By Patrick Cooney Question: What do Jackson, my mutt dog, and my research fish all have in common? Besides both being incredibly photogenic, what do Jackson and this Brook Trout have in common? Answer: They are all implanted with Passive Integrated Transponder (PIT) tags that transmit a unique identification number when exposed to a magnetic…
Category: Fisheries Management
Fish McBites: What are sustainable fisheries?
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…
Tracking Sharks in the Space Age
In Wes Anderson’s hit film The Life Aquatic, Captain Steve Zissou attached a “homing dart” to a Jaguar Shark so he could later track it down and kill it in an effort to avenge the death of his friend. Continuous yellow blips on their ship’s instruments allowed Team Zissou to track the shark across…
Rotenone: the fish killer
By Dana Sackett Rotenone has been used for centuries by fishermen to harvest fish. More recently, scientists and fishery managers have used rotenone to sample fishes and remove unwanted species from freshwater systems. But how does this toxic chemical work so effectively to kill fish, is it toxic to other species including humans, and…
Bottom of the barrel – Expansion of fishing to the deep sea is not sustainable
By: Dr. Jeff Drazen Department of Oceanography University of Hawaii Over the last 50-60 years many shallow water fish stocks have become depleted and others have outright collapsed. As a result fishers have targeted fish stocks in deeper and deeper waters. Studies on global catch have shown that the average depth of catch has increased…
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…
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…
What is the Most Popular Outdoor Activity in the US?
Question: How do you entertain 16 children with diverse backgrounds for 2 hours without a single complaint? Answer: Take them fishing of course! What a catch! Me and my wife teaching kids how to fish. Isn’t she a good sport? (Photo: Josh Raabe) Fishing Rises in Popularity Recreational fishing is currently the most popular outdoor activity in…
JAWS Returns: Signs of recovery in well-managed shark populations
Humans have done far more damage to great white shark populations than they have done to us. (Credit: Tobey Curtis) Sharks and their relatives, the skates and rays, have become poster children for the ‘global overfishing crisis’. Largely due to increasing demand for high-priced shark fin soup in Asia, shark populations worldwide have…
The Latest on Ciguatera Fish Poisoning
By: Dana Sackett Friedman et al. 2008. (http://www.mdpi.com/1660-3397/6/3/456) Ciguatera fish poisoning can cause a number of nasty symptoms (nausea, vomiting, painful electric-shock-like sensations, reversal of hot and cold sensations, intense itching, tingling, numbness, slowed heart rate, weakness, fatigue, muscle and joint pain, depression, headaches, and others) that can last from a few days to…
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…
Eliminating an Invasive Predator: Lessons From Lake Davis Pike
It was like the loud crash of an old Batman episode: BOOM!! KAPOW!! The shock waves from the explosion tore through the water and blew the fish apart from the inside by fatally rupturing the gas filled swim bladder, the organ designed to provide buoyancy in the water column. Desperate times and previous blunders had led…
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,…
The Forgotten Name in Sport Fish Restoration
The Sport Fish Restoration Act is such a successful program in the United States that few anglers know that it took 11 years, an expensive world war, and overcoming a Presidential veto to eventually become law. Not only do we take for granted the immense struggle that was surmounted to enact this legislation, but we don’t even associate…
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