Re: Dinosaur fish pushed to the brink by deep-sea trawlers

Reminds me of some real Rednecks that I met while working on a project in
the rural South. They said "if you can't eat it or (have sex) with it, what
good is it?"

Their phraseology was a little different, though.

There are catfish the locals caught in creeks, they called them "Mud Dogs" ,
and they had little foot like appendages on them, and they were ugly, but
not of any scientific interest, at least I never heard of any scientist
interested in them.


"Alan" <alan@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:memo.20060115160223.1120C@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> http://observer.guardian.co.uk/world/story/0,16937,1681745,00.html
>
> It is not every day that you come face to face with a dinosaur dating back
> 400
> million years, but for the fishermen in Kigombe on Tanzania's northern
> coast it
> has become almost routine.
>
> In the middle of Kigombe, a village of simple huts on this breathtaking
> edge of
> the Indian Ocean, a young fisherman stood proudly before a large green
> plastic
> container. Ceremoniously he reached inside and hauled out a monster of a
> fish,
> slapping its 60kg (132lb) of flesh on a table, where three children gawped
> at
> its almost human-like 'feet'. This is a living fossil, a fish with limbs,
> a
> creature once believed extinct: a coelacanth.
>
> Now it seems that man may have discovered the fish just to eradicate it,
> as ever
> deeper trawling throws up serious fears for the already dwindling
> populations of
> the fish, which lives at depths of between 100 and 300 metres (328ft to
> 984ft).
>
> The appearance of these creatures off the Tanzanian coast is a dramatic
> and as
> yet unfinished chapter in the extraordinary story of the coelacanth, an
> ancient
> fish that was 'rediscovered'. The coelacanth evolved 400 million years
> ago - by
> contrast Homo sapiens has been around for less than 200,000 years - and
> was
> believed to have gone the way of the dinosaurs until one was caught off
> the
> coast of South Africa in 1938.
>
> The fish has a remarkable physiology - it has no backbone, but an
> oil-filled
> 'notochord' and four limb-like appendages, with stubby fins. It has a
> double
> tail and gives birth to as many as 26 young at one time. It is believed to
> gestate for 14 months and may live for more than 80 years. The young
> develop
> inside the mother, attached to the outside of a huge yolk-filled egg of
> about
> 100mm (3.9in) in diameter.
>
> The world waited another 14 years before the second coelacanth was
> 'discovered'
> in the Comoros, off the East African coast. Then several more were found
> and it
> was photographed for the first time in its natural habitat. But it is the
> appearance of the coelacanth off Tanzania that has raised real worries
> about its
> future.
>
> It was in August 2004 that the local fisheries authority first received a
> phone
> call saying fishermen in Kigombe had caught a 'strange' fish. Officials
> went to
> check and to their amazement found two specimens of Latimira chalumnae -
> the
> coelacanth. Over the next five months 19 more were netted - weighing
> between
> 25kg and 80kg. Another appeared last January, then there was a gap until
> the
> fish again turned up as The Observer visited.
>
> The numbers are perplexing officials of the Tanga Coastal Zone
> Conservation and
> Development Programme, which has a long-term strategy for protecting the
> species, with the help of Irish aid. They see a connection with trawling -
> especially by big Japanese vessels - near the coelacanth's habitat, as
> within a
> couple of days of trawlers casting their nets coelacanths have turned up
> in
> shallow-water nets intended for sharks.
>
> Hassan Kolombo, a programme co-ordinator, said. 'Once we do not have
> trawlers,
> we don't get the coelacanths, it's as simple as that.' His colleague,
> Solomon
> Makoloweka, said they had been pressuring the Tanzanian government to
> limit
> trawlers' activities. He said: 'I suppose we should be grateful to these
> trawlers, because they have revealed this amazing and unique fish
> population.
> but we are concerned they could destroy these precious things. We want the
> government to limit their activity and to help fund a proper research
> programme
> so that we can learn more about the coelacanths and protect them.'
>
> Such is the paucity of resources for the programme that when The Observer
> visited its offices, we were shown an incredible specimen weighing 110kg -
> stuffed inside the office freezer. We had been asked to collect it.
>
> As the locals helped to haul the monster into the back of a taxi, the
> village
> leaders wondered if the fish could help them attract tourists to their
> impoverished community. Yet one of the challenges may be to persuade the
> wider
> Tanzanian population that this is a species worth preserving.
>
> Making our way to Tanga, with the coelacanth in the boot, Simon, The
> Observer's
> driver from Dar es Salaam, was deeply unimpressed with his unexpected
> passenger.
> He produced a pink bottle of rose poppy perfume and sprayed it liberally
> around
> the car to mask the odour seeping in.
>
> 'Why should they save this fish?' he demanded. 'This is not a good fish.
> It's
> oily and you cannot eat this, and it's a smelly fish.' Fixing me with a
> puzzled
> look, he concluded: 'It's a bad fish.'
>
> http://observer.guardian.co.uk/world/story/0,16937,1681745,00.html
>
>
>
> Alan
>
> http://www.veloceraptor.free-online.co.uk/enigma.html
>
> http://veloceraptor.blogspot.com/
>
> http://www.bushflash.com/pl_lo.html


.

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