Silicon Investor - I Love to Fish

[Snowshoe] Huge Humpback Whale Feeds Next to Dock [youtube video]

Snowshoe — 11/28/2025 6:19:18 PM

[Jon Koplik] Lamprey eels / science stuff / Helping Understand Human Nervous System ..........

Jon Koplik — 10/14/2025 11:59:02 PM

Lamprey eels / science stuff / Helping Understand Human Nervous System .......................

Smithsonian magazine

By Olivia Ferrari

September 26, 2025

This Invasive Vampire Fish Is Helping Researchers Understand the Human Nervous System in Jaw-Dropping Ways

The sea lamprey looks like it’s from another planet, but this ancient creature has a surprising amount in common with humans

A sea lamprey shows off its nightmarish mouth.

Key takeaways: Sea lampreys and research

Sea lampreys have large neurons and synapses, making them ideal for neuroscience research.
Scientists study the creatures to learn more about how we might recover from spinal cord injuries.

With a suction-cup mouth and over 100 teeth, the sea lamprey has earned the nickname "vampire fish" and comparisons to sea monsters. Sea lampreys are one of the world’s most ancient fish species, killing prey by latching their suction-cup mouth onto a fish's skin and rasping away the fish's flesh with a rough tongue to feed on blood and bodily fluids.

Sea lampreys sound like something from a horror movie, but the creatures have been crucial to almost two centuries of neuroscience research. Neuroscientists study sea lamprey spinal cells, which the animals can regenerate if their spinal cord is damaged, as a model to understand the human nervous system, spinal cord injuries and neurological disease. The evolution of human brains and nervous systems is also closely tied to these alien-like creatures.

Neurologists and zoologists began studying lampreys in the 1830s, examining their nerve cells to understand how the spinal cord works. Lamprey research took off after 1959, when biologists first described lampreys’ ability to regenerate spinal cord neurons and eventually swim after spinal damage.

Sea lampreys are ideal for neuroscientists to work with because the animals have large nerve cells and synapses, making observation easier than in other species. “The synapses are so big that you can see them, and you can record from them and access them very easily,” says Jennifer Morgan, neuroscientist at the University of Chicago’s Marine Biological Laboratory. The creatures also have a similar molecular and genetic toolkit to humans, she says, which can make it simpler to translate research from lampreys to humans and find tools that work in both species.

Lampreys thrive in different types of water, all over the globe. “[Lampreys] have been found on every continent except for Antarctica,” says Morgan, whose lab uses sea lampreys for research. “So, they’re very hearty animals and super easy to maintain.”

The sea lamprey (Petromyzon marinus) filter feeds as a larva but becomes parasitic once it reaches adulthood, latching onto fish and feeding on their blood. They can feed on trout, salmon and other large, commercially important fish, and one sea lamprey can destroy up to 40 pounds of fish per year.

Much of the supply of sea lampreys for research comes from the Great Lakes, where lampreys wreak havoc on the fishing industry. Although the species is native to the Atlantic Ocean, improvements in the late 1800s and early 1900s to canals connecting Lake Ontario and Lake Erie to the ocean enabled lampreys to bypass Niagara Falls, which had previously been a natural barrier. From there, lampreys invaded the lakes, where they have no natural predators. By the 1960s, lampreys had devastated trout fisheries in the region and a control program began to weed them out using pesticides.

Sea lampreys’ invasion of the Great Lakes has actually boosted their use in research. Over the last century, the Great Lakes Fishery Commission has directed considerable amounts of research funding toward lampreys, to study their life cycle and how to eradicate them. This put more lampreys in labs, resulting in studies on other aspects of their anatomy and evolution.

Collectors catch wild lampreys in the Great Lakes, says Morgan, and send them to the lab in coolers.

“Great Lakes fisheries harvested these lampreys, and they wanted scientists to understand them more,” says Robb Krumlauf, developmental biologist and scientific director emeritus at the Stowers Institute for Medical Research, who also researches lampreys sent from the Great Lakes. “They had a natural supply that they could give to those who are interested in the research.”

Although lampreys look like they’re from another planet, they have more in common with us than it might seem. Lampreys branched off from other vertebrates about 500 million years ago, so they have some of the oldest traits in the lineage: they’re at the base of the vertebrate branch of the evolutionary tree. Because of this, studying lampreys’ genomes can clarify important evolutionary steps in the lineage—like when vertebrates developed jaws, or arms and legs.

Sea lampreys survived multiple mass extinction events, including the asteroid 66 million years ago that wiped out roughly 80 percent of life on Earth. “It’s a chance to have a glimpse of the past. It’s sort of like a living fossil,” says Krumlauf.

Krumlauf studies how sea lamprey evolution and human evolution are related through how our faces and heads develop. The brain region that shapes facial and cranial features is similar across vertebrates, from lampreys to chickens to mice to zebrafish, even though all these animals’ heads look quite different.

“There’s a common toolkit,” says Krumlauf. “If you have building materials, and they’re all the same, you can build a garden shed or you can build a mansion––what’s different is the way the blueprint is put together.”

Studying lampreys shows how these blueprints evolved in the earliest vertebrates, says Krumlauf. His research links facial and head development in the animals to the development of craniofacial abnormalities in humans.

The evolutionary history of lampreys and other vertebrates also helps scientists like Yi-Rong Peng, ophthalmologist and neurobiologist at UCLA, illuminate the evolution of vision.

Peng’s research has found lamprey retinal cells are similar to those of other vertebrates, such as mice, chickens and zebrafish. Such a finding suggests retinal vision, like humans have, evolved early in the vertebrate lineage. Studying the overlaps between animal retinas gives a window into how vertebrates saw the world 500 million years ago. And understanding how the retina first formed in humans can help Peng’s research team study retinal cell degeneration that leads to blindness.

Morgan’s lab studies how sea lampreys regenerate spinal cords, and its work could lead to advances that help humans recover from spinal damage. When researchers cut a sea lamprey’s spinal cord, it becomes paralyzed but can regenerate nerve connections. The process does not have to be perfect to work, adds Purdue University science historian Kathryn Maxson Jones. Lampreys’ original neuron connections don’t reform in the same way, but cells grow in flexible ways to compensate for damage––biology can take different routes to achieve the goal of a spinal cord that works again. And the large size of lampreys’ cells and synapses enable the research team to closely examine the whole process.

A microscopic view of a sea lamprey’s reconnected spinal cord shows how it healed after being cut.

Sea lampreys are also crucial to Morgan’s research on Parkinson’s disease. A specific protein’s accumulation in the brain is linked to the progression of the disease, so injecting that protein into lamprey synapses allows the researchers to observe how it affects the nervous system.

This gives insight into how the disease progresses in the human nervous system and how exactly neurons can recover. Scientists observe how damaged lamprey neurons regenerate and how many synaptic connections are restored, guiding how to target treatment in human brains.

Morgan’s research team hopes to move from understanding nervous system damage in lampreys and humans to how to fix it.

When you cut your finger and the area becomes numb, that’s because of damage to the nerve endings in the finger, which is part of your peripheral nervous system, explains Morgan. But you do eventually get feeling back, because humans can regenerate cells in the peripheral nervous system––just not in our central nervous system.

But lampreys can. “When lampreys regenerate the spinal cord and recover function, they are using a lot of the same changes in gene expression that occur during regeneration of the peripheral nervous system in mammals,” says Morgan.

“Why we can’t do that in our spinal cord is a big question. But I think learning from the adaptations of these animals, that can do these really neat feats of nature like regeneration, will tell you something about the recipe that needs to happen, the conditions that need to be met,” adds Morgan.

And the parallels between lampreys’ brain features and ours make crucial research possible when studying human brains isn’t an option. “It often points us in the direction of things we would’ve never looked at in humans,” says Krumlauf.

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[Snowshoe] Giant Fish Bites Mermaid's Head in Aquarium youtube.com

Snowshoe — 9/23/2025 5:32:29 PM

[Snowshoe] After a decade of death, Canadian scientists say they've found the sea star kill...

Snowshoe — 8/4/2025 2:56:23 PM

After a decade of death, Canadian scientists say they've found the sea star killer
cbc.ca

[Snowshoe] Kayaker Surrounded by Giant Jumping Bluefin Tuna [youtube video]

Snowshoe — 1/22/2025 7:31:33 PM

[Jon Koplik] Bloomberg -- Billion-Dollar Plan to Halt a Carp Invasion .........................

Jon Koplik — 12/13/2024 4:56:13 PM

Bloomberg -- Billion-Dollar Plan to Halt a Carp Invasion .....................................................

Bloomberg
Businessweek

December 13, 2024

‘It’s Hell for the Fish’: The US Has a Billion-Dollar Plan to Halt a Carp Invasion

Officials are weaponizing Midwest waterways to prevent a disruption of the region’s fishing industry.

Jumping carp in the Fox River.

By Laura Bliss

Standing on a windy bridge over the Des Plaines River in Joliet, Illinois, Scott Whitney shows off a diagram of what he calls the gauntlet. Pictured is a half-mile-long underwater obstacle course for fish that runs upstream toward Lake Michigan. A curtain of turbulent bubbles is followed by a bank of speakers emitting ear-splitting noise, then a wall of electrified water and finally a navigation lock designed to flush downstream any organisms that make it that far. “It’s hell for the fish,” says Whitney, chief of the project management branch for the US Army Corps of Engineers’ Rock Island District.

He’s focused on one in particular: invasive carp, which have menaced Midwest rivers for decades. Whitney’s gauntlet -- officially known as the Brandon Road Interbasin Project at the Brandon Road Lock and Dam -- aims to stop the carp from getting any closer to Lake Michigan. Scientists deem this spot the fish’s likeliest entry point into the Great Lakes and its fishing industry, which the Great Lakes Fishery Commission values at $5.1 billion annually. The Corps plans to start building the BRIP in January at a cost of $1.15 billion, with Illinois, Michigan and the federal government splitting the tab.

An invasive black carp.The barrier will be the most ambitious defense against the carp in America. Their deep hunger for plankton has wreaked havoc on ecosystems, effectively pushing out native fish throughout the Mississippi and its tributaries. In addition to screwing with the food chain, the carp are despised by fishermen. Silver carp -- one of four closely related species native to different parts of Asia -- sometimes leap into the air at the sound of an outboard motor, a stress reaction that has knocked anglers unconscious and shattered facial bones.

Already, state and federal governments have poured hundreds of millions of dollars into control measures, including electric barriers, harvesting programs and even campaigns aimed at chefs and home cooks. But none will attempt to seal off the carp’s potential passage into the Great Lakes with this level of investment. “There really is no other project, probably in the history of humankind, that has put so much time, money and effort into trying to curb the movement of an invasive species,” says Jim Garvey, a professor of zoology and director of the Center for Fisheries, Aquaculture and Aquatic Sciences at Southern Illinois University.

The US’s struggle against invasive carp started with a well-meaning blunder, as journalist Dan Egan writes in The Death and Life of the Great Lakes. In the 1970s government scientists in Arkansas were testing to see if carp imported from Asia could, as an alternative to chemicals, clean up algae from catfish farms and sewage lagoons. Eventually funding ran out, and the research stopped. But some of the experimental fish were released, finding their way into surrounding waterways. The scientists thought the fish wouldn’t breed in the wild. They were wrong.

As they’ve migrated up the Mississippi River basin, two species have had a particularly suffocating effect. Silver and bighead carp can live for decades, eating pounds of plankton every day. Studies have found silver carp make up more than 90% of the aquatic biomass in sections of the Mississippi.

In 2002, as part of a broader congressional effort to control invasive aquatic species, the Army Corps installed its first electric barrier to fend off non-native fish in the Chicago Ship and Sanitary Canal, the critical connection point between the Mississippi basin and the Great Lakes. In a section of the canal in Romeoville, Illinois, about 10 miles upriver from Brandon Road, an underwater carpet of electrodes emits an electrical field designed to deter carp that swim near it. Over the past two decades, the Corps has spent about $286 million adding similar barriers in Romeoville and tweaking their voltage levels.

Inside the chamber of the Brandon Road Lock, drained during recent construction work.How effective these have been is a topic of controversy. No carp has been documented passing through them. But a handful of carp and a lot of their DNA have been found upstream of the barriers, close to Lake Michigan. After one DNA discovery in 2009, Michigan sued the Corps and Illinois, demanding the canal be closed because of the carp’s threat to Great Lakes fisheries. Such a closure would’ve blocked the small amount of barge traffic that uses the canal to travel in and out of Lake Michigan and forced Chicago to rethink its wastewater disposal. Debate raged over what closure would cost: The Corps pegged it at $18 billion; advocacy groups put it closer to $2 billion.

The case wound its way to the Supreme Court, which eventually rejected the closure request. But the sense of emergency was real. “‘ Terminator’ carp threatens Great Lakes,” the Guardian proclaimed in 2010. Then-President Barack Obama nominated a carp czar to oversee eradication efforts.

Amid the Great Carp Alarm, Congress directed the Corps to study additional options to prevent invasive species from spreading between the Mississippi basin and the Great Lakes. In 2019 the chief of the Corps signed off on the Brandon Road project. Its deterrents are crafted to target carp at different life stages, Whitney says.

Since most of the project is underwater, the view from the bridge where Whitney is showing off the plan won’t be that different when the BRIP is complete. The changes will be below the surface: The channel is being reconstructed to eliminate fish hiding spots or food sources and to shore up the structural integrity of the 91-year-old navigation facility. The plan is to install the BRIP’s electrical barriers with superior insulation to the ones operating in Romeoville, which have been known to throw out stray voltage. The noise from the underwater speakers will sound a little like a fork caught in a lawn mower.

Biologists are optimistic that the BRIP will keep carp at bay. And, really, it’s designed to be redundant with the setup in Romeoville, which will continue to operate at a cost of about $15 million per year. Illinois also spends more than $2.5 million a year paying fishermen to pull millions of pounds of carp out of the rivers. (In 2022 the state led a campaign to persuade chefs to put carp on restaurant menus, re-branding it “copi,” short for copious, but it hasn’t caught on.) “There is no single thing that anyone can do to make it a surefire” deterrent, says Reuben Keller, a professor of environmental science at Loyola University Chicago who studies aquatic invasion ecology.

Definitions of success may vary. The goal of the BRIP is to stop carp to the greatest extent possible, but there’s no official key performance indicator. Whitney acknowledges that, over time, carp could adapt to the BRIP’s deterrents and swim past them. That’s why he considers the project an example of “adaptive management,” meaning the Corps will continue to develop and add anti-carp defenses as necessary. “It’s the best we can do today,” Whitney says, “to prevent disastrous consequences if we fail.”

Laura Bliss is an editor and writer at Bloomberg Businessweek.

© 2024 Bloomberg L.P

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[Snowshoe] MBARI researchers discover remarkable new swimming sea slug in the deep sea mba...

Snowshoe — 12/2/2024 7:00:49 PM

MBARI researchers discover remarkable new swimming sea slug in the deep sea
mbari.org

MBARI* researchers have discovered a remarkable new species of sea slug that lives in the deep sea. Bathydevius caudactylus swims through the ocean’s midnight zone with a large gelatinous hood and paddle-like tail, and lights up with brilliant bioluminescence. The team published a description of the animal, nicknamed the “mystery mollusc,” in the journal Deep-Sea Research Part I.

*Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute

[Snowshoe] They also like fresh food... [youtube video]

Snowshoe — 8/12/2024 10:29:00 AM

[Jon Koplik] OMG. Really scary. Guessing : no "gag reflex" with Komodo dragons.

Jon Koplik — 8/12/2024 10:09:52 AM

[Snowshoe] Komodo Dragon eats beached shark... [youtube video]

Snowshoe — 8/12/2024 9:09:16 AM

[Snowshoe] Fishermen get a big surprise... [youtube video]

Snowshoe — 7/23/2024 11:05:37 PM

[Neeka] I would literally die of a heart attack right there on the spot.

Neeka — 7/20/2024 1:04:06 AM

[miraje] Those divers are Darwin Award candidates, IMO..

miraje — 7/19/2024 6:47:40 PM

[Neeka] [X] That’s the biggest freaking Tiger Shark i’ve ever seen! 😳 pic.twitter.com/...

Neeka — 7/19/2024 5:50:20 PM

[X]

That’s the biggest freaking Tiger Shark i’ve ever seen! 😳 pic.twitter.com/Ju3BpacKNz
— Nature is Amazing ☘️ (@AMAZlNGNATURE) July 19, 2024

[/X]

[Snowshoe] Somewhere in Minnesota... Dockside friendship between woman & sunfish reaches n...

Snowshoe — 7/2/2024 3:43:20 AM

Somewhere in Minnesota...

Dockside friendship between woman & sunfish reaches nine years

[Neeka] [youtube video] History Made: First Human-Whale 'Chat' Revealed

Neeka — 6/18/2024 3:45:34 PM

[Snowshoe] 100,000 live salmon spilled off a truck in Oregon. Most landed in a creek and li...

Snowshoe — 4/4/2024 9:28:34 PM

100,000 live salmon spilled off a truck in Oregon. Most landed in a creek and lived.
spokesman.com

April 4, 2024

On a recent morning in March, while dew was still on the road, there occurred the salmon smolt mishap of northeast Oregon.

The Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife said on Tuesday that one of its tankers was in an accident on March 29, resulting in the escape of thousands of live salmon that were being moved as part of a federal and state program to replenish stocks depleted by dams.

In an undated photo from U.S. Fish and Wildlife, chinook smolts that were being carried in a tanker truck that crashed on an Oregon highway, spilling more than 100,000 of the fish. Most of the fish flopped into a creek off the road, and they are expected to survive and continue their journey to the Pacific Ocean. (U.S. Department of Fish and Wildlife via New York Times)

[jazzlover2] I love it thanks.

jazzlover2 — 2/10/2024 2:54:52 PM

[Neeka] [youtube video] Wild Fish Follows His Diver Best Friend Everywhere | The Dodo

Neeka — 2/10/2024 1:35:21 AM

[Jon Koplik] FL beach / 1,200-pound surprise -- miamiherald.com

Jon Koplik — 2/4/2024 1:43:24 AM

[Neeka] [youtube video] WATCH – Researchers: Newborn Great White Shark Spotted Off Ca...

Neeka — 1/31/2024 12:14:04 PM

WATCH – Researchers: Newborn Great White Shark Spotted Off California Coast in First-Ever Clip

[Snowshoe] Record Breaking 2000Kg Of Fish Caught In Seine Net Fishing (Village beach haul ...

Snowshoe — 1/5/2024 8:00:51 PM

Record Breaking 2000Kg Of Fish Caught In Seine Net Fishing
(Village beach haul in Sri Lanka)
youtube.com

[Jon Koplik] fish sticks / link with photos, still intact : hakaimagazine.com

Jon Koplik — 8/8/2023 1:24:49 PM

[Snowshoe] Success for salmon habitat restoration in the Fraser River [youtube video] Cut...

Snowshoe — 4/26/2023 7:22:57 PM

Success for salmon habitat restoration in the Fraser River

Cut off from their essential habitat for more than 100 years, threatened Fraser Chinook salmon find new passage via large-scale estuary project.

The North Arm of the Fraser River Jetty habitat restoration project, estimated at $650,000, provides a unique solution to a century-old problem. The jetty, a 7-kilometre-long barrier, has been forcing young salmon from the freshwater of the Fraser River’s North Arm into the saltier, deeper water of the Strait of Georgia for more than 100 years. As juvenile salmon rely on the brackish marsh habitats that lie in between the river and the Strait of Georgia to rear and feed before they transition to the ocean, the jetty presents a serious barrier to their well being.

“Estuaries are really important nursery habitats for many species including juvenile Pacific salmon,” says Dr. Isobel Pearsall, director of PSF’s Marine Science program. “This environment allows them to obtain rich food resources so they can grow bigger before they migrate into the open ocean.”

As part of the project, Raincoast Conservation Foundation made a deliberate breach in the North Arm jetty in early March; they have been monitoring the 30-metre wide opening, and are already observing juvenile salmon passing through.

This immediate success makes this habitat restoration project rare.

The project is led by the Raincoast Conservation Foundation and its partners, including the Pacific Salmon Foundation (PSF), Ducks Unlimited, Tsawwassen First Nation, and Lower Fraser Fisheries Alliance. Harrison River Chinook used to be the most productive Chinook salmon population in the Fraser, but has been declining for more than a decade and is now considered threatened by the Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada (COSEWIC). Juvenile Chinook, likely from the Harrison River, have been captured using the breach passage during spring 2022.

“Juvenile salmon rely on access to estuary habitats to adapt to salty waters and for important feeding opportunities that can improve their ability to survive in the ocean,” says Dave Scott, a biologist with Raincoast and a PhD-candidate in the Pacific Salmon Ecology and Conservation Lab at UBC.

The Lower Fraser River and estuary is a highly modified environment with more than 80% of tidal marsh habitats, which juvenile salmon rely on, either lost or inaccessible. On the Fraser delta, this includes the jetties, causeways, and training walls that were built to control the arms of the river for ship navigation.

This restoration follows on Raincoast’s success creating three breaches in the Fraser River’s South Arm on the Steveston Jetty in 2019. Raincoast biologists found high numbers of juvenile salmon passing through to reach the marsh on Sturgeon Bank, instead of being swept out to the Georgia Strait. Raincoast plans on creating two more 30-metre-wide breaches in the North Arm Jetty to continue to restore natural migration pathways for juvenile salmon, other fish species, and natural flow of freshwater and fine sediments.

“Given our understanding of how vital estuaries are, it is only right that we start to fix some of the damage we humans have caused. Projects like this are really important to address some of the issues we have caused to juvenile salmon habitat…and hopefully give these fish a fighting chance on their way into the open ocean,” says Dr. Pearsall.

This project was made possible by funding from the Pacific Salmon Foundation, the Province of BC and the Government of Canada.

[Jon Koplik] WSJ -- Ocean garbage patch / Anemones and barnacles thrive on toothbrushes and ....

Jon Koplik — 4/17/2023 10:20:22 PM

WSJ -- Ocean garbage patch / Anemones and barnacles thrive on toothbrushes and ...................

April 17, 2023

Pacific Ocean Garbage Patch Is Bursting With Life

Anemones and barnacles thrive on toothbrushes and bottle shards thousands of miles from shore

By Nidhi Subbaraman

An 80,000-ton cloud of plastic and trash floating in the Pacific Ocean is an environmental disaster. It is also teeming with life.

Biologists who fished toothbrushes, rope and broken bottle shards from the Great Pacific Garbage Patch found them studded with gooseneck barnacles and jet-black sea anemones glistening like buttons. All told, they found 484 marine invertebrates from 46 species clinging to the detritus, they reported Monday in the journal Nature Ecology & Evolution.

The trash patch is the product of circular currents that form whirlpool-like gyres in five stretches of the world’s oceans. Plastic and ocean trash are swept into these spaces. A five-day boat ride from the California coast, where it spans over 610,000 square miles, the Great Pacific Garbage Patch is the biggest of these aggregations. “Micro-plastic” shards less than 5 millimeters long account for most of the debris, suspended in the water like pepper flakes in soup, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Between November 2018 and January 2019, the team collected 105 pieces of debris including nets, buoys and household items such as buckets and toothbrushes. They photographed and froze the objects before bringing them back to land. Ashore at Smithsonian Environmental Research Center laboratories in California and Maryland, they thawed the cargo piece by piece and scoured it for signs of life.

Most of the hitchhikers they found were coastal species that had found a way to thrive in the salty open ocean, a food desert for marine life that experiences punishing temperature extremes, said Linsey Haram, an ecologist and an author of the study.

Marine ecologists said they would expect most coastal species to struggle to survive outside their shoreline habitats. On the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, animals were found growing and reproducing.

“They’re having a blast,” said study author Matthias Egger, head of environmental and social affairs at the Dutch nonprofit The Ocean Cleanup. “That’s really a shift in the scientific understanding.”

Anemones like to protect themselves with grains of sand, Dr. Egger said, but out in the garbage patch they are covered in seed-like micro-plastics. Squeeze an anemone and the shards spew out, he said: “They’re all fully loaded with plastic on the outside and inside.”

Many of the invertebrates -- Pacific oysters, orange-striped anemones, rag worms -- are native to the coast of Japan. Dr. Haram said she suspects they were sucked into the ocean in 2011 by the tsunami that pummeled the Japan coast.

It is a rare chance to see the impact of a natural disaster on the ocean more than a decade after it occurred, said Rebecca Helm, a marine biologist at Georgetown University who has studied organisms at the gyre and wasn’t involved with the study. “We have a lot of coastal species that wouldn’t have made it to the open ocean living on plastic in the high seas.”

The patch is also a haven for animals that are at home on the open ocean. Such species -- sea snails, blue button jellyfish, and a relative called by-the-wind sailors -- gather more densely where there is more plastic, Dr. Helm and her team said in a study posted online ahead of peer-review.

Removing the plastic would mean uprooting them, Dr. Helm said: “Cleaning it up is not actually that simple.”

Write to Nidhi Subbaraman at nidhi.subbaraman@wsj.com

Copyright © 2023 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.

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[Jon Koplik] Seaweed blob twice the width of the US is heading toward Florida ..................

Jon Koplik — 3/18/2023 12:10:24 PM

Seaweed blob twice the width of the US is heading toward Florida ...........................

CNN

March 18, 2023

A seaweed blob twice the width of the US is heading toward Florida. Here's what you should know

By Jackie Wattles and Kristen Rogers, CNN

(CNN) A giant blob of seaweed twice the width of the continental United States is headed for the shores of Florida and other coastlines throughout the Gulf of Mexico, threatening to dump smelly and possibly harmful piles across beaches and dampening tourism season.

Sargassum the specific variety of seaweed has long formed large blooms in the Atlantic Ocean, and scientists have been tracking massive accumulations since 2011. But this year's bloom could be the largest ever, collectively spanning more than 5,000 miles (8,047 kilometers) from the shores of Africa to the Gulf of Mexico.

This year's sargassum bloom began forming early and doubled in size between December and January, said Dr. Brian Lapointe, a researcher at Florida Atlantic University's Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institute. The mass "was larger in January than it has ever been since this new region of sargassum growth began in 2011," he told CNN International's Rosemary Church.

Workers remove sargassum from a beach in Punta Cana, Dominican Republic, in June.

Traveling west, the blob will push through the Caribbean and up into the Gulf of Mexico during the summer. The seaweed is expected to show up on beaches in Florida around July, Lapointe said.

"This is an entirely new oceanographic phenomenon that is creating such a problem really a catastrophic problem for tourism in the Caribbean region, where it piles up on beaches up to 5 or 6 feet deep," Lapointe said.

Here's what you should know about why these masses happen and how they affect both humans and ocean life.

What is sargassum?

Sargassum is a catchall term that can be used to refer to more than 300 species of brown algae, although Sargassum natans and Sargassum fluitans are the two species most commonly found in the Atlantic.

When adrift at sea, the algae can have upsides for ocean life.

"This floating habitat provides food and protection for fishes, mammals, marine birds, crabs, and more," according to the Sargassum Information Hub, a joint project among various research institutions. "It serves as a critical habitat for threatened loggerhead sea turtles and as a nursery area for a variety of commercially important fishes such as mahi mahi, jacks, and amberjacks."

Is sargassum safe?

The problems with sargassum arise when it hits the beaches, piling up in mounds that can be difficult to navigate and emitting a gas that can smell like rotten eggs.

Sargassum can also quickly turn from an asset to a threat to ocean life.

It comes in such "large quantities that it basically sucks the oxygen out of the water and creates what we refer to as dead zones," Lapointe said. "These are normally nursery habitats for fisheries ... and once they're devoid of oxygen, we have lost that habitat."

Sargassum can be dangerous to humans, too, Lapointe added. The gas emitted from the rotting algae hydrogen sulfide is toxic and can cause respiratory problems. The seaweed also contains arsenic in its flesh, making it dangerous if ingested or used for fertilizer.

"You have to be very careful when you clean the beaches," Lapointe said.

Why is there a sargassum problem?

Just like plants and crops on the ground, the proliferation of seaweed can shift year to year depending on ecological factors, affected by changes in nutrients, rainfall and wind conditions, said Dr. Gustavo Jorge Goni, an oceanographer at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Atlantic Oceanographic and Meteorological Laboratory.

Sea currents are also influential on sargassum's growth and how much it accumulates, Goni added. Phosphorus and nitrogen in the sea can serve as food for the algae.

Those elements can be dumped into the ocean from rivers, which gain concentrations of phosphorus and nitrogen from human activities such as agriculture and fossil fuel production, according to the US Environmental Protection Agency.

For now, researchers are looking into ways to thwart the seaweed's impact on beaches, possibly by sinking it to the bottom of the ocean or harvesting it for use in commercial products such as soap, Goni said.

Goni cautioned that research into these sargassum accumulations is new, and it's likely scientists' understanding of how the algae grows will shift over time.

"Whatever we believe we know today," he said, "it may change tomorrow."

How does the buildup affect travel?

Before traveling to coastal areas this spring or summer, research whether sargassum is at your destination or might show up there, Lapointe said. Plan ahead so your vacation won't disappoint.

There are sargassum Facebook groups, with members posting about what they recently saw on beaches, Lapointe said.

"It's already affected the travel industry," he said.

Tourists enjoy the beach despite the sargassum algae buildup in Cancun, Mexico, in May 2021.

Unfortunately, sargassum can build up overnight so you might not be able to predict its effects on a trip, Lapointe said.

"This is why we're trying to work on these early warning systems high resolution in coastal areas, which takes higher-resolution satellite imagery to do a better job showing what's actually coming into a beach within the next 24 or 48 hours," he added.

Satellite images from within the last week show sargassum isn't an amorphous mass moving across the ocean, but rather teardrop-shaped blobs trailed by long, thin strands of seaweed.

Within the last week, sargassum blobs have been spotted about 215 miles (346 kilometers) from Guadeloupe, in between the islands of St. Vincent and Bequia, 1,000 yards (914 meters) off Martinique and off the coast of Key Largo, Florida.

How is sargassum cleaned up?

Mounds of algae accumulated on beaches cost millions of dollars to clean up, and removal efforts can also harm marine life, according to the Sargassum Information Hub.

In Barbados, locals were using "1,600 dump trucks a day to clean the beaches of this seaweed to make it suitable for tourists and recreation on the beaches," Lapointe said.

In shallow waters, sargassum can be removed using fishing nets towed by light boats or by hand, according to the Dutch Caribbean Nature Alliance.

In the US, cleanup is often done with Barber beach rakes pulled by a tractor, Lapointe said. But once there's an accumulation of more than a foot of sargassum, the rakes don't work as well, he added. That's when front-end loader dump trucks can be helpful, but they can be harmful to beach health.

Use of dump trucks to remove sargassum can become problematic.

"Oftentimes you have sea turtle nests on beaches that are being run over by tires of this heavy equipment crushing the eggs," Lapointe said.

What happens if sargassum isn't removed from beaches?

If sargassum isn't cleaned from beaches or is used as fertilizer, the arsenic in its flesh could leach out into groundwater, which could be a health hazard for humans, Lapointe said.

An excessive amount of rotting sargassum can also support the growth of fecal bacteria.

And in 2018, a massive bloom that ended up on the beaches of South Florida coincided with the biggest red tide ever seen on that coast, Lapointe said. Red tides occur when toxin-producing algae blooms grow so out of control they discolor coastal waters. Red tide organisms can live on sargassum and be transported by it.

The toxins in red tides can harm marine life, and sargassum buildup on beaches can prevent sea turtle hatchlings and adults from getting to sea, Lapointe said.

Will this happen every year?

Experts don't know whether a sargassum bloom of this size will happen every year, Lapointe said.

"It's hard to project because we don't know everything we need to know about the drivers (behind this)," he said. "We know it's variable from year to year and that the trajectory is generally going upwards. So based on what we've seen in the past, we're thinking we could continue to see this worsen for years to come. What will it be like in 10 years? Will it be double the size it is now?"

More funding to do the research that could answer these questions is needed, he added.

CNN's Paul Murphy contributed to this report.

© 2023 Cable News Network.

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[Jon Koplik] WSJ -- Didn’t Realize Your New Koi [ fish ] Can Live to 80 ? ......................

Jon Koplik — 10/18/2022 12:04:09 AM

WSJ -- Didn’t Realize Your New Koi [ fish ] Can Live to 80 ? ................................................................

Oct. 13, 2022

Didn’t Realize Your New Koi Can Live to 80?

Call Fish Rescue

Some homeowners installing ponds got more commitment than they bargained for; ‘You’ve got to worry about putting it in your will’

Tabb Lemons added a rescue koi to his ornate pond.

By Kathryn Dill

Kevin Varilek figured the police officer who pulled him over thought he was transporting drugs. There were 150-quart coolers in the bed of his pickup with suspicious looking hoses leading to an oxygen canister in the cab.

Where to?

Mr. Varilek told the officer he was transporting live fish. When the officer popped open one of the coolers, he found himself looking at a bunch of orange and white koi. “You weren’t joking,” the surprised officer said.

Mr. Varilek is an expert at rescuing koi, and he has been busy of late. Pandemic lockdowns sparked interest in building koi ponds, while a subsequent surge in home sales left some sellers at a loss for what to do with their orphaned koi.

Finding new homes for koi and moving them is a whole lot more complicated than driving a rescue dog or cat to a new place. It can require wading into muddy waters to try to lure the bashful fish to the surface. It demands gentle transport in carefully packed coolers, then quarantining the fish before introducing them to new ponds.

“Oxygen levels, the heat of the day -- you have to figure all that in,” said Mr. Varilek, who runs Lehigh Valley Koi Rescue with his wife, Jennifer, out of their Northampton, Pa., home. They perform up to 150 koi rescues each year, and calls have increased as the pandemic has subsided.

Mr. Lemons's 1,200-gallon kidney-shaped pond features a waterfall, bonsai trees, bougainvillea and lotus plants.

People have a lot of reasons for giving up their beloved koi, a variety of carp originally bred in Japan and prized for their vivid colors. They retire to warmer climates or assisted living and can’t take their fish with them. New homeowners are overwhelmed when they realize their backyard water feature is a complex ecosystem teeming with fish that can grow to the size of something you might catch while deep-sea fishing. Many simply don’t realize how long koi will live -- from 30 to 80 years.

“You’ve got to worry about putting it in your will, just like a parrot,” said Mr. Varilek.

It isn’t uncommon for koi to grow to nearly 2 feet and as much as 25 pounds. To roam healthily, they require about 10 gallons of water per inch of length. The bigger the pond, the bigger the koi.

Joe Dufresne, a volunteer at Sterling Animal, with a rescue koi.

Sterling Animal Shelter in Sterling, Mass., built a rescue pond several years ago. Adoptions have been rising ever since, said Executive Director Leigh Grady.

Backyard koi ponds range from several feet across to sprawling setups with underwater lighting, cascades and water dyed a darker blue to protect the fish from blue heron. Once a pond is built and mature, the lure to diversify a koi collection can be overwhelming.

When three butterfly koi and an albino catfish grew too big for their 10-by-18-foot pond, one of two in Ron Waldron’s backyard on the north side of Chicago, it was time to find a rescuer.

“They grow up and you get a little attached to them,” he said. “You don’t want to pawn them off on just anybody.”

The steward he settled on was Richard Price of Ohio Fish Rescue, who performs about 200 fish rescues a year, housing them in tanks and an indoor swimming pool at his 8,500-square-foot home in Strongsville, Ohio. He said requests to adopt his rescue fish went way up during the pandemic.

He quarantines them to monitor and treat ailments including fungal infections and “gill flu.” Pressure changes in their environment can create a bloat that can cause koi to float on their side and require rest in an Epsom salt bath, or gently but firmly squeezing their bellies to burp them.

Mr. Price has rescued fish from as far away as Southern California. During the pandemic, he delivered rescue koi to the home of former NBA star Shaquille O’Neal, who had installed an elaborate pond on the grounds of his Atlanta home.

Finding new homes for koi and moving them is a complex process.

Koi enthusiasts say the fish are intelligent enough to recognize the person who feeds them, bobbing to the surface whenever that person gets close. Owners can get emotional about sending them away.

Joe Dufresne, a volunteer at Sterling Animal, recalled standing knee-deep in a pond in a Massachusetts backyard gathering koi while their owner, a man in the process of a divorce, spewed a litany of complaints about his soon-to-be ex. Chief among them: The sale of their home, which forced the liquidation of his koi.

Earlier this year, Mr. Dufresne said, an elderly woman surrendered seven koi after she learned a hole in her pond would cost $10,000 to repair. “It was a very tearful day for her,” he said. “When they did get adopted, I made sure the people shared photos of those fish. I sent them back to her to show her.”

Tabb Lemons is one of the happy adopters. Initially, he was hesitant to introduce new fish into his 1,200-gallon kidney-shaped pond, which features a waterfall, bonsai trees, bougainvillea and lotus plants. He changed his mind after getting a Facebook message about a koi whose owner had died, leaving the fish living in a plastic tub while a caretaker searched for a new home.

“We named it Helen, for the lady who died,” he said. The golden koi is now the largest of the 15 in his pond. “She’s a real looker,” he said.

Write to Kathryn Dill at Kathryn.Dill@wsj.com

Copyright © 2022 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.

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[Snowshoe] I Love to Shark... [youtube video]

Snowshoe — 10/6/2022 12:32:21 PM

[Neeka] [youtube video] FLOAT FISHING for KING SALMON (in Michigan)

Neeka — 6/15/2022 10:46:02 PM

[Neeka] [youtube video] A whale saved my life

Neeka — 2/9/2022 1:33:43 PM

[Jon Koplik] Orange County Register -- ‘bizarre’ creature is massive sunfish spotted near Lag...

Jon Koplik — 12/6/2021 11:22:38 PM

Orange County Register -- ‘bizarre’ creature is massive sunfish spotted near Laguna Beach ....................

ocregister.com

or use :

archive.md

if link will not cooperate.

Or, this may work :

archive.md

Jon.

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[Jon Koplik] Bangor Daily News -- 600-pound bluefin tuna will feed hungry Mainers at Belfast ...

Jon Koplik — 9/24/2021 4:38:21 PM

Bangor Daily News -- 600-pound bluefin tuna will feed hungry Mainers at Belfast soup kitchen ................

Sept. 24,2021

600-pound bluefin tuna will feed hungry Mainers at Belfast soup kitchen

by Abigail Curtis

Doug Shartzer of Somerville, who has fished for bluefin tuna recreationally, begins breaking down a 600-pound fish that was accidentally caught by seine fishermen last week in Belfast Harbor. The fishermen donated the fish to the Belfast Soup Kitchen. Credit: Courtesy of Doug Shartzer

BELFAST, Maine -- Atlantic bluefin tuna is one of the most prized fish in the world, and on the open market, a 600-pound fish might sell for as much as $10,000.

But in Belfast, patrons of the Belfast Soup Kitchen will dine next week on locally caught bluefin tuna steaks for free after Maine fishermen donated an accidentally caught fish to the nonprofit organization.

That’s thanks to a turn of events that still boggles the mind of Jamie Steeves of Rockland’s J&J Lobster. The crew of his commercial fishing boat were off Belfast last Friday morning, using a seine net to fish for pogies, a fish used as bait for the lobster industry. Suddenly, though, the smaller fish disappeared and the net started dancing.

They had caught a 600-pound bluefin tuna in the net, completely by mistake.

“What happened shouldn’t have happened. What we did was definitely an accident,” Steeves said Thursday.

A crew fishing for pogies to use as lobster bait last week in Belfast accidentally caught a 600-pound bluefin tuna in a seine net. They donated the fish to the Belfast Soup Kitchen. Credit: Courtesy of Jamie Steeves

The fish was undeniably impressive, he said.

“It’s beyond wildest dreams. It’s probably the biggest one landed in the state this year,” he said. “What we saw, a person could fish five lifetimes and it wouldn’t happen.”

But the bluefin tuna, which died before it could be released from the net, also posed a problem for the fisherman and his crew. In order to prevent overfishing, there are strict regulations that govern how Atlantic bluefin tuna can be harvested. Commercial and recreational fishermen must have a permit to fish for it. Rules that govern bycatch mean that almost everything that was unintentionally scooped up in a net must be thrown overboard.

While the fish was still in the net, Steeves reached out to Maine Marine Patrol officers to tell them about his dilemma and ask for guidance.

“Obviously our biggest concern is that bycatch isn’t exploited for personal gain. There isn’t a great mechanism in place to handle those situations,” Capt. Matt Talbot of the Maine Marine Patrol said. “It certainly would be a waste to throw that over the side.”

Because it was obvious from the outset that the fishermen had caught the fish by accident -- meaning that it didn’t have to be seized as evidence -- they immediately got the green light to find it a new home at a soup kitchen or somewhere similar, Talbot said.

For help, Steeves reached out to Doug Shartzer of Somerville, a friend who has experience recreationally fishing for tuna and was willing to make some phone calls. Shartzer said that the tuna had likely followed the schools of pogies, also called menhaden, which come closer to shore in the fall in search of warmer water.

“There’s a lot of sea life up there right now,” he said. “We still think there are tuna there.”

Shartzer called five area soup kitchens and other charitable organizations to ask if they would be interested in the fish. Other people called other places, asking the same question. But all were closed on Fridays. Finally, the Belfast Soup Kitchen answered the phone.

“He cold-called, asking ‘Can you use a 600-pound tuna?’” Cherie Merrill, the executive director of the Belfast Soup Kitchen, said. “I never say no to anything, but all I could picture was dropping this 600-pound fish off at the door.”

Fortunately, that’s not what happened.

Shartzer had broken down the fish at the dock in Rockland. Marine patrol officers brought it up to Belfast in coolers, where Merrill, bemused but delighted, was trying to figure out what to do with it next. She knew the fish would be a hit at the soup kitchen, a busy place that has served more than 300 guests a day this month. All the people who have heard about it, guests and volunteers and others in the community, think the gift was amazing, she said.

“It was just a highly unusual donation,” she said. “Everybody was thrilled.”

Fishermen who accidentally caught a 600-pound bluefin tuna last week in Belfast Harbor donated it to the Belfast Soup Kitchen. Credit: Courtesy of Jamie Steeves

Still, butchering bluefin tuna is not something she has experience doing. Shartzer offered to come up the following day to help.

“He brought the knives he needed and everything,” Merrill said. “He absolutely knew what he was doing.”

Shartzer and four volunteers spent four or five hours filleting tuna steaks and vacuum sealing usable portions to place in the freezer. They also saved scrap pieces with the intention of making canned tuna fish with it.

“It came out beautiful,” Merrill said.

Shartzer also was able to get 50 pounds of top-quality toro tuna from the fatty part of the fish. This is the most prized part and expensive part of a tuna, and used for sushi.

After the butchering was done, the volunteers did sample some of the fish for lunch.

“The toro just melted in your mouth. It was fantastic,” Shartzer said.

Merrill said the Belfast Soup Kitchen may save the toro to use during a fundraiser dinner, with money raised being used towards the purchase of a walk-in cooler.

Next week, though, the guests at the soup kitchen will enjoy marinated tuna steaks with local bok choy and rice.

“Talk about local,” Merrill said. “We distributed 10,000 pounds of local produce last month. To add fish caught in the ocean to that is very exciting.”

© 2021 Bangor Publishing Company.

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[Jon Koplik] THIS IS JUST WONDERFUL !

Jon Koplik — 9/15/2021 11:50:05 AM

[Neeka] [youtube video] I CAUGHT A MONSTER BASS WITH MY DJI DRONE!!! [Viva Frei DJI Mav...

Neeka — 9/15/2021 11:24:51 AM

I CAUGHT A MONSTER BASS WITH MY DJI DRONE!!! [Viva Frei DJI Mavic]

[Jon Koplik] The Surprising Success Story of Fish Sticks .......................................

Jon Koplik — 5/1/2021 2:40:19 PM

The Surprising Success Story of Fish Sticks ..................................................

April 26, 2021

The Surprising Success Story of Fish Sticks

The 1950s convenience food has enjoyed a winning streak -- no less so than during the Covid-19 pandemic

British schoolchildren dig into a lunch of fish sticks in 1974. Since its debut in 1953, the frozen food has proved to be a hit among kids and adults, owing to its palatability, low cost, and convenience.

By Ute Eberle, Hakai Magazine

smithsonianmag.com

There are many curious facts about fish sticks. The invention of this frozen food warranted a U.S. patent number, for instance: US2724651A. The record number of them stacked into a tower is 74. And, every year, a factory in Germany reportedly produces enough fish sticks to circle the Earth four times.

But the most peculiar thing about fish sticks may be their mere existence. They debuted on October 2, 1953, when General Foods released them under the Birds Eye label. The breaded curiosities were part of a lineup of newly introduced rectangular foods, which included chicken sticks, ham sticks, veal sticks, eggplant sticks, and dried lima bean sticks. Only the fish stick survived. More than that, it thrived. In a world in which many people are wary of seafood, the fish stick spread even behind the Iron Curtain of the Cold War.

Beloved by some, merely tolerated by others, the fish stick became ubiquitous—as much an inevitable food rite of passage for kids as a cultural icon. There’s an entire South Park episode devoted to riffing off the term fish stick, and the artist Banksy featured the food in a 2008 exhibit. When Queen Elizabeth II celebrated her 90th birthday in 2016, Birds Eye presented her with a sandwich valued at US $257 that included blanched asparagus, saffron mayonnaise, edible flowers, caviar, and—most prominently—gold leaf–encrusted fish sticks.

A frozen block of fish is transported on a conveyor to be processed into fish sticks.

To explain why the fish stick became successful, there’s probably no better guide than Paul Josephson, the self-described “Mr. Fish Stick.” Josephson teaches Russian and Soviet history at Colby College in Maine, but his research interests are wide ranging (think sports bras, aluminum cans, and speed bumps). In 2008, he penned what is still the defining scholarly paper on fish sticks. That research required him to get information from seafood companies, which proved unexpectedly challenging. “In some ways, it was easier to get into Soviet archives having to do with nuclear bombs,” he recalls.

Josephson dislikes fish sticks. Even as a kid, he didn’t understand why they were so popular. “I found them dry,” he says. Putting aside personal preference, Josephson insists that the world didn’t ask for fish sticks. “No one ever demanded them.”

Instead, the fish stick solved a problem that had been created by technology: too much fish. Stronger diesel engines, bigger boats, and new materials increased catches after the Second World War. Fishers began scooping up more fish than ever before, says Josephson. To keep them from spoiling, fish were skinned, gutted, deboned, and frozen on board.

Frozen food, however, had a terrible reputation. Early freezers chilled meat and vegetables slowly, causing the formation of large ice crystals that turned food mushy upon defrosting.

Fish sticks are cut from a block.

That all changed in the 1920s, when entrepreneur Clarence Birdseye developed a novel freezing technique, in which food was placed between metal plates chilled to at least -30 °C. Food froze so quickly that the dreaded ice crystals couldn’t form. But when used on fish, the method created large blocks of intermingled fillets that, when pried apart, tore into “mangled, unappetizing chunks,” wrote Josephson. The fishing industry tried selling the blocks whole, as fishbricks. These were packaged like blocks of ice cream, with the idea that a housewife could chop off however much fish she wanted that day. But supermarkets had little luck selling the unwieldy bricks, and many stores even lacked adequate freezer space to display them.

Success came when the bricks were cut into standardized sticks. In a process that has remained essentially unchanged, factories run the frozen fish blocks through an X-ray machine to ensure they’re bone-free, then use bandsaws to cut them into slices. These “fingers” are dumped into a batter of egg, flour, salt, and spices, and then breaded. Afterward, they’re briefly tossed into hot oil to set the coating. The whole process takes about 20 minutes, during which the fish remains frozen, even when dunked in the deep fryer.

In 1953, 13 companies produced 3.4 million kilograms of fish sticks. A year later, four million kilograms were produced by another 55 companies. This surge in popularity was partly due to a marketing push that stressed the convenience of the new food: “no bones, no waste, no smell, no fuss,” as one Birds Eye advertisement proclaimed.

The appeal of fish sticks is somewhat paradoxical. They contain fish, but only that with the mildest flavor—and that fish has been dressed up to resemble chicken tenders.

Factory employees sort fish on a conveyor.

The battered disguise may be needed because, at least in North America, seafood has often been second-tier. “We’ve mostly considered the eating of fish to be beneath our aspirations,” writes chef and author Barton Seaver in American Seafood. Traditionally, fish was associated with sacrifice and penance—food to eat when meat was unaffordable or, if you were Catholic, to eat on the many days when red meat is verboten. Fish also spoils fast, smells bad, and contains sharp bones that pose a choking hazard.

The advent of fish sticks made eating fish easier and more palatable for the seafood wary. “You can almost pretend that it isn’t fish,” says Ingo Heidbrink, a maritime historian at Old Dominion University in Virginia. In his native Germany, where a reported seven million people eat fish sticks at least once a week, companies changed the fish at least three times since its introduction, from cod to pollock to Alaska pollock, a distinct species. “Consumers didn’t seem to notice,” says Heidbrink.

Josephson calls fish sticks “the ocean’s hot dogs.” Served as casseroles or alongside mashed potatoes, they quickly became standby meals for school lunches and family dinners. During the pandemic, demand has risen— in some countries reportedly by up to 50 percent—as families stock up on convenience foods during lockdowns.

Surprisingly, fish sticks are fairly sustainable. Today, most contain Alaska pollock, which is largely sourced from well-managed fisheries, says Jack Clarke, a sustainable seafood advocate at the United Kingdom–based Marine Conservation Society. The climate impact of fish sticks is small, too. “I was surprised at how low it was,” says Brandi McKuin, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of California, Santa Cruz, who recently studied Alaska pollock products. Each kilogram of fish sticks produces about 1.3 kilograms of carbon dioxide, which “rivals the climate impact of tofu,” she says. Beef, by comparison, produces over 100 times that amount of carbon dioxide per kilogram.

But not everyone seems confident about what exactly they’re eating when they consume the breaded fish. In the United Kingdom, where fish sticks are known as fish fingers, a survey revealed that one in five young adults believes they are actually the fingers of fish.

They still eat them happily.

This article is from Hakai Magazine, an online publication about science and society in coastal ecosystems.

© 2021 Smithsonian Magazine.

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[Neeka] [youtube video] Killer whale takes fish.

Neeka — 3/5/2021 5:24:43 PM

[Snowshoe] How marketers convinced America to eat fish sticks thehustle.co [graphic]

Snowshoe — 9/26/2020 12:35:04 PM

How marketers convinced America to eat fish sticks
thehustle.co

[Snowshoe] I Love to Bird... [youtube video]

Snowshoe — 8/3/2020 1:18:05 AM

[Neeka] [youtube video] Powerful Fishing Reel VS 100lb Girlfriend

Neeka — 2/4/2020 2:05:57 PM

[Jon Koplik] Video shows bald eagle entangled with octopus as fishermen come to the rescue .....

Jon Koplik — 12/13/2019 12:57:58 PM

Video shows bald eagle entangled with octopus as fishermen come to the rescue ........

A bald eagle, probably looking for food, got tangled with a Pacific Octopus in waters off Quatsino, Canada, according to Mowi Canada West.

NBC News3 hours ago

Octopus captures eagle that tried to attack it

video_youtubeGuardian NewsYesterday

Fishermen save bald eagle from clutches of octopus
Fishermen in Canada intervened when they came across a bald eagle locked in a battle for survival with an octopus.

ABC News3 hours ago

See it: Fisherman helps free bald eagle wrapped in octopus' tentacles

A group of fishermen in Canada rescued a bald eagle from the grip of a large octopus that had dragged the bird under water and was trying to drown it, a report ...

New York Post 11 hours ago

Here’s What Happens When a Bald Eagle and Pink Octopus With a Death Grip Battle It Out

A bald eagle and a pink octopus had a surprising conflict after the bird of prey attempted to attack the octopus.

TIME1 hour ago
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[Neeka] That is just sad. I remember delivering fresh albacore tuna to the Bumblebee can...

Neeka — 11/22/2019 12:41:21 PM

That is just sad. I remember delivering fresh albacore tuna to the Bumblebee canning plant in Astoria. The old building is still there and has been converted to a restaurant and offices as well as a gift shop and museum.

[Jon Koplik] WSJ -- Bumble Bee Foods LLC Files for Bankruptcy ..................................

Jon Koplik — 11/22/2019 1:21:50 AM

WSJ -- Bumble Bee Foods LLC Files for Bankruptcy .................................................

Nov. 21, 2019

Bumble Bee Files for Bankruptcy With $925 Million Offer From Taiwan’s FCF

Taiwan seafood company FCF Fishery’s offer for canned tuna maker includes $275 million in cash

By Alexander Gladstone

Bumble Bee Foods LLC, one of the nation’s largest canned tuna providers, filed for bankruptcy protection Thursday with an agreement to sell its assets to Taiwan’s FCF Fishery Co. for roughly $925 million.

San Diego-based Bumble Bee, owned by London-based private-equity firm Lion Capital, said that a chapter 11 process will help facilitate the sale to FCF as well as “reduce its debt burden caused by recent and significant legal challenges.”

The Wall Street Journal reported last week that Bumble Bee was preparing to file for bankruptcy within days as it faces mounting legal expenses stemming from its involvement in a conspiracy to fix prices on canned tuna.

Bumble Bee pleaded guilty in 2017 and agreed to pay a $25 million fine for having formed a cartel with its two main competitors, Chicken of the Sea International and StarKist Co. The Justice Department subsequently indicted former Bumble Bee Chief Executive Christopher Lischewski for his alleged role in the conspiracy. Mr. Lischewski, who pleaded not guilty, took a leave of absence from Bumble Bee last year and is on trial in California federal court.

Chief Financial Officer Kent McNeil said in a declaration filed with the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Wilmington, Del., Thursday that the $25 million criminal fine from the DOJ, as well as civil litigation from Bumble Bee’s customers and related legal expenses, resulted in the company’s default on its term loan and ultimately its decision to file for bankruptcy.

In addition to the hit from the antitrust probe, the company is facing class-action lawsuits from consumers, distributors and retailers over the conspiracy. Other consumers suing Bumble Bee have said it wrongfully labeled its tuna as being produced through “dolphin-safe” fishing methods. Bumble Bee has said its labeling was justified.

Bumble Bee has 41% of the U.S. canned tuna market and roughly 13% of the U.S. share of sales of canned “light meat” tuna, according to Mr. McNeil. It also has about 40% of U.S. sardine sales. But the company’s earnings have been hurt by an industry-wide slowdown as young consumers increasingly prefer fresh food and gravitate toward newer and more upscale brands.

FCF’s stalking horse bid, which will be tested at a bankruptcy auction, includes $275 million cash and $638.6 million of debt. The Taiwanese company has also agreed to pay the remaining $17 million Bumble Bee owes to the Justice Department.

The canned tuna seller is entering bankruptcy with up to $280 million in bankruptcy financing, provided by its existing lenders, so it can continue operating in chapter 11 pending completion of the sale.

Bumble Bee’s roots date back more than a century when the Columbia River Packers Association began fishing for tuna off the Oregon coast and established the Bumble Bee tuna brand.

The company has hired law firm Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison LLP, investment bank Houlihan Lokey Inc. and restructuring firm AlixPartners LLP to handle its chapter 11 case.

-- Josh Beckerman contributed to this article.

Write to Alexander Gladstone at alexander.gladstone@wsj.com

Copyright © 2019 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.

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[Snowshoe] The Oyster Poachers of Connemara getpocket.com In Ireland, few things are black...

Snowshoe — 10/21/2019 2:39:35 PM

The Oyster Poachers of Connemara
getpocket.com

In Ireland, few things are black and white, especially the law—and the tales of men who break it to dive for treasure under cover of darkness.

Like many stories of Ireland, this one begins in a bar. It was after closing time one quiet night during the mid 1960s in Connemara, and in the corner of the pub, a group of lads talked in low voices while nursing their pints. The publican went about his business, wiping up the bar top and rearranging stools. Soon, the men had empty glasses, but made no moves towards leaving. They were waiting for something. When the headlights of a pick-up truck shone through the window, they scattered out into the night. This is the first oyster poaching memory V (as he wishes to be referred to in this article) can recall. The men in the bar were waiting for a buyer who agreed to meet under the cover of darkness. The product was oysters, dredged from a neglected bed about two miles offshore. A typical poaching expedition took place under the glow of moonlight with three men setting out in a currach, a wooden Irish rowboat. For two to three hours at a time, the men—fishermen, farmers, and laborers by day—collected oysters from the sandy sea floor, filling mesh bags to the brim. Making as little noise as possible, they rowed back to the coastline...

[Snowshoe] I Love to Cephalopod... Cat Steals An Octopus To Eat it Alive youtube.com

Snowshoe — 10/18/2019 7:20:44 AM

[Jon Koplik] NYT -- polystyrene (Styrofoam) decomposes in sunlight much faster than thought ....

Jon Koplik — 10/16/2019 12:36:42 AM

NYT -- polystyrene (Styrofoam) decomposes in sunlight much faster than thought .................

Oct. 11, 2019

In the Sea, Not All Plastic Lasts Forever

Polystyrene, a common ocean pollutant, decomposes in sunlight much faster than thought, a new study finds.

By William J. Broad

A major component of ocean pollution is less devastating and more manageable than usually portrayed, according to a scientific team at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution on Cape Cod, Mass., and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Previous studies, including one last year by the United Nations Environment Program, have estimated that polystyrene, a ubiquitous plastic found in trash, could take thousands of years to degrade, making it nearly eternal. But in a new paper, five scientists found that sunlight can degrade polystyrene in centuries or even decades.

“Policymakers generally assume that polystyrene lasts forever,” Collin P. Ward, a marine chemist at Woods Hole and the study’s lead author said in a statement on Thursday. “That’s part of the justification for writing policy that bans it.” A main rationale for his team’s study, he added, “was to understand if polystyrene actually does last forever.”

Polystyrene, one form of which often carries the brand name Styrofoam, is used to manufacture single-use cups, straws, yogurt containers, disposable razors, plastic tableware, packing materials and many other everyday items, which are discarded daily by the ton. Much of it ends up in the ocean. A swirling mass of throwaway junk known as the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, located between Hawaii and California, is estimated to occupy an area roughly twice the size of Texas.

Many nations, companies, citizen groups and ocean institutes, as well as United Nations programs, have worked hard to ban single-use items and better regulate their disposal.

“We’re not calling the concerns or the actions wrong,” Christopher M. Reddy, a marine chemist at Woods Hole and another author on the study, said in an interview. “We just have a new thread to add and we think it’s significant.”

The study was published Thursday in the journal Environmental Science and Technology Letters, a publication of the American Chemical Society, a scientific group based in Washington.

The research was funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the Frank and Lisina Hoch Endowed Fund at Woods Hole, the Stanley Watson Chair in Oceanography at Woods Hole and a graduate research fellowship from the National Science Foundation, a federal agency.

It’s common knowledge that sunlight can cause plastics to weather. “Just look at plastic playground toys, park benches, or lawn chairs, which can rapidly become sun-bleached,” Dr. Ward noted in the Woods Hole statement.

The new study demonstrated that sunlight does even more, breaking down polystyrene into basic chemical units of organic carbon, which dissolves in seawater, and trace amounts of carbon dioxide, at levels far too low to play a role in climate change. By the end of this process the plastic has effectively disappeared from the environment.

In the paper, the researchers described the study as “the first direct evidence” of how of sunlight can break down polystyrene in the environment into its basic chemical building blocks.

Previous studies focused largely on the degrading effect of microbes. That made sense, Dr. Reddy, said, because microbes can eat many forms of organic carbon. But, he added, the chemical structure of polystyrene -- particularly its backbone of large, ringed molecules -- made the plastic unappetizing to decomposing bacteria.

However, that same molecular backbone turned out to be “the perfect shape and size to catch certain frequencies of sunlight,” Dr. Reddy said. And the energy that is absorbed breaks the chemical bonds.

In the lab, the researchers tested five different samples of polystyrene to see if sunlight could tear them apart. The team submerged each sample in a sealed glass container of water and exposed it to light from a solar simulator, a special lamp that mimics the frequencies of sunlight. The scientists then studied the water for evidence of breakdown products.

With sophisticated tools of detection and analysis, Dr. Ward and his colleagues then traced the origin of the loose materials back to the polystyrene. “We used multiple methods, and they all pointed to the same outcome,” he said in the statement: sunlight can turn polystyrene from a solid material back into basic chemical units.

The study also found that additives to polystyrene, which can determine its color, flexibility and other physical features, can slow or speed decomposition.

In a joint interview, Dr. Ward and Dr. Reddy said that one remaining puzzle concerns the exact nature of the dissolved organic carbon, which is too small in size to form visible particles. “We feel confident we can figure it out,” Dr. Reddy said.

The research team included Cassia J. Armstrong and Julia H. Jackson of Woods Hole, and Anna N. Walsh of Woods Hole and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

In the paper, the authors noted that the newly identified means of polystyrene breakdown “should be incorporated into global fate models” for plastics and help frame policy. None of the current inventories “account for degradation,” Dr. Ward noted.

In the interview, he and Dr. Reddy suggested that the new finding might eventually shed light on one of the outstanding mysteries of ocean pollution: that more than 99 percent of the plastic that should be identifiable is missing. Expeditions that have specifically looked for evidence of the calculated mass of plastic have repeatedly come up with surprisingly low returns.

In time, Dr. Ward said, the accelerating search for the breakdown products of polystyrene and other kinds of oceanic pollution may let scientists “balance the books.”

© 2019 The New York Times Company

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[Neeka] Salmon cannon could restore the population in the Upper Columbia [youtube video...

Neeka — 8/25/2019 4:17:27 PM

Salmon cannon could restore the population in the Upper Columbia

Whooshh Passage Portal

August 19, 2019 at 3:32 pm

A so-called salmon cannon could restore salmon populations in parts of the upper Columbia river that have not seen the fish in 90 years.

The salmon cannon is actually a fish-propelling system made by a Seattle company called Whooshh Innovations, which uses a series of tubes and computers to gently detour the salmon around dams, so they can travel upstream to reproduce. Whooshh is working with the Colville Tribe to see if its fish-moving tubes can restore salmon runs above the Chief Joseph and Grand Coulee dams, reports The Spokesman Review.

“In truth, the fish aren’t shot anywhere. The fish actually swim in on their own, and they are then sorted into a tube that’s misted inside so it’s very slick and air pressure gently movies them up and over the dam,” Michael Messina of Whooshh told KIRO Radio. “Each female is carrying 3,000 to 5,000 eggs, and that’s really important versus going up a ladder or not being able to go up at all. In terms of fisheries restorations this is really important.”

Along with salmon moving, the system can redirect predatory and invasive species to other parts of a river and away from the endangered fish.

“This is where all the computers and everything come in. There’s a lot of scanning of imagery taking place that makes a quick decision, and then they are routed up in the proper lane or if they are a fish that’s not supposed to go up they can be routed back out,” Messina said.

The Army Corp of Engineers is set to make a decision soon on whether to install the fish cannons below the Chief Joseph dam and possibly Grand Coulee.

mynorthwest.com

[Snowshoe] The Shipwrecked Sailors & the Wandering Cod getpocket.com Captain Pietro Querin...

Snowshoe — 6/26/2019 11:39:38 PM

The Shipwrecked Sailors & the Wandering Cod
getpocket.com

Captain Pietro Querini, a Venetian merchant sailor, and his crew of 68 were bound for Flanders from Crete in the fall of 1431 when his ship was blown off course by ravaging storms near the English Channel. Damaged beyond repair, the drifting vessel was abandoned for two life rafts, one of which disappeared and was never seen again. The other floated up to the North Sea, finally landing on the rocky southern tip of Norway's Lofoten Islands. Near frozen and delirious with hunger, Querini and his 10 remaining men clambered ashore in January 1432.

A father and son from the island of Røst rescued Querini's crew. A small fishing village punctuating the island chain, Røst welcomed the starving men, feeding them with stockfish, air-dried until stiff as a board and salty as the ocean air ripping along Norway's shoreline. It was this unlikely, petrified beacon of hope and the hospitable people of Lofoten that sparked a centuries-long love affair between Italy and Norway.

[DinoNavarre] Epic two and a half hour battle.... 54.8951 Brown Trout......

DinoNavarre — 1/30/2019 12:33:45 PM

[Jon Koplik] Duluth News Tribune -- What's on TV? Fish, and lots of 'em .......................

Jon Koplik — 1/27/2019 10:27:16 AM

Duluth News Tribune -- What's on TV? Fish, and lots of 'em ..............................................

January 27, 2019

What's on TV? Fish, and lots of 'em

By John Myers

Gary Rutherford uses a remote control to change the direction of an underwater camera in his fish house. Rutherford was using three different cameras and three big-screen television monitors to keep any eye on northern pike in Blue Lake. John Myers / jmyers@duluthnews.com1 / 5

ON BLUE LAKE — Gary Rutherford loves to watch televisions in the dead of winter.

So just about every morning in January and February, Rutherford fires up his big pickup truck, calls his yellow lab Ranger to join him and leaves his lakeside home in Pengilly to drive 7 miles to Blue Lake near Nashwauk.

He plows his way to his Ice Castle fish house, fires up a Honda generator, hooks up some electronics and then settles in to watch TVs.

Only Rutherford isn't watching Netflix or HBO or even the Outdoor Channel. He's watching Gary Rutherford's Fish TV, brought to you by three underwater cameras attached to three big-screen TV monitors bolted to the walls of the shelter.

Don't bother asking about watching the big game or a movie or playing a game of Fortnite. The only thing showing is northern pike, bluegills, crappies and the occasional perch.

This northern pike may look huge on a monitor but in reality it's only about 28 inches long. Photos by John Myers / News Tribune

"I probably watch more TV in these two months than I do all the rest of the year put together,' Rutherford said on a recent January day from the 70-degree above zero comfort of his fishing shelter. Rutherford, 69, insists he's a techno-novice, but the strings of HDMI cables in the shelter say otherwise. On this day he's using three underwater cameras — both Aqua-View and Marcum — but he owns several others just in case one goes bad.He's not just watching TV out here, of course, he also drops hefty sucker minnows impaled on treble hooks down the holes. The baits hovers just above the myriad stumps that haunt the bottom of the once small natural lake that has expanded in recent decades due to nearby mining operations.

And he catches a lot of fish.

Last year, Rutherford fished here more than 50 days, starting New Year's Day when the ice was safe for his big rig. He and his guests caught a combined 132 northern pike, his log book shows. His brother kept two — all the other fish were released.

This year he started Jan. 9. On the first day he and his guests caught 11 northerns. Blue Lake doesn't have many big pike; most of the ones Rutherford catches are between 24 and 28 inches.

"But they're fun to catch, for me,' he said. "I'm one of the few people out here who fishes northerns. Most people out here are going after panfish."

He uses stout, short ice fishing rods with casting reels spooled with PowerPro line and with a 12-inch steel leader. Sometimes his treble hooks are paired with a spinner blade and beads, sometimes not.

Rutherford used to fish competitive walleye tournaments in summer. But in recent years the retired National Steel Pellet Co. mineworker has been mostly targeting musky and pike during summer months. He used to make winter walleye trips to Red Lake and Lake of the Wods, too, but these days, in winter, it's strictly pike.

Gary Rutherford of Pengilly works to remove the hooks from a 26-inch northern pike caught on Blue Lake recently.

On a recent day Rutherford and a guest had five pike grab a bait, with two landed, over about three hours with lines in the water.But over that same time there were fish within view on Rutherford's underwater cameras almost constantly — an occasional crappie or bluegill and maybe a perch or two, but mostly northern pike. The water is gin-clear in this lake but the cameras still struggle to see very far out due to the lack of sunlight penetrating through deep snow on the ice. Rutherford plows an extra wide space around the fish house to let more light shine through.

After a while Rutherford gets to know the fish. On this day a chubby, roughly 28-inch pike came around every few minutes to check out our baits. He never once bit. Rutherford pointed to one of the TV monitors and the curious pike's unusually big belly for its size.

"That fat boy has been coming around for four or five days now, every day. But he won't eat,' Rutherford said, jigging one of his rods in a futile effort to tantalize the pike to bite. "They get you excited just watching... get your heart going."

Sometimes Rutherford would jig a hookless spearing decoy in an effort to attract a fish to bite, and it seemed to work. But it became very clear over the morning that not all fish that come in to check out a bait are interested in biting.

"Everybody thinks northerns hit anything you throw down there, that they will attack anything they see. But that's not true at all. A lot of them come in slow and just look, then swim over and look at another bait, then slowly swim off,' Rutherford noted after another visit by "fat boy." "I mean, you gotta be kidding me! A fish with that reputation is that close to an easy meal but not hungry?"

But when they do bite, the pike can come in fast and hard, swooping up a sucker minnow in seconds. They also tend to come in pairs. Rutherford has become a bit of a pike behavior expert after watching hundreds of them over recent winters.

"They don't school up, but they do tend to come in hungry pairs a lot of the time,' he noted.

Indeed, twice on our outing we had two pike on at the same time.

Gary Rutherford of Pengilly holds up the camera end of an underwater video system.

© 2019 Duluth News Tribune and Forum Communications Company.

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[Biotech Jim] Caught a bunch of smallmouth bass the other day, nice ones, but one seemed to ha...

Biotech Jim — 11/6/2018 4:10:18 PM

Caught a bunch of smallmouth bass the other day, nice ones, but one seemed to have a muscle wasting disease or simply was dying of old age. Here is that poor fella compared to a nice, chunky/healthy.one.