Right around 1879, the
fishwheel (
historical images,
McCord replica) came to the Columbia River. A clever application of mill-like thinking to traditional net fishing techniques, the fishwheel's river-powered automation of upstream harvesting revolutionized canning in Oregon and Washington, drawing both commercial attention and
critical concern [NYT 1881, PDF]. Two men, Thornton Williams and William Rankin McCord, each filed patents for fishwheel designs in 1881 (
#245251) and 1882 (
#257960) respectively; Williams brought an infringement suit against McCord which was
dismissed on the grounds that the invention was not new, being based directly on the publicly documented work of one Samuel Wilson in 1879. Fishwheels were fair game.
[more inside]
posted by cortex
on Jun 28, 2011 -
15 comments
Iori Tomita:
New World Transparent Specimens "If you’re a fish, Iori Tomita can see right through you. Or at least he can after he’s worked you over in his lab. A lifelong fisherman who studied ichthyology as an undergrad, the Japanese artist uses marine life he receives from fellow fishermen to create what he calls New World Transparent Specimens—sea creatures that have been transformed into DayGlo shells of their former selves. He first saw a sample of a fish that had been turned transparent at a university lecture six years ago, and since then he has used the same preservation technique to make thousands of hypercolored cadavers, which he sells at the Tokyu Hands department store."
posted by puny human
on Jun 12, 2011 -
10 comments
Early 1940: British police listening for radio transmissions from German spies within the UK pick up weird signals, and pass them to
Bletchley Park, the United Kingdom's main decryption establishment in WWII. The source of these German messages is an unknown machine, which the Brits dub
Tunny (10 minute video with
Tony Sale describing the Tunny). August 30, 1941: German operators send two very similar messages with the same key, providing insight into the encryption scheme. By January 1942, British cryptographers deduced the workings of the German code machines, sight unseen. The British were able to create their own Tunny emulators to decrypt messages sent by German High Command. After the war, these and other British code-breaking and emulating machines were demolished and/or recycled for parts and their blueprints destroyed, leaving a hole in the history of the British WWII code breaking. Efforts to rebuild the British Tunny emulator started in the 1990s, and quite recently
a Tunny emulator replica was completed.
[more inside]
posted by filthy light thief
on May 30, 2011 -
12 comments
"In November 1855, the Great Ansei Earthquake struck the city of Edo (now Tokyo), claiming 7,000 lives and inflicting widespread damage. Within days, a new type of
color woodblock print known as namazu-e (lit. "catfish pictures") became popular among the residents of the shaken city. These prints featured depictions of mythical giant catfish (namazu) who, according to popular legend, caused earthquakes by thrashing about in their underground lairs. In addition to providing humor and social commentary, many prints claimed to offer protection from future earthquakes."
posted by madamjujujive
on Apr 8, 2011 -
19 comments
Waterlife — No matter where we live, the Great Lakes affect us all. And as species of fish disappear and rates of birth defects and cancer rise, it seems one thing is clear: the Great Lakes are changing and something's not quite right with the water. An interactive documentary film from the
National Film Board of Canada.
[more inside]
posted by netbros
on Feb 26, 2011 -
20 comments
This is a pretty amazing video of a Chinese magician doing
magic tricks with goldfish on the BBC spanish website. Extended video and discussion (along with possible spoilers) can be found on
youtube. It's been picked up by some English-language sites (
here and
here). Real controversy, or just hype to drum up publicity? Either way, the magician is refusing to divulge his secrets (but insists that no fish were harmed in the trick).
posted by math
on Feb 18, 2011 -
59 comments
"The world’s oceans have been experiencing
enormous blooms of jellyfish, apparently caused by overfishing, declining water quality, and rising sea temperatures. Now, scientists are trying to determine if these outbreaks could represent a “new normal” in which jellyfish increasingly supplant fish.. Total jelly domination would be like turning back the clock to the Precambrian world, more than 550 million years ago."
posted by stbalbach
on Jan 13, 2011 -
69 comments
Four years after being spawned Fraser River Sockeye salmon return to the same creeks in which they were born to mate, spawn and die. Salmon have a strong preference for heavier returns every four years. Prior to 1913 this cycle peaked every second odd year (IE: 1905 - 1909 - 1913). However in 1913 (a year that had a record high 31 million fish harvested) construction of the Canadian Pacific Railway along side the Frasier river resulted in massive rock slides that
prevented most of the returning fish from making it to their ancestral streams. Clean up efforts in subsequent years and the construction of fish ladders at Hell's Gate saved the Salmon from extinction and switched peaked returns to every second even year (IE: 2010 - 2014 - 2018) but numbers of fish returning were way down.
Until now. This year's projected returns are the highest since 1913's record year and not far short of it. This is bound to make the organizers of
Salute to the Sockeye very happy.
[more inside]
posted by Mitheral
on Aug 25, 2010 -
37 comments
Tuna’s End Adapted from the book "Four Fish: The Future of the Last Wild Food" for the New York Times. A pretty bleak look at the state of world wide tuna fishing.
posted by chunking express
on Jul 13, 2010 -
55 comments
“There is one line in ‘Zero Hour!’ where a stewardess says, completely seriously, ‘The life of everyone on board depends upon just one thing: finding someone back there who can not only fly this plane, but who didn’t have fish for dinner,’ ” Mr. Abrahams said. “That was the essence of the movie. We just repeated the line. We didn’t have to change a thing.”
Airplane! (known in Australia as
Flying High!)
turns 30 [more inside]
posted by crossoverman
on Jun 28, 2010 -
186 comments
"Wow, a talking fish!" is a cheerfully deranged bit of animation based on an Armenian fairy-tale, starring a poor old fisherman, a talking fish, and probably the most psychedelic wizard ever committed to film.
posted by wanderingmind
on Feb 6, 2010 -
32 comments
O Lutfisk,
O Lutefisk!. Also known as lipeäkala, this dried white fish once saturated with lye is a traditional dish in both Nordic countries and in much of the upper Midwest of America and the plains region of Canada. Sounds tasty, right? Let
this article describe the experience of countless kids faced with this dish each Christmas Eve before you sign up for a
Lutefisk Eating Contest (scroll for video!) in Ballard, WA.
[more inside]
posted by julen
on Nov 29, 2009 -
39 comments
They
slice. They
dice. They
make tempura shrimp. I'm not exactly sure who or what
PF Max Company is, but this collection of YouTube videos -- featuring factory machines designed to cut, slice, sort, and do unspeakable things to fish -- is fascinating to watch. There are dozens of videos; these were selected for their
toe-tapping (rolling out imitation crab & scallop) musical accompaniment (shredding fish to make Surimi).
⚠Warning: these videos depict bad things happening to (dead) fish so if that upsets you, don't watch. [more inside]
posted by Deathalicious
on Sep 7, 2009 -
49 comments
The amazing story of the
coelacanth is one of the wonders of the living world that inspires marine biologists such myself. Coelacanths, part of the offshoot lineage of fishes known as "lobed finned ", are very different from typical "ray finned" fishes that you usually think of. Their bizarre
lobed fins are thought to be an intermediate step between fish fins and amphibian legs. Scientists had known that these weird fish existed because of fossils for over a century, but we believed that they went extinct 65 million years ago... until a South African fisherman caught one in 1938.
[more inside]
posted by WhySharksMatter
on Sep 7, 2009 -
49 comments
Australian scientists have found the
world's oldest penis. Published Monday in the online version of
Nature, the discovery of the 400 million-year-old clasper in an ancient fish specimen shows that animals were gettin' it on earlier than previously thought. Says one study author, "We were surprised because it's so big. We were expecting something smaller." SFW
posted by Dilemma
on Jul 16, 2009 -
34 comments
A single nutrient may have turned early humans into civilized man. Has stripping it from our diet given rise to cancer, diabetes, and other civilized diseases? "There has been a thousandfold increase in the consumption of soybean oil over the past hundred years. The result is an unplanned experiment in brain and heart chemistry, one whose subject is the entire population of the developed world." A
series of epidemiological studies showed that populations that consume high levels of
omega-3s in the form of seafood are the least afflicted by the major diseases associated with the Western diet. (
via)
[more inside]
posted by netbros
on Feb 24, 2009 -
66 comments
