All posts tagged: fish

Brits issued ‘immediate and widespread’ fish and chips shop warning | UK | News

Brits issued ‘immediate and widespread’ fish and chips shop warning | UK | News

Published by Sam Flores

If the crisis continues, the price of fish will rise, experts warn (Image: AFP via Getty Images) The cost of fish and chips is set to soar as British fishermen get battered by rising diesel prices. The fishing fleet at Britain’s biggest fishing port, Brixham, Devon, has been pictured moored up as the Gulf crisis continues. Andrew McLeod, who fishes out of Brixham, said six weeks ago it would have been £10,000 to £11,000 to fill his boat for a week at sea, whereas now his last fuel bill was £20,500. Mr McLeod said: “Six weeks ago it was 55p a litre for red diesel, last week it was £1.05. That’s an awful lot of fish you have to catch just to tread water and not make a wage.” He added that if the cost of diesel continued to rise or remained at the current price an awful lot of boats will stop fishing and have an early refit. He said this would have a huge knock-on effect to everyone involved in the industry from …

Why spring smells like semen and rotting fish

Why spring smells like semen and rotting fish

Published by Jenni Sidey

Get the Popular Science daily newsletter💡 Breakthroughs, discoveries, and DIY tips sent six days a week. Ah, spring. The sun is out, the streets are humming, the days are getting longer, and the air smells like… like… um… say, can anyone else smell that? It’s not just me, right? Right?? It’s not just me. All over America, spring is getting smellier every year, and the culprit is the Bradford pear, a tree that gained popularity in the mid-20th century for its ornamental properties. But it has since proven to be kind of a nightmare. As well as its distinctive smell (described as smelling like rotting fish, sweat, or semen), it has a nasty habit of shedding branches during storms. Its hardiness makes it awfully difficult to get rid of, to the extent that it’s now considered invasive in most of North America. Oh, and you can’t eat its fruit, either, because it’s full of cyanide. The tree isn’t just a problem here in the US, either. In my home country of Australia, we have a …

How we worked out a fossilised ‘pterosaur’ was actually a fish – new research

How we worked out a fossilised ‘pterosaur’ was actually a fish – new research

Published by skeptic

Georges Cuvier, the 19th-century French anatomist who first recognised pterodactyls as flying reptiles, wrote that “of all the beings whose ancient existence has been revealed to us, [they are] the most extraordinary”. Now known as pterosaurs, this extraordinarily diverse, highly successful group lived alongside dinosaurs for more than 150 million years, occupying habitats around rivers, lakes, coasts and even the open ocean. While some species were quite small (no bigger than a pigeon), a few evolved into flying giants with wingspans exceeding ten metres. The Upper Jurassic pterosaur Rhamphorhynchus (Bürgermeister-Müller-Museum, Eichstatt Germany). David Unwin, CC BY Pterosaurs are unlike any other animal, living or extinct. Despite this, a surprisingly long list of fossils have been misidentified as pterosaurs – including a specimen of the earliest bird, Archaeopteryx, and an extinct aquatic reptile, Tanystropheus, which had extraordinarily long neck vertebrae like some pterosaurs. One of the most renowned misidentifications occurred in 1939 when Ferdinand Broili, a Munich-based palaeontologist, described a new pterosaur, Belonochasma, based on what appeared to be the remains of jaws bearing hundreds of …

These rock-climbing fish can shimmy up a 50-foot waterfall : NPR

These rock-climbing fish can shimmy up a 50-foot waterfall : NPR

Published by Sam Flores

Shellear fish have certain anatomical traits making it possible for them to climb as well as swim. Pacifique Kiwele Mutambala hide caption toggle caption Pacifique Kiwele Mutambala Seventeen years ago, Auguste Chocha Manda, a researcher at the Université de Lubumbashi in the Democratic Republic of Congo, traveled to the Luvilombo waterfall in the south of the country where he saw something remarkable. Thousands of tiny fish — a species called shellear (Parakneria thysi) — were climbing up the 50-foot rockface behind the waterfall. “If you would ask a regular person, do you think fish can climb falls, most of them will tell you: you are crazy,” says Emmanuel Vreven, an ichthyologist at the Royal Museum for Central Africa in Belgium. “Well, it exists, it is out there.” The behavior has been documented in fish in other parts of the world, but Vreven says never in Africa. Manda had filmed the phenomenon 17 years ago but he ended up losing the footage. So beyond his anecdotal observation, there was no hard evidence. And Pacifique Kiwele Mutambala, …

Bite mechanics of ancient marine predators yields surprising results

Bite mechanics of ancient marine predators yields surprising results

Published by Jenni Sidey

The Western Interior Seaway, which existed roughly 80 million years ago, split North America into North and South. It was a warm, shallow sea teeming with life from the Arctic Ocean to the Gulf of Mexico. Fish, squid, and marine reptiles—the lizards that hunted them—inhabited this bountiful marine desert. Some of these predators included large-bodied, or sometimes giant-sized, mosasaurs. These semi-aquatic reptiles re-evolved to live in the ocean, along with long-necked polycotylids. To date, how did so many large predators exist and thrive in the same aquatic space without exhausting their food supply? This has been the focus of an international research collaboration, yet only now is there a comprehensive biomechanical answer based on recent 3D scanning, engineering simulation, and experimentation. The results provide clear evidence of the biomechanical differences between mosasaurs and polycotylids. These distinct physiological configurations represent distinct ecologies and prey types rather than direct competitors. Bite performance of North American mosasaurs and plesiosaurs, showing the bite performance as optimal (bright colors) or suboptimal (darker colors). (CREDIT: Université de Liège / F.Della Giustina) …

A ‘third eye’ helps fish navigate deep underwater

A ‘third eye’ helps fish navigate deep underwater

Published by Jenni Sidey

Light behaves differently underwater. It shifts with depth, bends through murky currents, and separates into distinct wavelengths that change from surface to seafloor. For fish, those subtle differences are not just background noise. They are cues. A new study from Osaka Metropolitan University points to a specific region deep in the zebrafish brain that helps decode those cues. The work identifies the tegmentum, part of the midbrain, as a place where two streams of light information meet, one from the eyes and another from a lesser-known light sensor often called the “third eye.” Together, those signals appear to guide a simple but essential behavior: whether a fish swims up or down. The finding adds detail to a long-standing question about how animals translate light into movement, especially in environments where light is constantly changing. Light irradiation protocol generating PP1-specific responses in wild-type larvae. (CREDIT: PNAS) Where Two Light Systems Converge Fish do not rely on a single visual pathway. Alongside their eyes, many species possess a pineal organ, a small structure sensitive to light that …

These tiny fish climb waterfall cliffs for 10 hours

These tiny fish climb waterfall cliffs for 10 hours

Published by Jenni Sidey

Get the Popular Science daily newsletter💡 Breakthroughs, discoveries, and DIY tips sent six days a week. Nearly all fish spend their entire lives in water—it’s sort of a big qualification to classify as a fish, after all. However, some species occasionally behave in ways that recall their land-curious evolutionary ancestors. After multiple excursions in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), biologists can finally confirm one fish species that sometimes gives adept human rock climbers a run for their money. According to a study published today in Scientific Reports, the tiny shellear fish (Parakneria thysi) will spend hours crawling up a waterfall’s cliffside to reach better habitats. Unfortunately, their vertical travel routes are also making them susceptible to illegal fishing in the area. Specimens of Parakneria crossing the second level of the Luvilombo Falls. Credit: Pacifique Kiwele Tales of parkouring shellears, each measuring only 1.4 to 1.9 inches long, have circulated in the DRC for over 50 years. But these claims remained unverified without any concrete scientific evidence—until now. Between 2018 and 2020, a team led …

Top chef reveals the two supermarkets that do great meat and fish – and shares most underrated store cupboard ingredient | Money News

Top chef reveals the two supermarkets that do great meat and fish – and shares most underrated store cupboard ingredient | Money News

Published by Sam Flores

Every month we interview top chefs from around the UK, hearing about their cheap food hacks, views on the industry and more.​​​​​​​ This time, we speak to multiple Michelin-starred chef Kenny Atkinson, chef-owner at Solstice and House of Tides in Newcastle and Solaya in London. I’ve been fortunate to work under some amazing chefs… but my time in London alongside a chef called Hywel Jones was where I really learned my craft as an aspiring chef. His ability to get the best out of ingredients and his techniques helped me learn to achieve this, which gave me the platform to build on and has helped shape the chef I am today. A cheap ingredient that a lot of people overlook is… offal. People often go for the prime expensive cuts, but offal is often very cheap. Tripe is something a lot of butchers give away for free, as no one wants it, but braised slowly in red wine, bacon and mushrooms, it is one of the most delicious things to eat. The best store cupboard …

Beyond Cheap Fish Oil: How A 5:1 DHA Ratio Powers Brain Health & Vision

Beyond Cheap Fish Oil: How A 5:1 DHA Ratio Powers Brain Health & Vision

Published by Jenni Sidey

Omega-3s are an amazing family of fats that our bodies can’t make efficiently on their own. Long used for general heart and inflammation support, research shows that when formulated with a heavy emphasis on DHA plus targeted eye nutrients, they can support brain structure, cognitive performance, memory, attention, and eye/retinal health.  Most people get very little DHA from their modern diet, especially with high intake of processed seed oils that compete with omega-3s. Studies suggest that boosting DHA intake with a targeted formula can support brain function in everyday healthy adults. But before we get into the science… We sell this unique Omega-3 formulation, so this is obviously an ad. As always, whether or not you buy from us – you should take note of what these studies have found when considering your daily supplement stack.  Long story short, what we sell is a specialized 5:1 DHA-to-EPA ratio fish oil fortified with lutein and zeaxanthin (more on that below). It’s designed specifically for brain and eye support. Support yourself & support the site – buy some here.  Actual …