WEIRD SCIENCE NEWS
Weird Science News may be oxymoronic to most. After all, most science is weird to those outside the Ivory Tower. It’s the aim of Weird Science News to change that. In this age of the internet weird science becomes wonderful, hypothesis becomes hope and myth becomes matter-of-fact with just few mouse clicks.
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A Great Year for Lobster?
OR Gulf of Maine=Giant Fish Farm? 09.04.12  The haul taken from 5-feet of water recently.
Over 40 years of snorkeling and SCUBA diving from the Virgin Islands to the Channel Islands to the Gulf of Maine and all over Long Island, NY, I’ve seen some remarkable marine ecosystems. But nothing prepared me for what I took in two weekends ago diving in some shallows off the coast of Massachusetts: dozens of jumbo lobsters all with eggs sitting in six feet of water. To try and put this discovery into perspective, after getting certified for SCUBA, I dedicated a generous portion of my young adulthood to diving for lobster in New York’s Long Island Sound. Over a decade or so I saw maybe three 2-pound lobsters—sadly, there are virtually no lobster there now. Over 2.5 hours in these Massachusetts shallows, I saw well over a dozen lobsters over four pounds another two dozen or so over two pounds. I caught one that my guests guessed was between seven and eight pounds. That beast was in about five-feet of water. Almost all had to be released because they had eggs. What’s going on? Below is a comment left at the bottom of a Gloucester Times story that suggests, as I believe, that the Gulf of Maine has become the world’s largest aquaculture project. We’d like to credit UNH lobster expert Win Watson for the lobstercam videos. They help illustrate that lobster traps aren’t just traps but also troughs for many lobsters that don’t get caught.
 Just another 22,000 pounds of fish used for lobster bait. No problem?
Think about this: we vacuum the ocean with high tech fishing gear looking for small fish that other species of fish would normally eat but end up instead being lobster bait. These bait fish travel in large schools and are targeted only for use in lobster traps. Thanks to this practice we can now think of lobster as the largest farmed marine species. Small lobsters get fed these small fish in traps. If those small lobsters are in the traps when the traps get hauled they get thrown overboard to continue their rich diet as they enter trap after trap. This continues until they are large enough to market. (Editor’s note: Unbeknownst to much of the world, and hopefully evident in these videos, lobsters can get out of these “traps” almost as easily as they get in.)
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So you see, not all of the protected and nurtured trap residents get caught and end up on dinner plates. Rather, they reach reproductive age unmolested to start the cycle again and again with an unlimited supply of food to help them along. I am not a marine biologist but I can imagine what would happen if we started feeding wild animals on land all the food they can eat it. Bags of sunflower seeds near trees for the squirrels, open dumpsters and barrels for hungry suburban raccoons, bales of hay all winter for deer and moose. I would think that this interference with Nature would produce more healthy animals that will be more successful in reproduction until we have too many and other species start to suffer. All the extra, well-fed, tossed overboard, surviving lobsters will produce offspring which, quite normally, will eat the bait in lobster traps until large enough to produce their own baby lobsters.
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Now think about all these small lobsters living in a mythical ocean without any traps. None at all. In the wild they would have to avoid being eaten by other lobsters or fish until they were big enough to survive on their own. They would hide under kelp beds and rocks, as lobsters should do, taking care of themselves as best they can. However, the trip from the larval stage to adult lobster is a dangerous one. A safe harbor with feeding thrown in (meaning traps) gives great protection on the ladder to adulthood for an awful lot more lobster than would otherwise happen in a world without lobster traps. But it doesn't end there. |
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The juvenile fish used for bait in lobster traps would normally be food for Cod, Haddock, Flounder, Hake, Halibut, Monk fish, Pollock, Tuna and other predator fish. Taking away large amounts of the food items that support these predator fish would have an adverse effect on their populations. I am not necessarily claiming that this is why the lobster hauls are currently huge and the fish landings are getting smaller. However, there is some logic here and maybe we could find a sustainable bait product that would replace the losses to our market fish that in essence, are the backbone of our entire fishing industry - what's left of it. |
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Survival of the Smartest
Did Darwin Miss Something? 01.24.12
Did Darwin Miss Something? 01.24.12
For
those die-hard Darwinians out there, we present to you the black
marbled jawfish, recently
discovered to be mimicking the color patterns of octopi as a
defense mechanism. NBN thinks that Darwin’s theory of evolution
struggles a bit to explain this little guy. The notion that random
changes in DNA drives the evolution of all animal species from one
works well enough explaining things like the walking
stick, the viceroy
butterfly, and the dying leaf
mimic katydid. You can see how, over a couple million years and a couple million more generations,
happenstance could produce the mind boggling menagerie of genetic mutations
needed to produce these one-of-a-kind insects. But when you throw in comparatively advanced
abilities like vision, hearing, taste and intelligence, random mutation alone is not
enough to explain the wide range of adaptions, like those exhibited by the black marbled jawfish, or the speed at
which we see some adaptations evolve.
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Welcome
to the world of ethology--the
examination of the interface between physical and behavioral
diversity as they relate to, among other things, evolution. NBN
relies on a handful of college course in such subjects to produce our
specious scientific supposition for this week: that learning and
other environmental influences can drive adaptive physiological changes at the
cellular level a lot faster than random mutation, a.k.a. Darwin's theory. Said another way, a living organism can perceive changes in the world around it and alter its DNA to better prepare its offspring to take advantage. Justifying this supposition may take a little work, but
here goes.
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This video shows just how readily an animal’s DNA changes to take advantage of subtle changes in its surroundings. The video talks about different populations of the same species of fish living across from each other on the same river. Despite living across from each other, these two populations of fish never interact. Each population was found to have developed changes in their DNA that reflect adaptations to environmental conditions unique to their side of the river. This is kind of like discovering people living in Brooklyn, NY, have different DNA than folks from New Jersey. That may be a bad
example because TV is making it increasingly clear that people from
New Jersey are not
the same species as
the rest of humanity. Still, Darwin’s notion that evolution occurs
solely through random changes in DNA occurring when egg and sperm do
their thing seems incomplete in the face of recent science. NBN
isn’t exactly sure how to fill in these perceived gaps in Darwin's
theory, but consider these two recent articles. This
one talks
about global warming producing a hybrid species of black tipped
shark that can live in both temperate and tropical waters. Then this article says salmon produced in a fish hatchery exhibit reliable changes to their DNA over the course of just one generation.
These are enormous
physiological adaptations over a very short period of time. Not the
sort of thing we can easily attribute to the “random” mutations Darwin
relied on. Could it be that Darwin is only
half-right? Can learning and other, yet-to-be-explained abilities to
perceive environmental changes, be hardwired directly to DNA in order
to speed up evolution when needed? Before you hit the “home” icon
on your Google browser, consider this: The higher the intelligence of an animal, the lower the reproduction rate. Think about it.
Kudzu definitely challenges NBN’s Theory of evolution.
We know we're grossly oversimplifying this subject, but the points raised are valid. Should NBN’s
theory that perception can drive evolution and much faster than previously thought, it could be good news in a
couple of ways. First, let’s take the battle over invasive species.
If species can rapidly evolve to adapt to environmental changes, native plants
and animals might evolve over a relatively short time to keep
invasive plants and animals in check. High speed evolution also
suggests we may not see the mass extinctions resulting from global
warming that many
experts fear. Anyway you look at this, global warming is
clearly going to turn the heat up on evolution science. Darwin’s
theories were formed largely on observations of the most static and
isolated of ecosystems, the Galapagos Islands. You have to wonder
what he’d revise if he could observe the ecological upheaval just
starting to get underway these days.
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Will Dolphins Talk to Humans?
Probably Not Once They Know Us. 09.27.11
Probably Not Once They Know Us. 09.27.11
A NY Times Article out last week asked: How Far Will Dolphins Go to Relate to Humans? Reading this article has NBN asking: How far will humans go to relate to dolphins? The scientist in the article spent the past 25 years trying to answer the first question with help from various charities. Now, in these tough economic times with a Congress suddenly critical of all scientific effort, NBN has to wonder how much longer will this dolphin outreach effort, called the Wild Dolphin Project, last in a country where everybody is broke. Fortunately for the Dolphin Project the U.S. government can’t tell charities what they can do with their money. But two public universities are collaborating with the Dolphin Project. According to the article, the woman leading the Dolphin Project spends the bulk of her day diving in remote parts of the Bahamas videotaping dolphins then analyzing the tape in the confines of her 65-foot research sailboat. All to find a way to communicate with dolphins and to see if dolphins will then want to communicate with humans. NBN can tell from our own experience: dolphins will reach out to humans.
Once, while ladling fish guts into a shark chum slick 40 miles off the coast of Long Island, NBN scientists happened upon an enormous pod of dolphins swimming 50 years off the stern of our 25-foot “research vessel.” The animals took a distinct right turn when they spied us and swam right past our boat. They came within inches of our gunnels and turned sideways to look up at us. There was no mistaking it. The dolphins were checking us out. So why does the project need to spend what must be well over a couple million dollars by now to learn to what extent dolphins will attempt to reach out to us if they have a means of doing so?
Unfortunately, to answer that question NBN can only offer a lot more questions and a few sad scenarios. First, why did we spend $1 trillion over in Iraq, taking the lives of 4,000 U.S. citizens and who knows how many Iraqis along the way? Given what’s happening in the other Middle East countries these days, it’s increasingly clear those 4,000 died, and thousands more were maimed, for little other reason than they were willing to make such sacrifices for such dubious reasons in a world where there’s no shortage of unscrupulous people willing to take advantage of a toxic mix of patriotism and hormonal excess. On the other hand, what benefit will come of finding out that dolphins, if given a means of communication, would reach out to humans? Should we find out what warm, wonderful creatures they really are maybe we can become even more upset over videos of Japanese slaughtering dolphins. It’s hardly likely that we’ll institute more stringent pollutions controls on behalf of dolphins once we find out what great conversationalists they are. That has NBN asking yet another question: Are these equally foolish endeavors? NBN loves science, so you know our answer: We’d love to hear yours.
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