Friday Fishy News - March 9

[Flattieman]

A two-headed fish tale being told at Kamloops Christian

By Mark MacDonald

Kamloops This Week - Canada

March 7

A little fish that has captured the imagination of students at Kamloops Christian School (KCS) has beat the odds — again.

The salmon fry became the talk of the school when it hatched and teachers and students noticed in disbelief two heads protruding from one body.

Maybe the fish, aptly named Two Head by the students, was shy of the gawking onlookers or just adjusting its four eyes to its tank in the school hallway, but it fell into a deep hibernation.

“They just sat on the bottom,” said Nikki Gerrits, whose Grade 2 class monitors the tank full of fry. “So we thought they were dead.”

That’s right — they, as in two.

“It is two fish, but they are like two conjoined twin fish,” explained KCS’s associate principal Karen Chupa.

“We’ve been kind of waiting for them to die, but they haven’t.”

But just as Gerrits was preparing the toilet bowl, this week the fish showed signs of life.

“I was checking on the fish with one of the students and it was just sitting in the corner and we thought it was dead,

“But then its gills moved,” she said.

Now Two Head swims vigorously, if somewhat awkwardly, since the two bodies appear to swim in opposite directions, around the tank — to the amazement of Gerrits’ class.

The fish are part of the school’s salmon project, a joint venture between the Department of Fisheries and Oceans (DFO), Gerrits’ class and Monique Kourtzman’s Grade 5 class.

The DFO donated the eggs and the students took charge of the incubation process. The students will release the fish into the wild in May.

Whether Two Head will join his comrades remains to be seen.

A fish biologist told the class its likely one body will die and fall off, leaving its twin to explore the great blue deep alone.

“It’s a two-headed fish. One fish is alive and one fish is dead,” said Grade 2 student Noah Kourtzman, with his nose pressed against the tank.

But Two Head has more immediate problems. Come feeding time, the lack of co-operation between Two Head’s two halves leaves both stomachs empty as the other fish gobble up the food.

Still, the future looks bright for Two Head. As it careened erratically around the tank, Gerrits remarked its the most movement she’s ever seen out of the fish.

Eating Fish Could Improve Eyesight

NBC11 News Online - USA

March 8

Remember when mother told you to eat your carrots because they're good for your eyes? That's really a medical myth.

But some scientists believe that vitamins, minerals, and even fish might help prevent blindness.

Royal Collette has one of the most common diseases that can lead to blindness.

"My doctor, ophthalmologist, said I had macular degeneration. I'd never heard of the term," he said.

Age-related macular degeneration affects the central vision. Over time, everything becomes a blur.

"The disease is relentless. If we can prevent the end stage from happening, you are much better off," said Dr. Emily Chew, who is heading up a study at the national eye institute to see if vitamins, minerals, and fish oil can slow down the disease.

Previous research showed that vitamins and minerals might reduce the risk of blindness from the disease.

The study found people who ate more than a serving of fish a week had a lower risk of macular degeneration than those who rarely ate it.

"Same with lutene," said Chew. "You see it in green leafy vegetables, spinach, kale, collard greens."

Collette has signed up for the new study with hopes it'll make a difference.

"If you can contribute to whatever advancement they're developing, why shouldn't I? I think it's a great opportunity," he said.

In Illinois, similar studies are being done at the University of Chicago.

Fish contaminated with mercury 'pose worldwide threat to health'

By Jeremy Laurance

The Indepependent - USA

March 8

A worldwide warning about the risks of eating mercury-contaminated fish is to be issued by an international group of scientists today.

Three times more mercury is falling from the sky than before the Industrial Revolution 200 years ago, the scientists say.

Fish absorb the toxic chemical, which pollutes the seas, posing a risk especially to children and women of childbearing age. The role of low-level pollutants such as lead and mercury on the growing brain has been known for decades and measures have been taken to reduce exposure to a minimum. But the scientists say more must be done.

The warning is based on five papers by mercury specialists summarising the current state of knowledge on the chemical published in the international science journal Ambio. Called the Madison Declaration on Mercury Pollution, it presents 33 key findings from four expert panels over the past year. Every member of the four panels backed the declaration which was endorsed by more than 1,000 scientists at an international conference on mercury pollution in Madison, Wisconsin, in the US last August.

However, it runs counter to research by British scientists last month which found pregnant women who ate the most fish had children who were more advanced, with higher IQs and better physical abilities.

The British researchers said that while mercury is known to harm brain development, fish also contain omega-3 fatty acids and other nutrients which are essential to brain development. They studied 9,000 families taking part in the Children of the 90s project at the University of Bristol and concluded, in The Lancet, that the risks of eating fish were outweighed by the benefits.

The US scientists focused on the risks of mercury which they say now constitute a "public health problem in most regions of the world". In addition to its toxic effects on the human foetus, new evidence indicates it may increase the risk of heart disease, particularly in adult men.

While developed countries have reduced mercury emissions over the past 30 years, these have been offset by increased emissions from developing nations.

The uncontrolled use of the metal in small-scale gold mining is contaminating thousands of sites around the world, putting 50 million inhabitants of mining regions at risk and contributing 10 per cent of the global burden of the pollutant attributable to human activities in the atmosphere.

The global spread of the threat is revealed in increased mercury concentrations now being detected in fish-eating species in remote areas of the planet. The impact on marine eco-systems may lead to population declines in these species and in fish stocks.

Professor James Wiener, of the University of Wisconsin, said: "The policy implications of these findings are clear. Effective national and international policies are needed to combat this global problem."

In the US, official government advice is for pregnant women to limit their consumption of all seafood, including white fish, oily fish and shellfish, to no more than 12oz (340g) a week in order to limit their exposure to mercury.

In the UK, the Food Standards Agency advises expectant mothers to avoid shark, swordfish and marlin and to limit their consumption of tuna, because these are the fish with the highest levels of mercury.

The key findings

* Three times more mercury is falling from the sky today than before the Industrial Revolution

* Eating fish is the primary way most people are exposed to the toxic metal

* There is solid scientific evidence of the toxic effects of mercury on the developing foetus

* Mercury exposure now constitutes a public health problem in most regions of the world

* New evidence suggests exposure to mercury may increase the risk of heart disease and stroke in men

* Increased mercury emissions from developing countries over the past 30 years have outstripped declines in the developed world

* Increasing mercury concentrations are now being detected in fish-eating wildlife in remote areas of the planet

Fish extinctions alter critical nutrients in water, study shows

Cornell University News Service

Monga Bay.com

March 3

Ecosystems are such intricate webs of connections that few studies have been able to explore exactly what happens when a species dies out.

Now, a Cornell study using computer simulations has teased out how the disappearance of a freshwater fish can affect the availability of certain nutrients that other species rely on.

Algae, at the base of the food chain, for example, rely on fish to cycle back into the water such nutrients as nitrogen and phosphorus, which are otherwise locked up in animal or plant cells. Fish excrete dissolved nutrients back into the water, making them available to algae, which need them to grow.

The study, published in the Feb. 27 issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, finds that overfishing could threaten the overall health of an ecosystem because it targets important fish species that play major roles in recycling nutrients. In fact, 20 percent of fish species accounted for more than half of all the recycled nutrients in the ecosystems studied, the computer simulations found.

"The loss of the most heavily fished species led to the fastest declines in nutrient recycling," said lead author Peter McIntyre, a postdoctoral researcher at Wright State University who was a graduate student in Cornell's Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology when he conducted the study. "Fishermen are targeting relatively large and abundant species that happen to play a major role in nutrient recycling."

The simulations, which relied on data from Rio Las Marias, a Venezeulan river, and Lake Tanganyika, a massive lake bordering Tanzania, Zaire, Zambia and Burundi, also shed light on the roles that surviving species might play in replacing the lost nutrients. In both ecosystems studied, when surviving species successfully picked up the slack in nutrient recycling left by an extinct species, nitrogen and phosphorus were maintained at 80 percent of their starting values until over half the total number of species were lost.

Studies of complex ecosystems, especially those involving large, highly mobile fish, are almost impossible to carry out in the wild, but new methods are helping researchers better understand these systems.

"Computer simulations provide a means to assess patterns of species loss in a system in which we just cannot do complex experiments," said co-author Alex Flecker, Cornell associate professor of ecology and evolutionary biology, who served as McIntyre's adviser. "But we have to be aware that there is a whole set of assumptions that goes into simulating species loss."

For example, it is unknown whether surviving species can truly compensate for extinctions. In a study of two species of fish in the Venezuelan river that eat mud from the river bottom, Flecker found that the rarer of the two species was unable to make up for the loss of the more common one. Thus, it appears that human overfishing of the common species, coporo (Prochilodus mariae), may have large effects on the ecosystem, in part because of its large contribution to nitrogen recycling.

The current study also revealed that species that heavily recycle nitrogen are not always the same ones that recycle the most phosphorus. These differences would make it difficult for conservationists to prioritize species to protect.

This is a modified news release from Cornell University News Service

Concern over situation of high-seas fish species

Scoop Independent News - New Zealand

March 6

Strengthening fisheries management in international waters "a major challenge" - FAO report

5 March 2007 - Although the proportion of the world’s marine fish stocks rated by FAO as overexploited or depleted has remained stable over the past 15 years, the status of certain highly migratory and high-seas species is cause for serious concern, a new report from the UN agency warned today.

Out of all the marine fish stocks monitored by FAO, 25 percent are either overexploited (17%), depleted (7%) or recovering from depletion (1%), according to the Organization’s latest "State of World Fisheries and Aquaculture" (SOFIA) report, released today. [see definitions, below.]

These figures have stayed roughly stable for the past 15 years.

But the condition of stocks of certain species that are fished either solely or partially in high seas areas outside of national jurisdictions is cause for serious concern -- particularly some stocks of so-called "straddling stocks", which regularly traverse national maritime boundaries and high-seas areas as well as highly migratory oceanic sharks.

More than half of stocks of highly migratory sharks and 66 percent of high-seas and straddling fish stocks rank as either overexploited or depleted, the report shows, including stocks of species such as hakes, Atlantic cod and halibut, orange roughy, basking shark and bluefin tuna.

"While these stocks represent only a small fraction of the world's fishery resources, they are key indicators of the state of a massive piece of the ocean ecosystem," said FAO Assistant Director-General for Fisheries Ichiro Nomura.

SOFIA additionally notes that monitoring of fish captures in high seas areas is inadequate, with catch statistics being reported only for very large areas, making accurately assessing the state of specific high seas stocks difficult and handicapping efforts to manage them more responsibly.

Trouble spots

Looking at all marine species, the percentage of stocks exploited at or beyond their maximum sustainable levels varies greatly by area, SOFIA shows.

Among the most troubled areas are the Southeast Atlantic, the Southeast Pacific, the Northeast Atlantic and high seas tuna fishing grounds in the Atlantic and Indian Oceans. In these areas the proportion of stocks falling into the overexploited, depleted or recovering category runs from 46 to 66 percent of the total.

"These trends confirm that the capture potential of the world's oceans has most likely reached its ceiling, and underscore the need for more cautious and effective fisheries management to rebuild depleted stocks and prevent the decline of those being exploited at or close to their maximum potential," Mr Nomura said.

Multilateral management falling short of the mark

Today's report also argues that reforms are needed in order to strengthen the world's regional fisheries management organizations (RFMOs), multilateral institutions established by governments in order to promote regional cooperation on fisheries management.

These organizations -- 39 already exist and new ones are in the works -- represent the only realistic means of governing the exploitation of fish stocks that occur either as shared or straddling stocks between zones of national jurisdiction, between these zones and the high seas, or exclusively on the high seas, SOFIA says.

Yet despite efforts to improve their management capacity in recent years, "a lack of political commitment by the members of some RFMOs and unyielding positions that mitigate against sound regional fisheries management has thwarted, if not stalled, efforts by some RFMOs to meet and address conservation and management challenges," it adds.

"Strengthening RFMOs in order to conserve and manage fish stocks more effectively remains the major challenge facing international fisheries governance," the report concludes.

The issue of RFMO reform will be the subject of discussions this week among high-level fisheries authorities from a large group of countries participating in the 27th meeting of FAO's Committee on Fisheries (COFI, 5-9 March 2007). COFI will be looking at a number of other issues as well, including the ecosystem approach to fisheries and aquaculture, deep-sea fisheries, marine protected areas, risks posed by lost or abandoned fishing gear, and the fight against illegal fishing.

Key findings

The state of global stocks of marine fish:

- 52% of stocks are fully exploited, meaning they are at or near their maximum sustainable production levels.

- 20% are moderately exploited,

- 17% are overexploited

- 7% are depleted

- 3% are underexploited

- 1% is recovering from depletion

Captures of fish in the wild have reached a record high of 95 million tonnes a year, with 85.8 million tonnes coming from marine fisheries and 9.2 million tonnes from inland fisheries.

Overall, global fisheries production (marine and inland capture fisheries plus fish farming) totals 141.6 million tonnes annually. Around 105.6 million tonnes of this (75%) is used for direct human consumption; the rest is used for non-food products, in particular the manufacture of fishmeal and oil.

Aquaculture remains the world's fastest growing food production sector, with 47.8 million tonnes of production each year. And with capture fisheries levelled off, fish farming is providing ever-greater amounts of fish for food. While in 1980 just 9 percent of the fish consumed by human beings came from aquaculture, today 43 percent does.

Fish and fishery products are the most traded food in the world. The global trade in fish and fishery products has also reached a record high, with an export value of US$71.5 billion -- up 23 percent compared to 2000.

Definitions

Fully exploited: The fishery is operating at or close to an optimal yield level, with no expected room for further expansion.

Moderately exploited: Exploited with a low level of fishing effort. Believed to have some limited potential for expansion in total production.

Overexploited: The fishery is being exploited above a level that is believed to be sustainable in the long term, with no potential room for further expansion and a high risk of stock depletion/collapse.

Depleted: Catches are well below historical levels, irrespective of the amount of fishing effort exerted.

Underexploited: Undeveloped or new fishery. Believed to have a significant potential for expansion in total production;

Recovering: Catches are again increasing after having been depleted.

High-seas stocks: Stocks occurring exclusively in waters beyond areas of national jurisdiction (which can be 200 miles or less). Excluded are so-called “sedentary” species that are immobile on or under the seabed or are unable to move except in constant physical contact with the seabed or the subsoil of the continental shelf, which remain under the sovereign rights of coastal countries.

Migratory stocks: Marine species whose life cycle includes lengthy migrations, usually through the Exclusive Economic Zones (EEZs) of two or more countries as well as into international waters. This term usually is used to denote highly migratory tuna and tuna-like species, marlins and swordfish.

Straddling stocks: Fish stocks that occur both within an EEZ and in an area beyond and adjacent to EEZs.

Greener Fish to Fry

The founders of a Massachusetts aquaculture company believe they’ve found the ideal species to raise.

By Justin Nobel

Plenty Magazine - USA

March 5

We can thank Australia for Russell Crowe, Kylie Minogue, fun phrases like ”G’day mate,” our fascination with crocodiles and poisonous snakes, and most recently, barramundi, the Land Down Under’s most popular fish.

Barramundi have white bellies, silvery sides, and a tasty white flesh high in omega-3’s. In the U.S. they are known mostly amongst seafood chefs and foodies. But Australis Aquaculture, a western Massachusetts-based company that has been farming the fish in indoor tanks since March of 2005, aims to change that. Initially the company shipped 3,000 pounds of fish a week, mostly to select seafood restaurants. But currently, 20,000 pounds of Australis’ barramundi make their way weekly to restaurants and grocery stores, including Whole Foods.

Aquaculture, the practice of growing marine animals in ponds and pens, is more than 3,000 years old. Today it’s the fastest growing sector of the world’s food economy. With global fish stocks declining (a recent study predicted that the world’s wild fish will disappear by 2048 if overfishing continues at the current rate) and global populations increasing, fish farming is likely to become even more common in the coming years.

“Aquaculture is the wave of the future,” says Dr. John Volpe, a fisheries scientist at the University of Victoria, “we just have to come to some conclusion about how we’re going to execute it.”

Volpe points out that by raising fish in tanks, farms like Australis avoid environmental problems that plague coastal fish farms—when these farmed fish escape they expose wild fish to disease, compete with them for resources, and mate with them, which reduces genetic diversity. Since barramundi are used to the tropical waters of the South Pacific, even if they somehow escape Australis’ regulated, slightly salty, 82ºF tanks they won’t last long in New England’s chilly waters.

Australis Aquaculture is the result of a partnership between Stewart Graham, an Aussie businessman and Josh Goldman, a New England fish farmer. The two believe they’ve developed an ideal way to farm fish—and the ideal fish to farm. Barramundi are docile, not picky eaters, and reproduce easily in captivity. By adjusting salinity, temperature, and light Australis induces breeding year-round (fish spend about a year in Australis’ tanks, until they weigh one to two pounds).

In the wild, barramundi spawn in the salty waters of estuaries but spend much of their lives prowling shady freshwater streams for shrimp, crab, and small fish. Some fishery scientists believe that carnivorous fish such as barramundi and salmon are ill-suited for farming because most of their feed comes from wild fish species. Critics say that fishing the ocean to provide food for farmed fish makes little sense—they point to vegetarian fish like catfish and tilapia as more sustainable alternatives.

Goldman argues that barramundi are more sustainable than other carnivorous fish because their diverse palate means their diet can be supplemented with canola and soy-based feeds. But some say feeding a mostly carnivorous fish a more vegetarian diet may have its drawbacks.

“If you use soy meal the fish tastes like soy,” says Dr. Daniel Pauly, director of the Fisheries Centre at the University of British Columbia.

Some epicureans are more forgiving.

“They’re not as flavorful as wild fish, but it’s a version of the wild,” says Jeremy Marshall, owner and head chef at Aquagrill, a New York City seafood restaurant that serves both farmed and wild barramundi.

Aquagrill’s barramundi, typically pan seared and served with soft mascarpone polenta, herb braised short ribs, sautéed artichokes, and roasted garlic cloves in a red wine demi-glace, goes for $26.50.

More than one billion people worldwide rely on fish as a major source of protein, and most of them aren’t likely to cough up $26.50 for a piece of farmed barramundi. But in the future, Graham and Goldman hope to bring the fish to a wider variety of grocery stores where its price will inevitably be lower. Even then, though, Australis will likely cater to more well-to-do consumers, according to Corey Peet, a fisheries expert at Seafood Watch, a group that evaluates the ecological sustainability of seafood (the group considers barramundi a “best choice,” their highest rating).

“If aquaculture is going to feed the world it’s not going to be with carnivorous fish,” says Peet, “but Australis’ model represents a great innovation.”

Flattieman.