Tag: Fishing

“Endangered”—You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.

The smiling family and their catch—a large great hammerhead. Photo from MarktheShark.com
The smiling family and their catch—a large great hammerhead. Photo from MarktheShark.com

This past week was supposed to be a happy week for Rosie O’Donnell. She was ecstatic to announce that she’s re-hooked her old job on The View, and will be joining its cast next year. But instead, Rosie is being scrutinized for a different catch—one made two years ago.

In early 2012, photos began circulating of Rosie with Mark the Shark, a notorious fisherman who pompously claims he has killed over 100,000 sharks. Dangling in the foreground is a great hammerhead, the largest of the hammerhead species and one listed as endangered on the IUCN Red List since 2007 (prior to that they were ‘data deficient’). Rosie was immediately and loudly criticized for the act, as the species had newly become protected under Florida law.

Rosie did not respond well to the critique. “chill people – really – my family fishes” she tweeted  to those calling for an apology for her actions. In response to one tweeter, she classily replied “it was years ago asswipe – b4 they were on the endangered list”. After the recent resurgence of the story due to a Slate article by widely acclaimed shark scientist and conservationist David Shiffman, Rosie stuck to her guns. “before hammerheads were illegal – my daughter caught one – end of story” she tweeted.

Or, to phrase her argument simply: the animals weren’t “endangered” when her family caught them, so back off.

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Emptying The Ocean: Trawling Leading To Deep Ocean Deserts

The more research is conducted on the effects of trawling, the harder it is to make a case for why it is allowed—anywhere, ever. It’s especially hard to argue for high seas bottom trawling, the kind that dredges up roughly twice the area of the United States every year and, since the United Nations couldn’t agree on terms, is currently unregulated. Now, a study published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences adds to the mounting evidence that our hunger for piscine protein is laying waste to parts of the planet we have never even seen, leading to lasting changes in the sea floor that prevent recovery.

Deep_desert_PLoS
Trawls are bulldozing millions of square miles of the sea floor every year. A new study in PNAS says that if such fishing is sustained, this is all that will be left. Image from Gewin 2004

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Tuna | Observations

This week I’m in Miami for the first-ever ScienceOnline Oceans! I’ll be sharing my experience with you all soon, but to tide you over, here is my favorite ocean-themed post from my old blog, Observations of a Nerd

Mouse, my adorable cousin, showing off a bubble

“Christie! Christie!” My four-year old cousin tugs eagerly on my jacket. “I wanna see the fishes.”

“Ok, Tuna, we can go see the fish.”

My little cousin loves the word ‘tuna’. She says it all the time. Tuna, tuna, tuna. Everything is a tuna-face or a tuna-head. She doesn’t even like tuna (she doesn’t eat it), but she loves the sound of the word rolling off her tongue. Finally, her nanny threatened that if she kept saying ‘tuna,’ we’d have to start calling her it. My ever so adorable cousin’s response was, of course, “TUNA!” So now that’s her nickname. She’s Tuna.

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