Stories tagged fish
"Doctor Fish": The hand will be skeletal inside of three minutes.
Courtesy Nemo's great uncleI pride myself in my ability to scoot along the greasy razor edge of what’s cool at any given moment. Like right now this is cool: Tentacles. And…now collecting vintage Booberry, Frankenberry, and Count Chocula boxes is cool. And now tentacles are cool again.
It amazes me, then, that this new wave splashed right by me: foot flesh-eating fish. Or, really, I suppose they’d eat flesh from anywhere, but what they’re getting is foot flesh. But how could I have missed this for so long? I mean, Tyra Banks, Eastern Europe, and big chunks of Asia are already all about flesh-eating fish. Sure, Tyra Banks is a little wiser than most people, and I can’t remember a time when Eastern Europe wasn’t dancing on the cutting edge, but that doesn’t mean I have to feel good about it.
So, what we’re dealing with here, to go back to the very beginning, are little carp, Garra ruffa. The carp are native to rivers across the Middle East, and are kept and bred in outdoor pools in Turkish spas. Why? Because they swarm people and eat the dead skin off their bodies.
The fish eat skin because food can be scarce in the warm pools they live in, and because their little jaws are toothless, they’re only able to eat dead skin.
Apparently dead skin isn’t very cool. (I have a feeling that it’s going to be the next big thing, though.) If you’ve got some dead skin on your feet that you’re afraid people will see, there’s a foot fish spa near D.C. The fish are also recommended as an alternative treatment for psoriasis, but you might have to cross an ocean to get to a pool full of psoriatic plaque-gulping fish.
The circle of life. Fantastic.
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Who will be next to go?: The greatest loss of marine diversity is due not to habitat destruction, but clerical error.
Courtesy mattneighbour
No, not extinct. Just re-named. See, a species can have lots of common names -- for example, groundhog, woodchuck, marmot, ground squirrel, and annoying little beggar who keeps digging up my garden -- but only one scientific name -- in this example, Marmota monax.
But it seems the researchers who go about naming marine species got a little carried away, giving more than one scientific name to a single species. Sometimes it was an honest mistake. Sometimes it was due to individual members of the same species taking on widely different forms, fooling researchers into thinking they were separate species. And sometimes it was due to “splitters” – taxonomists who seize on any tiny difference to declare a new species.
But a new survey of all named sea creatures has found that 31% -- some 56,000 so far – are, in fact, duplications. Some invertebrate species had as many as 40 different scientific names. More duplicates are sure to be uncovered, as the project is only about half-way done.
You've probably never thought about this before, but catfish and soccer balls don't mix well. Read this to find out why.
The discovery of a new fossil of an ancient four-legged creature with both amphibian and fish traits has been reported in the scientific journal Nature.
Named Ventastega curonica, the extinct animal’s 365 million year old remains were discovered in Latvia in the near-shore marine sediments of the Ketleri Formation. It lived during the Late Devonian about 100 million years before dinosaurs. Only partial remains of Ventastega were recovered, including its skull, shoulder, and pelvis, but by studying the bones' structures scientists were able to determine that the creature had limbs rather than fins.
Fossils of other transition creatures have been found with similar degrees of advancement between fish and tetrapods (animals with four limbs), but those appear to be more fish than tetrapod, while Vestastega appears to be more tetrapod than fish.
Since 2005, an ebola-like virus has been killing fish in the Great Lakes. A major die-off was recently reported near Milwaukee, affecting some 30 species. While the disease does not affect humans, it could devastate sport and commercial fishing in the region. Though the disease has not hit Lake Superior yet, it is starting to spread out from the Great Lakes region, thanks to infected fish swimming into rivers and streams.
Okay, make your guess. Is the world record for flight by a flying fish 10 seconds, 25 seconds, 45 seconds or 1 minute and 10 seconds? Watch this video to find out and see the fish in action.
Minnesota's fishing opener is a little over a week away. But if you're interested in catching some really big fish, you might want to go to Southeast Asia. Recently nabbed in rivers there were a 14-foot freshwater stingray and a 650-pound catfish, which is about the same size as the average black bear. Click on each link to see photos of these enormous fish.
One weird little fishy.: The mangrove killifish, Rivulus marmoratus. Photo USGS.
Researchers have found that the mangrove killifish, a two-inch-long fish common to Caribbean coasts, spends several months out of water, living in the hollows of trees. Most of the year, the fish live in muddy pools and are fiercely territorial. But during the dry season, they crawl into burrows carved into the trees by insects, pack themselves together tightly, and alters their metabolism to breathe air.
Oh, yeah, and the mangrove killlifish also has both male and female organs, so it can reproduce without a mate. This is one strange fish.
Gone fishing?: Where have the walleye's gone on Minnesota's Lake Mille Lacs? Fall surveys this year show about half the number of fish in the state's "walleye factory" than typically are found. (Photo courtesy of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service)The walleye is Minnesota’s state fish. And the No. 1 lake to catch walleyes in the state is generally considered to be Lake Mille Lacs. But fish population censuses conducted this summer on Minnesota’s walleye factory have fisheries managers scratching their heads.
You may have read or heard some of the headlines about this in recent days. Some of those reports sensationalized the situation. While the walleye numbers are down on the lake, they’re by no means at critical conditions, the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources (DNR) reports.
Routine testing done on the lake this summer corralled only about half the usual number of walleyes as the average number collected between 193 and 2006, the DNR says. The tests, conducted near shorelines are done annually to monitor fish populations and size.
“We expected some decline in walleye numbers based on a number of factors, including a weak 2004-year class of walleye,” said DNR Fisheries Chief Ron Payer. But the magnitude of this year’s decline was unanticipated.”
This year’s net catches averaged 7.2 walleyes per net compared to the 15.4 average from the previous 14-year average of 15.4 walleyes per net. Similar sampling done last year collected 20.4 walleyes per net.
So why the big drop?
Payer said that warm lake water, particularly in June, may have played a significant role in the drop. Warmer water temps stress fish and hooking mortality rate goes up as water temperatures go up, as well.
Is the situation critical?
Not yet, Payer said. But the reason the DNR does the annual walleye population survey is to gather data on setting limits for the coming fishing season. And there’s no doubt, he said, that those regulations will likely be tightened in 2008.
But he added that Mille Lacs still has a strong number of spawning-sized fish.
Payer said anglers should know Mille Lacs continues to hold good numbers of spawning-sized fish. Still, the new data means the DNR will need to revisit regulations to ensure the lake’s walleye harvest stays within the safe harvest level and the state’s allocation. No walleye harvest overage will be allowed in 2008 due to the lower than anticipated number of walleye in recent population assessments.
Because of several factors, Mille Lacs’ walleye population is regulated differently than other Minnesota lakes. Through a treaty with the Chippewa Indian bands negotiated in 1837, those bands have significant fishing rights on the lake. Those rights are taken into account with sport fishing limits each year in managing Mille Lacs’ walleye population.
This past year, sport anglers could only take four walleyes a day. They had to be between 14 and 16 inches in length, with the exception made for one walleye longer than 28 inches long. Earlier in the season, the limits were actually less restrictive, but heavy fishing success in the early part of the summer required tightening the Mille Lacs limits.
Regulations for the 2008 open water season will be established in February 2008 and go into effect with the walleye opener on May 12.
So do you have a theory on what's happened to the walleyes? Share your thoughts here with other Science Buzz readers.
A shark, doing it's best: Mostly he just wants to be left alone. (photo by Mshai on flickr.com)Scientists in New South Wales and Florida are testing a new method of measuring the biting force of a great white shark using computer models.
Attempts have been made to measure sharks’ biting force underwater, in captivity and in the wild, although these are known to provide inadequate results. Sharks will generally do weak a “test bite” before applying the full force of their jaws, and these test bites are generally all that’s measured.
In this new experiment, researchers are dissecting a 2.4-meter long great white shark, in part to make an extremely accurate computer model of its anatomy, and in part to drive home the point that the animal should have just allowed them to measure its bite while it was alive. Advanced computing methods, originally developed for “calculating stresses in structures such as bridges,” will then be applied to the model, and should provide a much more accurate range of the shark’s biting force.
This process contrasts sharply with my own, I believe, much more elegant test of shark biting power. There are several simple steps involved in my method: Step 1 – gather a variety of small to medium sized objects. Step 2 - Rate the hardness of these objects, not on an objectively quantified scale, but relatively (for example: The kitten is harder than the pillow, but not as hard as the dictionary). Step 3 - Take these objects to your nearest shark. Get the shark to bite the objects (this can be difficult, but the right combination of chum and verbal abuse should do the trick). You will then have a simple and easy to understand scale of shark biting strength (for example: the shark could crush the pillow, the kitten, the dictionary, and the cookie jar, but not the lawn mower engine). If you still feel, at this point, that you need a measurement that uses more universally accepted units, you can then crush similar objects by yourself, far away from the shark, using free weights, or forty-pound bags of dog food. These can then be easily converted into newtons, or pounds per square inch, or whatever your physics teacher requires.
If the computer model method proves to give reasonably accurate results, I suppose it will then be up to individual researchers to choose that method or mine. It will just depend on whether someone doesn’t want to get their hands dirty, or if they care about style and integrity.
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