Animots
Writing about animalsLink-o-rama: September 19th
What do you do when a 2mm beetle threatens to eat a lot of trees? Well, if you’re Alberta, you fight it with fire. Notice all the war-related language in the article.
Farm-raised” is slowly becoming synonym nowadays for purity, health, and a connection to the land. However, in the case of farm-raised fish, not-so-much. As an aside, I was in Alaska this summer and there appears to be quite the vitriolic hate-on for aquacultured Salmon. They really hate that it’s such an industry in British Columbia.
Most Unwelcome Visitor of All
Originally uploaded by stellaretriever
I’m an avid Flickr user and in my travels through that little universe, came across the photograph above and this accompanying story:
I hate bears, and not just a little, a LOT.
Please don’t call it cute (I will delete your comment). It is not cute. It is, at its young age, as un-ugly as they get.
I get raided about once a week and each time leaves me shaking with fear and fury. Fear that the f*cker or f*ckers mom will kill my puppy or me and fury that some millionare bastard in Southern Ontario has ruined my life this way.
The spring bear hunt in Ontario was canceled after a propaganda compain funded by industrialist Robert Schad. He had billboards posted in prominent places in Toronto showing the poor orphan bear cubs and the city dwelling population which never sees one of these bastards goes “oh poor babies” and voted to cancel the hunt.
Some of you are probably my contacts. Let me tell something. There are waaayyy more orphans now. Hunters get licenses to kill specific genders and ages of bear. Males only were done in and baiting was allowed. Baiting may seem really unfair but bait will draw the same bears as will show up in a suburban backyard.
My composters were gone years ago and I’m down to 1 sunflower feeder but still they show up. And I am within my rights to kill them (the gun wasn’t handy today, unfortunately). And what is more, I don’t care if it’s a mom or a cub or whatever – unlike a hunter who has to care or get in big trouble with the law.
Next year this guy will be four or five hundred pounds, and he is getting habituated to people. He’s a time bomb. A terrorist in the making.
And the swamp behind my house where only one bear lived in 1999 now has a least five, maybe more. And there is not enough food for that many bears in that particular swamp. So they are starving.
So I hope the animal rights folks are proud. The woods are full of starving bears. Great job cancelling the hunt.
I think the story speaks for itself and is a passionately-worded description of what it is like post-spring hunt for this Flickr member.
“Fuck you, Bob”
Bob Izumi is a fishing legend, “Canada’s most celebrated fisherman.” Seems like these guys don’t like him too much.
When “catch and release” isn’t: improving fish survival rates
Apparently, every 365 days, 47 million fish are caught and released in Australia. On the surface (no pun intended) that appears to be 47 million times that fish don’t die when they’re caught. A good thing. It seems, however, that the practise of “catch and release” may, in some cases, just be putting off the moment of death rather than avoiding it outright. That’s the troubling aspect of the “catch and release” mantra: the assumption is that in catching and releasing, you’re letting the fish live to see another day (or at least reproduce so you have a viable fish population). It might be a bit of a dream though: in one Australian fish species (Yellowfin Bream) if the hook used to land the fish is located deep in the mouth mortality is as high as 87 %.
Matt Broadhurst and Paul Butcher, New South Wales Department of Primary Industries scientists, have developed a new set of “protocols” to improve the chances a fish will survive their release. Here they are, taken from the press-release linked below:
- Cut the line on fish that swallow hooks;
- Remove hooks caught in the fish’s mouth;
- Minimise air exposure;
- Use landing nets without knotted mesh;
- Maintain water quality in on-boat holding tanks; and
- Use the right rig for the fish species being targeting.
I like bullet 3 the best. Taken to its logical conclusion…
It should be noted that all fish that Broadhurst and Butcher tested (all caught via hook by fishers) had “physiological changes measured as elevations in either plasma cortisol or glucose,” indicating that regardless of a “good” hook in a mouth or a “bad” ingested hook, these fish were under stress.
Links:
Going Fishing? Only Some Catch And Release Methods Let The Fish Live
Release method and anatomical hook location: effects on short-term mortality of angler-caught Acanthopagrus australis and Argyrosomus japonicus
