Shrinking Fish

"Scientists starting a novel project to investigate whether overfishing alters fish behaviour and changes their pattern of development."

Tying Videos on YouTube

I was curious to see what fly-tying stuff is available these days, free to view, so went searching via Gooooogle. Here is a great example of just how good things have become:

This video is one of many from Davie McPhail. If you want to see more quality tying you should definitely visit Davie's YouTube page where he's building a strong following.

If you tie flies left handed, Davie's videos are great because in his footage you're looking at the hook and vice oriented as it is when you tie yourself - some of the detail is masked but so long as you listen carefully that's covered by the narration.

Marine Astro Turf

Not exactly Astro Turf, but artificial sea grass, is being used to replace lost plant cover in Coromandel estuary reserve by the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research (NIWA) in New Zealand.

It's thought that increased sedimentation through wash-off from land development projects, has lead to a decline in sea grass. Some species of fish have seen a decline in numbers as less survive into adulthood. This is considered the result of increased predation due to loss of cover afforded by the structure of sea grass in their nursery grounds.

It's not just a local problem maybe this will become a world wide solution.

See reports and video:

• Taranaki Daily News
• TVNZ
• TVNZ Video

Dead zones

"A recent research study by scientists and fishery experts working in the western north Atlantic and eastern tropical Atlantic revealed that billfish and other finfish are becoming more vulnerable to overfishing as "dead zones" expand and shoal closer to the sea surface. This graphic using dissolved oxygen (DO) data from the World Ocean Atlas shows the depleted levels of oxygen at 100-meter depths off Africa and the Americas. The black and red colors indicate depressed levels of DO at or below 3.5 milliliters per liter (see scale)."

I was just reading an article over at www.delmarvanow.com about the effects of oxygen depleted regions in the world's oceans. A scientific study has established that while hypoxic zones, as they are known, are naturally occurring phenomena they are expanding further through continued increases in ocean temperatures. These expanses of water support less life and compress the regions of water available to many marine organisms.

These dead zones as they are known to anglers, are pushing bill fish, amongst others, into shallower higher oxygenated water and thereby exposing them to over fishing by commercial enterprise.

The study, composed of scientists from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the University of Miami Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science, and The Billfish Foundation suggests if stocks are not to crash, fishery management strategies must be adapted to account for the influence of the dead zones.

More family silver

O.K., I'll nail my colours to the mast, without debate. Don't follow Defra's advice and wait for government reports, act now!! Stop the UK government from selling our woodland! I urge anyone reading this, without delay, go sign the petition at

38 Degrees »

You might want to sign another one at

The Woodland Trust »

BUT don't be mistaken into thinking the Woodland Trust petition is the same as the one at 38 Degrees, it's not!! Sign the one at 38 Degrees before any other. If you read the article at the BBC you'll see that the Woodland Trust don't actually oppose the sell off!! And there enters the thin end of the wedge!!

It's meant to be International Year of Forests, let's make it just that!!

Shrinking Trout

I was just reading this over at BCLocalNews:

A group of Norwegian and Finnish scientists have recently observed that during cold temperatures, Salmoniods can reduce their body length up to 10%.

The writer, Jeff Weltz, asks himself, "How big, actually, was my friend Dave Rice’s 44-inch, fly-caught Thompson River Steelhead before it shrank?" Well, that could have been almost 49-inches. That's massive! Then again, 44-inches is massive enough!?

Mobile payment

In light of baseband hacking I wonder if buying your Starbucks coffee using your Android or iOS device is such a good idea? Over at RWW opinions are vague at best.

iMode users have been making payments using mobile devices for years, but that's such a small market hacking has probably never been much of a threat (correct me if I'm wrong). So, the success of payments over iMode can't really be presented as proof of concept.

Considering there is much development afoot with both Android and iOS regarding mobile payments, coverage could be huge. Hackers may well consider the expenditure of time and money worth a punt. The hardware manufacturers and platform programmers will have to close their security breaches and prove their cases before I'll wave my mobile at the coffee vendor...

Genomic signals

The Independent reports, if rather late, scientists have mapped genomic signals in search of an explanation for the crash in stocks of Canadian Pacific salmon. Their study focused on sockeye and implicated viral attacks, but doesn't provide an explanation for crashes in other stocks of salmon. So the work continues... if funding permits!?

For a more detailed report and some interesting reader comments, go to Canada.com or do a Google search 'Dead pacific salmon'.

Update (Thursday 20th 2011): Further reading at Times Colonist and a report from the Pacific Salmon Commission.

iPhone 5 v xCover

While I'm still a fan of the brand, I'm no longer the slave to Apple I once was. In the domain of look and feel, Apple's products remain second to none and mostly stand out far ahead of everything else in the market. That their products are the best functionally speaking is another matter, depending on perspective and requirements.

I own two Mac desktop PCs and a PowerBook all of which have performed pretty well over the years, but as my career has shifted my requirements have changed. These days I find just about any PC works fine for me. I use a computer to write program code, do basic image editing, word processing, email and web browsing. Even a cheap PDA can handle these tasks!? So any performance benefit the Mac can offer is mostly wasted on me, while style alone just doesn't cut the mustard, not at the premium Apple charges.

And when it comes to mobile phones I follow a similar trend. Currently owner of a completely rubbish phone, an LG KC550, my previous device was a Sony K800i which actually wasn't at all bad. However, I dunked the SE in a river bringing it to an untimely end. With the LG slowly dying, I'm after a new phone.

I could wait for the all singing all dancing iPhone 5 (which is hoping to steel some of Android 2.3's thunder, maybe outperform it (we'll see)) or maybe I could buy an HTC or Nexus. But do I need all that functionality (and limited battery life)? Not really! Anyway, a quick dip in the brine, or a good soaking in the river, and these, like most phones, end up in recycling! Treated the way I treat a phone before too long they'd all end up looking like a piece of jetsam (I can't stand the faff of cases and covers). So, I'm considering a basic rugged phone instead... something like the Samsung Solid Immerse GT-B2710 also known as the xCover 271.

The xCover has some good basic functionality and should take a reasonable amount of stick...