Thanksgiving Fish: The Missing Ingredient

By Steve Midway

As many of us in the U.S. prepare for the Thanksgiving holiday later this week, a litany of traditional foods comes to mind: turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, cranberry sauce, pumpkin pie.  Indeed—in some form or another—many of these foods were present at the first Thanksgiving.  However, conspicuously absent from both the traditional shopping list and holiday table are fish and shellfish, which were most certainly featured prominently at the first Thanksgiving.

Pass the eel, please. (Source)

Top 5 Most Poisonous Fish!

By Dana Sackett

Many TV shows and nature guides have been dedicated to educating the public on the most poisonous and venomous spiders, snakes and even frogs, but what about fish? Unlike spiders or snakes, we rarely hear about which fish are the most poisonous (or venomous). This week we are dedicating our blog post to these hazardous fish.

(Cooney)

The Swimming Dead: Videos of Zombie Fish

By Patrick Cooney

Like an underwater horror show, I filmed dead fish swimming amongst the living last week in a coastal river of western Washington.  Or at least, the zombie fish looked like they were dead.



Nowhere is the "Circle of Life" more apparent than in a river during

Song of Summers Past

By Craig Springer, Guest Blogger

With this autumn’s leaves shedding, it gives one pause for all those summers that have slipped downstream.  Sun-drenched memories are joyful like an Allman Brothers song.

Don’t fly mister bluebird, I’m just walking down the road. Early morning sunshine tells me all I need to know.

In memory, the buzz of bugs floated onto the flat and still waters, coming to my ears gentle and sporadic like soft waves splashing on a shoal.  I creel-clerked at Caesars Creek Lake for the Ohio Division of Wildlife, checking angler harvest in what now seems like a lifetime ago.  From the maples and hickories, and the box elders and dogwoods on shore, masses of cicadas droned incessantly.  If sound had color, theirs would be a monochromatic shrill. It seemed like they were serious about their future—the bugs looked to mate, breed and die in a span of days.  The summer air was memorable, stock still, and thick like an over-cooked pot of stew.

Fall Fishing (Source)

Scary stuff!

by Brandon Peoples

It’s a quiet autumn night. The full moon barely penetrates the thick, low-hanging fog. An unsuspecting group is returning home from their evening activities. They’re in a dangerous area, but they know they’ll be safe if they stick together and move quickly. They’ve been lulled into a false sense of security …little do they know that just out of eyeshot, they’re being stalked by a killer.

Paid to go fishing

by Ed Kluender, Guest Blogger

It’s happened to most of us in fisheries field research, whether loading up the shock boat at a ramp, stopped at a gas station for tater wedges and bad coffee, or on the river when you run into someone who’s paying a guide to be there for nearly the same reason we’re there on the clock.  

It starts with the initial, “What are you doing with all that weird gear?”  Upon explanation is the inevitable, “Man, it must be nice to get paid to go fishing!”  

I’ve seen a range of attitudes after this.  Oddly enough, one of the more common responses is an uncomfortable mixture of resentment, cynicism, and anger that one could actually make a career of being on the water studying fish.

Humpback Chub are an endangered species native to the Grand Canyon.  As a tourist, you can pay upwards of $1000 to visit this spot.  As a fish biologist, you can make overtime pay there.  Photo: Kristen Pearson

When the quick cure causes long-term danger: Who knew antibiotics could be such a problem?

by Dr. Dana Sackett

Whether for an ear infection or something more serious, chances are we have all had to take antibiotics at one point in our lives. Despite this regular use of antibiotics, few people know where they come from or that our overuse of these drugs are causing some serious problems in our aquatic environment.

Antibiotics come from the chemical warfare that occurs between microscopic organisms that have developed natural defenses to protect themselves from other microscopic organisms. For example, penicillin, one of the earliest and most widely used antibiotics, was discovered when Sir Alexander Fleming observed that mold (Penicillium notatum) produced a natural substance that destroyed bacteria (Staphylococcus aureus) in 1928. Since this discovery, hundreds of these bacteria-killing substances have been discovered and many are synthesized and mass produced as our own personal weapon against disease causing bacteria.

(Source)