Category Archives: science

Would Salmon lose their appeal if they were overweight?

That's a Big'Un, alright Will Salmon retain it’s place of nobility among fishermen if they all have big guts, too much cholesterol, and arses to match?

Science is many things, and some aren’t terribly pretty. Fish scientists have labored to find food to feed farmed fish that grows more “fish protein” than it takes to raise the feed..

It’s the same battle they’re facing with alternative energy.

Doctor’s have been warning us of the perils of McDonald’s fries for years, yet suddenly it’s a surprise to learn that feeding vegetable oil to penned fish grows more flab?

This is the first time we can refer to large-scale trials on fish over an entire generation, where we gain more fish protein in the form of salmon than we use to produce the fish feed.

Next time my girlfriend starts to scold me about my ample midsection she’ll get a scientific earful – “that’s human protein, dammit – now fork over more pie.”

They’re pen-raised but seals will ensure plenty escape, and with big guts, I’d like to see a female scape pea gravel into a nest – considering she hasn’t seen her tail in years.

… and you can forget jumping, sure – they’ll porpoise a few times when they’re rested, and the fast water will give them an assist – but is this still the same fishery when you have to wade out to unhook them?

I’ve handled plenty of unsavory fish, but can’t say I’d reach for some sweating silvery blimp that’d founder unless I held him upright.

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I’ve just enough time to squeeze in a nap before midnight

Maybe we need to rethink what's attractiveWe’re being shortchanged, California anglers pay $35 bucks a year to fish from dawn till dusk – legal hours unchanged for the last half century.

It’s for the greater good, fish need beauty sleep – and I’m all for their being rested and refreshed the following day, but if the environment changes, shouldn’t these legacy rules change in lockstep?

Science is on our side, what with the recently released study on the Tennessee River, whose findings demonstrate radical change in mayfly behavior, complements of Starbux, and the Mega-caffeine craze…

Caffeine exists in a high-enough concentration to force-feed a typical baby mayfly the equivalent of 26.6 cups of coffee a day, according to Sean Richards, associate professor of biological and environmental sciences at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga.

We never put “two and two” together, enduring all those miniscule evening hatches assuming water temperature or weather prevented the normal hatch from coming off. What’s really happening is mayflies – and by inference, caddis, and stoneflies, are partying into the wee hours of the morning and emerging in pre-dawn darkness.

I never intended my hard earned license dollars to support prepubescent youngsters pissing away their youth in a cataclysmic blur of hyper-reproduction – where the frantic paroxysm of emergence occurs after legal hours – when wardens prowl and the legal anglers are abed.

Trout populations may not be in decline, and if we’re able to fish between midnight and when the Seven-Eleven closes, 100 fish nights might be common. Even “Whirling Disease” may be a myth, fueled by a diet of caffeine laced invertebrates, trout chase as much tail as we did.

Congress is busy bailing out the unfortunates that don’t fish – so save your moral outrage for the election, where we can really apply pressure.

“If you think about Prozac, it mellows people out for the most part, and gives them a state of well-being,” he said. “If you give that to a fish, then how well are they going to be able to avoid a predator?”

On second thought, don’t write anybody – things are peachy-fine, and I’ve just got enough time to squeeze in a nap before dark.

I’ll see hear you in the fast water.

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Hell yes, we can build a better one, maybe a couple dozen flavors

You design it, but don't shoot the messenger I’ve mentioned the topic before, but am reminded anew by today’s story on the FDA’s genetically modified animal approval process.

A great deal of emphasis has been placed on the fly fishing “boutique” experience, complete with ponderous grain fed trout lolling in hygienic currents – for rich patrons and their entourage. It’s been folded into the sport, compliments of the “grip and grin” photo – where “slabs” are awe inspiring, despite being fed Fruit Loops by the shovel full – with a leavening of Human Growth Hormone as chaser…

There’s only a couple million of us – but that’s enough to have Sage or Orvis commission the “perfect trout” – grows four times faster than normal, eats sewage without ill effects, and can reproduce in a rain puddle without stress.

Declining water quality and the loss of critical watershed to development could be countered with genetics – although we’d fist fight over whether to put an asterisk next to any IGFA record book.

We could switch genetics as often as fashion, introducing Brown Trout capable of 60 MPH speeds underwater, prefers Mud Snails to Mayflies, and glows in the dark – allowing all the conundrums of fishing to be laid bare.

In a neighboring watershed we could feature Eastern Brook Trout with teeth as big as sharks, whose impoundments are fenced with Concertina wire – and all the guides carry sidearms … adding risk and fear, something we’ve never had before.

Throw some original DNA in a freezer so’s we could always return to the “Old Timey” flavor, and toss a bunch of dissimilar stem cells in a blender to see what else we could catch…

You know it’s coming, the consumer angle will be first due to it’s broader market, but the boutique experience will surface in some indoor cement pond in lower Manhattan, featuring piped chamber music, Bling water, and complimentary Sushi.

River frontage in the crap water is still cheap – you may want to think outside the streambed …

Brownline patriotism at its finest

The IAC 1090, hat's off - gent's As part of the continuing War on Terror – wherein our beloved government ensures we go to bed scared of our own shadow, major cities are securing their water supplies through deployment of the IAC 1090, Intelligent Aquatic Biomonitoring System.

Lt. Col. Matt Schofield, an environmental scientist at the U.S. Army Center for Environmental Health Research in Fort Detrick, Md., says, “Everybody drinks water, and the question of whether or not there’s a contaminant or a toxic substance in the water is very real.”

Each IAC 1090 contains 8 very patriotic Bluegill that endure a three week tour of duty sampling our water supply. In an era replete with $600 toilet seat covers, no need to ask where Haliburton the government recruits these finned patriots – or what’s the cost per pound…

Fish cough by flexing their gills to get rid of unwanted particles, like grains of sand, from their breathing passages. If the fish shows signs of distress in response to something in the water by coughing or increased activity, the system automatically trips an alarm, takes samples, and summons authorities by email and pager so that they can investigate whether there is a threat to humans. The cost of the system is between $45,000 and $110,000.

I’m sure they tried trout first, but exposure to normal tap water likely proved fatal. Given the flouride laced, estrogen cocktail served out of our spigot, only a hardened brown water fish could pull a tour of duty without cracking under the strain.

It’s definitely the water

Fishdoo If I’m growing my vegetables with fish crap – am I going to get the same curled upper lip when I mention it was Carp that made that Spinach?

Like people, the “good looking fish” get all the breaks – and fish with big tails, feelers, and roman noses, are relegated to a second tier of desirability – except for the Catfish, and only because 72 million Southerners insist on it.

I figure the next big outbreak of Ecoli will have everyone pointing at the Pikeminnow, while the Salmon responsible crap indiscriminately in your radishes.

Farmed fish effluent transformed by bacteria into fertilizer – feeding a hydroponic vegetable plot. It sounds like the best of both worlds; no Red dye #3 to taint the rockfish below, and no “trout chow” shoveled into the ocean causing oxygen deprivation and blight.

“Aquaponics” is still on the pricey side – and cannot compete with a ball of fish in the Ocean, but it doesn’t have all the detrimental side effects plaguing the large aqua-farms.

These demands make it tough to compete with foreign and industrial-scale aquaculturists on the metrics of price and size alone. (Luckily, the fast-growing vegetable crops are the primary moneymaker.) Cabbage Hill’s customers are mainly local restaurants and markets that prize what Ferry refers to as “farm-to-table” relationships. “These systems are fairly expensive,” Rakocy notes. “So you have to raise really high-value crops and look for niche markets.”

Now all you need is a hardy, fast growing fish that can thrive in tepid water, doesn’t migrate, and is content to munch stems and seeds, as we’re eating all the other stuff.

Would Goldfish flakes be considered a dry fly

Now with Messenger RNA Inhibitors You know Rio or Scientific Anglers will rise to the bait, they’ve made a fly line for almost every conceivable gamefish, rod action, and water density, and this latest trend folds neatly into the light tackle phenomenon.

AFTMA will spew coffee out of it’s collective nose when manufacturers insist on either decimals or scientific notation to cover the line sizes smaller than #1, but as carbon nanotubes are mainstream science we can expect the rod companies to introduce something shortly .. after they’ve figured out that “sticky ferrule” issue.

A team at Kyoto University, Japan has designed the world’s smallest fishing reel to store, without any damage, long DNA strands that have a tendency to become tangled.

Can the 0.0002 weight be that far away – and will they be enough to subdue an enraged Goldfish? Forget “double taper” think “double helix” …

Ignore the Bouquet, it’s all part of the natural order of things

Migration by truck I don’t think the government would be terribly appreciative but we may want to reintroduce the “Viking funeral” for hardcore anglers, what better way to display your devotion than,  “I want to be nutrients for invertebrates.”

A lot of research has been focused at the effect of pacific salmon carcasses in West Coast fisheries, specifically the benefit performed by many thousands of tons of decaying fish distributed throughout the waterway and its banks.

Researchers have traced salmon nutrients to many
different types of organisms, from freshwater invertebrates
and fish to birds and bears and even to streamside
vegetation. These organisms take up the nutrients
by feeding directly on salmon eggs and spawnedout
carcasses, incorporated dissolved nutrients (e.g.,
algae and fungi), or feeding on other organisms that
have taken up salmon nutrients. Streams that are fertilized
by salmon nutrients are hypothesized to be more
productive than streams that receive relatively few or
no salmon.

Salmon apparently have great impact to the insect populations of their host streams, and not all of them are beneficial. Construction of spawning “redds” are destructive to to the host insects – and the density of the spawn can radically diminish insect populations in the prime gravel areas.

After two years of benthic sampling for insect production
and analysis, preliminary results show that the stream bed disturbance caused by salmon spawning activities severely impacts the insect community, reducing density and perhaps even diversity.

This affect is reversed by the decomposition of spawned salmon, and the benefits of carcasses and their debris lasts about 6 months. Researchers are able to see the effects of Carbon, Nitrogen, and Phosphorus, released by the decaying salmon, as their isotopes originated in salt water making them different than resident minerals. Streams vary in mineral richness, and some streams can get a mineral boost in excess of 30% of their historical totals.

Bilby et al. (1996) also monitored growth rates of juvenile
fish, finding that age-0-plus coho salmon exhibited a doubling in growth rate after adults spawned in the stream. In a nearby stream without spawning salmon, age-0-plus steelhead showed no change in growth rate during the winter. High growth rates can increase the overwinter survival rate, and larger smolt size has been related to increased marine survival (Bilton et al. 1982; Ward and Slaney 1988). Piorkowski (1995) qlso found that direct consumption of salmon biomass was the main avenue of nutrient uptake for salmon fry, grayling (Thymallus spp.), and rainbow trout (0. mykiss) in southcentral.Alaskan
streams.

The value of a carcass is obtained only if it isn’t flushed out of the ecosystem due to high water. Streamside debris plays a role in capturing and retaining carcasses long enough for them to be consumed by insects and terrestrial animals.

The bad news is the value to the watershed rises if more bodies are available to decay, as almost all of the Pacific salmon runs are a fraction of their historic size, this makes the host rivers less fertile than before. The implication may be that less returning fish means  the rivers are able to support less insects and juveniles.

The same applies for salmon eggs and released milt. About 30% of the eggs released actually spawn, the other 70% become additional forage for anything able to ingest them.

What isn’t mentioned and might be inferred is the effect of dams on the fertility of a host river. Blocking any migration would remove the beneficial effect of carcasses and suggests the river is immediately less fertile and unable to support historic populations of insects and resident fish.

The short answer is there’s no such thing as a bad way to dispose of fish parts. Tossed onto the bank they’re forage for all manner of terrestrial wildlife and plants, and flung into the creek they’re chow for mayflies, caddis, and everything else, including next season’s fry.

Add it to your list of snappy comebacks should some bird watcher grief you over your “natural” disposal methods – as long as you don’t hit them with it – it’s all good.

Mayflies responsible for Canary population explosion

The last of the brave birds It’s the burgeoning field of “BioMimicry” – the imitation of natural processes in a man made device. Mayfly gills and their movement appear to be the last great hope for canaries.

A tiny robotic replica of a mayflies gill is likely to replace the old “canary in a coal mine” – as its physical properties and size means it can move both airborne and waterborne particles over a sensor head without inducing a counter current with its movement.

The next step will be to construct a tiny artificial micro-robot that can reproduce the switchable gill action of the mayfly nymph. Such a mechanism could be installed in sensors intended to detect unhealthy air in otherwise stagnant areas, such as in subway stations or mines. If a miniature set of robotic mayfly gill plates can move air over a sensor, potentially harmful substances can be detected faster – and no canaries would be harmed in the process.

It’s a big deal because all manner of unhealthy items live in stagnant dank areas, and the speed the sensor registers means someone has a running start for the exit.

This may cause some consternation for us ardent fishing types, some fellow waving and yelling about BWO’s might be complaining about your Bad Wader Odor.

Oh, Hell – just throw a rock at Mr. CandyAss..

Trendy ain’t what it’s cracked up to be

Red, sentient, and really pissed I can only assume I’m part of the larger malady, and you may have noticed the sudden quiet from my end of the Blogosphere. All I remember was a salad and a turkey-dog, then 48 hours of “Kill Me, please.”

The only thing quiet was the blog, as all my “ends” were suddenly clamoring for attention, with me hugging the Porcelain, suddenly really religious.

Little Red vine-ripened fruit, I salute you – and after three or four years, when I can look at you again, I may buy some more. Until then everything that resembles you has been banished from the pantry – and if I succumb to the desire of a BLT, I’ll slice a red donut.

Not being able to stray more than 13 feet from the water closet puts a crimp in fishing, but humor has returned so it appears I’ll survive.

A "false positive" may shorten the outing considerable

False positives are a bad thing The California Department of Fish and Game is taking the offensive on the Quagga and Zebra Mussel issue. Inspections continue for boat owners in the Southern end of the state, and next week they’re planning on stopping all boat owners heading up the I-5 corridor.

Interstate 5 is the North-South highway that bisects California and extends from Mexico to Oregon.

All trailered boats will be required to stop at the Cottonwood Inspection Facility in Tehama county, where boat owners will be quizzed on usage and their craft will endure a mandatory Zebra/Quagga inspection.

Both May 22nd and 23rd from 2 – 8 PM, DFG will have both biologists and trained inspection dogs to facilitate the process.

Upon entrance to the scales, DFG Game Wardens will ask vessel owners a series of questions about their watercraft. Vessels found to be clean will be released and allowed back onto the Interstate; boaters with suspect vessels will be inspected onsite by trained biologists and specially trained detection dogs. “Dirty” vessels – those that have not been cleaned, drained and dried – will also be inspected and could be quarantined.

It’s illegal to transport either mussel, allowing the DFG to detain any boat so afflicted.

To be on the safe side, I’d make sure the salami and cheese sandwiches were stored in the vehicle cab – no sense getting a “false positive” when our four legged friends “lock up” on your cooler…

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