Category Archives: science

The end of the unwilling outdoor blood donation

Under the counter sales to them as can reproduce As most of you already know, mosquitoes ferret us out due to the CO2 we exhale. Ditto for anything else that sucks blood, and why entomologists lay dry ice on a white blanket and run for their lives …

Now researchers claim they can render us completely invisible to the hosts of blood sucking insects by giving us a repellant that will cause complete sensory overload to all the creepy crawly things that are determined to make the out-of-doors experience miserable and demeaning.

… to the gals mostly, us real woodsmen delight in bleeding profusely, and show our scars at the least provocation …

The good news is that it’s “1000 times more powerful than DEET.” Which was removed from shelves due to its propensity to lower your kid’s IQ and cause numerous birth defects. A thousand times more powerful suggests that probability may be inching towards certainty, which may make sales to those under 65 illegal.

… not to worry, fly shops will sell little crack vials to them as able to reproduce, for six or seven times the normal markup … Or I will, in the parking lot … for even more.

Print my nymphs in Powerbait

I think most of the sporting fraternity would readily admit that they’re waiting on only two pieces of technology. Surely a lighter over and under would be a delight to own – as would a nine foot fly rod that could throw itself, but if you really want their research priorities it would boil down to the Star Trek broach – that you slap when you tell Scotty to beam you up, or the “Earl Grey, hot” matter-transmuter that Picard uses to summon hot tea and old Hardy reels …

We’ll have to wait a bit longer to be atomized and reassembled, but the burgeoning field of “3D Printing” should have the capability to crap solid objects out of the ether …

… so long as there’s plenty of “ink” in your printer, maybe even a fly rod or two …

printed Chocolate cookie

As we’ve already got our expectations for junk food flavor set as low as possible, you can imagine how Madison Ave will insist on your 9 PM telly being dominated by flavorful and steaming, lush rich colors – and while your forebrain will warn you as you swipe the debit card through your computer, it’ll be too late.

… the flaccid, greasy, thing is already winging its way to you, burping itself into your outstretched hand …

It’ll be a bold new world when you press the “Dozen Adam’s” key … and I’ll be glad I’m able to skip the sodden result …

Feel the Trout … Be the Trout

Yes, but it's protein We’ve not heard words like that since the Sixties, yet you’ll be sharing much more with trout than you’d expect, given that soon you’ll be deciding whether Caddis taste better than Mayflies, or whether you prefer your Crane fly larvae straight up or with a hint of Sour Cream.

As has been well documented, science has issue with bovine flatulence and is determined to save the ozone layer at the cost of your filet mignon. Dutch scientists are postulating that insect meat has everything necessary to sustain humans, and what’s better is they lack that big flabby mammalian abdomen to bust musty …

No, they didn’t ask you to vote on flank versus feelers, they just assumed you’d eat what was put in front of you. More “felt sole science” – slap it on a plate – legislate your allegiance, and hope the science eventually lives up to the marketing.

Whether insect meat actually exists is a topic of much debate. Our West Coast insects are comprised of flimsy exoskeleton containing yellow goo – which alternately compresses and fragments when harvested by car windshield. I’ll assume the ersatz-beef made of insects will only be realized when the nutritionists from McDonald’s mix the soft jam-like innards with wood chips – or something similar.

I’m willing to bet that both flavor and texture might well be solved quickly, given our penchant for already-cooked cardboard dinners. “Rare” might be a thing of the past, but only because the scaly wings and most of the eyeballs burn off in the “well done” variant.

For us fishermen it’ll test our resolve. Which of us wouldn’t be tempted to bust a corner off our burger to start the hatch at 2:30 …

The annual “I ain’t drinking that shit no more” post

There's little comparison Now that Canadian researchers have discovered that Goldfish under the influence of Prozac do not respond to sexual advances, I’m duty bound to ask how much tap water do our Northern neighbors drink before a Goldfish looks good enough to hit on?

… and aren’t we glad that fish have scruples?

Californians are known to house most of the native crazies, much of the lower 48 exports their antisocial types to the coast, where we hose them down and provide a change of wardrobe, before returning them as Presidents or members of Congress…

In other related news, British researchers now have proof that all the gender bending chemicals released into the watershed via sewage treatment – actually bend gender, affecting fish reproduction and inducing as much as a 75% failure rate.

Endocrine disrupting chemicals (EDCs) disrupt the ways that hormones work in the bodies of vertebrates (animals with backbones), including humans.

They can be found in everything from female contraceptive drugs and hormone replacement therapy pills, to washing up liquid, with the most well studied EDCs being those that mimic estrogen (female hormone).

EDCs have been seeping into rivers through the sewage system for decades and have an observed effect on fish, altering male biology to make them more female – hence the ‘gender bending’ reputation of these chemicals.

– via PhysOrg.com

All this research puts us anglers in a bit of a quandary. As many of our planted fish have been gargling EDC’s by the bucketful, imported into the watershed from numerous federal “gladiator academies” – which requires us anglers to adhere to the “Don’t ask and don’t tell” statute.

Which explains why the fish are so damn tight-lipped when my fly floats past.

Outside of the obvious genetic tomfoolery, exactly where is all that water coming from?

“Extra labeling only confuses the consumer,” said David Edwards, director of animal biotechnology at the Biotechnology Industry Organization. “It differentiates products that are not different. As we stick more labels on products that don’t really tell us anything more, it makes it harder for consumers to make their choices.”

Which is exactly what troubled me about the “Mercury-toxic-no-eat-sign” featured prominently at every junction of the creek nearby, why would you go to all that trouble to label something genetically identical to the healthy specimen?

It must be more of that government waste I hear so much about.

Tastes like Chicken

The FDA defends its approach, saying it is simply following the law, which prohibits misleading labels on food. And the fact that a food, in this case salmon, is produced through a different process, is not sufficient to require a label.

We’re simply reminding everyone that this is the week the FDA rules on genetically engineered fish, our thoughts on the matter being well known, yet it’s still a landmark case with impacts far beyond the current focus.

The company has several safeguards in place to quell concerns. The fish would be bred female and sterile, though a small percentage might be able to breed. They would be bred in confined pools where the potential for escape would be low.

What concerns me outside of the obvious, is where is all that water going to come from? Most of the known world is already using its potable water multiple times between snowpack and faucet. Trucking saltwater in from the ocean would be cost prohibitive, yet terrestrial fish farms located close to market implies yet another water-craving industry determined to siphon those last few droplets from native fish.

Close to market means Los Angeles, Phoenix, Las Vegas, and a host of other desert cities, no?

Nestle and the bottled water crowd may be a blessing compared to the the rich soup we’ll soon see in our spigot. The agricultural industry has locked up the rights for any source of significance, yet the aquaculture crowd will insist on something “clean” to grow salmon in – and that combined payload of antibiotics and fertilizer should follow whatever slope is available to mix with local waters or intermingle with groundwater.

If they mix in salt you can add toxic to that blend.

Yummy.

The upside could be a gene or two added to all them roman nosed fish lying doggo in the salmon wastewater pond. If we get lucky we might wind up with sea-run Carp, or they’ll get white faces like the Joker – sight fishing would be so much easier.

Hello 911? I’ve got a heron on life support and am out of baggies

Dr. Skinner's Animal Shelter They’re onto me …

Seven short miles away an entire UC campus is determined to find out why Yolo County drivers never hit anything while driving. My streets and thoroughfares clean of corpses and the local Interstate a lone buffer of Purity in California’s asphalt archipelago …

They claim they’re compiling more accurate statistics for the occurrence of animal-automobile kinetic couplings, but I think the county commission is thinking national game refuge and the funding that comes with it.

Now that they’re commissioning an iPhone app to ease road kill reporting, it gives me blanket absolution from my necro-scavenger hunt and burgeoning life list, and should the girlfriend complain, I can always blame science.

An old iPhone case tucked into the center console next to the array of Ziploc sarcophagi; a squeal of of rubber smoke, a hurried exit, and should the casual bystander note my interest in the bleeding corpse – I’ll give them a friendly wave and stab a forefinger at the cold glass of my Apple phone.

The site’s founders hope to soon hire a software engineer to design a smartphone app. They think one would attract new and younger volunteers, speed up the process, and, with built-in GPS function, assure more accurate location information.

Call me an ambulance chaser, but a quick scan of the website each morning – a quicker call to the boss to explain my tardy, and every Blue Heron that duels Detroit will be reclassified as “long beaked naked chicken” – just as soon as the clasp on my Buck knife closes …

While initially I was put out at the NY Times for lavishing the  “Doctor Roadkill” moniker on someone with clean conscience hands, I really don’t need the rest of the fly tying world finding out from Perez Hilton where I score all the free goods.

For those of you interested in assisting UC Davis and their scientific research –  road kill reports can be filed at the CROS site. While I don’t expect you’ll understand, it would be a great assistance to science should you standardize your nomenclature:

Don’t merely enter “stray kat”, rather use metadata that is useful to researchers, like; “medium blue dun with bronze highlights and a rich maltese note to the forelegs (or maybe that’s just axel grease). Light bouquet, rated a “double bagger” due to rampant livestock.

That’s the scientific method and befits us amateur entomologists.

Conspicuous is my omission of the route to work. Knowing the playful nature of our readership, I’m sure to discover that both Polar Bear and fur seal have a yen for the center divider.

Tortoise and the Hare: How rubber soled wading shoes pose an ecological nightmare

The inherent weakness in the Clean, Dry & Protect doctrine is the lack of attention to the entire wading boot in deference to a nearly complete focus on the sole material.

While the message has been taken to heart, many forums have questions and comments suggesting many anglers have a false sense of complacency regarding their feet once shod in rubber soled wading shoes.

Didymo cell count

Research documents on Didymo from New Zealand show quite plainly that a leather topped rubber soled wading shoe is only half as bad as a leather-upper felt soled shoe. Conversely, you could also make the claim that a rubber-upper felt soled wading shoe has the identical risk as a rubber soled wading shoe.

… and if you’re a neoprene wearing felt soled wader as I am, you’re a bloody plague on two feet.

But wait, there’s more …

“Because of the rapid spread of invasive species such as garlic mustard, Japanese knotweed and wild parsnip, hikers should include a whisk broom or brush as part of their hiking gear,” said Neil Woodworth, executive director of the Adirondack Mountain Club. “By giving your boots or shoes a good brushing before leaving the area, you can help prevent seeds from spreading to the next trail you hike.”

Hikers should also clean their clothing, backpacks and equipment before going to a new area to hike. Campers should shake out their tents before breaking camp to dislodge invasive seeds.

– via the Press Republican

Using Sherlockian Deduction, a rubber soled angler is likely to hike further than a felt soled fisherman, who is conscious that every terrestrial step is wearing down his beloved felt, and therefore …

While you might have the upper hand in the water, you’re a goddamn ecological nightmare once on dry land.

While us “true conservationists” take the long slow slog back to the parking lot in midcurrent – which we’ve irreparably soiled already.

These are the Good Old Days

It really matters little in the greater picture, the invasive species issue is on land, sea, and air. Plants are becoming a bigger issue than aquatic invasives simply due to the available land mass, versus the relatively miniscule amount of water that traverses all those acres.

We’ve got some really burgeoning issues with Knotweed, Mile a Minute vine, and Hogweed, and unlike contaminated ballast water on ships, many invasive plants are common to your subdivision as they’re sold in nurseries.

Given the felt sole bans and legislation cropping up in Alaska, Maryland, and elsewhere, it’s not unreasonable to suggest that some well meaning hiking organization won’t insist that your footwear be antiseptic for the terrestrial pristine as well.

… and while you’re thinking “that’ll never happen” ask yourself why New Zealand confiscated 80,000 pair of rubber soled shoes at their airports.

Introducing the Salmon Pout: Why fly fishing for Carp is the new Purism

In our Bold New World department comes a Salmon angler’s dream, an Atlantic salmon that eats year round, reproduces like a New Zealand Mud Snail and grows twice as fast as real salmon.

The only problem is the damn thing has to be taught how to swim.

Ocean Pout or Conger Eel

You grab a gene from a Pacific Salmon, add a couple more from the Ocean Pout (or Conger Eel, at left) mash the syringe into an Atlantic Salmon egg, and watch the magic happen…

Once you cull the progeny for misshapen ogres and hunchbacks – and fillet what’s left, you’ve doubled your seafood production and the consumer is none the wiser.

As the FDA faces unthinkable hurdles trying to regulate these test-tube fish, producers exploit loopholes in food laws with great glee.

But AquaBounty says FDA cannot legally obligate the fish producer to label the product as anything other than Atlantic salmon. Anything else is voluntary.

–via AOL News

On one hand I’m not so sure anglers will lose out in the mix. At some point a couple of extra genes may produce a scrappy opponent that will provide great sport when planted illegally in a backyard pond, or even the kitchen sink.

As most fishermen rarely eat their catch, we won’t care too much when some lab coat wads a big needle up Mother Nature’s finest, we can no longer afford the outpouring of cash for a weekend-long pilgrimage to the Pristine, or the gear necessary.

AquaBounty says it has launched a “blue revolution,” which brings together biological sciences and molecular technology “to enable an aquaculture industry capable of large-scale, efficient and environmentally sustainable production of high quality seafood. Genetically altered trout and tilapia are the next to be offered up to the nation’s fishmongers.

Once trout hits the aquaculture cross-hairs we’ll see some plaintive bleat from our conservation organizations and the IGFA, but they’ll be steamrollered into quiescence because of the larger issue, world hunger.

If we know we’re headed down this path, the next Theodore Gordon may be the fellow that grows a boutique fish purely for the sporting crowd. Throw a little bluegill genes into some Bluefin tuna, and squeeze the result into something colorful, yielding the Gangsta Trout.

Able to swim at a reel screaming 40MPH, can sheer a seven weight in a single jump, and feeds on Asian Carp, Zebra Mussels, and small children.

Lipstick on a Pig Trout

In light of what is about to occur, I see the Carp crowd having the last laugh, “sure, the water is tepid and the fish have Roman noses, but at least they don’t share any genetics with a Snickers Bar…”

Genetic salmon, Ocean Pout, Conger Eel, Heath Ledger, gangsta trout, asian carp, IGFA, bold new world, aquaculture, fish genetics, carp, fly fishing

We’ve always known our wet flies and nymphs were sexy, it was them dry fly fashionistas that never believed us

I can remember listening intently while it was explained that attractor flies have relied on the color red, as it was the color of blood and should excite any predator.

The Woman in Red

The real truth has been revealed that anything in red is twice as seductive as other colors, and while fly fishing’s founding fathers insisted it was blood, they were really playing fast and loose with a fish’s emotions.

Simply wearing the color red or being bordered by the rosy hue makes a man more attractive and sexually desirable to women, according to a series of studies by researchers at the University of Rochester and other institutions. And women are unaware of this arousing effect.

Naturally the American Museum of Fly Fishing blames all them Victorian eurotrash for another in a long string of sports scandals, all the while convinced Theodore Gordon was both chaste and pure of heart. Anyone actually reading Gordo’s book on dry flies knows he was a cocksman, as every third etching has some fulsome yet anonymous babe draped on the bank.

For the collector it means any fly fishing book authored in the last century is liable to be fuel for a puritanical purge that should drive their value into orbit.

Along with this learned association between red and status, the authors point to the biological roots of human behavior. In non-human primates, like mandrills and gelada baboons, red is an indicator of male dominance and is expressed most intensely in alpha males. Females of these species mate more often with alpha males, who in turn provide protection and resources.

“When women see red it triggers something deep and probably biologically engrained,” explains Elliot. “We say in our culture that men act like animals in the sexual realm. It looks like women may be acting like animals as well in the same sort of way.”

– via Science Daily

… and it’s obvious there’s a few loose ends, as most women seeing red are possessed by something deep and primitive, but it’s usually thrown crockery and a couple of snapped fly rods that results.

The volume of fly fishing magazines whose cover is adorned by stern looking Marlboro-men wearing red shirts and dirty ball caps? About 87%, which translates into nearly 46% of the sales destined for beauty parlors and woman that aren’t angry yet …

females attracted to red, the lady in red, fly fishing, attractor flies, Theodore Gordon, cocksman, fly fishing humor, the color of blood

Tents and pocket lint worse than wading boots

It’s bad enough that we’re forced to endure the obligatory cavity search when boarding the plane – thereby removing all the explosives, brass knuckles, shanks, and belt fed weapons common to fishermen, but our arrival may soon be far worse.

The Nasty live here I stumbled across a New Zealand document outlining their strategy in combating the invasive threat – which includes foreign plants, insects and all the stuff we know about …

The volume of invasives carried unknowingly is enormous – but of particular interest is the items now being routinely confiscated from arriving tourists. Naturally there are the obvious targets like fruit and foodstuffs, but tents are in the high risk group and confiscated immediately.

Shoes have to be declared, and inspected – and may be cleaned on the premises by airport staff, or confiscated, some 80000 pairs were removed from passengers last year.

In 2006-2007, 116,700 seizures were made from 2% (103,000) of arriving air passengers and crew. Contaminated used equipment (e.g. footwear and tents) was the most commonly seized risk good (34%), followed by fruit fly host material (23%) and meat products (10%).

Pathogenic fungus spores, plant seeds, and all manner of biologics are found in debris trapped in the soles of standard footwear.

A study on footwear in Honolulu International Airport recovered 65 species of fungi from 17 shoes (Baker 1966). Pockets of clothing also have been shown to carry potential risk material including dried and fresh foliage, seeds and feathers (Chirnside et al. 2006). Used tents may not only harbour plant and animal debris but also live insects (Gadgil and Flint 1983).
Because tents are potentially going to be used in national parks or other indigenous forest areas, tents were categorised as ‘a major risk’, and carefully screened by
MAFBNZ border staff.

Researchers examined 157 pairs of soiled footwear carried in luggage and found that while the amount of soil and leaf litter adhering to the sole was relatively small, with a median
(range) weight of 1.0 g (0.01-55), this contamination supported a range of bacteria, fungi, seeds and nematodes (McNeill et al., unpublished data). Seeds were present on over 50% of footwear examined, and 73% of all seeds recovered were found to be viable. Nematodes, which are microscopic worms that include a large number of plant parasitic species, were present in 63% of the samples collected.

… and yes, anglers were caught transporting the nasty too.

… used fishing waders and socks have been implicated in the arrival of the invasive freshwater algae didymo (Didymosphenia geminate) from North America to New Zealand.

Assuming a goodly percentage of vacationers wore comfortable footwear due to the walking and gawking necessary to take in the sights, we can assume a significant percentage were rubber soled (soon to be banned on international flights) so we can expect to be replacing all those wading boots again …

Just kidding.

It neatly demonstrates how thin your margin for error is … and if you thought you wouldn’t have to quarantine your rubber soled wading boots, wouldn’t have to freeze them, or wouldn’t have to scrub them with disinfectants and dry them completely … you’re dead wrong.

… and while you’re at it dry those waders and socks too.

Didymo, New Zealand, Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry Biosecurity, nematodes, confiscation of tents, invasive species, anglers