Tag Archives: fish
field book project
I recently acquired a smartphone. (As a friend told me: “Welcome to 2005.”) This is improving my life in a lot of ways, among them that it is finally possible for me to read blogs. I know, yeah, I have … Continue reading
more about salmon
Erik Stokstad at Science wrote an item about how salmon are actually managed – and it pretty much works, so no need to reorganize it, according to a guy at a salmon nonprofit.
salmon in fresh and salt water
One of the sets of terms I remember being most excited about learning in high school was anadromous/catadromous. (What, you didn’t learn this in high school? And you call that an education?) In case you missed it, a highlight of … Continue reading
museum tourist: california academy of sciences
I’d been to the Cal Academy in San Francisco once or twice before, but it was about a decade ago, and I didn’t remember much other than a bunch of fish. So I went into this expecting your basic natural … Continue reading
halloween costume
Not my costume, someone else’s: Lamprey. A lamprey is a jawless fish that sports, at the business end, a bunch of teeth and a raspy tongue with which they can suck your blood. (If you are a fish.) Yipe. Thanks … Continue reading
museum tourist: denver museum of nature and science
I took the occasion of a visit to Colorado last week to drop in on the Denver Museum of Nature and Science. The building opened in 1908, which is positively ancient for Colorado. And like any self-respecting natural history museum, … Continue reading
museum tourist: national aquarium (cont.)
A few weeks ago when I went to the National Aquarium in Washington, I got quite a surprise: this guy, staring me down from inside his tank. He’s a northern snakehead, a kind of invasive fish who made quite a … Continue reading
museum tourist: national aquarium
I have an embarrassing admission to make: I love fish, I love aquariums, I grew up in the Washington area, and I had never been to the National Aquarium in D.C. Until today. In my defense, the National Aquarium is basically one big room in the basement of the Commerce department, it doesn’t have a very good reputation, and it is dwarfed by the ginormous, beautiful National Aquarium in Baltimore. But I happened to have a pass for free admission that expired tomorrow, so this afternoon I finally stopped in. Continue reading
museum tourist: KU natural history
This weekend I was in Lawrence, Kansas, where my dad grew up, and stopped by the University of Kansas Natural History Museum. It’s in a great old building atop a hill on the KU campus. In olden times (the Cretaceous, … Continue reading
how to catch a pacu
Yesterday I wrote for ScienceNOW about how piranhas got their pointy teeth. The main thing I learned about piranhas is, really, they aren’t that bad. I talked to two people who have spent a lot of time catching piranhas in … Continue reading