By Brandon Peoples Just what “is” a fish species? Etheostoma clinton may say, “…it depends on your definition of ‘is’.” Last year, researchers Steve Layman and Richard Mayden discovered five new species of darter—tiny colorful fishes in the perch family. They named the new species after “environmentally-minded” politicians, most notably Barack Obama (Teddy Roosevelt and…
Author: Steve Midway
The Fate of Released Aquarium Fish
It’s been estimated that close to 10% of US households have aquariums. And why not—aquariums are an inexpensive and interactive way to observe a variety of fish, often with minimal upkeep for a pet. Yet despite the ease with which you can purchase and possess a wide range of fish species, there is a growing…
Scientists group fishes to improve prediction
Brandon Peoples Most scientists share the gripping compulsion to place things into tidy categories. Fish ecologists are no exception. Why group? Grouping species helps improve our understanding and management of aquatic ecosystems. Because local fish diversity can be quite high, predicting responses of individual species to environmental change or nonnative introductions can be difficult. Grouping…
Get to Know an Introduced Species: Northern Snakehead
This article begins a series of 10 posts dedicated to discussing introduced fish species in US waters. Some species are headliners, while others have been around so long that we think of them as part of our wild fauna. Check back for more installments, and Get to Know an Introduced Species! Steve Midway The Background…
Fisheries CSI: DNA in the Water
By Brandon Peoples Fisheries managers often must monitor rare species. Regardless of the sampling gear being used, detecting numerically rare fishes can be difficult. With traditional fisheries gears, increasing detectability often means increasing sampling effort—which costs more money. Recently, researchers have found a new way to monitor rare species: environmental DNA (eDNA). Like any animal,…
Fish Fry? Forest Fires and Stream Fish
Many of us growing up in the US can easily recall Smokey the Bear, the US Forest Service’s mascot who placed in our hands the responsibility of preventing forest fires. The message was solid—for those who enjoy the forest, be sure to extinguish campfires and other sources of fire. And for many years, forest fire…
What can fish tell us about ecosystem health?
by Brandon Peoples Chances are if you’re reading this post, I don’t have to convince you that clean water is important. We’re responsible to ourselves to maintain enough clean water to support our society. Most obviously, we must maintain water quality for human consumption. In addition, agencies are required to manage water quality to protect…
The Adipose Fin: Old Mysteries with New Answers
If you are a fish, your fins are obviously critical for making a living. Fins provide a long list of essential functions, from generation of movement to stabilization, turning, stopping, and dynamic lift (to name a few). Yet only select families of fish—namely trouts and salmons and catfishes—possess a small nub-like fin behind their dorsal…
Hypoxia
“Currently, hypoxia and anoxia are among the most widespread deleterious anthropogenic influences on estuarine and marine environments, and now rank with overfishing, habitat loss, and harmful algal blooms as major global environmental problems.” Diaz et al. 2008 Fish killed by hypoxic events. (Source: EPA) The Dead Zone. Fish kills. Hypoxia. We increasingly hear these…
Why fishes need floods
In April of 2011, the river near my house was bigger than I had ever seen it. One afternoon I went to get a closer look at the flooding at a park near the dam. Although the park sat more than 20 feet higher than the normal river’s edge, water stood where children had played…
When the Levee Breaks
It’s that time of the year again…people across the northern hemisphere are looking towards dark skies and thinking of rain. For many fish biologists, high water simply means a perfectly good spring day spent in the office. For me, it means a long day tending to a flooded experiment. But to others, spring floods often…
New News for Old Fish
The coelacanth (pronounced ‘see-la-canth’) holds an interesting place in both ichthyology and the history of ichthyology. Many of us are familiar with the image of this large, speckled fish, easily identified by the thick lobes that characterize its fins. Surely it commanded a few moments of simultaneous intrigue and eyebrow-raising in Ichthyology or Evolution 101….
Research Feature: Turtles, Crabs, and Bycatch Reduction
By the time long-lived marine vertebrates reach adulthood they have few natural predators. However, fishing gear set in critical estuarine and nearshore habitat can serve as anthropogenic “predators” to these megafauna. For larger marine megafauna such as sharks, marine mammals and sea turtles, fisheries-related mortalities are mostly due to incidental entanglement in gear such as…
Q-n-A: Fish illustrator
Ichthyology, the study of fishes, doesn’t always mean sitting down in a stuffy lab with jars of preserved fish. For this installment of Q-n-A, I sat down with Val Kells, a renowned marine science illustrator with a passion for ichthyology. Val has illustrated field guide books for fishes of the Atlantic coast of the US…
Magnuson-Stevens and Stock Recovery
Commercial marine fisheries on the whole are showing signs of recovery. At least that’s what the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) announced earlier this week. A recent report put out by the NRDC re-evaluated many previously-overfished marine species, and came to the conclusion that 64% of stocks are successfully rebuilt or show significant signs of…
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