diamond-mesh nets they were using were trapping baby fish, while a square-shaped mesh could allow small fish to escape to maintain a breeding population. But two years after the new nets were fully adopted, fishermen insist they're making a difference. This square net is a blessing for us, said John Gabriel Naronha, who runs six trawlers in the area. When the small fish grows up, the fishermen can really benefit ... we can get good prices for big fish. And the small fish gets a chance to grow.The project, launched in 2011, is one of many being showcased at a major conference on oceans beginning Monday, where the United Nations will plead with nations to help halt a global assault on marine life and ecosystems that is threatening jobs, economies and even human lives. The oceans of the planet are in dire need of urgent action, said Marina Walter, deputy director for UNDP in India. That action is even more urgent now that climate change is causing ocean temperatures to rise while waters also become more acidic, causing widespread destruction of coral reefs that sustain a quarter of all marine species. But conservation efforts work best when they're linked with local livelihoods, Walter said. You cannot work on biodiversity or life underwater in isolation, without looking at the livelihoods of people, the bread and butter.No one in 80 or so fishing villages of Sindhudurg district expected to have problems fishing, after centuries of their families relying on the sea. Located in one of India's 11 ecologically critical coastline habitats, the area is teeming with life from more than 350 marine species including Indian Ocean dolphins and Olive Ridley turtles. Colorful corals span the shallows, while tangles of mangrove forests protect the land from water erosion. But that bounty has suffered against the twin assaults of overfishing and pollution, which caused a steady decline local fish stocks and forced fishermen to push further out to sea. Since switching to new nets, fishermen say fish stocks are recovering, though there is no data collected yet to prove it. Surveys of fish population may be conducted at the end of this year, when the UNDP finishes its six-year project in the area. The struggles of India's fishermen are hardly unique. About one out of every 10 people in the world relies directly on the ocean to survive. Most of those are among the world's poorest and most vulnerable, meaning they have few substitutes when marine life declines. And it is declining rapidly, thanks to increased fishing for an expanding global population and unchecked runoff of industrial chemicals, sewage and other pollutants. Already, about 90 percent of wild fisheries around the world are over-exploited or collapsed. Meanwhile, the UNDP has also helped set up a crab farming project in the Sindudurg area to encourage local preservation of the mangroves and resistance to land developers and those gathering firewood from chopping the saltwater-tolerant trees down. Now, nurseries for crab seedlings line up along a 2-acre (8,000-square-meter) stretch of backwater pools filled with the mud that crabs like to dig into. It takes up to nine months for the crabs to grow to full size, at which point they are harvested and sold for about $15 per kilogram ($6.80 a pound). Recently, the group of nine women and one man earned nearly $1,000 in profits from a single harvest. Local officials are delighted with the low-fuss process and positive results. With very little manipulation of the environment, you can grow crabs wherever you have mangroves, said N. Vasudevan, who heads a special unit dedicated to mangrove conservation for the government of India's western state of Maharashtra. This story corrects number of villages. AP custom sweatbands no minimumhow to take off festival wristbandcustomise fidget spinnerrubber bracelets cheap24 hour wristbands coupon codeflash drive wristband
More than 70,000 officials at or above the county-head level have been investigated for suspected corruption since the 18th Communist Party of China (CPC) National Congress in 2012, the top anti-graft body of the CPC said Saturday. The anti-graft campaign continues to gain momentum and win applause from the public, according to a statement on the website of the CPC Central Commission for Discipline Inspection (CCDI). Five years ago, China's new leadership launched a high-profile anti-corruption campaign, which has led to the downfall of a number of high-level officials, known as "tigers," and lower-level "flies" who serve at the grassroots level. Among the tigers felled in the campaign were Zhou Yongkang, a former member of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee; Bo Xilai, former Party chief of Chongqing Municipality; Xu Caihou and Guo Boxiong, both former generals and vice chairmen of the Central Military Commission; as well as Ling Jihua and Su Rong, former vice chairmen of China's top political advisory body. According to the CCDI, 1.34 million township-level and 648,000 Party members and officials in rural areas were also punished during that period. The CPC, the world's largest ruling Party, released an "eight-point" rule on austerity in late 2012 to reduce undesirable work practices. The CCDI now has a monthly reporting system on the implementation of the rules within provincial-level governments, central Party and governmental agencies, centrally administered state-owned enterprises and central financial institutions. China also worked with the international community to hunt corruption suspects who had fled overseas via the "Sky Net" manhunt and other operations. By the end of August, 3,339 fugitives were captured from more than 90 countries and regions, with 628 of them being former officials. About 9.36 billion yuan (around 1.41 billion U.S. dollars) was recovered, the CCDI said. Among the top 100 fugitives listed on an Interpol red notices, 46 have been arrested, it said. Amid high pressure, the number of corrupt officials who fled overseas saw a drastic decrease in 2016. A total of 19 fugitive suspects fled China in 2016, compared with 31 in 2015 and 101 in 2014. In the past five years, the CPC Central Committee has tirelessly addressed "si feng," or "the four forms of decadence" -- formalism, bureaucratism, hedonism and extravagance. By the end of 2016, 155,300 violations against the eight-point code on frugality and maintaining close links with the masses had been investigated. Among the violations, 78.2 percent took place in 2013 and 2014, 15.1 percent took place in 2015, and 6.7 percent in 2016, indicating marked decreases each year. Moreover, the CCDI has shown that it is serious about tackling corruption within its own ranks, which it refers to as "darkness hiding beneath the light." By the end of 2016, 17 disciplinary officials were investigated and 7,900 others were punished, it said. A survey by the National Bureau of Statistics showed 92.9 percent of people were satisfied with the anti-corruption campaigns in 2016, 17.9 percentage points higher than in 2012.
