My take away from this is that letting the small fish go under the premise that they are juveniles that will later grow to be bigger lets the adult midgets go, ruining the gene pool. I wonder if this finding will have any impact on conservation rules against taking small fish when fishing.
The other thing about the Baltic Sea is that there has been so much fertiliser and toxic farming chemicals running into it since the start of the agricultural revolution that the fish is full of heavy metals and toxins. The Swedish authorities recommend against eating it more than once a month and never for pregnant women and people with health conditions.
This farming runoff overload has also led to huge areas where the sea floor is completely dead.
I'm sure I read somewhere that Maori fishermen used to eat small-mid sized fish and left the largest ones because they were the best breeders. I can't find a reference now but has logic.
This is why I'm afraid of mosquitoes. Fighting them means creating a superhuman (super mosquito?) version that will be resistant to everything. When they find new diseases to obliterate the human race with, we are done.
Personally, I believe that mosquitos are far more concerning than any other impending environmental disaster.
I don't like how this is worded. Makes it sound as though the cod are actively reducing their size. But this is very straight forward Darwin's Theory, survival of the fittest, in action. In this case, the "fittest" cod are the ones with the propensity to be small, since they can escape the nets and survive to breed and pass on that propensity.
And it follows that there won't be a "bounce back" of the larger cod any time soon, as it takes thousands of years in a minimally interrupted state for such diversity to come about in nature. Of course this applies to all other living creatures as well.
I've often made the argument that evolution can happen very quickly within a few generations and doesn't necessarily take millions of years. It's interesting to see some cases in nature where rapid changes in a predator's behavior (in this case humans) can radically alter a visible trait.
What I've had heard so far about cod's troubles in the Baltic sea is that it's not salty enough for them. For cod to reproduce, their eggs need a certain salinity so that they swim to the right depth after they are spawned.
Reminds me of a line that Philip Glass co-opted for his 5th Symphony:
“Therefore the land mourns, and all who dwell in it languish, and also the beasts of the field and the birds of the heavens, and even the fish of the sea are taken away.”
What's impressive is that somebody, somewhere keeps collecting a nice stash of Eastern Baltic cod otoliths in hopes that somebody else would come along and invent a new way to use them.
Are there any 'old fashioned' cod in captivity or maybe stored DNA samples? Maybe Collosal could splice the missing genes back in and bring them back into the gene pool.
We need to make certain parts of the world- unfishable- as in drag-net destroying pylons on the sea-floor, the waters mined with drones that attack any boat entering with the intent to fish. Its the only thing working against the international lawlessness picking the planet clean.
My take away from this is that letting the small fish go under the premise that they are juveniles that will later grow to be bigger lets the adult midgets go, ruining the gene pool. I wonder if this finding will have any impact on conservation rules against taking small fish when fishing.
The other thing about the Baltic Sea is that there has been so much fertiliser and toxic farming chemicals running into it since the start of the agricultural revolution that the fish is full of heavy metals and toxins. The Swedish authorities recommend against eating it more than once a month and never for pregnant women and people with health conditions.
This farming runoff overload has also led to huge areas where the sea floor is completely dead.
I'm sure I read somewhere that Maori fishermen used to eat small-mid sized fish and left the largest ones because they were the best breeders. I can't find a reference now but has logic.
Had to truncate the title to fit 80 char limit
Pertains to Eastern Baltic cod, not all
This is why I'm afraid of mosquitoes. Fighting them means creating a superhuman (super mosquito?) version that will be resistant to everything. When they find new diseases to obliterate the human race with, we are done.
Personally, I believe that mosquitos are far more concerning than any other impending environmental disaster.
I don't like how this is worded. Makes it sound as though the cod are actively reducing their size. But this is very straight forward Darwin's Theory, survival of the fittest, in action. In this case, the "fittest" cod are the ones with the propensity to be small, since they can escape the nets and survive to breed and pass on that propensity.
And it follows that there won't be a "bounce back" of the larger cod any time soon, as it takes thousands of years in a minimally interrupted state for such diversity to come about in nature. Of course this applies to all other living creatures as well.
Related, this is an excellent book on Cod fishing and how it helped humans and finally how overfishing has hurt the Cod numbers: https://www.markkurlansky.com/books/cod-a-biography-of-the-f...
It might sound like a boring topic, but it's one of the best books I've read and something I recommend a lot.
I've often made the argument that evolution can happen very quickly within a few generations and doesn't necessarily take millions of years. It's interesting to see some cases in nature where rapid changes in a predator's behavior (in this case humans) can radically alter a visible trait.
What I've had heard so far about cod's troubles in the Baltic sea is that it's not salty enough for them. For cod to reproduce, their eggs need a certain salinity so that they swim to the right depth after they are spawned.
Here's an article in Latvian news site about it - https://nra.lv/neatkariga/intervijas/481931-mencu-zveja-balt...
Reminds me of a line that Philip Glass co-opted for his 5th Symphony:
“Therefore the land mourns, and all who dwell in it languish, and also the beasts of the field and the birds of the heavens, and even the fish of the sea are taken away.”
The traditional approach to this problem is to harvest males and let females go. You're not going to select them out of sexual reproduction.
You will see males evolve to resemble females more closely, though.
Reminds me of the tuskless elephants.
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/article/wildlife-...
What's impressive is that somebody, somewhere keeps collecting a nice stash of Eastern Baltic cod otoliths in hopes that somebody else would come along and invent a new way to use them.
Are there any 'old fashioned' cod in captivity or maybe stored DNA samples? Maybe Collosal could splice the missing genes back in and bring them back into the gene pool.
If you catch by weight, does it matter how big the fish is? A ton of cod is a ton of cod.
We need to make certain parts of the world- unfishable- as in drag-net destroying pylons on the sea-floor, the waters mined with drones that attack any boat entering with the intent to fish. Its the only thing working against the international lawlessness picking the planet clean.
Spoiler: because overfishing altered their genes
Thanks for this cod piece.
Regression?
[dead]
Modernity/Capitalism supercharges the hate Christianity has for nature, and well take out the earth with ourselves in the process soon.
Hail the great anthropocene.