Saving Valentina. A group of five friends out boating on the Sea of Cortez discovered a young humpback
whale entangled in fishing net and possibly near death. After about an hour of hard work they were able to free the whale, who proceeded to put on an amazing show for her rescuers.
[Via]
posted by homunculus
on Jul 14, 2011 -
43 comments
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
"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
Dave Lamoureux’s kayak, named Fortitude, must be the only one in Massachusetts registered as a motor vessel. That’s because a powerboat registration is required to get a permit to fish for tuna here.... His most recent catch, on Nov. 5, was a 157-pound bluefin, a record tuna for an unassisted kayak fisherman, and a near record over all, topped only by a 183-pound halibut caught by Howard McKim, an Alaskan, in 2004.
posted by caddis
on Nov 23, 2009 -
49 comments
Noodling, catfisting, grabbling, graveling, hogging, dogging, gurgling, tickling, stumping:
all these words mean the same thing--
catching big, honkin' catfish with your bare hands!
posted by not_on_display
on Apr 17, 2009 -
20 comments
World's Mightiest Ship Was Lost Without a Trace in 1744 "In July 1744, she set sail to rescue a Mediterranean convoy blockaded by the French Brest fleet in the River Tagus at Lisbon. After victoriously chasing the French fleet away, she escorted the convoy into the Mediterranean Sea as far as Gibraltar, then set sail to return to her home port in England. During the course of the voyage, her fleet captured a number of valuable prizes, and she was also reported to have taken on board a consignment of 400,000 pounds sterling for Dutch merchants. On her return trip to England, HMS Victory was lost with all hands in a violent storm on October 5, 1744."
[pdf] [more inside]
posted by tellurian
on Feb 11, 2009 -
11 comments
For over a thousand years, fishermen all over the world have been using
cormorants to help them fish in lakes and rivers. In Gifu, Gifu Prefecture, Japan,
cormorant fishing on the
Nagara river has continued uninterrupted for the past 1,300 years. In
Guilin and
Yangshuo, China, cormorant birds are famous for fishing on the shallow
Lijiang River.
The islands of the Beaver Island archipelago in Northern Lake Michigan host what may be the densest concentration of the big, black diving birds on the continent, an estimated 50,000 that eat about 9 million pounds of fish from the surrounding waters from spring through fall. Fishermen and tourism interests want the state and federal governments to
cut the number of double-crested cormorants around the Beaver Island group by half, raising the ire of bird lovers and animal-rights activists who say the cormorants aren't at the root of the problem.
posted by mrducts
on Jul 1, 2008 -
13 comments
Pregnancy Boom at Gloucester High As summer vacation begins, 17 girls at Gloucester High School are expecting babies—more than four times the number of pregnancies the 1,200-student school had last year. Some adults dismissed the statistic as a blip. Others blamed hit movies like Juno and Knocked Up for glamorizing young unwed mothers. But principal Joseph Sullivan knows at least part of the reason there's been such a spike in teen pregnancies in this Massachusetts fishing town.
posted by swift
on Jun 19, 2008 -
209 comments
Seventy four years ago,
something happened off La Jolla Shores, California, that changed the world of ocean recreation forever. An invitation-only group of watermen, the
Bottom Scratchers became the
founding fathers of free diving. Although the club would eventually grow to only 20 members, the men did everything they could to grow the sport and teach others how to spear fish, keep a good spear gun or get lobsters and abalone on breath-held dives.
posted by miss lynnster
on Feb 14, 2008 -
9 comments
"Hello, and welcome to
Mainly For Men (
part 1,
part 2). And, as the title implies, this is a programme, fellas, just for you." Yes, everything the BBC thought the red-blooded male back in the late 1960s would be interested in (ie women, cars and shark fishing). The result was so hideous it was never broadcast until a TV Hell themed night many years later. Possibly NSFW... some brief nudity ('artistic', naturally) and mild swearing. And rampant mind-blowing sexism.
posted by fearfulsymmetry
on Nov 29, 2007 -
85 comments
Here's an odd unforeseen consequence of the Columbian drug trade: fishermen along Nicaragua's Mosquito Coast have been been getting rich off of "
white lobster"—cocaine dumped overboard by Columbian drug traffickers that, through a fortuitous arrangement of sea currents, washes ashore.
[more inside]
posted by Weebot
on Oct 31, 2007 -
17 comments
Fishing Hurts is a new website from PETA aimed at getting people to stop fishing.
No one would consider doing to a dog what some so casually do to fish—trick them into impaling themselves in the mouth and pull them into an environment where they can't breathe. But the fact is—fish feel pain just as all animals do. When it comes to feelings, a child is a dog is a fish.
posted by billysumday
on Mar 12, 2007 -
207 comments
The story began quietly enough on May 18, 2002, when an angler caught an 18 inch fish in a
Crofton, Maryland pond. In
2005 a
fisherman is reported saying "We would throw one in the cooler, two others would jump out and we'd have to chase them through the woods."
Frankenfish,
timeline of the snakehead story in the USA. The snakehead is a voracious, predatorial
fish, capable of walking,
attacking men, living up to 4 days out of water and now
spreading from
state to state. Video of
snakeheads eating (disturbing). Another kind of snakehead, the
smuggler of humans. Mentioned
previously on MetaFilter. [
via]
posted by nickyskye
on Jan 6, 2007 -
37 comments
Fisher Poets You've heard of
cowboy poetry, sure, but how about the verse of modern-day fishermen and women? Taking the
Cowboy Poetry Gathering as their model,
fisher poets have plunged into the
celebration of occupational culture with their own
annual festival in Astoria, Oregon. Get a glimpse into this difficult, dangerous, and unpredictable way of making a living through the work of
Erin Frestad,
Geno Leech,
Toby Sullivan, and others. Listen to the sounds of the gathering on
this piece from PRI's Here & Now, too.
posted by Miko
on Nov 3, 2006 -
8 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
How Many Fish are in the Sea? During the heady days of the late 19th century, in response to a perceived decline in coastal finfish stocks,
Spencer Baird and his clutch of young naturalists at the Smithsonian set out to find the answer. In 1871, Baird founded the
U.S. Fish Commission. The Comission set up operations in
Woods Hole, MA, where it continues its work today as the
Northeast Fisheries Science Center (a branch of NOAA’s
National Marine Fisheries Service). The Fish Census of 1880 established the fist benchmark on fish populations in coastal waters; crews of Gloucester schooners competed to see who could bring the most
bizarre fish finds up from the platueaus of the Grand Banks, and America’s first research vessel, the
Albatross, was purpose-built for the project. Baird's protege (and later successor)
George Brown Goode compiled the data into
the first comprehensive reference work on American fisheries. Known to students of salt water as “Goode’s Fisheries”, the report (
beautifully illustrated) remains invaluable to researchers today, as today's fish populations dip into
an even more drastic decline.
posted by Miko
on Nov 30, 2005 -
13 comments
Okie Noodling... why not take it straight to the fishies! Noodling, aka tribbling, hogging, or hand fishing is the art of catching catfish using your hand as bait (or your arm for the big ones). These guys root around river banks like muskrats in search of their quarry, but sometimes encounter snakes, snapping turtles, or beavers. Imagine having a 30 to 60 pound catfish chomp on your arm! If you are ever inclined to get in touch with your animal side, this is a pretty good place to start.
posted by philmas
on Oct 21, 2005 -
17 comments
