The Future of Seafood

If you’ve lived on the Gulf Coast for more than a few years you have seen both commercial and recreational fishing under go some significant changes. For various species and types of fishing there have been increases in length limits, decreases in number allowed, changes in gear types, area restrictions, seasonal closures, turtle and fish excluder devices and closed areas.

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Fish seem to get into everything

When we think of how mankind has used fish throughout history the first uses that come to mind are either as food or bait. But, there have been, and are, many other uses for fish and some may surprise you. The more mundane uses for items like fish bones have been money and sewing needles. Oyster shells had been used for knives and whole lobsters as fertilizer.

Life and death: It is all in the numbers

Given the current and continuing controversy over the future of gillnet fishing in Alabama it is time to remind the players involved that information, not opinion and money, are what should drive the making of fishing regulations.

You cannot pull the trigger on these fish

It sounds as if this fish was named after a pistol and in a way it was. The gray triggerfish (Balistes capriscus) gets its common name from the fact that when it feels threatened its three dorsal spines are raised into a locked position. It pins itself in between rocks or in coral making it hard for predators to get it out. The only way to get these first spines to come back down short of breaking them off is to pull on the third spine. This cause all three to drop back into position. This is the ‘trigger’ that gives this fish its name.

Make it work, make it last, make it do or do without!

This is the fifth and last article in the series called ˜New ways of doing old things”.We all have heard the old saying ˜We’ve always done it that way”. Many times there is a good reason for doing the way it has always been done – it works. But, as Bob Dylan said ˜The times they are a changing” and how we do things is going to change with it. With global warming and all its concomitant effects, some of us are starting to think in ways that are new to us.In the last column we talked about how we might judge our lives based not upon how much we have but rather upon what we did. Keeping what we have in working order and learning how to maintain it is very important to most of us.