When you think about commercial fishing in the US, you probably think about walleye pollock, sardines, and menhaden. What most of us don’t think about are the commercial fisheries that historically and currently take place in the Great Lakes. In the past several decades over 50 species have been represented in the Great Lakes commercial…
Category: Ecology: Organisms & Habitats
Rare, Weird, and Ugly Sharks
“If I only kept the dollars when we actually caught sharks, I’d be left with about $3.”
Fisheries Science “Unplugged”
If a sturgeon leaps from the water and no one’s there to tweet about it, does it make a splash? Earlier this week, fellow Nicholls State University biology professor Dr. Gary LaFleur Jr. sent me photos from his biomarkers class after they “went off the grid”. Students took pirogues (a type of canoe) to a…
Invasivores Unite: Eat invasive species, save the world
Author: Patrick Cooney Artist: Henry Hershey (twitter: @spoonbill_hank; insta: @hanks_fish_art) Invasivore: A person who eats invasive species to reduce the ecological impact of invaders. Bad news Humans are to blame for the spread of aquatic invasive species across the globe. The United States Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) says, “Aquatic nuisance species are spread many ways…
How do fish handle cold water?
Summertime’s come and gone, and winter has arrived in the Northern Hemisphere. Inland waters across North America are cooling down, and many will soon be covered with ice. Winter can be hard on fishes, being poikilotherms that can’t regulate their own body temperature (with some exceptions). So just how do they make it through this…
The Peaceful Betta
Guest Blogger: Joelle Montes. What if I were to tell you that there is a fish out there that is equally as mesmerizing to the Siamese fighting fish but lives a more peaceful lifestyle?
Blog Biodiversity: Related Species in the Scicomm Ecosystem
It’s my first semester teaching Evolution & Ecology at Nicholls State University; with plenty of challenging and complex topics to tackle, I’ve also been given the latitude to integrate more science communication (scicomm) into this upper-level biology course. We’ve included Twitter and popular science articles alongside analyses of natural selection, genetic drift, and traditional scientific…
Birds vs Fish
These days, many scientists stand unified on several topics, including the defense of science itself. But it’s also good to know that scientists still have a sense of humor, and that some scientific debates can be entertaining, educational, and accessible, all at the same time. Enter “Birds vs Fish”, an ongoing feud largely played out…
A Breath of Fish Air
I recently migrated from Michigan to Louisiana to join the faculty at Nicholls State University as assistant professor. Moving from the Great Lakes to the bayou is inevitably laced with logistical concerns; in this case they included mobilizing myself, my wife, all our stuff, and…my fishes. That’s a two-day trip across ~1200 miles, but I…
To See a Coelacanth
This week’s post reflects on some time I am spending with Prosanta Chakrabarty. Prosanta, myself, and a research team are currently in rural, coastal Tanzania sampling Western Indian Ocean fish
The most common fish in the sea
The most common fish in the sea is likely a fish that you’ve never seen or even heard of…
Gila Trout Swim Mineral Creek: Devastating fire cleared path for rare trout’s return
Wear and tear on boot soles and a helicopter—that’s what it took to get 1,033 Gila trout safely placed in the remote headwaters of Mineral Creek, well inside the Gila National Forest of southwestern New Mexico. On November 18, 2016, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (Service) working with its partner agencies, the New Mexico…
Determining Trophic Position: Everyone Gets A Trophy, but Only the Top Doesn’t Get Eaten
By: Dana Sackett For environmental scientists and biologists, there are some terms and phrases so commonly used that they become a part of everyday conversations. Trophic position is one of those terms that is often used in daily conversations without the realization that many do not have a clear idea of what it means. This…
Happy BOFFFF Day!
While mama fish may not have the same maternal instincts of our own dear mums, they do their part to sustain fish populations, particularly BOFFFFs. “What is a BOFFFF?” might you ask…A Big Old Fat Fecund Female Fish.
Yellow Perch and the hypoxia Goldilocks zone
It may seem obvious that suffocation is not good, but determining a fish’s tolerance for low oxygen is increasingly important as hypoxia increases worldwide. Hypoxia (low dissolved oxygen concentrations) occurs naturally—it develops in the hot summers and cold winters beneath ice in small lakes and ponds. Hypoxia can also occur as a result of human…
The Fisheries Blog 