bluefin tuna

A whale of a tuna was reeled in off Japan, and turned quite a few heads at a fish market in Tokyo on Friday. This was the largest recorded tuna reeled in since 1986, weighing in at 445 kilograms (981 pounds), and sold for 3.2 million yen ($36,700).

“Many of the people who work at the market have never seen a tuna that big,” said a government official from the Tokyo Metropolitan Government, who regulate the Tsukiji fish market. It is interesting to note that the Tsukiji fish market is one of the largest fish markets in the world.

The monstrous tuna, which was auctioned off at 7,200 yen per kilogram, had already had its guts removed and gills cleaned off, which means this whopper of a fish must have weighed more when it was first reeled in off Nagasaki prefecture this week, the official continued.

“It is extremely rare to see a tuna heavier than 400 kilograms,” he said. Yes it is very rare indeed. Tuna generally only reach the 200 kilogram mark, and it is rare to find one of this size.

The largest Japanese caught tuna ever sold at the Tsukiji fish market was a 496 kilogram specimen reeled in in the spring of 1986. However, the largest tuna recorded in the world came from Canada, caught in 1995 weighing in at an astounding 497 kilograms.

There has been a steep decline in global tuna stocks due to overfishing over the past decades. This has caused Western nations to put in a motion for a trade ban on the endangered Atlantic bluefin Tuna.

Goldfish - Not the one in story.

Nick Richards, a 16 year old fishing enthusiast from the UK, reeled in a whopper of a goldfish from a lake in Poole. The fish weighs an astounding 5 lbs, which is only 2 lbs less than the world record for goldfish. By all accounts it appears to be the biggest goldfish ever caught in Britain, and the youngster is quite pleased with the catch. He had set out to catch a common carp, which happen to be in the same family as the goldfish, but instead he reeled in this golden monster.

This is quite a catch, considering that goldfish are only generally 1 inch to 9 inches long, and generally do not weigh in at any more than however they do have the habit of growing to suit their surroundings. Another reason this is such an amazing catch is that goldfish can generally only survive in tropical to subtropical waters, and any sudden changes in temperature can be potentially fatal for the fish.

When asked to comment on the catch he had this to say, “Apparently it’s the biggest ever caught in the UK. I’ve heard it weighs only 2lb less than the world record.”

I would hate to burst the kids’ bubble, but while this may be the largest goldfish in the UK, the record still goes to the goldfish discovered on the west coast of Thailand in the Andaman Sea. That fish measured a staggering 2.5 meters long, by 1.70 meters tall! No weight was given for the monstrous fish, but I guarantee it was a wee bit over 7 lbs. Sorry kid, better luck next time.

That being said, no one can say for sure just how the goldfish Nick caught got into the lake, however there are a few generalized ideas which may explain the phenomenon.

It is believed that the goldfish started out as one of the prizes commonly doled out at fairgrounds in Dorset town, but was later abandoned when it got too big to live in its bowl. It is not an uncommon occurrence for prize goldfish such as these to be tossed into lakes and ponds, as the owners get bored of them, or they do not want to be bothered with finding more suitable living arrangements when they outgrow their bowl.

This is good news for fishing enthusiasts such as Nick, as they can sometimes reel in a whopper from surrounding lakes, and have a good fish story to tell. However it should be noted that the majority of the goldfish which are tossed aside as yesterday’s news, often don’t make it long enough in the wild to be considered today’s news.

It is not known what Nick plans to do with the fish, however you can rest assured it is most likely not going into his frying pan.

There was a lot of mystery surrounding a disease which was rampaging through European Salmon farms, a disease which was wasting their hearts and muscles. Finally, through the use of Genome sleuthing, the mystery has been solved.

The disease is caused by a previously unknown virus. This identification does not mean that there is now also a cure for the disease, however it is a great step forward into solving the problem. Now that scientists have pinned down the disease and the genome, it is only a matter of time before a cure will be found.

“It’s a new virus. And with this information now in hand, we can make vaccines,” explained director of Columbia Univerity’s Center for Infection and Immunity, Ian Lipkin.

A couple of years ago, some Norwegion fisheries got into touch with Lipkin and asked for his aid in discovering what was going on in their Norwegion Salmon farms. They wanted to know what was causing the HSMI (Heart and Skeletal Muscle inflammation), the scientific name for an affliction which was identified in 1999 on one of their farms.

The fish which are infected are physically stunted, and have muscles so weak that they often have trouble swimming about, or even circulating blood around their bodies. This disease often results in death, so there is a great cause or concern. The reason there is so much concern is that the original outbreak was followed by 417 other in Norway and the United Kingdom, and every year there are more reports of the disease.. What is even more disturbing is that there have been reports of wild salmon being infected, which means that salmon which escape the farm are infecting the already low numbers of wild stocks. If something is not done to fix this problem, it could quite possibly spiral out of control, and have a devastating effect on not only local ecosystems but on the entire salmon market as we know it. “If the potential hosts are in close proximity, it goes through them like wildfire,” said Lipkin.

Lipkin and his team, which have already had great success in identifying mystery viruses, rigorously examined samples taken from infected salmon pens. They were looking for the DNA sequences which resemble sequences found in other viruses, and hopefully finding the HSMI-causing sequence. Lipkin compared the grueling process akin to solving a Sunday paper crossword. The researchers eventually found what they were looking for, and dubbed the virus piscine reovirus, or PRV. The virus was unveiled and explained in the issue of Public Library of Science one, published on the 9th of July.

Some viruses which are rather similar have been discovered on poultry farms, and cause muscle and heart disease in chickens. “Analogies between commercial poultry production and Atlantic salmon aquaculture may be informative,” The researchers wrote in the article. “Both poultry production and aquaculture confine animals at high density in conditions that are conducive to transmission of infectious agents.”

The results from these investigations might just be useful when the Obama administration comes up with its national policy for regulating aquaculture.

Bighead carp

The latest plan of action for getting rid of the Asian Carp (a very invasive species that could potentially throw the entire Great Lakes Ecosystem out of whack), comes from Governor Pat Quinn.

Illinois is going to be entering into a special deal with a Chinese meat processing company, known as Beijing Zhuochen Animal Husbandry Company and also with Big River Fisheries located in Pearl, Illinois, to remove 30 million pounds of this horrendous fish from Illinois rivers. Big River is in charge of processing, packaging and shipping the carp to Zhuochen, who will then resell it in international markets, where Asian Carp are considered quite a tasty dish. It is hoped that the company will be able to reel in at least 30 million pounds by the end of 2011.

“We believe the people of China who like to eat Asian carp will find this is the best anywhere on Earth,” Quinn boldly told the press earlier.

The environmentalists, who have been pulling their hair out since June when a Bighead Asian Carp was reeled in in Lake Calumet, were not at all impressed by the idea. They say that it is at best a way to buy time, and at worst a tactic which will kill the fishing industry.

“Many communities have been robbed of their ability to use and fish on the Illinois River by the slow response to limit the Asian carp’s infestation,” explains Henry Henderson, the Natural Resources Defense Council Midwest Director, “Governor Quinn’s announcement will be welcome news for people in places like Peoria, where it might help them get their river back. But our goal for the Illinois River should be to eradicate this dangerous invasive species, not manage a fishery.”

Lionfish

Key Biscayne, Florida – It appears that Lionfish are soon going to be a very common thing in the shallower waters off the coast of Miami. A young Lionfish was captured just off of the Key Biscayne beach this past Saturday, it is only one of five of this invasive species spotted within the last few weeks.

The Lionfish generally makes its home in the Pacific Ocean, and they are known to breed quickly, and often have voracious appetites. This means that these invading Lionfish could possibly throw the whole marine ecosystem of South Florida out of whack by them eating up baby lobsters, groupers and other species native to the reef.

The mere fact that they are present could spell trouble for this years’ lobster season, as Lionfish and lobsters have the same tastes in habitats, which include underwater crevices and holes, and they are known to be highly toxic. They are equipped with a multitude of tiny poison tipped spines, and can give you quite a nasty sting.

Steven Lutz, a local snorkeling enthusiast, managed to catch himself a baby Lionfish on Saturday while in the company of Dr. Michael Schmale, from the University of Miami’s Rosenstiel School for Marine and Atmospheric Science. Scientists are able to pinpoint where these Lionfish come from by running genetic tests. “I have been swimming these waters for the past twenty years and this is the first time we have seen them here,” Lutz informed, “Divers should use extra caution when grabbing for a lobster this season, or they might be in for a nasty and painful surprise.”

Halieutichthys intermedus - Fish Biology, MCZ, AMNH

This is an absolutely amazing development.. Even though the Gulf of Mexico is in turmoil, what with the BP oil spill gumming up the works, it appears that life does go on, as scientists revealed on Thursday that a new species of pancake batfish have been discovered there.

The discovery was published in the Journal of Fish Biology, which is a team of researchers led by H.C. Ho of the Academia Sinica, and reports that two flatfish species have been discovered in the Gulf Of Mexico. The Halieutichthys intermedus and the Halieutichthys bispinous were the two species which were uncovered.

What makes this discovery so amazing, is that the latter of the two flatfish discovered is found exclusively in the area of the oil spill. No one really knows why the Halieutichthys bispinous is found only in the area of the spill, but it has been said that it does not necessarily mean there is anything special about that environment. Some researchers have theorized that the fish simply prefer that environment as it is free of natural predators, and that suits the batfish just fine. More research is planned, however the top priority of course is getting the spill cleaned up.

John Sparks, of the American Museum Of Natural History, had this to say on the subject, “If we are still finding new species of fishes in the Gulf, imagine how much diversity — especially microdiversity — is out there that we do not know about.”

Halieutichthys bispinous - Fish Biology, MCZ, AMNH

ORA has finally announced the initial release of it’s first batch of 100% cultivated Spotted Mandarins (Synchiropus picturatus). Their biologists have been working around the clock in developing the methods to raise this remarkable fish.

Even though the Spotted Mandarin is often considered one of the most popular and coveted fish to have in their aquariums, the mandarins which are caught in the wild are very difficult to feed and most often perish in aquariums.

ORA has effectively eliminated the issue of feeding by training the Spotted Mandarins bred in captivity to eat a myriad of commercially available foods. Now even the rookie aquarium keeper can more conveniently find an affordable, and available, food source for their ORA dragonettes.

However, it should be noted that caring for an ORA Mandarin is not as simple as tossing in a cube of frozen food, and then following up with a sprinkling of food pellets every now and then. These fish are between 1.25” and 1.5” in length, and as such they are still growing and will have gargantuan appetites. This means that you will be feeding your new ORA Mandarin very frequently, at least two times and sometimes more per day. Some of the frozen foods which the ORA Mandarin will readily accept in its diet include: baby brine shrimp, prawn eggs, Hikari Blood Worms and fish roe. They are also used to eating New Life SPECTRUM Small Fish Formula Pellets, just in case some of the other aforementioned ingredients happen to make your stomach squirm.

There is a certain kind of damsel fish, the Stegastes Nigrigans, which will actually selectively cultivate the algae they prefer to feed on. They have shown to actually encourage the growth of Polysiphonia, their preferred food, and limit the growth of other algae which they can’t digest as well. Researchers, which are writing in the open access journal BMC Evolutionary Biology, have been investigating the algae preferences of damselfish and explore their intricate cultivating practices all across the Indo-West Pacific region.

Hiroki Hata from Ehime University, Japan, worked with a team of researchers to explore this ‘gardening’ behavior. He said, “We surveyed 320 territories of 18 damselfish species and thoroughly examined algae from each fish territory from coral reefs in Egypt, Kenya, Mauritius, the Maldives, Thailand, Borneo, the Okinawa Islands, and the Great Barrier Reef. We found that although the crop alga species shifted in the West Indian Ocean, the intensive farming by damselfish was seen throughout this geographic range”.

It has been found that damselfish do not posses any organs which would allow them to process cellulose fibers, and they aren’t able to digest many species of algae. The most common type of algae they feed on is the red algae known as Polysiphonia. Unfortunately, this kind of algae is not very competitive and the damselfish lend a helping hand by killing off competing algae.

The Council of Agriculture in Taiwan surprised the world last week by stating that they had successfully created fluorescent cichlids. These cichlids were created by breeding  trangenic Convict cichlids and Angelfish.

The creation of this fish was the brain child of the Academia Sinica, Taiwan’s national research academy, and took just shy of 7 years to accomplish.

Some other innovative fish that this group has cooked up are the GloFish Zebra danio (Danio rerio) and the fluorescent Medaka (Oryzias latipes). These fish have been authorized for sale, and quite popular, since 2003 when they first hit the market in Taiwan as an aquarium fish.

Dr. Chih-Yi Chen, the head of the investigative team which created this cichlid, has stated that creating this cichlid took a lot of effort because of the lack of control they had over the spawning process, as compared to the smaller fish they previously tinkered with.

The scientists had to literally sit by the aquarium and wait for the fish to spawn so that the gene fragments could be immediately inserted into the Convict cichlid eggs. If it is not injected immediately, the results don’t seem to take.. This made the whole process very fickle.

An even greater obstacle was overcome, when they were in the process of spawning the fluorescent angelfish, as the couldn’t use micro-injection techniques in the same manner as with the Convict cichlids. In this case, they needed to apply an electric field to the cell membrane, in order to inject the gene fragments.

Well, they pulled it off.. The only question now is… What the heck is it good for? A fish nightlight?

Fluorescent Convict cichlid (Amatitlania nigrofasciata) - Pic by JY Lin Co Ltd

In a rather interesting turn of events, scientists have just released a robotic fish, which appears to be able to influence the behavior of other fish in the aquarium.

This “Robofish” has produced some rather interesting results in testing. Not only was it able to get three-spined sticklebacks to join its group, but it also seems to be able to influence their movements about the aquarium.

This amazing innovation was created by John Dyer, Dean Walters, and Natalie Holt, by utilizing a plaster mould and of a stickleback, and then spruced up with authentic patterns and coloring.

The Robofish is guided by pulleys and magnets located underneath the aquarium. This effectively allows the Robofish to move about in programmed patterns. In preliminary testing, Jolyon Faria and some other team members managed to get the Robofish to lead a wild stickleback away from its hiding place and then execute a right-angled turn.

It is awe inspiring to say the least. This is the first time that a robotic fish has managed to have an effect on its natural counter-parts. It is interesting to note that large groups of stickleback were less likely to follow the Robofish, but lone stickleback seemed ready to accept the leadership offered by the creation. It is not known why the Robofish would have a greater effect on lone sticklebacks as opposed to groups, but it is assumed that the lone sticklebacks took comfort in the assertiveness of the Robofish.

More research is needed, however Robofish could have some rather interesting applications in the world today.