I was recently asked why I study stream and river fishes. Of course I rattled off several of the high points about threatened habitats, high biodiversity, and simply cool fish. But that question prompted me to reflect on why I do what I do, and I decided to go back to ‘square one’– the well-accepted…
Category: Threats to Fisheries
Do fish have ears? And if so, what impacts do people have on their ability to hear?
By: Dana Sackett At first glance, fish don’t appear to have ears, but that doesn’t mean they can’t hear. While there are usually no openings on a fish’s head for sound to enter, they do have inner ears that pick-up sound through their body. In fact, many fish rely on their ears to find habitat…
El Niño, warming up the tropics with some devastating global consequences
By: Dana Sackett (with awesome edits by Troy Farmer) Most of us have probably heard the term El Niño. But what exactly is El Niño and what impact does it have on our oceans and climate? Another important question to ask is: what can we expect from El Niño in a future with a warmer…
Neighborhood watch: rising threats to freshwater fishes
By Stephanie Januchowski-Hartley, Guest Blogger Illustrations by Hannah Dean Imagine you live in a small neighborhood with limited places to access food or resources. What if, in addition to living in a small neighborhood, 30% of your neighborhood were also under an activity that impacts you in a negative way? Say it is under construction and you can’t…
What can guppies teach us about fisheries management?
We can’t manipulate entire stocks of Bluefin Tuna in massive experiments. But we can use guppies to get the same answer. But first, a quiz: How does overfishing affect fish populations? Obviously, more commercial catch reduces the total biomass and number of individuals in a stock—that’s a given. But commercial over-harvest has another, more subtle…
Why is genetic diversity important?
Genetic diversity and the portfolio effect can help buffer species against global change. The greater the genetic diversity, the greater the opportunity for resiliency to future climate change. When it comes to fish conservation in an era of global change, genetic diversity is like a diversified financial portfolio. If you bet everything on one strain, you could end up with…
Dam Removals
Recently we’ve heard a lot of trumped up talk about building walls. While we don’t get political here at The Fisheries Blog, we wanted to take this opportunity to highlight the trend of taking down walls, also known as dam removal. Dams are built for a lot of good reasons. Larger ones produce hydropower, and…
Zebrafish help show how ‘BPA-free’ is misleading
By: Dana Sackett Zebrafish are small freshwater fish that originated in rivers from India. These fish share important biological properties with all vertebrates that make them useful in understanding how contaminants may impact other vertebrates in the environment, including ourselves. Logistically they are also useful because they are easy to maintain in aquariums, and they…
How did Justice Scalia lose his argument that fish are “tangible objects”?
The Question: Are fish “tangible objects”? To you, the answer to the above question may seem simple. However, as you are about to find out, the answer to this question was an incredibly complicated issue for a Florida fisherman and the nine Supreme Court Justices. More than 10 miles off the West Coast of Florida, on…
Estrogens may be feminizing a waterway near you
By: Dana Sackett “Clutching the bottle of water I had just collected from the Pee Dee River, I climbed the steep embankment back to our truck wondering how much estrogen we would find in our sample. We spent the better part of a month driving across North Carolina to examine a suite of chemicals called…
The Trout You’ve Never Heard Of (and Almost Never Did)
By Craig Springer, Guest Blogger The trout stole its color from a southern New Mexico summer sunset. Gila trout sport a painter’s pallet of pink and olive, rose, yellow, copper—and a few tones in between. Beneath the black pepper flakes that fleck its side lies a lexis—a language carried forward from another time. It’s an…
Why didn’t the fish cross under the road?
Think about how you arrived to work or school today, yesterday, or last week. Did you go by car, bike, or train? Did your journey include traveling over a river, wetland, stream, or estuary? If you answered yes to either of these questions, it is very likely that you crossed over a possible barrier to fish…
Unlikely invaders
by Brandon Peoples The media likes to make a big deal about invasive species. We’ve seen plenty videos of jumping carp, documentaries about Red Lionfish, and photos of pipes choked by zebra muzzels. But what about the other aquatic invaders, the ones that sometimes sneak past the headlines…the species that may even be threatened in their…
Some Unexpected Consequences of Climate Change
By: Troy Farmer, a postdoctoral researcher at Auburn University On a global scale, aquatic systems are warming. Average temperatures in the world’s oceans have been steadily increasing over the past 50 years. Given that the observed warming trends are predicted to continue, our job, as fisheries scientists, is to understand how fish are presently being…
Conservation Road Maps for The Coming Decade
By Michelle Staudinger Every 10 years, State natural resource agencies review the health (or decline) of their fish, wildlife, and associated habitats. They take a proactive approach, thinking carefully about the priorities, challenges, and actions they would like to accomplish during the coming decade. All of this planning and reflection is packaged into each State’s…
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