Initially marketed to create a seafood/non-meat alternative (for Catholics and others avoiding meat), for years, the “Fillet-O-Fish” sandwich and similar fast food items were purposely vague—both in name and taste. In response to what I’m guessing were poor sales and the increasing public cry to know more about the origins of their food, fast food…
Author: Steve Midway
Why Do Mussels Matter?
By Brandon Peoples If you’re like me, you’ll be hitting the creeks this spring to catch a trout or smallmouth bass. But did you know that as you wade along, the very stream bed you walk on is teeming with life? In fact, much of the stream bed itself is alive… Mussels are diverse and…
Citizen Science: Fishing for Data
Many of us have heard from an older generation just how hard it was to collect data. And forget about the analysis—I’ve been led to believe that entire reports and scientific papers have been written solely dependent upon the slide rule! But no matter what hyperbole one employes to describe what they once went through,…
Q-n-A: Journal Editor
Welcome to The Fisheries Blog‘s second Q-n-A! This segment is designed to showcase the knowledge and specialty of someone in the fisheries world who flat out knows their stuff. For this Q-n-A, we are featuring Derek Aday, the new Editor of Transactions of the American Fisheries Society. I recently asked Derek what it’s like to…
Hurricane Impacts on Fish
By Steve Midway As the Northeast US continues to recover from Hurricane Sandy, we are all reminded of the danger that hurricanes (now in some cases “superstorms”) pose. And with the admonishment that such storms might be stronger and/or more frequent in the future, we will all need to increasingly consider the negative impacts of…
Q-n-A: Catch Shares
Welcome to The Fisheries Blog‘s first Q-n-A! We are introducing this segment to showcase the knowledge and specialty of someone in the fisheries world who flat out knows their stuff. For this inaugural Q-n-A, we are featuring Kelly Denit, a Fisheries Management Specialist for NOAA. I recently asked Kelly to clarify some of the information…
Not Too Big to Fail: Recovery of Collapsed Stocks
These days, we hear a lot about disasters and disaster recovery—hurricanes, earthquakes, tornadoes. Turns out that fish stocks are not immune to disasters, either. This week the Acting Secretary of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) announced Fishery Disasters in three US fisheries. Dating back to 1994, anywhere from 0 to 7 disasters have…
Bluehead Chubs Construct Nests and Welcome Guests
By Brandon Peoples Appalachian Mountain streams alive with color. (Lance Merry) Every spring, the clear upland streams of eastern North America erupt in vivid shades of red, yellow and blue. These displays are not caused by flowers, but by the breeding colors of minnows. Before the fireworks can begin, a particular type of minnow…
Reconciling Species Assessment
Marine fish species and populations are evaluated in a number of different ways, with two main methods including traditional stock assessment and conservation based metrics, such as the IUCN’s Red List. To make the Red List of Threatened Species, a species must have declined ≥50% within either a three-generation period or 10 years (whichever is…
Fish Farming in Haiti: Part III
This is the final part of a 3 part series. Click here for Parts I and II. It takes about 15 minutes to travel the two miles from the main road down to the fishing village situated on Lake Azuei. We bounce around in the truck like popcorn; I know people in the US who…
Fish Farming in Haiti: Part II
This is Part 2 of a 3 part series. Please click here for Part 1. The city of Croix des Bouquets (pronounced ‘quad ah boo-kay’) is hot, and dry wind whips through, distributing a small film of dust on everything. There, outside a bustling police station, Val pulls up next to us in a Toyota…
Fish Farming in Haiti
In early June 2012 I spent some time in Haiti. One thing I was able to do was to get a firsthand look at a fish farming operation that is not only a model of success in an otherwise challenging landscape, but helps dozens of extremely poor families in seven villages by providing work and…
Ear bones in all shapes and sizes
One of the difficulties of fisheries management is that we can’t observe fish all the time to know exactly when and what they eat, who eats them, and which individuals mate, among other behaviors. To get around this, we infer life histories from sampled individuals, but we also know there are inherent difficulties with sampling…
Book Review: Overfishing
Overfishing: What everyone needs to know Ray Hilborn, with Ulrike Hilborn Many fisheries scientist know that it’s hard to use an often unqualified term like ‘overfishing’. The specifics of overfishing mean many things to many people, but a general definition would be fishing a stock beyond its ability to produce maximum biomass or profit. (See,…
Estimating Recreational Catch: The New Marine Recreational Information Program (MRIP)
For many of us, our jobs directly or indirectly have to do with estimating fish populations. We may be part of a project that samples specifically to estimate abundance or productivity, or we may be working on a specific biological question that has demographic implications. For all stock assessments, harvest (catch or removal) is a…
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