"Tool use in animals is rare, and bespeaks a level of intelligence that most of us are unaccustomed to associating with non-humans. That's what makes this video of a Green Heron using bread to lure fish to their doom so remarkable. One would be hard pressed to argue that this bird is not thinking critically about the technique it is employing to catch its prey. Not only is it demonstrating logic and reason in its capacity to understand that a piece of bread can be used as bait, it's also passing up the chance to eat the bread in favor of a better meal, actively weighing cost and benefit, pitting immediate gratification against delayed satisfaction.
It's a stunning display of animal intelligence."
posted by flapjax at midnite
on Aug 27, 2012 -
68 comments
As of today,
Whole Foods will no longer sell
red rated fish, and will sell only sustainable species. Some fishermen are
fuming.
“It’s totally maddening,” Mr. Sanfilippo said. “They’re just doing it to make all the green people happy.”
posted by Xurando
on Apr 22, 2012 -
118 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
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
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
Big Fish! 14 year old Bobby Capri Jr. catches a
52 pound striped bass in a kayak off the Atlantic City shore. But he's not the
first kid to reel in a big fish. The adult
world record for striped bass was also caught in New Jersey. So, who here has the best fish story?
posted by MsVader
on Jun 30, 2004 -
20 comments
Trout Stomach Pump : Summer's almost here, so you'd best start
looking for clues.
" Finally I observe what the fish are actually feeding on. To do this I have to catch a fish. This is frequently the hardest part, but I can usually scam one up somehow. I then pump it's stomach.....while securely holding the fish I gently insert the tube down the fishís throat as far as I can. I take particular care not to injure the fish during this process.....The suction created by the pump extracts the stomach contents. I carefully release the fish unharmed into the water (I have never lost a fish in this process). Then I squeeze the bulb and deposit the fish's stomach contents into my hand. It is then a simple process to match the stomach contents to the contents of my fly box"
posted by troutfishing
on May 24, 2004 -
24 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
