Four Hilton Worldwide hotels in Costa Rica have pledged to stop serving sailfish and marlin after entering into an agreement with the Billfish Foundation (TBF) and the Costa Rica Sport Fishing Federation (FECOPT).

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sailfish - popular game fish

When the practice of catch and release was introduced, a lot of anglers were upset. How can you preserve your memorable trophy catches if you aren’t allowed to bring it home? Today, the trend has shifted – a lot of sport fishers love catch and release since it has boosted fish populations and allowed more anglers to catch larger specimens. Also, the conundrum about how to mount a released fish has been solved, thanks to modern fish taxidermy.

Today, there is no need to bring your fish to the taxidermist to have it mounted. Instead, you contact one of the many fish taxidermists that specializes in fish replicas and provide them with as much details as possible about your catch, e.g. species, sex, length and weight. If you have a photograph of the fish, this will also be helpful.

The fish taxidermist will take that information and use it to create a lifelike fish replica, typically from fiber glass. The replica will then be painstakingly painted to look as much as your catch as possible. If you hire a highly skilled fish taxidermist, a replica like this can actually be even more lifelike than the stuffed skin of a dead fish can ever hope to achieve.

To get a fish preserved has always been expensive. With the advent of modern fish replicas, a new option has become available for anglers on a budget. Instead of having a replica crafted and painted to look exactly like your catch, you can send in details about size and species and get a high-quality ready-made fish replica as a tribute to your trophy catch. This is much less expensive, and if you order from a top-notch producer you will get a replica that really looks like a living specimen of that particular species.

Fish taxidermy has also become greener during recent years when it comes to the actual preservation process. The greenest alternative is of course to go for a fish replica since that requires not preservation at all, but if you really want to have an actual fish stuffed and mounted it is today possible to find fish taxidermists that will carry out the process using a minimum of toxins. Earlier, being a taxidermist was quite a dangerous occupation since a lot of toxic compounds were used to ward off decay, such as the infamous arsenic soap. Arsenic is highly toxic and can be fatal, even in small amounts. Doses too small to cause acute symptoms can still lead to long-term problems such as cancer. The tannins used to preserve the color of the skins were also frequently dangerous, for the tanner as well as for the environment. Even though the taxidermy field has a long way to go yet, significant improvements have been achieved during the last few decades, especially in countries were more stringent occupational and environmental laws have been enacted.

Yellowfin tuna, Thunnus albacares

You like to think you’re doing the world a favor, and doing your part by making sure that can of tuna you pick up at the supermarket is “Dolphin Safe”, however, have you ever stopped to think what it might be doing to other sea life?

To properly understand the conundrum, we first need to look at the underlying history of “Dolphin
Safe” tuna.

The story goes something like this.. Way back when, a bunch of environmental activists got together and exposed those nasty tuna fisherman for the vermins they were. They were reeling in record amounts of tuna sure. But how did they find the tuna? Truth of the matter is, there are really only two ways to go about looking to tuna in the sea; rigorously searching using sonar, boats, and planes, or following around the dolphins.

No one really knows why, but dolphins tend to be associated with huge schools of tuna. So whenever a group of these tuna fishermen went out, they looked for pockets of dolphins and cast their lines.. It worked. They brought in record amounts of tuna, but they were also harming the dolphins.

We got all worked up about the poor dolphins, so the fishermen had to get creative. They now use floating objects on the ocean surface to attract the tuna, and then circle around them with a bunch of boats and reel in everything in the circle using seine nets.

Well surprise surprise… The dolphins are now safe, however any number of other species are now being caught as by-catch in bigger numbers than ever! You see, it seems that most sea faring creatures are drawn to these interesting floating things in the ocean, as they’ve never seen them before.. They go in to investigate, and BAM! They are stuck too!

So, did we REALLY do a favor by introducing “Dolphin-Safe” tuna? The dolphin isn’t endangered after all, but some of the other sea creatures being reeled in now are.. So we saved one species, but put another 100 or more at risk of extinction…

You can read a more extensive examination of the problem by visiting Southern Fried Science.