To make his fish look fresher, a Kuwaiti fishmonger glued googly eyes on his stock. The Kuwaiti Commerce Ministry reportedly forced him to close shop after a Facebook video showing the infraction went viral.
As one Twitter user wrote, "Never judge the freshness of fish by the googliness of their eyes." Truer words, truer words... Read the rest
Since the 1950s, wildlife departments have airdropped fish from planes to repopulate remote lakes. Above is video shot by Kamas State Fish Hatchery.
"They kind of flutter down, so they don't impact very hard," said Kamas State Fish Hatchery supervisor Ted Hallows. "They flutter with the water and they do really well."
From an article Hallows wrote in Wildlife Review (PDF):
Many of the lakes in Utah are excellent places to fish, but you can’t get to them with a truck or a car. The Uinta Mountains alone have more than 650 fishable lakes. The best way to stock many of these valuable fisheries—and sometimes the only way to stock them—is from the air… What used to take the old-time biologists and their pack trains months to stock can now be stocked in a few hours with an airplane. And using an airplane stresses the fish less. That means more of them will survive their fall to the water.
More at The Kid Should See This: "Aerial stocking: Utah wildlife departments drop fish into lakes from airplanes"
— Pattern (@Pattern) August 29, 2018
From first sketches to first bass caught, watch Nate Marling create a fishing lure that looks and moves like a cricket. Read the rest
Since moving in, Ted had done nothing to help with the housework. The household tasks assigned to him on the whiteboard in the kitchen have always gone undone. Despite demands that he pick up after himself, Ted leaves food scraps everywhere and never pays the rent on time. On Friday, after finding the leftovers she'd left in the fridge eaten, Sally decided to put an to Ted's bullshit.
The quiet of her and Dave's wee flat had been disrupted for long enough. Read the rest
Jackie Chaves of BonAppetEats makes delightful jewelry that looks good enough to eat, but among her best-sellers are these cute miniature ponds inside Altoids Smalls mint tins. Read the rest
MIT's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (MITCSAIL) created this graceful fishbot that can swim around a lot like a regular fish. Read the rest
If you want an idea how desperately bad the U.S. healthcare system is for those unable to afford it, the reader reviews on Moxifish—aquarium antibiotics—make for grim reading.
Worked in two days! My fish no longer has a tooth infection:) lol
My fish started work at a new job and his insurance hadn't kicked in yet. Well, of course, my fish got a bad case of bronchitis or something like that. Nevertheless, we decided to get him some meds and boom! Within 2 days he was all new again and just kept swimming!
My fish got bronchitis the first week of a new job and didn't have the time or money to go see a doctor. I received these quickly after ordering them and now my fishy's nasty cough is gone!
My fish have been sick for two weeks straight and having trouble sleeping at night. I finally figured out that the fish have a bad sinus infection and swollen glands. After just a few hours the swelling is gone and my fish can breath again. They were even outside all day building a shed and didn't feel sick at all. :).
$40 for thirty 500mg amoxycillin capsules isn't a good deal, and it seems likely the reader reviews have become more about the joke than the broke. But doctor visits can cost hundreds of dollars without insurance (and $50 or more with it), alternatives are not easily accessible, so here we are.
P.S. survivalists have long suggested stocking up on pet antibiotics for the comic-book apocalypse. Read the rest
In 1987 or so, the Welsh island of Anglesey, legendary redoubt of the druids, hosted a similarly legendary gathering to which only people with fish-themed surnames were invited. In Fish Story, Charlie Lynn (with the help of one Caspar Salmon) sets out to unravel "the truth behind a fishy tale." Read the rest
Not today, fisherman, not today. Read the rest
SEE UPDATE BELOW
This mysteriously "tattooed" fish was caught near Lopez Jaena in the Misamis Occidental province of the Philippines. Some locals considered the fish a warning from the depths. They're actually right, as the likely non-magical explanation is that the fish was caught in a printed plastic bag floating in the ocean and the pattern transferred to the animal's scales over time. (Mysterious Universe)
UPDATE:
According to ABS-CBN, "Zosimo Tano who caught the fish, clarified... that the print on the fish's body came from his shirt, which he used to cover the fish."
(Thanks, Teddy-Bob_Silas!)
Flashlight fish, also called lanterneye fish and scientifically photoblepharon (light-eye), are strange and wondrous creatures best viewed during a night dive in the Pacific. Read the rest
Dope. The labyrinth aquarium will set you back $6,500, from this vendor. Read the rest
Goldfish-driven vehicles continue to make great strides since our previous coverage. Now they are higher up and on a sturdier wheelbase, allowing free movement around any gallery where this iteration resides.
Quentin Destieu and Sylvain Huguet say:
Machine 2 Fish is an artistic installation using a robotic experimental system that translates the movements of a living goldfish into the physical locomotion of a robot. It is a question of allowing a goldfish to move in a terrestrial universe thanks to this prosthesis. The aim is to create a pseudo-intelligent system linking the fish and the machine to a stand-alone device that refers to cyborgs and science fiction. This project was born in 2010 as part of a residency with the support of M2F Créations / Lab GAMERZ, the 2016 version embeds a new system of sensors and computer programming able to respond as closely as possible to the requirements of fish.
When will the BattleBots-style series FishBots start? We're waiting with bated* breath.
• Machine 2 Fish (Vimso / Gamerz)
* Yes, the pun is intentional. Read the rest
"The alligator's coming, Connor! The alligator's coming!"
The Archerfish of Southeast Asia and Australia spit at perched insects to knock them into the water for an easy meal. From KQED's "Deep Look":
“When the fish fires the shot,” (Wake Forest University biologist Morgan) Burnett explained, citing the work of other researchers in Germany who first used high-speed cameras to observe the projectiles in 2014, “the water leaves the mouth as essentially a very long stream. But during flight, the stream merges into a ball.”
The fish accomplishes this feat of timing through deliberate control of its highly-evolved mouthparts, in particular its lips, which act like an adjustable hose that can expand and contract while releasing the water.
YouTuber Kitty Loves Tofu set up this inverted aquarium in an indoor koi pond then put some food inside. After a few early adopters benefited from taking a chance and swimming in, their neighbors decided to join in, too. Read the rest
Scientists declared the ruby seadragon a new species in 2015, but that was based on dead specimens in a museum. Now though, Scripps Institution of Oceanography biologist Greg Rouse who led the team that originally discovered the species, managed to find two of the wonderful fish swimming around the Recherche Archipelago, off the south coast of Western Australia. Each one is about 10 feet long. Just kidding. They're 10 inches long. From National Geographic:
After four dives with a remote-controlled mini-submarine, they managed to film two ruby seadragons more than 167 feet underwater, as the fish swam through rocky gardens of sponges and nibbled at their prey, most likely tiny crustaceans called mysids...
...The footage confirms that ruby seadragons use a different means of camouflage than its closest relatives. Common and leafy seadragons are covered in leafy outgrowths meant to camouflage the fish as they swim through seagrasses. The ruby seadragon, however, lacks them—opting instead for a scarlet body, an efficient way to disguise itself from predators in the dark depths.
Most surprisingly, the video suggests that the ruby seadragon can use its curled tail to grasp objects.
