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November 8-9th Sat/Sun Little House, Mendocino (send Carol $20 to reserve your spot) Dining Out? This is an announcement from the Seafood Watch Program
at the Monterey This Fall the Seafood Watch Program is launching a Hawaii
pocket guide. This winter Seafood Watch will be working on a National
pocket guide and The following changes were made to the West Coast pocket
guide for Squid: California
market squid moved from the "Best
Choices" column to the Snow Crab: Snow
crab from Canada was identified as
a "Best Choice" because
Canadian managers have implemented very progressive conservation measures
and the Rockfish: Rockfish
from Alaska and British
Columbia were distinguished from other Shrimp: Shrimp
from the U.S. that are wild-caught
or farmed remain in the The Seafood Watch Pocket Guide is your tool for making
environmentally The Seafood Watch West Coast pocket
guide is updated twice per year, Here's what about to happen with Abalone: The first in a series of special
Fish and Game Commission (Commission) meetings
to review and receive public input on the draft Abalone
Recovery and Management Plan (ARMP) has been set for Wednesday,
October 22, 2003 from 6-9 p.m. at
the Monterey Department of Fish and Game office
at 20 Lower Ragsdale Drive.
Once completed, the
ARMP will provide guidelines for the recovery and management of seven
species of California abalone. The plan aims to recover depleted species
in central and southern California, while continuing to closely manage
the sport fishery for red abalone in northern California. For more information
on the ARMP and future special Commission, contact Ian Taniguchi, marine
biologist, at (562) 342-7182, or check the Marine Region Web site at
www.dfg.ca.gov/mrd/ Effective 8 October 2003 the season will be closed for Cabezon, Greenlings and Sheephead. Rock fish will be closed within a few weeks but no definate date yet. No word on Lingcod yet. Very Cold and Very Lonely LONDON -- Lloyd Scott completed his underwater version of the Loch Ness Marathon. It took him 12 days walking on the bottom of Scotland's Loch Ness to reach the endpoint and surface to land. Simply put, Scott described the experience as "very cold and very lonely." It might have been a little less lonely if he'd run into the Loch Ness Monster. But he says there were no monsters in sight. Fifteen km into his trek through the waters of Loch Ness clad in an antique dive suit, Scott lost touch with his guide rope and fell 15 feet down a 300 foot sheer drop. The fall hurt his shoulder.The dedicated fundraiser brushed off the incident as minor and got back in the Loch yesterday. "It was incredibly silty and I had zero visibility. I had to drop down on my hands and knees to find the line and I just went over a ledge," Scott told reporters on the scene. The zero visibility has taken away the chance of spotting the famed monster of the Loch. Scott's team reported that the only thing Scott has seen is one fish. Lloyd Scott walked 26 miles wearing a 1940s diving suit, complete with a 40-pound metal helmet. He finished the underwater marathon Thursday. The former firefighter and professional soccer player did it to raise money for children with leukemia. For decades, people have reported seeing a sea monster in Loch Ness -- but the existence of such a creature has never been proved. Military sonar may give whales the bends Sonar may be killing whales and dolphins around the world. They say military sonar is driving the ocean mammals to the surface too quickly. The result is a fatal case of what divers call the bends. Scientists have suspected for years that whale strandings and deaths are connected with the use of naval sonar. But they haven't been able to establish why, until now. The team of British and Spanish researchers studied beaked whales that had become stranded four hours after sonar was used as part of an anti-submarine drill. They found gas bubbles in the internal organs of 14 whales that beached themselves near a naval exercise in the Canary Islands. The bubbles are similar to those found in scuba divers who surface too quickly and get decompression sickness. Some of the whales' blood vessels had even exploded. Decompression sickness, called the bends, occurs when nitrogen gas that has dissolved in the blood of divers under pressure expands rapidly, forming bubbles that clot or damage vessels. In humans, decompression sickness causes dizziness and chest pain; untreated, it can cause paralysis or death. The alternative explanation, the researchers argue, is that sonar actually causes gas bubbles to form. There is also a theory that loud noises might cause gas bubbles to form in deep-diving marine mammals. Low-frequency sonar generates sound loud enough to cause permanent hearing damage in humans as far 160 kilometres away. Signs of severe damage to the eyes and ears have been found in whales that died during past sonar exercises. The findings are published in this week's edition of the journal Nature. 409 million year tale of sea's oldest predator JOHN INNES A FOSSIL shark has been dated at 409 million years old - the most ancient of the ocean predators yet found, it was revealed yesterday. The specimen, discovered in rocks in New Brunswick, Canada, sheds light on a period of shark evolution which is little understood. Scientists said the shark belonged to the species Doliodus problematicus, previous examples of which could only be identified by their teeth. Unlike those specimens, the new fossil includes the head and part of the front of the body. It has two rows of teeth, and paired pectoral fin spines, which are normally associated with bony fishes. Such a feature has never before been seen in chondrichthyans, which include sharks, skates and rays with cartilaginous skeletons. The fossil is 15 million to 20 million years older than the previous "oldest" shark, an Antarctic and Australian species known as Antarctilamna prisca. Randal Miller, from the New Brunswick museum in St John and colleagues described the find in the journal Nature. "This species is the oldest shark showing the tooth families in situ," they wrote. Appeals Court Rules Against Long-Line
Fishing
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