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Oldest lobster fossil uncovered in Mexico REUTERS May 4, 2007 MEXICO CITY – Mexican scientists said they have identified the world's oldest lobster fossil, that of a creature alive when Africa was only just breaking apart from the Americas about 120 million years ago. The fossil is 4.7 inches long, and its shell and legs are immaculately preserved by the mud in the southern state of Chiapas, where it was found. It is dated as 120 million years old, about 20 million years older than previous lobster fossils. “This lobster that we found in Chiapas belongs to the genus that...

December 22, 2006—Like pulling a shadow from the darkness, researchers in Japan have captured and filmed a live giant squid—likely for the first time—shedding new light on the famously elusive creatures. Tsunemi Kubodera, a scientist with Japan's National Science Museum, caught the 24-foot (7-meter) animal earlier this month near the island of Chichijima, some 600 miles (960 kilometers) southeast of Tokyo (see Japan map). His team snared the animal using a line baited with small squid and shot video of the russet-colored giant as it was hauled to the surface. The squid, a young female, "put up quite a fight"...

WASHINGTON (AP) - Clambakes, crabcakes, swordfish steaks and even humble fish sticks could be little more than a fond memory in a few decades. If current trends of overfishing and pollution continue, the populations of just about all seafood face collapse by 2048, a team of ecologists and economists warns in a report in Friday's issue of the journal Science. "Whether we looked at tide pools or studies over the entire world's ocean, we saw the same picture emerging. In losing species we lose the productivity and stability of entire ecosystems," said the lead author Boris Worm of Dalhousie University...

Close window Published online: 2 November 2006; | doi:10.1038/news061030-10 Sayonara, sushi...Time could be running out for seafood.Heidi Ledford Salmon, like all seafood: predicted to collapse by 2048.Alamy What's your favourite seafood dish? Seared scallops? Salmon sashimi? Grilled shrimp? Enjoy it while you can, because by 2048 it could all be gone. A recent survey of global fisheries data says that seafood stocks around the world will collapse within 50 years — if we don't change the way we treat the world's oceans1. "That's the end of the line," says Boris Worm, a marine conservation biologist at Dalhousie University in...

Lobster defenders are seeing red after two local men were nabbed for allegedly snapping the tails off live crustaceans and tossing the traumatized creatures back into the sea. Anthony T. Gozzo, 52, of Billerica and his partner, Mark E. Turcotte, 20, of Lowell were arraigned in East Boston District Court yesterday on 202 counts of possessing mutilated lobster. “I certainly hope these fishermen are punished to the fullest extent of the law for this sick crime,” said Matt Prescott of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals - which isn’t crazy about lobster boiling, either. Environmental police spotted the pair...

Customers craving fresh crustaceans will have to look beyond Whole Foods Market Inc. after the natural-foods grocery chain decided Thursday to stop selling live lobsters and crabs on the grounds that it's inhumane. The Austin-based grocer, which has stores in Massachusetts, Rhode Island and Connecticut, spent seven months studying the sale of live lobsters from ship to supermarket aisle, trying to determine whether the creatures suffer along the way. In some stores, they experimented with "lobster condos," filling tanks with stacks of large pipes the critters can crawl inside. And they moved the tanks behind seafood counters and away from...

No wonder people think this town is goofy. The Whole Foods Market chain headquartered here in Austin is thinking about stopping the sale of live lobsters because it could be cruel to the lobsters. "We're reviewing the entire process literally from boat to plate to see if we can make some significant improvement in that whole supply process," Whole Foods spokeswoman Kate Lowery said. One way Whole Foods could make some significant improvement would be to release all the lobsters into Town Lake. That way I could collect them and eat them. Still, on Thursday the Whole Foods leadership will...

For education and discussion only. Not for commercial use. The Wall Street Journal finally has shed light on a mystery that haunted Washington for months: Why did the White House fire longtime head chef Walter Scheib? Blame it on the bivalve. A source in the East Wing told the Journal that Scheib displayed a certain arrogance in repeatedly serving scallops to Bush. Bush hates scallops, it seems, and Scheib was shown the door in August after 11 years on the job cooking for presidents, princes, prime ministers and movie stars. Scheib last week said in the New York Daily News...

NOAA announced today that tests of white shrimp samples collected the week of September 12 from Mississippi Sound found no elevated contaminants. The agency collected 23 samples of white shrimp from Mobile Bay to Lake Borgne two weeks after Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf coast. The samples were tested for hydrocarbon exposure due to oil spills or urban runoffs and other contaminants, such as PCBs and DDTs.

For Coast shrimpers, end of a livelihood: A heritage, Southern culture may be lost with the battering from Katrina By Matt Apuzzo/ September 16, 2005 BILOXI -- Hanh Luong has no home and no cash. The only thing he has left, and his only hope for the future, is the Santa Maria, a battered 98-foot fishing boat he worked years to buy. But two weeks after Hurricane Katrina, his boat remains tethered to what's left of Biloxi's piers. The polluted Gulf of Mexico is off-limits to shrimping, and all the major processing plants between Alabama and Louisiana have been pulverized...

An animal rights group wants the Aquarium of the Pacific in Long Beach to gut its cafeteria menu of fish and seafood, arguing that "serving fish at an aquarium is like serving poodle burgers at a dog show." Like Lilo in the animated "Lilo and Stitch," who refused to make a tuna sandwich for her friend, Pudge, a fish, because it would be "an abomination," the head of the Fish Empathy Project for People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals said serving fish at an aquarium just isn't right. "An institution with a mission that includes teaching people to respect...

Seafood was the spur for Man's first migration By Roger Highfield, Science Editor (Filed: 13/05/2005) The lure of a seafood diet may explain why the first people left Africa, according to a genetic analysis published today that overturns the conventional picture of the very first migration of modern humans. The international project shows - contrary to previous thinking - that early modern humans spread across the Red Sea from the Horn of Africa, along the tropical coast of the Indian Ocean towards the Pacific in just a few thousand years. And it suggests that the first migratory wave probably included...

PITTSBURGH, Pennsylvania (AP) -- He could have survived two world wars and Prohibition. He also could have been dinner. He's Bubba, a 22-pound leviathan of a lobster pulled from the waters off Nantucket, Massachusetts, and shipped to a Pittsburgh fish market. On Tuesday, Owner Bob Wholey Wholey gave the lobster to the Pittsburgh Zoo & PPG Aquarium, which will send him to an aquarium at a Ripley's Believe It or Not museum

A Canadian seafood company helped buy geoduck kingpin Doug Tobin's fishing boat and finance his $1.5 million Puget Sound clam-poaching ring — all in exchange for exclusive rights to resell the stolen shellfish, according to a lawsuit filed by the Washington state Attorney General's Office. A year after Tobin was sentenced to 14 years in prison for making off with nearly 100 tons of shellfish in the region's oddest and most sophisticated wildlife-poaching ring, the Attorney General's Office accused a Richmond, B.C.-based company of fronting him much of the cash to get started. The state is seeking millions of dollars...

Forgive me if I have posted this in the wrong area, I am not new to FR but haven't posted much. A group of my friends are going on a golf trip. There are 12 golfers playing 4 rounds of golf as foursomes. I have been asked to come up with a schedule that has each golfer playing at least one round of golf with the other eleven golfers. Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.

You know things are getting bad when a conference sponsored by seemingly mainstream groups like the Ocean Conservancy and the Pew Charitable Trusts includes a panel on "direct action" featuring the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society's "Captain" Paul Watson. An open promoter of violence, Watson declares there's "nothing wrong with being a terrorist, as long as you win." Yesterday he told the self-described "seaweed rebels" at the conference on ocean health: "We can no longer afford to eat any seafood." After announcing that Sea Shepherd is "proudly a pirate organization," Watson insisted: ... we have got to cease and desist and...

On a busy Thursday afternoon, people stood in line to buy shrimp at Rose's Seafood, a no-frills market on a little waterfront street in Kemah. What wasn't as obvious is that roughly half the shrimp spread out before them in big, wet piles were imported — although the market is located a stone's throw from where shrimp boats dock. Shrimp producers from countries like China and Vietnam,plus four others, are facing the distinct possibility of paying substantial duties as the result of an anti-dumping petition working its way through Washington. The first indications of how big the duties will be...

For education and discussion only. Not for commercial use. One of the jewels of the Massachusetts Division of Marine Fisheries has been its venerable Massachusetts State Lobster Hatchery in Oak Bluffs. However the Vineyard Gazette reports that the hatchery may have to be appended to the Woods Hole Marine Biological Laboratory as one way to allow it to continue to function. A $1 million project to upgrade and expand the facility is on hold as the state grapples with its fiscal crisis and its new governor, Mitt Romney, came to office on a ‘no new taxes‘ pledge. Two months ago,...

Toxic Algae Blamed for Marine Species Deaths (Anchor link was wrong: scroll down if you want to read the article on the site. The text is just the same as below.) SACRAMENTO, California, May 7, 2002 (ENS) - Toxic algae may be contaminating shellfish and killing marine mammals and seabirds along the Southern and Central California coast. Domoic acid, a naturally occurring toxic algae [that should be algal toxin], is the suspected culprit, say the California Department of Health Services (CDHS) and Department of Fish and Game (DFG). The agencies say dozens of marine mammals, including dolphins and sea...