The history of tuna

Forgot I had this article, and thought other would enjoy reading it.

Fish coughs up golden watch

The story below can be viewed here, though I copied and pasted for your convenience. Anyone holding in Daf Yomi, I am pretty sure someone can keep the watch, as it should have a "din" of "zuto shel yam", unless I'm missing something. A modern day "Yosef mokir Shabbos"!!!

ELE‘ELE — With tennis shoes on, wallet in pocket and a bamboo stick in hand, Kaua‘i resident Curt Carish on Wednesday may have written himself into the most eccentric fisherman’s history book.To catch a fish with such simple gear would be an interesting tale in itself. But after Carish hauled in a nenue, the 10-inch fish coughed up a gold watch.“I was just sitting on a picnic table looking out into the ocean of Port Allen beach when I saw a nice-size fish awkwardly swimming close to shore,” Carish said. “So my friend Allen Hall gave me a bamboo stick and said, ‘Go get ‘em.’”Carish jumped into the waist-high water and struck the nenue a few times with the dull stick until the fish went limp.He said its stomach was abnormally large but he just threw the fish in the cooler along with his frozen chicken that he was going to barbecue that night.Tanley, a good friend of Carish, opened the cooler minutes later to discover a gold watch laying inches from the nenue’s mouth.“And the funniest thing is that the watch was on time and still ticking,” Carish said.Carish, who often hangs out at the private Port Allen Club with many other members, said in all of his 30 years on Kaua‘i he has never encountered anything this bizarre.

New York - Swedish Study Finds Fish Diet Boosts Intelligence Scores

The article was taken from here, though despite finding several news sources citing it from "DPA" I could not locate a DPA. Maybe I need to eat more fish...

New York - A regular intake of fish appears to boost intelligence scores in teenagers, according to a new Swedish study. The research suggested that 15-year-old males, who ate fish at least once a week, had "higher cognitive skills at the age of 18 than those who ate it less frequently."
The fish diet appeared to "increase combined, verbal and visuospatial intelligence scores by an average of 6 per cent."
Eating fish more than once a week almost doubled the score, according to the study published in the March issue of Acta Paediatrica said.
The researchers used responses from 3,972 males in the survey with cognitive scores registered in their Swedish military conscription records three years later.
"We found a clear link between frequent fish consumption and higher scores when the teenagers ate fish at least once a week," said Professor Kjell Toren of the Sahlgrenska Academy at the University of Gothenburg, western Sweden.

Toren said the findings were "significant" since the research was conducted between 15 and 18 years of age "when educational achievements can help to shape the rest of a young man's life."
The researchers said they did not know what mechanism was linked to fish consumption and improved cognitive performance.
One theory was the benefits were linked to long-chain polyunsaturated fatty acids found in fish.
The leading author of the study, Dr Maria Aberg from the Centre for Brain Repair and Rehabilitation at the University of Gothenburg, said the team had considered other factors including ethnicity, where the teenagers lived, what level of education their parents had achieved, how often the teenagers exercised, their well-being and weight.
"Having looked very carefully at the wide range of variables explored by this study it was very clear that there was a significant association between regular fish consumption at 15 and improved cognitive performance at 18," Aberg said.
The researchers are now set to investigate whether the results were affected by the kind of fish eaten.

Rabbi Chaim Goldberg presenting at Lander College for Men

UPDATE:

Around 30 students attended our Lander College excursion, where we talked about tilapia, trout, basa vs flounder, and salmon. A good time was had by all, especially me!!!

You can hear it by following the link here!

Lander College for Men 75-31 150th Street Kew Gardens Hills, NY Tuesday, March 17th from 5-6pm

THE KASHRUS OF FISH IN THEORY AND PRACTICE
A DEMONSTRATION
Given by
Rabbi Chaim Goldberg, Shlita
OU Fish Rabbinic Coordinator

Come one, come all!!!

Rabbi Goldberg Hits Boston!!!

UPDATE: YOU CAN WATCH THE VIDEO OF THIS AMAZING PERFORMANCE BY CLICKING HERE!!!

Many of my hardcore fans are already familiar with this appearance, but with my limited web skills (and lots of work going on) I finally got around to up loading this badboy. Hope it works this time!!

Rabbi Goldberg Speaking at Rutgers Hillel Tomorrow

For those of you in New Brunswick, NJ, Rabbi Chaim Goldberg will be taking his scaled friends to the Hillel House at Rutgers for a pre-sushi making lecture on kosher fish. Go Scarlet Knights!!!

Global Warming's Fish-Gender Effect

A small increase in water temperature among sensitive fish like the South American pejerrey can result in a population that is 98% male
Cousseau, B. and Perrotta, R.G. / Fishbase.org

(See original article at www.time.com)

Once scientists began studying the impact of global warming on everything from tourism to asthma, it was only a matter of time before they got around to sex. Now two biologists at Spain's Higher Council for Scientific Research (CSIC) have done just that, at least when it comes to fish.

You may have missed it in biology class, but in some finned species, like the Atlantic silverside — as well as in many reptiles — sex is determined not by genetics but by temperature: the undifferentiated embryo develops testes or ovaries on the basis of whichever option conveys evolutionary advantages for that particular environment. Now, in a study published in the July 30 edition of the scientific journal Public Library of Science, Natalia Ospina-Alvarez and Francesc Piferrer have gone a little further in explaining how that mechanism works. In laboratory tests, they have demonstrated that higher water temperatures result in more male fish.

"We found that in fish that do have temperature-dependent sex determination [TSD], a rise in water temperature of just 1.5 degrees Celsius can change the male-to-female ratio from 1:1 to 3:1," says Piferrer, the study's co-author. In especially sensitive fish, a greater increase can throw the balance even more out of whack. Ospina-Alvarez and Piferrer have found that in the South American pejerrey, for example, an increase of 4 degrees Celsius can result in a population that is 98% male.

What makes these findings especially troubling, of course, is that the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) predicts that ocean-water temperatures are likely to rise by 1.5 degrees over the course of this century — and they may even go up a few degrees more. "If climate change really does result in a rise of 4 degrees, which is the maximum the IPCC predicts, and if species can't adapt in time or migrate, then in the most sensitive cases of TSD, we're looking at extinction," says Piferrer.

Most research into fish sex determination has been done in the lab (for obvious reasons), but the pejerrey is one of the few species that scientists have been able to study in the field. And those studies have revealed that already, its proportion of males to females is skewed. "It could be because of chemical pollution or it could be because of climate change. We don't know," cautions Piferrer. "But the field data matches our predictions."

At this stage, it is hard to tell what these results bode for already declining fish populations around the world. Of the estimated 33,000 piscatorial species, only 5,000 have had their sex-determination mechanism affirmed. But the study by the two CSIC scientists also suggests that the percentage of TSD fish is lower than previously believed. In tests of 59 species believed to be reproductively sensitive to temperature, only 40 proved to be true TSDs.

That would be good news in this grim era of climate change if it weren't for one factor: even genotypic sex determination can be affected by anomalous conditions, including anomalous temperature. "Basically, if you freeze it or cook it enough," says Piferrer, "you can get whatever sex you want."