Brachypopomus gauderio is not the only electric knifefish recently described from South America, U.S. researchers John P. Sullivan* and Carl D. Hopkins** have described another member of the genus Brachyhypopomus and given it the name Brachyhypopomus bullocki.
This Monday, a Megamouth shark (Megachasma pelagios) was caught by a Taitung fisherman off the coast of Taiwan.
The famous Sharktooth Hill Bone Bed near Bakersfield has tantalized the imagination of scientists and laymen alike since it was first discovered in the 1850s. How did a six-to-20-inch-thick layer of fossil bones, gigantic shark teeth and turtle shells three times the size of today’s leatherbacks come to be?
When long-line fishing boat captain Rodney Solomon reeled in an air-to-air missile 50 miles (80km) off Panama City in Florida, he did what anyone would have done – strapped it to his boat and enjoyed the remaining 10 days of his fishing trip.
Bottle nosed dolphins living along the coast of Florida are getting used to supplement their diet by snatching bait from fishing lines or circle recreational anglers practising catch-and-release. Some dolphins have even made a habit out of routinely approaching humans to beg for food.
The European River Otter (Lutra lutra) which was once almost eradicated from British waters is beginning to make a come-back thanks to improved environmental care and the reintroduction of captive-bred specimens.
Scientists tagging sharks off the Irish coast have tagged a surprisingly high number of Basking sharks this year: 50 specimens in just three days.
Dubai’s largest reef, consisting of over 1,100 coral-encrusted rocks, has been moved to a new location to protect it from future development. Details of the relocation have been kept secret for more than a year to ensure its success, and the transfer was therefore not announced until today, on World Environment Day.
As reported earlier, an ill-fated eel somehow ended up in the butt of an allegedly constipated Chinese gentleman. Two European fish experts have now taken a closer look at a photograph of the eel in question and given their expert opinion on its identity.
In several species of fish, such as the cichlid species Neolamprologus pulcher, it is common for subordinate females to help an unrelated dominant breeding pair raise their young. The reason behind this seemingly altruistic behaviour, known as alloparental care, has puzzled scientists for many years and one of the most widely spread hypotheses put forward…
Just like dolphins, sharks can be trained to roll over to be cuddled by humans. In experiments carried out in the United States, several species of shark allowed themselves to be picked up from the water and cuddled by their trainers.
Scientists from the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) have revealed that largemouth bass injected with oestrogen produces less hepcidin than normally. Hepcidin is an important iron-regulating hormone in fish, amphibians and mammals, and researchers also suspect that hepcidin may act as an antimicrobial peptide.
Hundreds of thousands of tourists visits Green Island each year to enjoy scuba diving and snorkelling among its beautiful reefs, but no sewage treatment exists so an average of 1,500 tons of untreated sewage is flushed into the sea on a daily basis.
As reported earlier, fish populations may adapt and change in response to significant fishing pressure. Researchers are now suggesting that the genetic make-up of cod in the Atlantic Ocean might be changing, since cods genetically predisposition to seek out shallower waters are more likely to end up in nets or on fishing lines, while deep-dwellers…
This Saturday, about 55 False killer whales (Pseudorca crassidens) stranded on Long Beach, Kommetjie, in South Africa. Both adults and calves began to appear on the shore around 5.30 in the morning, perhaps as a result of the bad weather. This incident is the second large stranding in a short period of time; in March…
In an effort to curb the population of invasive Atlantic sea lampreys (Petromyzon marinus) in the North American Great Lakes, researchers are now testing a “love trap” in northern Michigan.
Criminal gangs are becoming a growing problem in Adelaide, Australia, but unlike most other gangs, these criminals are not fighting over drugs, precious stones or illegal firearms – they’re in it for the fish.
Eleven suspected abalone poachers have been arrested in northern California, officials said Friday. Since the tide was unusually low in Mendocino County, California Department of Fish & Game wardens were aware of the increased risk of poaching activity and kept their eyes on the coast line, including the coral reefs that had become exposed as…
American fishing captain Linda Greenlaw, best known for her depiction in the book “The Perfect Storm” and the film on which it was based, has been convicted of illegally entering and fishing in Canadian waters.
The intricate symbiotic relationship between reef building corals and algae seem to rely on a delicate communication process between the algae and the coral, where the algae is constantly telling the coral that the algae belongs inside it, and that everything is fine. Without this communication, the algae would be treated as any other invader,…
As reported earlier here and here, the retired 523-foot military vessel “Gen. Hoyt S. Vandenberg” was scheduled to be sunk this month to become an artificial reef off the Floridian coast, and we can now happily report that everything has gone according to plan.
Eleven of the 18 freshwater stingrays living at the U.S. National Zoo died over the holiday weekened, together with two arowanas. All dead fishes were residents of the zoo’s Amazonia exhibit; a 55,000-gallon (208,000 L) aquarium designed to replicate a flooded Amazon forest. Zoo officials are now suspecting low oxygen levels to be behind the…
“We are not asking fishermen to stop fishing, only asking them to start releasing their catch,” says marine scientist Edd Brooks. Brooks is a scientific advisor for the not-for-profit Company Shark-Free Marina Initiative, SFMI, who has just instigated a new strategy for preventing the deaths of millions of sharks belonging to vulnerable or endangered species.
The 2009 whaling season has now started in the waters off Iceland. Iceland and Norway are the only two countries that openly defy the international whaling moratorium; Japan is instead using a loop whole, claiming their whaling to be carried out for scientific purposes.
Four Pacific Angel sharks have been born at the Aquarium of the Bay in San Francisco, USA. The pups weighed between 115 and 120 grams at birth and measured 21-24 cm.
Acesulfame K passes through the human body into wastewater, survives water treatment and accumulates in groundwater, Swiss researchers have found.
A group of conservationists and scientists are planning a research trip to the world’s largest rubbish pile; the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. Also known as the Eastern Garbage Patch, the Pacific Trash Vortex, or simply the Great Plastic Vortex; this gyre of marine litter has been gradually building over the last 60 years but we…
After acknowledging the failure of current fishery policies within the union, EU officials are now considering banning the practice of discarding fish at sea.
In this blog we have written a lot about the sensitive issue of bottom trawling, but unlike what many of us think, the bottom trawling debate is not a new 20th century environmental concern.
If you want to learn more about how the charismatic creatures known as stingrays feed, you should check out a new study published in the most recent issue of Neotropical Ichthyology.
The Top 10 list of new species from 2008 has now been compiled by the ASU institute and an international committee of taxonomists. Last year, thousands of new species were described by science, many of them native to hard-to-access regions of our planet, such as remote tropical areas or deep sea habitats, but two of…
Around 55 percent of coral reefs in South Sulawesi waters have been damaged by destructive fishing practices, the South Sulawesi marine and fishery service announced on Wednesday. Due to the destructive practise of throwing explosives into the water to catch fish, only 45 percent of the coral reefs in the national marine park of Takabonerate…
The inclination to end up stuck on a hook seems to be a heritable trait in bass, according to a study published in a recent issue of the Transactions of the American Fisheries Society.
Shark fin soup has traditionally been a must-have among well-to-do Asians and an essential part of the menu at commemorative dinners, such as wedding banquets and New Years celebrations in countries like China, Thailand, Taiwan, Malaysia and Indonesia.
The Snubfin dolphin (Orcaella heinsohni), recognized as a species as recently as 2005, have been spotted while utilizing a rare hunting technique previously only noted in the Irrawaddy dolphin (Orcaella brevirostris), a close relative of the Snubfin.