[NilsS]

(Mako)Mike -

You beat me to it by a couple of minutes. I don't know if I can do it, or how to do it if I can, but if possible could you append this to the thread you started for Mike?

Thanks,
Nils
<><><><><><><><><><><><><>

As an aid to Flatts1b, who seems not to know what the appropriate protocol is here, this link will take you to the Ocean Associates, Inc. site. Ocean Associates is a fisheries consulting firm started by John Everett, a retired NMFS scientist with an impeccable reputation. If you check the included bios of the listed Associates, you'll see that they are all cut from the same cloth - and all from those good old days when fisheries policies were mostly based on science, not on pandering to political pressure.

Anyway, follow the "Recent projects" link, then click on the first, "Provide analytical report on proposed menhaden fishing regulations..." and read the Executive Summary. If nothing else, you'll gain an appreciation for the difference between real research and what has for the most part come to pass for science in fisheries management today.

(I would strongly suggest that for those interested folks, you compare John's report with H. Bruce Franklin's "The Most Important Fish in the Sea." Also, perhaps, his background compared to Dr. Franklins, etc.)

This post edited by NilsS 08:23 AM 04/11/2008

 

[NilsS]

As we've all seen far too often, objective science is getting harder and harder to come - and regardless of who does the science, someone's going to be paying for it. I've found that the most effective way to counter bad science is with better science - not with more innuendo about who paid for what. John Everett critiqued the science underlying the proposed Texas ban (and by inference a bunch of others). Perhaps the antis will respond in kind - but I kind of doubt it.

If you don't agree that menhaden are omnivorous, that's fine - but the argument that you've never seen anything in one's stomach, and you've seen a couple of them with grass shrimp in their mouths, isn't really all that compelling, is it? If menhaden are omnivorous as John stated, then a lot of menhaden are eating a lot of stuff besides phytoplankton. And that lotta stuff might well include useful stuff at early life stages. If they are purely vegetarian, that should be easy to prove (and in fact John referenced work disproving it, I think, or at least seriously questioning it.)

You make a living as a small boat fisherman, so you've obviously got an interest or two in supporting that fishery. Should we therefore question everything you write regarding fishing?

 

[HungryJack]

Oh boy......

loligo wrote:
Oh boy......

Having personally caught in the neighborhood of nearly 1 million menhaden in my life, I have never ever observed anything in a menhaden stomach.
And you inspected the stomach contents of each one before you sold it ?
Did you even know what you were looking at when you looked inside a menhaden stomach,
of course not,
but you do feel qualified to rebuked scientists about it
Here is why you never found anything;

"Traditional stomach analysis have not captured the extent of juvenile and adult menhaden?s animal diet because of their extremely rapid digestion and their regurgitation of stomach contents during sampling. Putting the sampled animals on ice does not stop digestion, which is complete in a few hours, and quickly works through even the stomach walls and into the flesh. Recent menhaden diet studies using fatty acid composition and carbon and nitrogen isotope ratios, confirm menhaden to be primarily carnivores at all life stages.
DNA analysis of already-digested stomach contents in herring (a close cousin) shows that young stages of predatory fish are part of their diet, even though they are quickly rendered invisible by rapid digestion."

PS- when I posted the same about Herring and their effect on game/foodfish species in another thread,
you and your Herring obsessed pal twofin laughed at me.

This post edited by HungryJack 10:57 AM 04/11/2008

 

[obtuseangler]

Are there any followup studies of water quality in areas where Omega is sucking up massive tonnage of bunker?

 

[guest]

this is kind of a no brainer. they run through the water with thier mouths open and acting like sieves. So anything under a certain size and above a certain size is going to be eaten, plant, animal, or inorganic

 

[657603]

some poor lab rat...

will be counting plankton this summer....from the mush that is called a bunker stomach.
I've had peanut bunker in our Lab, and fed them fish flakes, which is probably made of other fish, I guess that kinda' proves they don't eat just plants?

SO to solve the problem of menhaden eating all the fish larvae, just set up some automatic fish feeders. Ya know the kind we have set up in our home aquariums when we get lazy or go on vacation...

This post edited by researchdude 12:19 PM 04/11/2008

 

[guest]

loligo wrote:

No doubt- But these guys are going to try to claim that pogies are eating more than is sustainable and therefore "we" should be harvesting more of them, to "save" the other fish....I've heard it before.



And others will say that there isn't enough menhaden to feed the other fish, or that they are needed to "clean" the water. Both side are equally ridiculous in their understanding of complex processes and only seek the information that back-up what the want to have happen.

 

[HungryJack]

 

[HungryJack]

pickled brain thinks.....

Those are your own words.
Why do they upset you so ?

When posted that way,
does it make you realize how uniformed many of your comments are ?

This post edited by MakoMike 04:01 PM 04/11/2008

 

[MakoMike]

We now return you to our regularly scheduled bickering

 

[SORTIE]

amusing to scan however