Photos by Wayne Levin of surfers, swimmers, fish and more. (-v-)
posted by vronsky on Nov 4, 2009 - 9 comments

The End of Fish - maybe it's finally time for an environmental accounting, cuz the 'bill' is coming due; stocks and flows, folks.
posted by kliuless on Oct 8, 2009 - 74 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

The Jupiter Foundation and the Whalesong Project are both organizations which record humpback whale songs from floating buoys; some of their archived recordings can be found here, here, and here. (Warning, last two may resize your browser.) DOSITS hosts a more comprehensive collection of oceanic sounds, with seals and fish along with its whales and dolphins. It also has a couple of nice sections on how animals use sounds in the ocean. (Previously.) [more inside]
posted by Upton O'Good on Sep 7, 2008 - 9 comments

Dude, there are some fucked up creatures crawling around on the ocean floor.
posted by goodnewsfortheinsane on Dec 5, 2006 - 66 comments

Three million fish committ suicide in the desert - A very large number of fish die in California's largest lake, the Salton Sea. These events are not unique to this lake; even large areas of the ocean experience them. The eutrophication of coastal regions, as well as land surrounding inland waters, is often to blame for the degraded water quality that leads to these deaths. For the record: the initial report of suicide by the fish can neither be confirmed or denied.
posted by Unique Metabolism on Aug 3, 2006 - 19 comments

Wade in the Water In 2004, Smithsonian Folklife Festival featured the maritime cultures of the Mid-Atlantic region, from Long Island to North Carolina. Now, this site gives a home on the web to the cultural documentation gathered for the festival -- music, recipes, stories and oral history, an interactive map, the occupational folklore and natural history of regional fisheries, photos, video, and more. The material, ably compiled by folklorists and educators, creates a lasting and very accessible archive of festival highlights as well as an excellent overview of the distinct coastal culture of the Mid-Atlantic. Don't miss the great menhaden net-hauling chantey Help Me to Raise 'Em (links to mp3).
posted by Miko on Mar 27, 2006 - 7 comments

The National Enquirer (Oceanic Edition): Redefining seafood for the masses, Underwatertimes.com catches the news at its raunchiest and most macho, with lots of nice pictures to soften the blow. [More inside.]
posted by MiguelCardoso on Mar 12, 2004 - 5 comments

Terrifying gallery of fish from the deep, DEEP seas.
posted by jonson on Mar 1, 2004 - 71 comments

Ocean Tank and Shark Video Cam - take a aquatic break to explore the New England Aquarium's 200,000-gallon ocean tank, viewable from user-controlled cameras. The exhibit has more than 50 species of sea creatures from eels, sharks and barracuda, to turtles, stingrays and angelfish. You might catch a diver in the tank at feeding times. Viewable 9 am to 5 pm, EST.
posted by madamjujujive on Nov 4, 2003 - 12 comments

The SalmoFan: So long, and thanks for all the fish and animals, and plants... Amidst the catastrophic decline of large ocean fish, Salmon farmers can choose the hue of their "farmed" Salmon with the SalmoFan. [Meanwhile, these same salmon are fed on a factory fishing catch process which effectively strips most large life forms from the ocean.] With 1/4 of all mammmals and 1/2 of all plant species facing extinction, Is the planet truly at a crossroads? Are we losing the extinction battle? .."Overfishing is a global problem. People are taking marine life faster than it can reproduce. The world's catch peaked at 86 million tons in 1989, up fourfold in 50 years.....But many governments, including the United States, Mexico, the European Union, Japan and China, kept on pouring subsidies into commercial fishing fleets to keep them afloat...The Gulf of California in Mexico is not dead, but it is exhausted from overfishing, which has caused every important species of fish there to decline....Crucial fisheries have collapsed worldwide."

Contrast that with This: "[once upon a time there were] cod shoals "so thick by the shore that we hardly have been able to row a boat through them." There were six- and seven-foot-long codfish weighing as much as 200 pounds. There were great banks of oysters as large as shoes. At low tide, children were sent to the shore to collect 10-, 15-, even 20-pound lobsters with hand rakes for use as bait or pig feed. Eight- to 12-foot sturgeon choked New England rivers, and salmon packed streams from the Hudson River to Hudson's Bay. Herring, squid and capelin (a small open-water fish seven inches long) spawning runs were so gigantic they astonished observers for more than four centuries"
posted by troutfishing on May 27, 2003 - 31 comments