Reversing Undesirable Fish Evolution

TaeKwonDood writes "Your granddad's approach to fishing — throw the little 'uns back — may have hurt their evolution, but we can reverse that, says a group of researchers, with a change of policy. Fish have been 'reprogramming' themselves to be smaller and live longer. Welcome to evolutionary dynamics, Lamarck. But, no, they are serious. And it can be fixed within 12 generations. What do the smart people out there think about this? Are they using the term 'evolution' the wrong way?"

Comments

See the same things with elephant tuskers ...

[Gopal.V]

For years, the elephants in southern India have been hunted for their tusks. Fifteen years ago, you could very well run into a lone tusker in the wild with metre long tusks.

But now of late, there are baby elephants being born who grow up to be fertile males without the large tusks. With tiny foot long points out of their mouths, instead of something resembling the original giants that I used to love.

It's almost as if the poachers are even more of a significant selection force than nature and female preference put together.

Human to Crocodile to Human

[G3ckoG33k]

Technically they are correct, in practice I have my doubts. It is hard to get all the variables in a breeding programme to act in line. Ask any dog breeder.

I once was asked by someone from J. Witnesses if I could transform a human into a crocodile. Sure I said, just give me some 300 million years and I might succeed. And, give give me another 300 million years and I may even get it back to a human.

Me, the magician!

flawed methodology

[SethJohnson]

TFA describes a closed study of a population of fish. It's not an examination of wild populations of fish or an analysis of trends in wild populations. Extrapolating their observations from the closed population and applying them to the wild populations isn't accurate.

Commercial fishing is performed with nets (or longlines) and does not discriminate based on size. Everything in the net goes into the hold. Any non-target fish are discarded after they are dead. Sport fishing does discriminate based on size, but doesn't have a significant impact on saltwater fish. Also, larger fish are usually the smarter fish that have avoided anglers' lures, etc. which is a phenomena that isn't accounted for in this study.

Seth