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Fish in the News, by Annie, on March 10, 2010
 photo by tiswango A popular target for recreational and commercial fishing, the red grouper may have more to give to the world than just delicious meals. Scientists from the University of Florida have observed this fish cleaning sand from rocky areas, literally digging holes in the ocean floor so that other diverse sea creatures who are attracted to the rocks, such as coral and sponges, can live there. For this reason, they’re calling the red grouper “underwater architects.”
If the red grouper population starts to decrease, other marine life who depend on its cleaning practices could be negatively affected as well. Scientists and officials are realizing it may be time to rethink how we regulate fishing.
Source: Washington Post (click the link to see the red grouper in action)
Fish in the News, by Annie, on March 8, 2010
 photo by Graphic Reality In Australia, it’s raining fish!
A recent article on the Northern Territory News website speaks of residents finding small fish on the ground far from rivers and creeks. Some believe they fell from the sky during heavy rainstorms, others say that little fish get caught up in water spouts that start over rivers then travel across the land, but the most likely theory is that creeks have flooded during heavy desert rainstorms, delivering their occupants far from home.
Read the full story here.
Comic, by Gudrun, on March 8, 2010
 Read the EIGTH page of The Lake Bound Adventures of Chinku and Jabari, and keep coming back for more, every other Monday a new page will be posted for your viewing pleasure.
Fish in the News, by Gudrun, on March 3, 2010
Annie and Gudrun have been heavily absorbed in book preparation, and have sorrowfully neglected to keep their cyber friends up to date. They send many apologies and promises to return Friday with fresh posts and new directions.
Until then, if you’re needing a fish-fix, read about the filter-feeding Prehistoric Megafish discovery, reported on by National Public Radio.
 source: www.paleocreations.com
Fish in the News, by Annie, on February 24, 2010
 photo by Dolmang A Toronto based group plans to lease the bottom seven floors of a brand new office building in Times Square. They want to build a public aquarium, as well as a museum about pirates. The lease would be for 25 years, and the aquarium could open as soon as 2011. There has not been a public aquarium in Manhattan since 1941.
I wonder if it will be as good as the Churaumi Aquarium (Okinawa, Japan), shown in the photo. That’s a whale shark, if you’re wondering.
Comic, by Gudrun, on February 22, 2010
 Read the SEVENTH page of The Lake Bound Adventures of Chinku and Jabari, and keep coming back for more, every other Monday a new page will be posted for your viewing pleasure.
Writing, by Gudrun, on February 19, 2010
 Okay, its the end of a very quiet week where I could have gotten a lot of writing done but instead I hid behind excuses of “research” and “backstory” and “Winter Olympics” instead of tackling head on the Annie’s Fish rewrite that must be conquered.
I went through stages of “I’m not good enough,” “the story’s not good enough,” “why did I ever think I could write a book, everyone in the WORLD wants to write a book, the competition is too high,” and other familiar feelings of inadequacy and self loathing. This went to the point of keeping me, and consequently my husband, awake at night fretting.
But, as anyone in their right mind knows, there’s no way out of this kind of situation but to dive in and do the work. Nobody’s going to do it for me, and if I let it scare me stiff, it will never change to something less scary, and it will never get done.
So this morning, cue the Rocky soundtrack fanfare (which is easy to do as they’re playing the newest Rocky movie, the one where he’s old, on French TV this weekend, thus lots of commercials), I cleaned off my desk. I put all the unfinished paperwork, uh, somewhere else (don’t look at the desk behind me), I moved my standing file folder that stares at me saying “you should be job hunting, you should work on your illustration portfolio, you should finish this other book you started writing a few years ago, the manuscript’s right here” to a different shelf, out of eyesight. In its place, I put the flowers I received for Valentine’s day and my lucky Day of the Dead skull with bright pink flowers in the eye sockets and turquoise curly-cues on the cranium. I cleared my schedule, whipped up a raspberry Emercen-c, and I’m gonna do it.
Fish in the News, by Annie, on February 17, 2010
Lake Tanganyika cichlids in the news! A recent study performed by Thomas Stewart and Craig Albertson discusses the strange skeletal anatomy of the Perissodini cichlids, who feed themselves by biting the scales off other fish. These fish often have a mouth that is shifted to one side to make it easier to remove scales from their prey. The study suggests that this evolution comes from how these fish hunt and where they live, and not every Perissodini is born with a mouth off to one side. The scientists wonder whether the shape of the fish’s face changes over its lifetime, or if the fish with centered mouths just die off because they are not as effective at hunting as the fish with the lopsided mouths. They believe further research into the Perissodini fishes will help them better understand the Perissodini, and ‘handed-ness’ among vertebrates in general.
Read the abstract or download the article.
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What is this? Annie Velter, seventh grader, is learning all about tropical fish, scuba diving and Tanzania before she goes to visit her grandmother. You can soon read about her adventures in the new middle grade novel Annie's Fish. Learn more... |
