Friday Fishy News - Stuff That You Haven't Heard Yet

[Flattieman]

Over-fed fish dies of obesity in Guangxi (Xinhua)

Updated: 2006-08-17 14:27

China Daily

NANNING -- Grossly overweight, a 150-kg, 1.6-meter-long groper, a large edible fish, has died at an aquarium in Beihai, a coastal city in south China's Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region.

Ample food and little movement made the fish, which was almost twice the size of its peers, suffer from arteriosclerosis, a chronic disease in which thickening and hardening of the arterial walls resulted in impaired blood circulation, said Yang Chunyong, a breeding engineer at Beihai Sea World after anatomizing the fish's body.

The groper was about 30 cm long and weighed around six kgs when it was introduced to the aquarium five years ago. Since then, it had eaten at least 10 kg of small fish everyday, said Huang Yan, the fish keeper. The fish died on August 8.

The aquarium has decided to reduce feed quantities and propose a more balanced diet for the other five five-year-old gropers, which all weigh over 100 kg, said Yang.

"We will move the five giants to a bigger home and encourage them to do more exercises to keep fit," he said.

A groper often inhabits in warm seas and the lifespan of a wild groper is about 10 years, while artificially-raised specimens live for about seven years.

Tuna study could change fish harvesting

ABC - www.abc.com.au

August 15

Tuna harvested in Port Lincoln this morning could change the way the fish are marketed in South Australia.

The Tuna Boat Owners Association has just finished a study, which kept tuna in captivity for up to four times longer than normal to measure the effect on the size, health and quality of the fish.

The association's research manager, David Ellis, says the results of the study are yet to be analysed, but if successful, it could enable Port Lincoln's tuna to be marketed throughout the year.

He says the findings could also benefit employees.

"At the moment in the industry we have a few months where the fish aren't in the water and we're getting prepared to go to sea and normally that's the time where people take holidays, or the casuals normally find some other work to do," he said.

"By having long-term holding it could open up a more continuous workplace arrangement for employees."

genetic testing to help anglers, fish

By JEFF BARNARD

ASSOCIATED PRESS - USA

Monday, August 14, 2006

GOLD BEACH, Ore. -- The last time Scott Boley came home from salmon fishing, he had 17 fish to show for three days of work.

"That's pretty skimpy fishing," said Boley, the skipper of a salmon troller, a partner in the Fishermen Direct Seafood market and a member of the federal panel that sets ocean salmon fishing seasons.

But Boley hopes those fish and barcodes tied to their jaws represent a better future for Oregon and California salmon fishermen, who saw their catch cut by nearly 90 percent this summer to protect dwindling returns of wild chinook to California's Klamath River.

As part of a pilot program funded by the Oregon Watershed Enhancement Board, Boley and other trollers are clipping a piece of pectoral fin from each fish they catch and sending it to the Hatfield Marine Science Center for DNA testing that shows within 48 hours what river basin it came from.

Using a Global Positioning System receiver, they log into a computer the latitude and longitude of each fish, plus their names, the date, the water temperature and the depth at which the fish was caught.

Then they tie onto each fish a metal tag carrying a barcode, which can be used in the future to access that information from a Web site.

Scientists and fishermen hope the genetic testing and unprecedented detail on where salmon swim will help fisheries managers keep the commercial salmon fleet fishing while protecting struggling runs like the Klamath's wild chinook.

Canada already uses overnight genetic testing to increase the salmon harvest off the coast of British Columbia's Queen Charlotte Islands while protecting weak stocks on the west coast of Vancouver Island.

For the past four years, boats from the Department of Fisheries and Oceans have gone out the week before the season opens to check fish DNA. If too many fish from weak stocks show up, fishermen wait or go somewhere else. During the season, fish landed on shore are checked to make sure not too many weak stocks are being taken.

Queen Charlottes fishermen are now landing an extra $17 million worth of salmon a year, said Terry Beacham, research scientist with the department's Pacific Biological Station. Meanwhile, the harm to the weak stocks from Vancouver Island is less.

The Oregon program grew out of research Oregon State University salmon geneticist Michael Banks started in 1994 to distinguish the winter run of chinook from California's Sacramento River from other runs.

In recent years, a network of labs has developed a salmon genetic database that covers 120 watersheds from Alaska to California.

Using 13 different genetic markers on the salmon genome, known as microsatellites, researchers can spot the native river basin of an individual fish with 95 percent certainty, Banks said. Using 16 microsatellites, they can distinguish between the winter, spring and fall runs of chinook from California's Sacramento River.

Testing of fish caught off Newport in June showed they came from rivers from British Columbia to California, with more than half from the Sacramento, and very few from the Klamath, Banks said. By the end of salmon fishing this fall, he hopes to sample 2,000 fish.

Gil Sylvia, superintendent of the Coastal Oregon Marine Experiment Station, hopes the genetic testing and barcodes will boost marketing opportunities for fishermen and guard against farm-raised salmon being sold as wild-caught salmon.

Flattieman.

Edited August 18, 2006 by Flattieman

[mrsswordfisherman]

Hmmmm interesting stuff Flattieman

Thank you for sharing that with us

Cheers mrsswordfisherman