Love the One You're With

Like many rivers in the western United States, California's Eel River has two types of steelhead trout that swim upstream from the ocean to spawn. Today, these typically standoffish fish clans spawn in separate stretches of the river and at different times of year, but they are more closely related than are comparable groups in other western rivers. Scientists have long wondered why. Now they may have an answer.

A massive landslide from California's Nefus Peak may have blocked the Eel River with a 140-meter-tall dam, creating a lake and forcing steelhead trout to spawn downstream for several centuries until the dam eroded.

LINK (Via: Science)

Female trout can fake orgasms, care about size

According to Sweden's National Board of Fisheries, female brown trout are known to deceive males during mating....go figure.

LINK (Via: WTOP)

Ottawa silences scientist over West Coast salmon study

Photo: Marlies Jordan

Top bureaucrats in Ottawa have muzzled a leading fisheries scientist whose discovery could help explain why salmon stocks have been crashing off Canada's West Coast, according to documents obtained by Postmedia News. The government released 762 pages of documents relating to the Miller study to Postmedia but many passages and pages were blacked out before they were released.

The documents show the Fisheries Department wanted to publicize Miller's study, which raises the spectre of a mysterious virus killing huge numbers of Fraser River salmon before they reach their spawning grounds.

LINK (The Vancouver Sun)

Could it be the migrating salmon are picking up the virus as they pass the fish farms?

A virus that has killed millions of salmon in Chile and ravaged the fish farming industry there was probably brought over from Norway, a major salmon producer has acknowledged.

Since 1984, when it was first diagnosed in Norway, the I.S.A. virus had an outbreak in every major salmon-farming region in the world except British Columbia, said Don Staniford, the global coordinator for the Global Alliance Against Industrial Aquaculture.

LINK (Via:The NY Times)

Here we go again

New research from Queens University in Belfast seems to suggest that fish do indeed feel pain.

LINK (Via: Spiegal)

Talk amongst yourselves.

Measuring Swimming Performance Differences of Wild vs. Hatchery Fish

LINK (Via: The Columbia Basin Bulletin)

Scientists Alter Developing Fish Brain to Resemble That of Another Species

Think of the possibilities!

A trout with the brain of a tuna.

LINK (Via: Science Daily)