A 100-pound sailfish that jumped into a boat off the coast of Florida and impaled a Maryland woman fishing there was brought to the hospital. Last week’s attack left 73-year-old Katherine Perkins with a groin injury. She claimed that the fish moved so quickly that she didn’t have time to respond, according to a report […]
Tag: sardines
Penguins in crisis as sardine populations plummet
African penguin populations are plummeting along with sardine stocks. As are Cape gannets and Cape cormorants, who also feed almost exclusively on the small pelagic fish. The penguins at Boulders Beach in Simonstown are safe as a tourist attraction, for now. The population has been relatively stable over the last five years but researchers believe […]
Feed a fishery, starve a seabird
Competition for fish stocks with fisheries to feed humans could be forcing seabirds to go hungry, according to new research. The study, published Dec. 6 in the journal Current Biology, reveals that seabirds’ share of fish has dropped by nearly 20 percent over a span of 40 years. Expanding large-scale fisheries, meanwhile, have increased their […]
Blue-footed boobies on the decline, plummeting sardine stocks may be to blame
The iconic blue-footed booby (Sula nebouxii) of the Galapagos Islands has suffered a population decline of 50 percent in less than 20 years, according to research conducted by biologists from Wake Forest University. The study, which appeared in the journal Avian Conservation and Ecology, suggests the unexplained disappearance of sardines from the birds’ diet is […]