A stunning new aerial video shows a school of bunker fish seemingly dancing in the waters off of the Rockaways — as they’re pursued by sharks.
The footage, posted on Twitter Monday by the Rockaway Times, shows dozens of bunker fish swimming together, with the school dramatically changing shapes as it dodges sharks that can be seen just below the surface.
When the camera pans back the Rockaway shoreline can be seen close by.
“SHARKS! chasing bunker fish. #Rockaway,” the caption reads “As Robbie Ostrander, our fave photog says, ‘This is some National Geographic s–t.’ Scary and beautiful.”
Spotting marine life off the shores of the Big Apple has become more common in recent years, as the waters surrounding the city have become increasingly cleaner, experts say.
“Bunker along the Rockaways have attracted Humpback whales inshore close to the beach that have been ‘lunge feeding’ through them, scooping up hundreds at a time,” Queens College biology professor John Waldman told The Post on Monday.
“Bunker head south this time of year to warmer waters, which is why we’re seeing them migrating now along our beaches,” Waldman said.
He said bunkers are often described as the “most important fish in the sea,” because they are a vital part of the marine food chain.
Menemsha Fish House — one of the Island’s largest wholesale seafood distributors — has been shut down by its parent company, the owners confirmed Monday, as the pandemic continues to churn up rough waters for Vineyard fishermen and decimate the region’s seafood industry.
Nestled among Menemsha’s historic, salt-crusted Dutcher Dock fish shacks, the fish house has been a division of the independent, Boston-based seafood wholesaler Red’s Best since 2010, buying and selling hauls from approximately 100 local Island fishermen and a handful of other regional anglers who land their catch in Menemsha.
The business, which is the only seafood wholesaler in Menemsha and normally operates year-round, shut down in late March when seafood restaurants closed at the onset of the pandemic. The distributor eventually reopened in a more limited capacity this summer, as catches increased and restaurant demand rose.
But with the season ending, former operator Peter Lambos and Red’s Best owner Jared Auerbach said the economics of the wholesale market became impossible, forcing Red’s Best to officially close the business at the beginning of October.
“[Red’s Best] is providing a service to commercial fishermen, and we take that responsibility very seriously, so we felt an obligation to be there and support people during the fishing season,” Mr. Auerbach said. “But it was not a good business environment. When the season wound down, we had to close.”
Mr. Auerbach said the impact of the pandemic on the restaurant business had a cascading effect on the entire seafood industry, hurting prices and hollowing out demand for fresh seafood. Red’s Best, which has wholesale locations on the Boston Harbor, as well as New Bedford and Chatham, laid off a large portion of its staff when the pandemic began. But after restarting this summer, the Menemsha Fish House location is the only Red’s Best location that has officially shut its doors; the other three remain operational.
“The [Menemsha Fish House] facility was built to be able to expand our purchasing, and be able to process and sell to restaurants,” Mr. Auerbach explained. “With the pandemic, the restaurant business fell off a cliff for us.”
(The Fish House restaurant located near the airport, was affiliated with the Menemsha Fish House during its first year in 2018 but is now independently operated.)
The fish house property, a tiny parcel of land located midway up the Dutcher Dock, is owned by the town of Chilmark and leased to business partners Alec Gale and Timothy Broderick, according to town assessors’ records. Red’s Best owns the small building, Mr. Auerbach said, which was recently renovated to include a loft office and a commercial freezer for storage.
The building and property is commercially zoned as working waterfront and leased with the specific intended use of seafood wholesaling, according to Mr. Lambos.
Mr. Gale was not immediately available for comment Monday.
In 2018, Mr. Lambos said of the Island’s 28 licensed seafood distributors, the Menemsha Fish House was responsible for wholesaling approximately 27 per cent of the catch, including 96 per cent of its scup, 88 per cent of its sea bass, around 70 per cent of the Island’s fluke and 50 per cent of its striped bass. The distributor also bought and sold lobster and hard-shell clams, and serviced about 45 per cent of the Island’s approximately 250 commercial fishermen.
“The closure definitely puts a huge dent,” Mr. Lambos said. “We bought everything that came through the door. We weren’t like, all right, our case is full right now, we can’t buy anything. The purge valve wasn’t an option. It was the whole part.”
Unlike other licensed Island distributors, like independent oystermen or The Net Result in Vineyard Haven, the Menemsha Fish House operated on a larger, industry-wide scale. Fishermen who landed catch on the Island could offload almost any species at the shack, which would then try to sell as much as it could to Island restaurants before distributing the rest to Boston through Red’s Best. The connection with Red’s Best also allowed the fish house to bring certain less prevalent species to the Island for distribution, like salmon.
But Mr. Lambos said this summer was particularly difficult, with catch numbers way down for fishermen and the expenses of distributing seafood off-Island onerous. Whereas in normal years the fish house employed up to seven people during the summer, it was down to two this year.
“We were barely keeping our head above water during busy time,” he said. “And then we got to the shoulder season, and the expenses . . . it cost $1,000 just to get the product off-Island.”
Island fishermen do have other options for off-loading their catch, including taking it to the mainland themselves or selling directly to other outlets. But transporting the catch off-Island involves added time, expense and equipment, as well as inconvenience, Mr. Lambos said. The fish house also had personal relationships with Island fishermen who preferred dealing individually with the wholesaler, buying everything from half a million farmed Island oysters in 2018 to thousands of pounds of fresh tuna that was landed in Chilmark.
“Having that large-scale, wholesale business on the Island is crucial to the Island fishing industry and its history,” Mr. Lambos said. “It’s small-boat [fishermen]. It’s basically all owner operated. It’s families. And you know, you got to be able to see it. I like to joke that we’re like the Plimoth Plantation, with people coming by and watching us unload the fish, modeling the industry.”
Mr. Auerbach said despite the closure, Red’s Best has no intention to leave Island fishermen high and dry come spring. And Mr. Lambos said that Red’s Best was currently working with the Martha’s Vineyard Fishermen’s Preservation Trust — a nonprofit dedicated to preserving the Island fishing industry and the historic Menemsha fishing village — to fill the void left by the fish house’s closing.
“There will be options for fishermen to sell fish in Menemsha going forward,” Mr. Auerbach said. “We’ll find a way to not leave any fishermen stranded.”
Barbara Williams noticed an odor emanating from the ailing Indian River Lagoon on Saturday in Cocoa. And when she walked toward her dock at her Indian River Drive home, she spotted washed-up casualties from an ongoing algal bloom.
“I noticed several white blobs. And I looked a little closer, and I said, ‘Gosh, those are stingrays — and they’re turned upside down,’ " Williams said.
“We had noticed the water right before Thanksgiving: I had never seen it that root-beer color. It had gone from that pea-green to root beer. And I’ve just never seen it that color,” she said.
“We’ve lived for 17 years on the river here,” she said.
The St. Johns River Water Management District and partner organizations continue receiving reports of fish kills in the Indian River Lagoon from the past few days, News 6 partner Florida Today reported. Areas of concern are centered near State Road 528, near Williams’ home, and State Road 520.
For months, officials have feared that ongoing lagoon algae blooms could eventually kill marine life and seagrass on a large scale. Ongoing warmer-than-usual temperatures have worsened the situation.
Mike Conner is executive director of Indian Riverkeeper, which tackles environmental issues along the estuary’s 156-mile length from New Smyrna Beach to Jupiter Inlet. He said suffocating, single-celled algae have proliferated for months in separate blooms with “totally different colorations” across the Cocoa-Merritt Island area — the Banana River is green, while the Indian River looks brown.
“Once the water does clear, once the bloom has been beat back, I can only imagine the seagrass density is going to be just shot up there. It was already bad,” Conner said.
“Seagrass hasn’t gotten any sunlight in any way, shape or form the last few months. And I have to wonder what’s left on the bottom,” he said.
Friday afternoon, Conner took water samples at the Hubert H. Humphrey Bridge boardwalk on Merritt Island. He found the algal bloom had reduced dissolved-oxygen levels to 1.5 milligrams per liter — too low to support marine life for long.
“Those readings can’t support life. You need at least three parts, if not four, for marine organisms to have a chance,” Conner said.
Conner posted Merritt Island fish kill photos and video Saturday on the Indian Riverkeeper Facebook page. He noted dead stingrays, skates, shrimp, pinfish, trout, whiting, croakers, saltwater catfish and juvenile flounder.
“Notice that ‘bottom’ species such as flounder, catfish and even shrimp are in the top foot of the water column, if not at the surface gasping for oxygen. At one point a school of small mangrove snapper came to the top, too,” the post said.
Low dissolved-oxygen concentrations have also been recorded in lagoon water in Titusville, SJRWMD officials reported Saturday.
“(Marine animals) are trying to get air anyway they can. We were seeing shrimp the other day during broad daylight, and that’s very unusual,” Conner said.
On a positive note, a cold front is forecast to sweep across the Space Coast on Monday — sending the mercury plunging. In the Cocoa-Patrick Air Force Base region, low temperatures should settle around 50 degrees Monday night, the National Weather Service reported.
Northwesterly winds could gust as high as 25 mph. Tuesday’s high may only reach 58, with a nighttime low around 46.
“Cooler water can hold more dissolved oxygen than hot water. So that’s a good thing. Also, the winds are going to be pretty brisk. And that’s going to rough up the surface of the lagoon. It’s going to add oxygen to the water,” said Conner, who lives in Jensen Beach.
“I’m looking forward to come up there in about two or three days and seeing what the difference is. So the timing of this cold front is good,” he said.
“But cold fronts don’t kill algal blooms. You know, this brown algal bloom that’s so pervasive up there? That has lasted all winter long in different years,” he said.
Aaron Koning, a postdoctoral research fellow at the University of Nevada, Reno’s Global Water Center, has spent seven years studying a network of freshwater protected areas (fish reserves) that communities established in one branch of the Salween River Basin in northern Thailand.
Working with the communities that rely on the river, he established friendships and trust and gained important insights that helped in his work to study how freshwater reserves help both the fish in the river and the people whose daily lives revolve around the Ngao River – the river of shadows.
In his most recently published research of this reserve network in Thailand, he found that the freshwater fish reserves are extraordinarily successful at protecting multiple species of fish. He mapped more than 50 reserves, all community organized and managed independently of government support, throughout the river and its branches.
“The conservation benefits of each reserve established independently by local Pgagayaw, or Karen, indigenous communities are remarkable, and the collective benefits for fish within the entire network of reserves are even greater,” Koning said. “Twenty-seven years ago, one community created a reserve in an effort to protect their fish, and since then reserves have spread among communities throughout the valley. It’s a great story of effective community-based resource management.”
Koning worked with a team of scientists who he had known from his work at the University of Wisconsin-Madison: Martin Perales from the University of Wisconsin-Madison; Etienne Fluet-Chouinard, now from Stanford University, and aquatic conservation ecologist and Associate Professor Peter McIntyre of Cornell University.
“During the six weeks of fieldwork related to this study, Martin and I lived with friends in riverside villages, but made the 90-minute drive to Mae Sarieng for internet access on a couple of weekends, The families we stayed with have been like my extended host family for the past seven years, with friends and relatives spread throughout the river valley.”
They bounced around the study area of the 50-mile-long Ngao River in a 1999 Toyota Hilux 4X4 truck, through the various communities, including teak forests and upland agricultural areas with rice paddies and soybean crops.
“When I initially started documenting the locations of reserves several years ago, I tried to find the locations of as many reserves within the basin as I could by exploring every road and trail on the map, and many that weren’t on any map,” he said. “For our fish surveys, we selected a set of 23 reserves distributed throughout the river basin that broadly represented all of the reserves. While there are probably 40 species within this river valley, in this study we regularly observed 33 species of fish.”
Fish Surveys
His fish surveys were conducted during the dry season, when little or no rain falls from November to May. In the wet season, the river increases in height by more than 12 feet, everything is lush and damp and the teak and dipterocarp trees dominate much of the landscape along with as well as upland agricultural areas, rice paddies, and soybeans being grown.
Intensive fisheries have reduced fish biodiversity and abundance in aquatic ecosystems worldwide. No-take reserves have become a cornerstone of marine ecosystem-based fisheries management. The team used the knowledge gained from decades of study on marine reserves to test if the same principles of success might apply to this network of riverine reserves, where one might not think reserves would work.
“The applicability of this marine reserve network paradigm to riverine biodiversity and inland fisheries remains largely untested,” Koning said. “Our research shows that freshwater reserves created by 23 separate communities in Thailand’s Salween basin have dramatically increased fish richness, density and biomass when compared to adjacent areas. One river reserve is 1,000 feet long and just 12 feet wide in dry season, but you can see fish everywhere.”
Underwater fish surveys were done using masks and snorkels with lots of crawling over and around rocks underwater. In many reserves, the abundance and size of fish seeking protection was evident by eye from the river bank in the dry season.
McIntyre, now Koning’s colleague in this research, was once his doctoral advisor at the University of Wisconsin, and co-advisor for his postdoctoral work at Cornell. McIntyre said he was shocked that the reserves worked so well.
“When you see piles of fish in each of these reserves, it is clear that something big is happening,” he said. “Questions remain about whether the fish populations are viable in the long run, and how durable the governance approach will prove, but this unique experiment in conservation still has much to teach us.”
Small reserves enhance fisheries
Despite their small size, grassroots reserves enhanced the species richness, density and biomass of protected fish communities enormously. Relative to adjacent fished areas with comparable water depth and substrate composition, reserves held 27% more fish species; 124% higher fish density and an astounding 2,247% higher biomass on average.
“Our results demonstrate that small reserves have great benefits for intensively harvested fishes in this tropical river, even though their collective area encompasses only 2% of the flowing water in the entire river basin,” Koning said. “The area of individual reserves ranged from just a half acre up to six acres.”
“One of the most important findings is that the network of reserves adds benefits beyond those arising from any single reserve,” McIntyre said. “Another key lesson is that communities have the power to protect the resource themselves, in a way that doesn't prevent them from using it intensively outside of the reserve boundary.”
This study demonstrates that fish reserves can work well in subsistence fisheries targeting rivers, thereby offering a model for protecting fish biodiversity and offsetting overfishing in rivers worldwide. The study is especially timely given that overharvest of fisheries threatens thousands of species and the food security of hundreds of millions of people around the world.
Study has global impacts
“Freshwaters are under-represented among the world’s protected areas, and our findings suggest that networks of small, community-based reserves offer a generalizable model for protecting biodiversity and augmenting fisheries as the world’s rivers face unprecedented pressures,” Koning said.
In Southeast Asia, riverine reserves are commonplace; hundreds of communities have designated no-fishing zones that together form de facto reserve networks in rivers throughout the region.
“The communities are quite reliant on the river,” Koning said. “Each community has a conserved forest on a small tributary from which they take their community drinking water. For areas which have paddy rice fields, the river provides the irrigation water.”
The river also provides food, especially during the long dry season when little is growing on the landscape. During this time communities harvest more fish, due to both the water levels being lower and the break from agricultural activities during this season allows spending more effort on fishing.
“The river is also a recreational place during the dry season when kids swim regularly,” he said. “Community members talk about the importance of the reserves for conserving fish, that they want to ensure there are fish for their children and grandchildren.”
The river also provides some communities with revenue from tourism. There are community trekking guides that take clients rafting on bamboo rafts down the river.
“There is a nascent catch-and-release angling program that some Thai friends of mine are working with Ngao River communities to establish,” he said. “Basically, a guide from a riverside village will take recreational anglers to fish in the fish reserves, with the permission of the community, which receives a fee for the access to support the community’s ongoing conservation efforts.”
There are only a few communities participating in this tourism model, but already it appears some communities are considering expanding their reserves to enable more recreational anglers to participate and perhaps generate more revenue.
“The harvest of fish is mostly for local consumption, but occasionally if a large fish or a couple of large fish are caught, they will sell them to middlemen, who then drive them to the nearest city, Mae Sarieng, to sell at the hotels or restaurants. But there isn’t really a commercial harvest of fish, most people catch fish for their own use and share what they can’t eat with family or others in the community.”
The idea of freshwater fish reserves has the potential to be a big step forward in terms of freshwater biodiversity protection, not just in Thailand but worldwide. These results and the model could be applied in freshwater ecosystems worldwide - including highly diverse and highly threatened tropical rivers such as the Amazon, Congo and Mekong Rivers.
McIntyre echoed Koning’s take on the potential for worldwide implementation.
“Aaron's findings offer a great model for other parts of the world, “he said. “The role of cultural traditions and governance structure can't be overstated, so we do not expect simplistic transferability. However, many of the principles identified could be applicable to subsistence fisheries elsewhere.”
Koning is currently a postdoctoral researcher working with Zeb Hogan and based at the University of Nevada, Reno’s Global Water Center in the College of Science.
Koning and Hogan, an aquatic conservation ecologist, along with Sudeep Chandra, the Director of the Global Water Center at the University of Nevada, Reno will be replicating the Thailand study on Cambodian rivers as part of their Wonders of the Mekong project, a comprehensive approach to fish conservation, economics and cultural values.
The Wonders of the Mekong Project, a partnership with the Inland Fisheries Research and Development Institute of Cambodia with funding from U.S. Agency for International Development, is led by Hogan. They conduct applied research, working to build capacity and develop outreach and communications products to highlight the economic, ecological, and cultural values of biodiversity and ecosystem services associated with the Lower Mekong River. The Wonders project will be building on the findings of this Ngao River study.
Anglers in North Dakota should check out the 2020-22 Fishing Guide or the state Game and Fish Department’s website for winter fishing regulations, plus fishing questions and answers.
New research led by Australian scientists shows that the biggest fish in the sea are female!
Introducing the whale shark (Rhincodon typus). Officially known as the world’s largest fish, they grow up to maximum known size of about 60 feet (18 meters) total length (TL). Their large size implies that they are slow to grow and therefore have longevity, but data on the growth patterns of whale sharks is very limited. This is a problem for scientists since age and growth data are central to the management of any species, especially one of this immense size. Whale sharks also have low resilience to anthropogenic threats such as overfishing, warming oceans and ship strikes. In fact, declines in abundance have led to these majestic animals recently being classified as Endangered by the IUCN Red List.
Introducing the whale shark (Rhincodon typus). Officially known as the world’s largest fish, they ... [+]grow up to maximum known size of about 60 feet (18 meters) total length (TL). Their large size implies that they are slow to grow and therefore have longevity, but data on the growth patterns of whale sharks is very limited.
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This is especially true for whale sharks that call Ningaloo Reef home. A World Heritage-listed site, Ningaloo is found halfway up the West Australian coastline. Although 500 species of tropical fish are found within Ningaloo Marine Park, it is the whale shark that garners the most attention. Large numbers visit every year from April to July, along the world's largest fringing reef that measures 162 miles (260 kilometers) long. This decade-long study, led by Dr. Mark G. Meekan of the Australian Institute of Marine Science at The University of Western Australia, recorded the growth patterns of free-swimming whale sharks at an aggregation site at Ningaloo.
This whale shark population has been monitored for a while, including having their photos taken for identification and stereo-video measurements of size throughout the years. But how can the scientists tell them apart? This constellation-like pattern sure does look alike! While to the untrained eye they look identical, these spot and stripe patterns are unique to individuals. Therefore, photographs of these patterns taken by snorkelers, divers, and trained scientists can be used as an identifying tag in mark-recapture studies.
Whale sharks have low resilience to anthropogenic threats such as overfishing, warming oceans and ... [+]ship strikes. In fact, declines in abundance have led to these majestic animals recently being classified as Endangered by the IUCN Red List.
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A total of 54 (6 females, 48 males) whale sharks were resighted and successfully measured across the 10-year sampling period. The results reveal that female whale sharks grow more slowly than boys but end up measuring longer! These results don’t come too much of a surprise since there exist numerous examples of shark species where females grow to larger sizes than males, including great hammerhead (Sphyrna mokarran), bonnethead (Sphyrna tiburo), blacknose (Carcharhinus acronotus), and shortfin mako (Isurus oxyrinchus) sharks.
This gentle giant has captured many hearts around the world, and in Western Australia (WA) it has become their marine animal emblem! In 2016, the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) officially declared the whale shark Endangered. The IUCN Red List classifies animals worldwide into categories ranging from Least Concern to Extinct, and with this recent change in classification for the whale shark only two categories (Critically Endangered and Extinct in the Wild) stand in the way of us… well, possibly losing these beautiful animals. Thankfully, they are protected in Australian waters under both state and federal law.
In this photo provided by the Wyoming Game and Fish Department is a hornyhead chub, a native fish in only a few streams in Wyoming, often considered a glacial relic near Fort Laramie, Wyo., on July 31, 2014. Wyoming Game & Fish biologists are working to expand the fish's range. In September, biologists released 308 hornyhead chub collected in the Laramie River to the Sweetwater River. Another transplant is planned next year.
In this photo provided by the Wyoming Game and Fish Department, biologists sample the Laramie River for hornyhead chub near Fort Laramie, Wyo., on June 20, 2013. The fish lives in the Laramie and North Laramie Rivers and was recently transplanted into the Sweetwater River.
By CHRISTINE PETERSON Casper Star-Tribune
CASPER, Wyo. (AP) — Tucked away in the remotest stretches of some of the remotest streams is a small fish that in the spring uses its head to build forts for its eggs.
The hornyhead chub, known for strange bumps that help in fort building, is one of Wyoming’s rarest fish. It’s also one of its most interesting, if you ask any local fisheries biologist.
The 5- to 7-inch long fish can carry rocks as big as its head to build a wall around its nest. It also allows other small, native fish to lay their eggs in its fort, then protects the array of soon-to-be fry.
And the hornyhead chub is making a bit of a comeback.
With some help from Wyoming Game and Fish Department biologists, it recently expanded its range by 50%. For a fish that was only in two streams, a 50% increase is notable.
“One of our goals, and mine personally, is that we don’t lose a single native species in this state, whether a fish or amphibian or bird,” David Zafft, fisheries management coordinator for Game and Fish, told the Casper Star-Tribune. “We won’t hang onto them everywhere, but some places we can. There are so few areas where the hornyhead chub lives, and we can’t afford to lose it.”
Ask an angler in, say, Ohio, and they’ll likely wonder why the fuss about a fish so common it’s used as bait. The hornyhead chub’s native range extends from eastern North Dakota to western New York and down to northern Arkansas. In much of that area they’re plentiful. But many western streams, where few populations remained as glacial relics, it has struggled.
It no longer exists in Colorado and Nebraska, and in Wyoming, where it never had much of a native range, it lived in isolated portions of the Laramie and north Laramie Rivers.
Causes for extirpation from states like Colorado likely run the gambit from degraded habitat and introduced predatory fish like smallmouth bass to increased levels hormones in the water that cause males to be unable to spawn, said Zafft.
In Wyoming, the fish lived in about 16 miles of the Laramie River and eight miles of the North Laramie River in the Laramie Range.
That was until the Arapaho Fire.
The 2012 blaze was one of Wyoming’s largest at the time, burning about 100,000 acres and destroying 90 buildings. A large rain shortly after sent a flood of ash, soot and debris down the winding, North Laramie River so thick that it eliminated all eight miles of habitat and killed thousands of fish, including the hornyhead chub.
“If they don’t have a place to move to get out of the way, suspended ash coats their gills and suffocates them,” said Steve Gale, fisheries biologist in the Laramie region.
So Game and Fish biologists worked with landowners along the North Laramie River and began transplanting hornyhead chub from the Laramie River. Each year proved more promising, and this year, populations in the North Laramie matched those from before the fire.
But even with those successes, the chub still had a very limited range in Wyoming.
Some might ask why it matters if a small fish with funny horns on its head lives or dies. It’s not a sport fish. It’s not even a bait fish. It is, however, a critical part of Wyoming’s natural systems, said Zafft.
“I consider them more of an indicator species of healthy habitat like somebody might the spotted owl in a northwest boreal forest,” Zafft said.
The chub requires cold, clean water and plenty of gravel to build its nests.
“If you have hornyhead chub around it means you have bears and birds and all sorts of native species because they have a pretty unique set of habitat requirements that are very easy to mess up,” he added.
And about that nest building.
During breeding season, the males grow a dozen or more small bumps – tiny horns, if you will – on the top of their heads. They use those to scoop and scoot rocks and dirt into a pile. The male then picks up rocks with its mouth and drops them on top, increasing the mound.
About five years ago, Game and Fish partnered with the University of Wyoming’s cooperative fish and wildlife unit to look at other areas the hornyhead chub may have lived, and could successfully be reintroduced in Wyoming.
Biologists found one historical record of the hornyhead chub in the Sweetwater River. That lone fish was collected in 1852 and is currently preserved in the Smithsonian, said Paul Gerrity, a fisheries biologist in the Lander region.
No one knows why other records don’t exist from the Sweetwater, but Gerrity has a few theories. Historical records from the 1800s talk about how cattle moving through on the Oregon Trail overgrazed a mile or more on the sides of the Sweetwater River. Because the hornyhead chub exists in such isolated portions of streams, it’s entirely possible that livestock grazing wiped the small population out with that lone specimen proving their existence.
The study also labeled the Sweetwater River as prime hornyhead chub habitat because of its clear water, gravel bottom, lack of the most concerning nonnative predators and the existence of other native fish like Iowa darter and bigmouth shiner.
So in September, Game and Fish biologists released 308 hornyhead chub collected from the Laramie River into the Sweetwater. Another transplant is planned for 2021.
“We have a moral obligation, and Game and Fish has a statutory obligation, to ensure their existence,” Gerrity said.
Plus, he added: “They’re just a neat native fish.”
For copyright information, check with the distributor of this item, Casper (Wyo.) Star-Tribune.
FILE PHOTO: Britain's Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Secretary George Eustice walks outside Downing Street in London, Britain, September 30, 2020. REUTERS/Hannah McKay
LONDON (Reuters) - Britain dug in its heels over fishing in Brexit negotiations with the European Union, demanding an end to what its environment minister cast as an unfair system of EU fishing in its waters.
Britain wants “zonal attachment” to agree a total allowable catch for the United Kingdom’s waters - a step that would give it a much larger quota share than if the fish maths were worked out on the EU’s proposals.
“All we’re asking for ... is there to be annual negotiations based on the science and also for there to be a move towards a fairer, more scientific sharing methodology which is called zonal attachment which is broadly where the fish are to be found,” Environment Secretary George Eustice told BBC radio.
“Under that analysis we currently only have access to about half of the fish in our own waters, that is profoundly unfair on our fishermen, we’ve been clear throughout that needs to change.”
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Barbara Williams noticed an odor emanating from the ailing Indian River Lagoon on Saturday in Cocoa. And when she walked toward her dock at her Indian River Drive home, she spotted washed-up casualties from an ongoing algal bloom.
“I noticed several white blobs. And I looked a little closer, and I said, ‘Gosh, those are stingrays — and they’re turned upside down,' " Williams said.
"We had noticed the water right before Thanksgiving: I had never seen it that root-beer color. It had gone from that pea-green to root beer. And I’ve just never seen it that color," she said.
"We’ve lived for 17 years on the river here," she said.
The St. Johns River Water Management District and partner organizations continue receiving reports of fish kills in the Indian River Lagoon from the past few days. Areas of concern are centered near State Road 528, near Williams' home, and State Road 520.
For months, officials have feared that ongoing lagoon algae blooms could eventually kill marine life and seagrass on a large scale. Ongoing warmer-than-usual temperatures have worsened the situation.
Mike Conner is executive director of Indian Riverkeeper, which tackles environmental issues along the estuary's 156-mile length from New Smyrna Beach to Jupiter Inlet. He said suffocating, single-celled algae have proliferated for months in separate blooms with "totally different colorations" across the Cocoa-Merritt Island area — the Banana River is green, while the Indian River looks brown.
"Once the water does clear, once the bloom has been beat back, I can only imagine the seagrass density is going to be just shot up there. It was already bad," Conner said.
"Seagrass hasn’t gotten any sunlight in any way, shape or form the last few months. And I have to wonder what's left on the bottom," he said.
Friday afternoon, Conner took water samples at the Hubert H. Humphrey Bridge boardwalk on Merritt Island. He found the algal bloom had reduced dissolved-oxygen levels to 1.5 milligrams per liter — too low to support marine life for long.
"Those readings can't support life. You need at least three parts, if not four, for marine organisms to have a chance," Conner said.
Conner posted Merritt Island fish kill photos and video Saturday on the Indian Riverkeeper Facebook page. He noted dead stingrays, skates, shrimp, pinfish, trout, whiting, croakers, saltwater catfish and juvenile flounder.
"Notice that 'bottom' species such as flounder, catfish and even shrimp are in the top foot of the water column, if not at the surface gasping for oxygen. At one point a school of small mangrove snapper came to the top, too," the post said.
Low dissolved-oxygen concentrations have also been recorded in lagoon water in Titusville, SJRWMD officials reported Saturday.
“(Marine animals) are trying to get air anyway they can. We were seeing shrimp the other day during broad daylight, and that's very unusual," Conner said.
On a positive note, a cold front is forecast to sweep across the Space Coast on Monday — sending the mercury plunging. In the Cocoa-Patrick Air Force Base region, low temperatures should settle around 50 degrees Monday night, the National Weather Service reported.
Northwesterly winds could gust as high as 25 mph. Tuesday's high may only reach 58, with a nighttime low around 46.
“Cooler water can hold more dissolved oxygen than hot water. So that’s a good thing. Also, the winds are going to be pretty brisk. And that's going to rough up the surface of the lagoon. It’s going to add oxygen to the water," said Conner, who lives in Jensen Beach.
“I'm looking forward to come up there in about two or three days and seeing what the difference is. So the timing of this cold front is good," he said.
"But cold fronts don’t kill algal blooms. You know, this brown algal bloom that's so pervasive up there? That has lasted all winter long in different years," he said.
In this photo provided by the Wyoming Game and Fish Department, biologists sample the Laramie River for hornyhead chub near Fort Laramie, Wyo., on June 20, 2013. The fish lives in the Laramie and North Laramie Rivers and was recently transplanted into the Sweetwater River. (Steve Gale/Wyoming Game and Fish Department via AP) less
In this photo provided by the Wyoming Game and Fish Department, biologists sample the Laramie River for hornyhead chub near Fort Laramie, Wyo., on June 20, 2013. The fish lives in the Laramie and North Laramie ... more
Photo: Steve Gale, AP
Photo: Steve Gale, AP
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In this photo provided by the Wyoming Game and Fish Department, biologists sample the Laramie River for hornyhead chub near Fort Laramie, Wyo., on June 20, 2013. The fish lives in the Laramie and North Laramie Rivers and was recently transplanted into the Sweetwater River. (Steve Gale/Wyoming Game and Fish Department via AP) less
In this photo provided by the Wyoming Game and Fish Department, biologists sample the Laramie River for hornyhead chub near Fort Laramie, Wyo., on June 20, 2013. The fish lives in the Laramie and North Laramie ... more
Photo: Steve Gale, AP
Wyoming biologists working to expand range of rare fish
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CASPER, Wyo. (AP) — Tucked away in the remotest stretches of some of the remotest streams is a small fish that in the spring uses its head to build forts for its eggs.
The hornyhead chub, known for strange bumps that help in fort building, is one of Wyoming’s rarest fish. It’s also one of its most interesting, if you ask any local fisheries biologist.
The 5- to 7-inch long fish can carry rocks as big as its head to build a wall around its nest. It also allows other small, native fish to lay their eggs in its fort, then protects the array of soon-to-be fry.
And the hornyhead chub is making a bit of a comeback.
With some help from Wyoming Game and Fish Department biologists, it recently expanded its range by 50%. For a fish that was only in two streams, a 50% increase is notable.
“One of our goals, and mine personally, is that we don’t lose a single native species in this state, whether a fish or amphibian or bird,” David Zafft, fisheries management coordinator for Game and Fish, told the Casper Star-Tribune. “We won’t hang onto them everywhere, but some places we can. There are so few areas where the hornyhead chub lives, and we can’t afford to lose it.”
Ask an angler in, say, Ohio, and they’ll likely wonder why the fuss about a fish so common it’s used as bait. The hornyhead chub’s native range extends from eastern North Dakota to western New York and down to northern Arkansas. In much of that area they’re plentiful. But many western streams, where few populations remained as glacial relics, it has struggled.
It no longer exists in Colorado and Nebraska, and in Wyoming, where it never had much of a native range, it lived in isolated portions of the Laramie and north Laramie Rivers.
Causes for extirpation from states like Colorado likely run the gambit from degraded habitat and introduced predatory fish like smallmouth bass to increased levels hormones in the water that cause males to be unable to spawn, said Zafft.
In Wyoming, the fish lived in about 16 miles of the Laramie River and eight miles of the North Laramie River in the Laramie Range.
That was until the Arapaho Fire.
The 2012 blaze was one of Wyoming’s largest at the time, burning about 100,000 acres and destroying 90 buildings. A large rain shortly after sent a flood of ash, soot and debris down the winding, North Laramie River so thick that it eliminated all eight miles of habitat and killed thousands of fish, including the hornyhead chub.
“If they don’t have a place to move to get out of the way, suspended ash coats their gills and suffocates them,” said Steve Gale, fisheries biologist in the Laramie region.
So Game and Fish biologists worked with landowners along the North Laramie River and began transplanting hornyhead chub from the Laramie River. Each year proved more promising, and this year, populations in the North Laramie matched those from before the fire.
But even with those successes, the chub still had a very limited range in Wyoming.
Some might ask why it matters if a small fish with funny horns on its head lives or dies. It’s not a sport fish. It’s not even a bait fish. It is, however, a critical part of Wyoming’s natural systems, said Zafft.
“I consider them more of an indicator species of healthy habitat like somebody might the spotted owl in a northwest boreal forest,” Zafft said.
The chub requires cold, clean water and plenty of gravel to build its nests.
“If you have hornyhead chub around it means you have bears and birds and all sorts of native species because they have a pretty unique set of habitat requirements that are very easy to mess up,” he added.
And about that nest building.
During breeding season, the males grow a dozen or more small bumps – tiny horns, if you will – on the top of their heads. They use those to scoop and scoot rocks and dirt into a pile. The male then picks up rocks with its mouth and drops them on top, increasing the mound.
About five years ago, Game and Fish partnered with the University of Wyoming’s cooperative fish and wildlife unit to look at other areas the hornyhead chub may have lived, and could successfully be reintroduced in Wyoming.
Biologists found one historical record of the hornyhead chub in the Sweetwater River. That lone fish was collected in 1852 and is currently preserved in the Smithsonian, said Paul Gerrity, a fisheries biologist in the Lander region.
No one knows why other records don’t exist from the Sweetwater, but Gerrity has a few theories. Historical records from the 1800s talk about how cattle moving through on the Oregon Trail overgrazed a mile or more on the sides of the Sweetwater River. Because the hornyhead chub exists in such isolated portions of streams, it’s entirely possible that livestock grazing wiped the small population out with that lone specimen proving their existence.
The study also labeled the Sweetwater River as prime hornyhead chub habitat because of its clear water, gravel bottom, lack of the most concerning nonnative predators and the existence of other native fish like Iowa darter and bigmouth shiner.
So in September, Game and Fish biologists released 308 hornyhead chub collected from the Laramie River into the Sweetwater. Another transplant is planned for 2021.
“We have a moral obligation, and Game and Fish has a statutory obligation, to ensure their existence,” Gerrity said.
Plus, he added: “They’re just a neat native fish.”
Staff photo / Ed Runyan Lisa Reel of Bazetta is shown near one of her 125 fish tanks in the basement of her home. The tank contains Cuckoo catfish and Electric Yellow fish.
Lisa Reel’s introduction to tropical fish was not that unusual. She won a goldfish at a fair when she was 5.
But something unusual did happen.
“It lived until I was like 13,” the Bazetta Township woman said.
“I started getting more fish, and it escalated to four or five tanks,” she said.
That led to a memorable day when her tanks leaked at the Warren home where she grew up.
“My mom wasn’t very happy when the water was coming through the ceiling,” Reel recalled.
Reel, who is treasurer of the nonprofit organization Youngstown Area Tropical Fish Society, continued her aquarium hobby after marrying her husband, Jeremy Reel, and moving to Bazetta, where they have raised three children.
At first, her tanks were throughout the first floor of the home.
“My husband said, ‘There’s no room on the counter because of your fish tanks. We’re making you a fish room.’ “ It began with a space about 13 feet by 10 feet in the basement.
That has expanded about four-fold over the years and now includes about 125 tanks containing more than 500 fish. She and her husband have built racks out of various sizes of lumber to hold the various sized tanks. Her largest is 250 gallons.
Her fish room is maintained at a temperature of about 70 degrees. Two pumps provide oxygen for the tanks. There are lights above many of the tanks.
“I have really high electric bills,” Reel said.
FOUNDED IN 1972
Reel is one of about 50 members of the Youngstown Area Tropical Fish Society, which was founded in 1972.
Today, its members come from the Mahoning Valley, northeast Ohio and western Pennsylvania There are about a dozen tropical fish clubs in Ohio, according to aquaworldaquarium.com.
Because of COVID-19, most of the get-togethers and activities of the Youngstown Area Tropical Fish Society and other tropical fish societies have been vastly curtailed most of the year, club secretary Joe Doyle said.
But most years, the Youngstown group has meetings in the basement of the First Presbyterian Church, 3654 Main St., Mineral Ridge, where speakers from around the United States talk about tropical aquariums, fish and plants and the trips they have taken. Each presentation usually includes images of fish and plants projected onto a screen.
FISH BREEDING
People who participate in tropical fish societies typically own fish, but they also frequently breed their fish and compete in contests with them.
Some of the fish are rare, so in breeding them, “You feel like you had a hand in continuing the existence of this fish,” Doyle said.
Breeding fish requires some bookkeeping. Doyle said it includes submitting a report indicating how the person spawned the fish, “how you raised the fry, what type of food you fed, temperature, pH, hardness of the water.”
The club sells the fish, with proceeds going to the club to help pay for the meeting-room rental and things such as insurance.
Doyle said the organization allows people interested in tropical fish to talk about their hobby.
“It’s amazing,” he said. “When you talk to members of the club, it’s not unusual to find people who have 20 or 30 tanks in a room in their house.”
Doyle has a fish room at his house containing 15 aquariums of various sizes and shapes. His largest tank is 75 gallons.
“It’s a hobby,” Doyle said. “Every aquarist has a history. You have to ask each individual aquarist how he got started. Myself, I was 12 years old. And one my friends got an aquarium, so of course I wanted an aquarium.”
COLLECTING
Reel said she and her daughters have enjoyed keeping a variety of kinds of animals over the years — lizards, snakes, cats, dogs, birds.
“I think my favorite pet was a chinchilla,” she said of a small, South American rodent that is considered active and playful.
But fish are her hobby.
“Some women collect shoes. Some women collect purses. This woman collects fish and fish tanks,” Reel said.
She acknowledges that keeping fish has become an “obsession,” but the time she spends with them is relaxing and fun.
CASPER, Wyo. (AP) — Tucked away in the remotest stretches of some of the remotest streams is a small fish that in the spring uses its head to build forts for its eggs.
The hornyhead chub, known for strange bumps that help in fort building, is one of Wyoming’s rarest fish. It’s also one of its most interesting, if you ask any local fisheries biologist.
The 5- to 7-inch long fish can carry rocks as big as its head to build a wall around its nest. It also allows other small, native fish to lay their eggs in its fort, then protects the array of soon-to-be fry.
And the hornyhead chub is making a bit of a comeback.
With some help from Wyoming Game and Fish Department biologists, it recently expanded its range by 50%. For a fish that was only in two streams, a 50% increase is notable.
“One of our goals, and mine personally, is that we don’t lose a single native species in this state, whether a fish or amphibian or bird,” David Zafft, fisheries management coordinator for Game and Fish, told the Casper Star-Tribune. “We won’t hang onto them everywhere, but some places we can. There are so few areas where the hornyhead chub lives, and we can’t afford to lose it.”
Ask an angler in, say, Ohio, and they’ll likely wonder why the fuss about a fish so common it’s used as bait. The hornyhead chub’s native range extends from eastern North Dakota to western New York and down to northern Arkansas. In much of that area they’re plentiful. But many western streams, where few populations remained as glacial relics, it has struggled.
It no longer exists in Colorado and Nebraska, and in Wyoming, where it never had much of a native range, it lived in isolated portions of the Laramie and north Laramie Rivers.
Causes for extirpation from states like Colorado likely run the gambit from degraded habitat and introduced predatory fish like smallmouth bass to increased levels hormones in the water that cause males to be unable to spawn, said Zafft.
In Wyoming, the fish lived in about 16 miles of the Laramie River and eight miles of the North Laramie River in the Laramie Range.
That was until the Arapaho Fire.
The 2012 blaze was one of Wyoming’s largest at the time, burning about 100,000 acres and destroying 90 buildings. A large rain shortly after sent a flood of ash, soot and debris down the winding, North Laramie River so thick that it eliminated all eight miles of habitat and killed thousands of fish, including the hornyhead chub.
“If they don’t have a place to move to get out of the way, suspended ash coats their gills and suffocates them,” said Steve Gale, fisheries biologist in the Laramie region.
So Game and Fish biologists worked with landowners along the North Laramie River and began transplanting hornyhead chub from the Laramie River. Each year proved more promising, and this year, populations in the North Laramie matched those from before the fire.
But even with those successes, the chub still had a very limited range in Wyoming.
Some might ask why it matters if a small fish with funny horns on its head lives or dies. It’s not a sport fish. It’s not even a bait fish. It is, however, a critical part of Wyoming’s natural systems, said Zafft.
“I consider them more of an indicator species of healthy habitat like somebody might the spotted owl in a northwest boreal forest,” Zafft said.
The chub requires cold, clean water and plenty of gravel to build its nests.
“If you have hornyhead chub around it means you have bears and birds and all sorts of native species because they have a pretty unique set of habitat requirements that are very easy to mess up,” he added.
And about that nest building.
During breeding season, the males grow a dozen or more small bumps – tiny horns, if you will – on the top of their heads. They use those to scoop and scoot rocks and dirt into a pile. The male then picks up rocks with its mouth and drops them on top, increasing the mound.
About five years ago, Game and Fish partnered with the University of Wyoming’s cooperative fish and wildlife unit to look at other areas the hornyhead chub may have lived, and could successfully be reintroduced in Wyoming.
Biologists found one historical record of the hornyhead chub in the Sweetwater River. That lone fish was collected in 1852 and is currently preserved in the Smithsonian, said Paul Gerrity, a fisheries biologist in the Lander region.
No one knows why other records don’t exist from the Sweetwater, but Gerrity has a few theories. Historical records from the 1800s talk about how cattle moving through on the Oregon Trail overgrazed a mile or more on the sides of the Sweetwater River. Because the hornyhead chub exists in such isolated portions of streams, it’s entirely possible that livestock grazing wiped the small population out with that lone specimen proving their existence.
The study also labeled the Sweetwater River as prime hornyhead chub habitat because of its clear water, gravel bottom, lack of the most concerning nonnative predators and the existence of other native fish like Iowa darter and bigmouth shiner.
So in September, Game and Fish biologists released 308 hornyhead chub collected from the Laramie River into the Sweetwater. Another transplant is planned for 2021.
“We have a moral obligation, and Game and Fish has a statutory obligation, to ensure their existence,” Gerrity said.
Plus, he added: “They’re just a neat native fish.”
Pure Blue Fish US Inc. technology treats the water with biological and microbiological subsystems that enable the system to function at top efficiency without discharging polluted water, or any water, to the environment.
With the consumption needs of an increasing world population putting greater stresses on environmental sustainability, there is a challenge of how to balance demand with supply.
Fishing experts project global aquaculture production will need to more than double in the next 40 years to feed the close to 10 billion people by the year 2050.
These same experts say there are many threats to fishing from the ocean, including overfishing that has reduced fish populations in some cases to the point of extinction. Industrialization has led to heavy metals pollution of the oceans. Plastic breakdown has infested marine life with micro-plastics.
The challenging scenario is one Pure Blue Fish U.S. founder and Chief Executive Officer Nimrod Litvak is addressing head-on and a key focus on the solution will be based in Orangeburg County.
an (aqua) culture
Litvak founded Pure Blue Fish, a fish farming company, about four years ago in Tel Aviv, Israel, to grow yellowtail fish.
The raising and eventual harvesting of the fish include recirculating aquaculture systems with zero-water discharge technology. The technology reduces water costs and pollution.
Last month, Litvak announced the company will invest $28.1 million to open its flagship U.S. operation in Orangeburg County at the John W. Matthews Jr. Industrial Park. The company will create 82 new jobs.
"Unlike most intensive aquaculture systems, our technology treats the water with biological and microbiological subsystems that enable our system to function at top efficiency without discharging polluted water, or any water, to the environment," Litvak said.
The Blue Fish system Pure Blue’s Zero-Water Discharge Recirculating Aquaculture Systems (RAS) Technology was developed by Professor Jaap van Rijn of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in Israel.
Instead of the traditional method of growing fish outdoors, this system raises fish at high densities in a "controlled" environment typically indoors.
The technology allows farmers to control environmental conditions year-round.
The technology removes the fish waste through converting ammonia to nitrate, converting nitrate to nitrogen gas, which evaporates; and converting organic-rich sludge and fish waste to a gaseous phase.
The processes provide a healthy environment for freshwater and saltwater aquaculture and minimize the discharge of waste.
The zero-water discharge RAS also treats the water circulating in the system by biotech and micro biotech technologies, according to the company.
This helps to save high costs of water and the cost of treating water going in; prevents polluting water from going out to the environment, and allows fish aquaculture to prosper on land away from oceans and lakes, Litvak said.
In Orangeburg, Blue Fish will build a facility that will be 50,000 to 100,000 square feet at the John Matthews Industrial Park on about 30 acres.
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The interior of the building is currently in the design phase. It is expected to be completed by 2022. It will be privately funded and owned by the company.
The company will raise the yellowtail fish from fingerling to the nursery stage, where the fish will stay a period of two months and grow under close observation.
The fish then enter into the grow-out phase of about one year where they reach a size of about four pounds. The fish then go into the final stage of harvesting, sorting by size and packaging.
The fish will go fresh to the market in eight hours, according to Blue Fish.
There will be about 18,500 fingerlings in each production cycle and six productions a year, according to the company.
Pure Blue Fish’s South Carolina operations will serve as a production and packaging facility for distribution to the restaurant market.
The plant will start with annual production capacity of 150-200 tons of fish a year and 11-16 employees. It will operate around the clock. The initial output is expected nine months after the plant is operational.
A packing/processing house will be built to serve the fish plant after the farm reaches 600 tons of annual production.
Eventually, the production facility plans to produce 3,000 tons of fish a year.
Yellowfish
Yellowtail is a species of sturdy ocean fish in the jack family.
The fish is typically harvested wild off the coast of central Japan, southern California and Baja, California, and farmed in Mexico and Australia, according to the company.
The fish is mostly eaten as sushi or sashimi in fine Japanese restaurants, or grilled and served widely in other cuisines. In retail shops and supermarkets, the whole fish is sold, as well as fillets.
Meeting demand
Litvak notes the demand for fish is there.
Citing researchers from Florida Atlantic University, Litvak says the United States was the fifth largest seafood consumer in the world in 2015 and ranked third in wild-caught volume.
FAU researchers also say the Unites States is the largest importer of seafood products in the world. In 2017 alone, about 5.9 billion pounds of seafood were consumed with more than 50% of seafood consumed coming from aquaculture.
Less than 1% is produced in the U.S.
Orangeburg County
seen as big catch
Litvak says the project is a win-win in that it provides the county a locally grown fish by a local workforce for local consumption. The county will also become a production and distribution center and will offer a healthy food option.
Litvak cites the Orangeburg area as a suitable location with the needed infrastructure and economical utility rates. The company also cited the available training for company employees and attractive manufacturing incentives.
The average wage at the Orangeburg plant is expected to be between $18 and $25 an hour. Orangeburg County's average manufacturing wage is $15 an hour.
Orangeburg lures
The company is receiving traditional incentives such as fee-in-lieu of taxes and a state grant for road infrastructure improvements.
The Coordinating Council for Economic Development has also approved job-development credits related to the project.
The company looked throughout the Southeast from Virginia down to Florida, but chose Orangeburg due to its logistics, pro-business environment and technical employee skill sets.
Blue Fish is the 22nd international company to call Orangeburg County home.
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In this photo provided by the Wyoming Game and Fish Department, biologists sample the Laramie River for hornyhead chub near Fort Laramie, Wyo., on June 20, 2013. The fish lives in the Laramie and North Laramie Rivers and was recently transplanted into the Sweetwater River. (Steve Gale/Wyoming Game and Fish Department via AP) lessIn this photo provided by the Wyoming Game and Fish Department, biologists sample the Laramie River for hornyhead chub near Fort Laramie, Wyo., on June 20, 2013. The fish lives in the Laramie and North Laramie ... morePhoto: Steve Gale, AP
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