In Cod’s Shadow, Redfish Rise

Can live for 75 years, and appear to be growing back smaller as a species.

Well.. if you harvest fish and prefer the bigger ones, Thats pretty much selection pressure on a plate right there.

Not that a HN’er would ever comment without reading the article, it’s important to note that the fish in the title is not the fish most commonly known in the US as Redfish, the Red Drum. Interestingly the Red Drum was fished very close to extinction starting in the early 80s due to a craze for a restaurant dish called Blackened Redfish.

It would be nice if such articles could identify the Latin name of the mentioned species. It's hard for me to know exactly what fish a "redfish" is. People all over the world call certain fish "red fish", like Americans call Sciaenops ocellatus redfish, while Chinese call Lutjanus erythropterus redfish, while they are actually completely different fish. In the other hand, the redfish in this article is called ocean perch in the US, although it is not a perch at all. Common names are confusing. Until now, I have not been completely sure what kind of fish the referred redfish is. If anyone knows its Latin name, please help me to know.

This is fascinating. Given the lifespan of redfish, my naive thought is that it makes sense to keep the fishery closed for at least that long—to develop multiple generations. But the success of the current generation is putting so much pressure on the ecosystem that culling it through fishing might be the best option. And yet, having an expected bycatch of 9% could put undue pressure on other species and threaten one with extinction.

Meanwhile, the cod haven’t come back.

An opportunity arises for a Kafkaesque headline: "In Codd's Shadow, Redpanda Rises."

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/feb/27/russia-i... This article says we're overfishing redfish. I guess it's a different population but we're overfishing everything. The oceans need a break

Remarkable to see in this article that humans still think that their meddling with systems they fundamentally do not understand will yield beneficial outcomes.