Free Republic

Joel Vasquez Rojas, the mayor of San Pedro Huamelula, married the reptile – dressed in a white gown – at the city hall and then shared a dance in front of packed party of local residents. According to local tradition, the crocodile is a princess whose marriage to the town mayor will bring in an abundance of seafood for fisherman on the Pacific coast. ‘As young people, this means a lot,’ said local resident Eduardo Zarate 'It’s the greatest treasure our ancestors have left us.’ For safety, the crocodile’s jaw was wired shut for the day. ‘It is my wish...

Aerospace giant Boeing finds itself in a fishy fight against Native Americans and environmentalists over pollution in the waterways -- a disagreement that could affect where Washington state's largest employer builds the next generation of planes. At the heart of the fight, which could impact thousands of jobs, is a peculiar question: How much locally caught fish do Washingtonians eat, and what are the health risks? Green groups, alone with Washington state tribes, have sued the Environmental Protection Agency to push for increased fish consumption rates -- currently set at six-and-a-half grams a day. If the number is set higher,...

Fish don't have Facebook to help keep tabs on their schoolmates. Like junior high students before the Internet, they have to hang out for a while to become pals. But a research team at Australia's James Cook University found that ocean acidification, caused by the fossil fuel burning that drives climate change, could be robbing some tropical fish of their ability to remember friends. Under normal ocean conditions, juvenile damselfish take about three weeks recognize their other fish in their schools. But under simulated conditions with estimated carbon dioxide levels in the year 2100, damselfish apparently lose that ability to...

Talk about a big fish. An Atlanta man and his father last week caught an 884-pound sturgeon during a fishing trip to Canada. According to Great River Fishing Adventures, 19-year-old Paul Jarvis hooked the 11-foot-10 white sturgeon Thursday morning on the Fraser River. “In the first few minutes I had it on the line, I couldn’t believe the weight and power of the fish," said Jarvis, who battled the fish with the help of his father, Ron, for about an hour. "I am a big guy, and I could barely hold on to the rod let alone begin to reel...

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has found that Alaska seafood is safe from Fukushima radiation, but a citizen’s group plans to conduct a separate study of the water in lower Cook Inlet using a crowdsource funding site. “The (FDA) results confirm information from federal, state and international agencies that seafood in the North Pacific and Alaska waters poses no radiation related health concerns to those who consume it,” said a statement released by state health and environmental officials. The FDA review was based on a sampling plan developed by the departments of Environmental Conservation and Health and Social Services,...

He has net himself a 172kg Queensland grouper - and he isn't letting it go. Not even for the $10,000 he claims to have been offered by a businessman from Tianjin, China. Mr Johnny Tan, 52, owner of seafood restaurant Grouper King, bought the rare 2.3m giant for "between $5,000 to $6,000". It was caught by local fishermen in waters off Pedra Branca on Tuesday evening. "It would have been easier for me to just sell the fish, but this is my first 'big' fish of the year," said Mr Tan. He said that fish this size are popular in...

Caught -- and released to the Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources. Rob Scott, the Crane Lake, Minn., angler who caught a potential tip-up world-record lake trout in February, pleaded guilty Friday in Fort Frances Provincial Offences Court to keeping one lake trout over his limit. Scott, 65, won't get to keep the fish. He paid a $400 fine plus court costs amounting to about $75, according to Kevin Elliott, Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources enforcement supervisor in Fort Frances. Scott, who was represented by an Ontario attorney, did not contest the charges. He caught and kept the fish that unofficially...

A Canadian high school student named Bronwyn Delacruz never imagined that her school science project would make headlines all over the world. But that is precisely what has happened. Using a $600 Geiger counter purchased by her father, Delacruz measured seafood bought at local grocery stores for radioactive contamination. What she discovered was absolutely stunning. Much of the seafood, particularly the products that were made in China, tested very high for radiation. So is this being caused by nuclear radiation from Fukushima? Is the seafood that we are eating going to give us cancer and other diseases? The American people...

Agenda 21 is alive and well in Klamath County, Oregon. Klamath Basin farmers are feeling the wrath of the Klamath Tribes in collusion with the Federal and Oregon state governments. Water is now basically off limits to ranchers unless they get approval from the tribes, and approvals are few and far between. ... The success of this plan spells disaster for not only the Klamath Basin family farmers, but for all family farmers, as it will be a precedent. Without locally grown produce and animal feed, we will be even more dependent on imported food at a much higher price....

ST. PAUL, Minn. — The troublesome fish currently known as Asian carp may get a new name in Minnesota over concern that the current one casts people from Asian cultures in a negative light. Proposals advancing in the Legislature would require the Department of Natural Resources to refer to the fish as "invasive carp," a reference to the threat the non-native fish pose to Mississippi River-area ecosystems. ...

The saying a dog is a man’s best friend, may now be even applicable to a pet fish – at least in the case of Petronas marketing manager Puspanathan Subramaniam, who boarded the MH370. His father Subramaniam Gurusa­my said the pet arowana fish was sluggish and had refused to eat for over five days. “The fish now only eats if I prop my son’s photo next to the aquarium,” said Subramaniam, 60, who became a security guard after retiring as a construction worker five years ago. The fish, however, is not the only one showing signs of misery. When Puspanathan...

Warming oceans aren’t just shifting the migration patterns of some of our favorite fish; scientists say climate change may be stunting fish sizes too. Widely consumed North Sea species, including haddock, whiting, herring, and others, have shrunk in size by as much as 29 percent over nearly 40 years, as water temperatures have increased between one and two degrees Celsius, researchers from the University of Aberdeen in Aberdeen, Scotland, revealed in a study published in the April issue of Global Change Biology.

At least 30 people have contracted a rare skin infection after buying seafood at markets in Chinese neighborhoods across New York City, prompting health officials to issue a warning to consumers and market workers to take precautions when handling raw or live fish. The source of the outbreak was unclear, but health officials said that all of the people who were infected had bought fish at markets in Sunset Park, Brooklyn; Flushing, Queens; or Chinatown, in Manhattan. There was no evidence that eating fish from any of those markets could cause illness, officials said. “People are encouraged to wear waterproof...

The Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) will spend $175,000 for a study on the “swimming abilities” of fish in the Northern Rockies, the agency announced on Thursday. The FWS, a bureau within the Department of the Interior, will award a grant for the study that will produce a “fish swimming video.” The grant announcement, entitled “Cooperative Research Program on the Swimming Abilities of Native Stream Fishes in the Northern Rockies-Upper Great Plains Regions of Montana,” estimated the project’s cost at $175,000.

For generations, tour boats have been collecting fishing enthusiasts in Key West, Fla.: taking them for a day of deep sea casting; providing them rods, bait, companionship; and then, when the day ends, there's a little wharf-side ceremony. Everyone is invited to take his biggest fish and hook it onto the "Hanging Board"; a judge compares catches, chooses a champion, and then the family that caught the biggest fish poses for a photograph. The one up above comes from 1958. Notice that the fish on the far left is bigger than the guy who, I assume, caught it; and...

(Reuters) - A tiny fish characterized by a disproportionately large head and previously unknown to scientists has been found in mountain rivers of Idaho and Montana in what biologists said on Thursday marked a rare discovery. The new aquatic species is a type of freshwater sculpin, a class of fish that dwell at the bottom of cold, swiftly flowing streams throughout North America and are known for their oversized head and shoulder structure. "The discovery of a new fish is something I never thought would happen in my career because it's very rare in the United States," said Michael Young,...

The Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation(NRK) has put up some striking photos of water off the coast of Lovund, a small island off of Norway. Though it was “only” -7.8°C (18 °F), a sharp eastern wind was enough to freeze a large quantity of fish in place. The translation tools used to understand NRK’s article don’t exactly remove all language barriers, but it seems that Aril Slotte of Havforskningsinstituttet, a marine research institute, believes that the fish might have been chased by a predator, and that’s why there were so many grouped together that closely. Ingolf Kristiansen, who happened upon the scene,...

University of Cincinnati archaeologists are turning up discoveries in the famed Roman city of Pompeii that are wiping out the historic perceptions of how the Romans dined, with the rich enjoying delicacies such as flamingos and the poor scrounging for soup or gruel. Steven Ellis, a University of Cincinnati associate professor of classics, will present these discoveries on Jan. 4, at the joint annual meeting of the Archaeological Institute of America (AIA) and American Philological Association (APA) in Chicago. UC teams of archaeologists have spent more than a decade at two city blocks within a non-elite district in the Roman...

The Grinch might be out of a job soon. Sixty holiday revelers in the Argentine town of Rosario found out the hard way why they should always read the signs at the beach when they were attacked by a shoal of piranhas during a Christmas Day swim. The attack occurred at a beach along the city's Parana River, where residents were trying to escape scorching 100-degree temperatures. More than 20 children were wounded by the hyper-aggressive fish, with one seven-year-old-girl reportedly losing a piece of her finger. The attack is the worst of its kind in Rosario since 2008, when...

Nigel Hussey, a researcher who works with the Ocean Tracking Network, says the fish some speculated was a goblin shark is actually the mysterious "long-nosed chimaera" — mysterious because they're rarely caught.