Microplastics In Our Fish: How Fish Food Is Affecting Our Food Supply and Our Health

Microplastics are small plastic particles ranging in size from 1μm (the size of a human hair) to 5mm (the size of a pencil-top eraser) that don’t dissolve in water and are usually fragmented from larger pieces of plastics. That sounds like something that should never end up on our plates, right? Well, researchers have found that these small plastics have, unfortunately, found their way into our food chain.

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Shark Movements Can Be Used to Design Better Marine Protected Areas

Marine protected areas can be very effective at protecting marine life, and they’re even more effective when the actual movements of wildlife are used to guide the drawing of their borders. By using telemetry, scientists can make shark-friendly protected areas and watch how effective they are at reducing commercial fishing.

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Going Blue: The Environmental Impacts of Aquatic Foods

Food production puts a major strain on our planet, and many people are exploring ways to reduce its impacts. Aquatic foods — including fish, shellfish, and water plants — may be one option! Which of these “blue foods” are more sustainable than others, and in what ways? What can we do to make catching and farming aquatic food even more environmentally-friendly?

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Bugmeal: The Future of Aquaculture?

With global declines in wild fish stocks, there is an increasing demand for fish grown through aquaculture. Yet current diets for aquaculture fish are mostly made of fish sourced from wild fisheries and from the aquaculture industry itself (Péron et al., 2010), contributing to unsustainable practices in the industry. In an effort to find a more sustainable replacement, researchers at the Japan International Research Center for Agricultural Sciences conducted a study looking at the effects of substituting fish protein used in fish diets with protein made from the younger stages of the black soldier fly. The results look promising.

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The use of albatrosses as a conservation tool

Illegal, unreported, and unregulated (IUU) fishing poses an imminent threat to biodiversity in our oceans. Notoriously difficult to track, fishing vessels are able to elude traditional tracking measures. Authors H. Weimerskirch et. al. introduce the concept of the “ocean sentinel”, where sea birds that are naturally attracted to fishing vessels are equipped with bio-loggers. Data from these loggers help locate where, when, and how frequently IUU is occuring.

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Fishing for Answers– Cyanide Detection in Aquarium Fish

Up to 10% of our salt water aquarium fish are caught through a dangerous technique known as cyanide fishing. While this practice is heavily outlawed for its reckless environmental consequences, it is nearly impossible to tell how a fish was caught by the time it reaches the US– until now. Breen et al., suggests a new rapid response test for the presence of cyanide in fish as a way to help stop this harmful fishing practice.

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Hidden fish populations protect us from ourselves!

We raise cows, chickens, and pigs on farms, but we still commonly hunt wild populations for one type of animal protein- seafood. Many fish populations are overexploited, but scientists found that despite this, Atlantic flounder populations were in better shape than expected. Why? How can we ensure that this stability continues?

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Do Red Snapper Call Decommissioned Oil Rigs Home?

As natural reefs are becoming more and more scarce in the muddy bottom of the Gulf of Mexico, scientists have looked towards decommissioned oil rigs as replacements. Because red snapper are an important reef fish in the Gulf, they are used as a focal species to determine if artificial structures are as capable as natural reefs to support the reproductive potential of reef fish.

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Tiny Doctors: Cleaner Shrimp Heal Wounds and Aid in Sustainable Fish Production

Throw out the antibiotics and bring in the shrimp! In a recent study, researchers at the Center for Sustainable Tropical Fisheries and Aquaculture found cleaner shrimp to be an effective biologic control in preventing parasitic infestations in farm-raised fish.

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