Is Maximum Sustainable Yield a tool of science or of diplomacy? For the world’s fish populations, the concept has stood for years as a working blend of economic goals and conservation principles. The word “sustainable” lends it a particular respectability in our environmental age. It purports to answer the burning question about how many fish… Read More Fisheries Politics Masked as Science
By Misha Warbanski [Former public radio reporter Misha Warbanski studies biology at the University of Victoria in British Columbia, Canada.] Pacific sardine (Sardinops sagax) is a small pelagic schooling fish that can live up to 15 years and reach 41cms in length. Its range stretches over 5,000km of coastal surface waters, from Baja California to Southern Alaska,… Read More The rise and fall of Pacific sardine in west coast waters
In the early 1950s it was made illegal to “phone catfish” in Alabama. Game wardens had discovered that catfish populations were being decimated using a novel fishing technique. Locals had discovered that they could repurpose the magneto component of old crank-style telephones to send an electric shock through the local fishing holes. The shock… Read More “Phoning” fish: the Strange World of Electrofishing
History of Oceanography 