Fish and aquatic news

This Sunday, a mile-long super pod consisting of over 1,500 dolphins was encountered by eight lucky Sea Trust volunteers off the coast of Pembrokeshire, UK.

Twelve thefts of exotic fish and pond equipment have been reported over a three-week period across Hull, East Yorks.

Humberside Police Community Support Officer Sam Gregory said all the evidence suggests the culprits are using the Internet to seek out their targets.

“For the Florida Keys’ reefs, overall, the live coral cover has diminished by 50 to 80 percent in the past 10 years,” says Margaret Miller, a coral reef researcher at the National marine Fisheries Service. According to Miller, the destruction is the result of several contributing factors, such as pollution, climate change, over-fishing, and coastal developments.

One of the most controversial environmental issues of the past decade now seems to have been solved thanks to the consolidated efforts of one U.S. and one U.K. researcher.

In the late 1980s and early 1990s, researchers started getting reports of numerous deformed wild frogs and toads. Many of them missed a limb partly or completely, while others – even more strikingly – had extra legs or extra arms.

Sea Lamprey spawning sites have been discovered in the River Wear at Chester-le-Street, County Durham, by local anglers. After being alerted by the fishermen, the Environment Agency found no less than 12 spawning sites, known as redds, measuring up to a metre across.

You have probably noticed it if you’ve ever tried to catch a fish using your bare hands or a small net: the uncanny ability of these creatures to escape, sometimes even before you make a move. Most fish species are incredibly fast and seem to be virtual mind-readers when it comes to predicting when and where you will make your next attempt.

Most IWC* member countries accidently kill whales, e.g. by unintentionally ramming into them with motorized vessels or by using fishing methods that may entangle and suffocate these air-breathing mammals as accidental by-catch. While this type of accidental deaths is reported from most member nations, Japan and South Korea have an inordinate amount of accidental by-catchs, says Professor Scott Baker, associate director of the Marine Mammal Institute at Oregon State University.

Norway, one of the two countries that openly defy the IWC ban on commercial whaling, has suspended this year’s whale hunt mid-season after catching less than half the quota of 885 whales. The suspension coincides with this week’s annual IWC meeting in Portugal, but is not linked to the meeting or any adjacent negotiations. Instead, a lack of demand in the Norwegian distribution chain is cited as the reason behind the surprising deferment.

The water was released from the North Pine Dam in southeast Queensland between Monday morning and Tuesday night as heavy rains were threatening to overfill the dam.

Of the 679 whales Japan reported killing during the hunt of 2008/2009, 304 were female. 192 of them were pregnant and four were lactating.

Rocky, a snakehead living with its keeper Chris Deverso in New York State, might get a new lease on life.

Snakeheads are Asian predatory fishes capable of breathing oxygen from the air and move over land. They have been banned in the USA since they might wreck havoc with North American ecosystems if introduced to the wild.

South Africa is officially adding the whale and the shark to the iconic Big Five group; turning it into the Big Seven.

No less than 215 anglers from throughout the UK participated in the 2009 Scottish Sharkatag organised by the Scottish Sea Angling Conservation Network (SSACN).

The United Nations Environment Program has now released the first study of the impact of marine debris throughout the world’s oceans. The report found that plastic, especially bags and polyethylene terephthalate (PET) bottles, makes up more than 80 per cent of all rubbish found in the oceans.

A team of U.S. scientists has documented the first transmission of the lethal phocine distemper virus from the Atlantic Ocean to a population of sea otters living along the coast of Alaska.