Australasian Fishes: We Want Your Fish (Sightings)!

December 2017

Fish Thinkers has just become  an official project supporter of Australasian fishes, which as someone that has a slight obsession with fish, I am rather happy about.  Set up by the Australian Museum in 2016, it is a really nice example of a citizen science project that is open to all and it is getting lots of interesting results.

Sustainable shopping: how to buy tuna without biting a chunk out of the oceans

Canned tuna is an Australian pantry staple.
NOAA

 

by Candice Visser and Quentin Hanich, University of Wollongong

Shopping can be confusing at the best of times, and trying to find environmentally friendly options makes it even more difficult. Welcome to our Sustainable Shopping series, in which we ask experts to provide easy eco-friendly guides to purchases big and small.

Pregnant Sharks and Rays Abort Offspring When Fished

Pregnant Sharks and Rays Abort Offspring When Fished – Guest post by Kye Adams

Have you ever seen a viral video of a shark or ray giving birth (e.g. River Monsters)? Unfortunately, it turns out these videos have a pretty dark explanation: There’s a fairly high chance the female is actually aborting her pups due to the stress of being caught.

Shark Search Indo-Pacific: finding sharks and conservation solutions in the Big Ocean

Dr Andrew Chin is based at the Centre for Sustainable Tropical Fisheries and Aquaculture – James Cook University and is the current president of the Oceania Chondrichthyan Society. He is also the Programme Director of Shark Search Indo-Pacific, a project that I personally find incredibly interesting and have been following closely. Andrew stopped by Fish Thinkers to give us the inside scoop on Shark Search Indo-Pacific in the guest post below:

Using Rockpool Fish Behaviour to Understand why Rockpools are so Species Rich

The Cocos frill goby (Bathygobius cocosensis) and the Eastern jumping blenny (Lepidoblennius haplodactylus) dominate intertidal rockpools in south eastern Australia making them ideal species to use when investigating the diversity of rockpool fish communities. Beautiful illustrations by Tilley Wood (Instagram: @tilleymadethis).

Following on from a previous fish thinkers guest post: “Close to home: what drives the distribution of intertidal rockpool fishes?”, University of Wollongong Researchers  Kai Paijmans and Dr Marian Wong  have published new research that offers novel insight into the secretive goings on of rockpool fish communities.

For those who aren’t inclined to wade through scientific literature, Below is an overview by lead author Kai for your enjoyment.

Species on the move

A prediction of the preferred environmental habitat for the range-shifting yellowtail kingfish (Seriola lalandi) for March 2008, based on a combination of preferences for sea surface temperature, current speed and sea surface height.

Curtis Champion is a PhD candidate at the Institute for Marine and Antarctic Studies – University of Tasmania. He stopped by the Fish Thinkers blog to give us a run down on some of the research he is working on.

Species on the move and a quick explainer about how range-shifts are commonly identified

Climate. Change. No doubt you’ve heard of the phenomenon. And while a small number of our political reps sporadically break into the headlines for criticising its reality, the global scientific community has been busy forging novel territory to understand its ecological consequences. This emergent field is most-commonly referred to as “species redistribution science” because plants and animals shifting where they live (generally towards the poles or up mountains) in response to changes in temperature is perhaps the most perceptible ecological effect of climate change.

How do patterns in coastal seascapes influence temperate reef fish assemblages?

Daniel Swadling is a new PhD student at the University of Wollongong who is embarking on a project to better understand the relationship between temperate fishes and their habitats. He also loves his luderick and drummer fishing using an old school Alvey reel, so he is going to fit in just fine and I sense there will be plenty of fishing adventures in the future. Below is his guest post recapping his honours project and where he is heading with his PhD research.

My name is Daniel, I am a PhD student at the University of Wollongong (UOW)

Have your say on the NSW Marine Estate Threat and Risk Assessment

Are you concerned about the health of New South Wales marine environment?

If you are, it is worth looking at the NSW Marine Estate Threat and Risk Assessment Draft Report and providing a submission or comment to improve the assessment.

The report will be used to determine the most important threats and risks to the NSW marine environment and your submission could help decide where management actions are directed. Note: submissions are due this Saturday the 30^th of April.

The website contains the current threat and risk assessment for a range of human activities on environmental assets (for e.g. fish, beaches, rocky reef etc.). It is interesting to see what the current risk ratings are for certain human activities and how the NSW Marine Estate justify these ratings.

To search for this information the NSW Marine Estate has developed an interactive tool to help you navigate through the draft assessment. Once you have identified a human activity (for e.g. recreational fishing) and its risk on an environmental asset (for e.g. the fish assemblage) there are links to a variety of reports used to justify this ranking plus a link to provide your own feedback.

The interactive tool did take me some time to get the hang of, so below are instructions and screen grabs to help you navigate your way through the site.

5 free ways around the great paywall of academia. #Updated 2019#

Picture: Severin. Stalder CC BY-SA 3.0 via wikimedia commons

If you do not have subscription access to academic journals through an institution then to access a large proportion of academic journals you will be charged a fee for each paper; fees of $30 or more per article are common. And if you need to access a lot of papers then the cost quickly adds up. Needless to  say many people don’t have the means to pay. Of course you could stick to open access journals i.e. free to read and download (Head to the directory of Open Access Journals for easy access to a whole range of open access journals), but by doing so you will miss a lot of what’s happening in the academic world*.

If you can’t afford to pay then you have a few options to get around the paywalls.

Here are  5 ways around the great paywall of academia;

Vote 1 in FlyLife Photo Comp

Voting is now open for the Fly Life Magazine‘s photo competition and all of the finalists have some cracking entries.

Big congrats to our mate Angus Kennedy for reaching the finals with his shot of Matt guiding his canoe down the rapids of a remote south coast Bass stream.