picture by: Philipp Rassel

Newcastle may be faced with a new threat to its natural species of fish, the platy. Typically a beginner fish, do to their sturdiness, the platys originate from Central America. Recently however, scientists in Australia have found this livebearer infesting their waters. It is especially concerning because their numbers grow quickly, being live-bearers. Platys also eat frogs and fry from fish spawning, leaving native species fighting against a growing tyrant.

Six platy were found in a drain connected to a main water supply in Newcastle; leaving scientist with the concern that they fish have found their way to the dam. If this is the case, it may be too late to control the situation. So how did they get there? Experts believe it is from, what they are now calling, “Finding Nemo Syndrome.” In the movie Finding Nemo by Disney and Pixar Studios, “all drains lead to the ocean.” The movie has led many inexperienced fish owners with the assumption that flushing unwanted fish is a proper way to dispose of them humanely. Thus, people introduce a new, non-native species into the waterways, which can cause major ecosystem troubles for the natives.

For Information on the proper way to dispose of an unwanted fishie friend Read the Article “Don’t Flush that Fish” by Shirlie Sharpe http://freshaquarium.about.com/cs/disease/a/noflush.htm

To read this article in its entirety visit: http://www.flmnh.ufl.edu/fish/InNews/threat2008.html

picture provided by: NOAA Ship DELAWARE II

Cornell Lab of Ornithology and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution has developed a new Right Whale listening buoy for the Massachusetts Bay. The buoys are designed to recognize the distinctive call of the Atlantic Right Whale which migrates throughout the bay. When heard, the buoys emit a signal to a web-site and marine warning system that lets ships know that the whales are in the shipping lanes; thus, they are able to avoid collisions with the endangered species.

These 50 ton ocean wonders were hunted to near extinction, leaving their numbers today, at less than 400 whales. During the winter and spring months the Right Whales gather at the Stellwagen Bank National Marine Sanctuary; near the Boston Harbor. Over 1,500 vessels pass through this area, and collisions with the whales are the leading cause of the animals deaths each year.

The 10 buoys are placed strategically along the inbound and out going shipping lines. Each buoy has a 5 mile radius of listening and alerts analysts of the whale calls its hearing. This gives the workers time to inform ship captains that the whales are in the area they are headed, with time to avoid accidents. The warning call remains in effect for a 24 hour period after the Right Whales have been detected, to further protect them during times where they are being non-vocal. Ships must slow to 10 knots and post whale/sea turtle look outs during an alert.

The buoy alert system is expected to stay operational for the next 40 years while the Liquefied Natural Gas terminal is expected to stay in business. Hopefully, but protecting the whales now, during this vital time in their attempt to reestablish their numbers, they will still be around for future generations.

You can here the whales live through the public alert website at : http://listenforwhales.org

for the complete article about how buoys are being used to protect the endangered North Atlantic Right Whales visit science daily at: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/04/080428104518.htm

Alligator Snapping Turtles carry a reputation of fear, weighing in at over 200 lbs (90 kg) and packing a bite that earned the word Alligator in its name. Perhaps, the last place you would expect to find such a fearsome reptile, would be in the bustling city of New York. That is unless, like 45lb fluffy, you were housed there to protect the illegal drugs of your owner. Fluffy was rescued during a Long Island drug raid. Since his rescue, he has been relocated to a New England Aquarium as an attraction for their new Killer Instincts exhibit.

So, while Fluffy’s owner may be facing some hard time in the big house, Fluffy will be living a care free life in a turtle appropriate and drug-free environment. Congratulations Fluffy.

For more information on Alligator Snapping Turtles and a picture of Fluffy visit: http://www.practicalfishkeeping.co.uk/pfk/pages/item.php?news=1669

picture provided by Creative Commons at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.5/.

 (disclaimer: Creative Commons has no affiliation to the AC or the views or thoughts published in this article.)

Giant Frozen Squid. photo by: Hideki Saito

A giant female Squid caught by a New Zealand fishing boat in the Antarctic last year, is finally set to undergo dissection Te Papa. The squid weighed in at an astounding 490kilograms, or 1,080 pounds! Up until its capture, the squid has remained frozen, and is now in the process of being thawed out for dissection at the museum. The museum is planning on having a web video of the procedure, for those who want to watch. Scientists are hoping to find what this enourmous squid has been eating, by removing the stomach and examining its contents. The dissection should take a couple of days to complete.

To read the entire article (and to find the link to the dissection, live feed) please visit ONENEWS at:  http://tvnz.co.nz/view/page/1318360/1746926

Photo provided by http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.5/ (the use of this photo does not suggest  creative commons endorses this article or veiw points presented on this topic)

Not exactly news but still interesting: In September 2007, approximately10,000 wilderbeest drowned in a failed attempt to cross Kenya’s Mara River during their seasonal migration, National Geographic reports. Every year, over a million wilderbeest (also known as gnu) leave the Serengeti Plain of Tanzania during late summer and head for Kenya in search of food.

According to Terilyn Lemaire, a conservation worker with the Mara Conservancy, it is common for drownings to occur during migration, but not on this scale. Normally, less then 1,000 wilderbeest will die when they try to cross rivers during the migration. But this year, part of the migrating herd decided to cross the River Mara at a particularly treacherous crossing point. Once they had gotten into the water, they realised that it was impossible for them to clime up either embankment. They could not climb up the embankment on the other side; nor could they climb the embankment they had just jumped off. This trapped the animals in the river where they got swept up by current and drowned.

Living in a herd has many benefits, but the herd mentality can also prove lethal. When the first wilderbeests failed to cross the river and got swept away by current, the rest of the herd just continued to stampede into the water behind them. The deaths could therefore continue over the course of several days until about one percent of the total species population had drowned. This was of course a miserable incident for the wilderbeest, but it was surely a happy time for crocodiles, storks, vultures and other animals that feed on carcasses.

According to Terilyn Lemaire, there was no unusual flooding at the time. The wildebeest merely chose an unsuitable crossing point.

You can read the full article at: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2007/10/071001-wildebeest.html

On South Australia’s Eyre Peninsula, residents of the fisher town Port Lincoln have found a new way of turning fish into a profit, The Age reports. Tourists are now welcomed to tour the marina and swim with the Bluefin tuna in a pen. According to Matt Waller, a former skipper on a tuna fleet, the interest in tuna fish has spiked thanks to the two documentaries Tuna Cowboys and Tuna Wranglers. The success of Tony Santic and Dean Lukin has also been important for the new found tuna curiosity among tourists.

Interested in swimming with tunas during your next holiday? Read the full article here:

Tony Šantić was born in Croatia in 1952 and moved to Australia with his family when he was 6 years old. Šantić is now a well-known owner of successful thoroughbred race horses, but he started out as an orange roughie fisher with a leaky boat off the coast of Tasmania. He then became a tuna fisher and a tuna farmer in Port Lincoln.

Dinko “Dean” Lukin is a tuna fisherman who became a famous a weightlifter in the 1980s, and then returned to the family fishing business in Port Lincoln. He is Australia’s only winner of an Olympic gold medal for weightlifting and he carried the Australian flag during the closing ceremony of the 1984 Olympic Games.

September 27, 2008 is the projected date for the Smithsonian Institution to open its new “Ocean Hall.” The hall will be an astounding 23,000 square feet of displays, facts, history, exploration, and countless other exhibits to help bring man and the oceans together. Ocean Hall will cover an immense array of oceanic topics using an auditorium, high tech video feeds, and fossils; but perhaps the most exciting, for any fish enthusiasts, will be the wonderful live displays.

Ocean Hall will be housing a 1,500 gallon coral reef tank; the coral tank will hold a vast number of fish, corals, and other inhabitants that make the coral reefs so amazing. Perhaps, the most impressive live exhibit will be the 1,800 gallon tank that the Smithsonian will be using to accommodate a 24 foot long female giant squid.

Multiple changing galleries will be set within Ocean Hall, the galleries exhibits changing themes every 18 months; the first of many shows being titled “Going to Sea.” Which covers many important issues in mans relationship with the oceans. This will be the largest remodeling that the Smithsonian has undergone since it opened its doors in 1910; and perhaps one of the most important; raising awareness amongst people about how important the oceans truly are to us.

To read the full article on Ocean Hall and to gather a complete list of all that Ocean Hall will bring to the Smithsonian Institution visit usa today at: http://www.usatoday.com/tech/science/2008-04-25-ocean-hall-smithsonian_N.htm 

A federal judge on Wednesday refused to stop Oregon and Washington from trapping and killing California sea lions at Bonneville Dam this spring to keep them from gobbling endangered salmon.

The Humane Society of the United States filed a lawsuit against the plan and asked for a preliminary court injunction to stop it.

Humane Society attorneys argued that culling sea lions won’t significantly benefit threatened salmon and steelhead runs. Shooting the animals would harm Columbia River kayakers and others who have relationships with individual sea lions, they said

But U.S. District Judge Michael Mosman rejected the injunction request. The judge agreed that it appears somewhat arbitrary to crack down on sea lions when fishing kills more salmon listed under the Endangered Species Act. But initial evidence indicates that sea lions do “very serious” harm to endangered and threatened salmon, Mosman ruled.

“It’s a rather remarkable thing to say that (destroying) an individual animal will cause irreparable harm,” Mosman said early in the hearing. He later called the Humane Society’s evidence of damage “far less weighty” than the government’s.

State officials said they could begin trapping sea lions as early as Tuesday, targeting animals that have been seen eating federally protected fish at the dam.

The plan authorizes capturing and killing up to 85 sea lions a year for five years. But the states’ goal is to capture 30 this year, with first priority given to relocating the animals to captive environments such as Sea World and the St. Louis Zoo.

About 20 slots have been found so far, said Guy Norman, director of the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife’s Vancouver office. Only about four weeks remain in the spring chinook’s journey upriver to Bonneville, Norman said.

“Our No. 1 step is to relocate as many sea lions as we can,” he said. “Whether we will get to lethal means this year is unknown.”

Anglers and biologists have grown increasingly frustrated with sea lions that feast on salmon gathering to climb Bonneville’s fish ladders. Last year, crews counted sea lions eating more than 4 percent of the salmon run, although biologists suspect they probably ate more.

Sea lion numbers have surged from about 1,000 animals in the 1930s to about 238,000 now along the West Coast. Fishery managers say it doesn’t make sense to let sea lions eat salmon while the Northwest restricts fishing and spends billions to try to help the fish recover.

Humane Society officials said the killing of sea lions at Bonneville Dam would be the first government-led killing since at least 1994, when Congress beefed up protection of marine mammals.

Other sea lions probably will take the place of the captured sea lions, they argued. Getting rid of 30 sea lions would save about 2,100 endangered or threatened fish, far fewer than fishing takes.

A decisive hearing on the lawsuit will be held as early as mid-May — when sea lion trapping probably will be finished for the year.

Sharon Young, a Humane Society field director, said the government should back off in the meantime. “We’re hoping they will not start shooting while the court is still hearing arguments.”

I have recieved permission to use this news article from Scott Learn at scottlearn@news.oregonian.com

CBS News website has reported that a 66 year old man was attacked early this morning by a Great White Shark. The man was training with a group of triathletes in the oceans off Tide Beach in San Diego, CA. The witnesses of the attack stated they heard their friend scream “Shark” as he was drug under water. The victims identity has not been released; two friends helped carry him back to shore, where he was pronounced dead at the life guards station. The bite had run across both of his thighs. It was a single injury, which leads authorities to assume that the attack was a case of mistaken identity.

Authorities were quick to clear the beaches and ocean of people as a precaution, leaving 17 miles of Southern California beach empty. Helicopters flew over head attempting to locate the shark, but found nothing. One member of the Triathlon Club of San Diego says that he saw a rare visitor on the beach prior to the attack, sea lions, which he has never seen on the beach before. Authorities are now assuming the shark had moved so close inland; the attack took place 150 yards offshore, in pursuit of its prey.

This is the first lethal shark attack to occur in San Diego County since an Ocean Beach attack in 1994.

For the complete article from CBS News Visit:

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/04/25/national/main4045576.shtml